marzipan from the lakeside cafe

A footnote to the lostcities series:

Among the random pieces of wood I keep for pirate luthier purposes and other DIY work, I rediscovered the lid of a wooden box of marzipan. No idea where the box is (it may be serving to store some photos somewhere) but looking at the lid again after a long while:

Own photo.

I recognised the very lovely lakeside promenade where my great-grandparents Helene and Julius lived during their years at Königsberg and where my father (at toddler age) and his mother also moved in while his father was away conscripted to war duty. Basically, my father learned to walk in the scenery shown above, which I only realised when I looked into Königsberg as part of the lostcities series. The family lived at Münzstraße 10, and the Cafe Schwermer, which famously made its own Königsberg style marzipan and saved the recipe for a new start in Western Germany after the war, was at Münzstraße 27, according to the text under this flickr picture (so far I haven't found their house number anywhere else, will keep looking for confirmation).

In any case, both addresses were on the lakeside and quite close to the castle shown on the wooden lid above, as well as on multiple postcards. There is also a similar but different lid shown here.

The USP of Königsberg marzipan is that the shapes made from the marzipan are flamed on the outside so they are sealed in a crunchy crust, keeping the inside moist. I remember receiving these sweets on special occasions as a child, although I'm not sure I liked them better than other kinds of marzipan products sealed eg in chocolate. I think most of the time they will have come in cardboard packaging with a transparent foil top so you could see the shapes and sizes of the pieces. The wooden box may have been a more expensive selection which I may only have received once, not sure. It must have come from the ephemeral East Prussians ins the family, but I'm quite sure the significane of the image was never explained to me.

After the war, the company Schwermer moved to Bad Wörishofen (Bavaria) but in recent years both the cafe and the production there have been given up and I'm not sure who if anybody still produces Königsberg style marzipan under the Schwermer brand.

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

a famous brandy

We have brewers, wine makers and also a distiller in the extended family. In the cases where the businesses were successful over several generations, there tends to be some information available about these families. So conversely, I am also looking into other famous names in the drinks industries from the relevant geographical areas that are not related to us (yet) to look for parallels, inspiration, and possible connections.

After writing about our old distiller, I felt inspired to look into the Asbach brand, which comes with a nice old-fashioned typography, using the letter A in a shape suggestive of Gutenberg era printing, as well as the adjective "uralt" (ancient). Sadly, the company isn't nearly as ancient as one might think, dating back only to the empire of Wilhelm II.

A bottle of Asbach Uralt filtering autumn sunlight. Own photo.

Hugo Asbach (1868-1935) trained as a merchant at Cologne and got interested in the distillation of brandy. He went to France to learn more about the making of Cognac. After his return in 1892 he set up his own brandy making business in the picturesque town of Rüdesheim on the very romantic middle section of the river Rhine, strategically placed in midst of different wine growing areas on all sides with easy delivery by ship. In times of continuing rivalry with France, the idea was to make something comparable to Cognac to be independent of imports. Initially, it could even be referred to as cognac. Reportedly, Asbach coined the word Weinbrand in 1907 as a German translation for cognac. Only after the Versailles Treaty of 1919 did the name cognac become protected as a designation of geographic origin, along with champagne. Hence we now call the brandy Weinbrand - or simply Asbach. Beyond the drink itself, Asbach also introduced chocolate beans filled with brandy, the Weinbrandbohnen.

All of which is fascinating in terms of the origins of products we still buy today, but not much use for deeper incursions into family history or indeed the history of distilleries and spirits. There is only a tiny little family tree known with no hint of wine, beer or spirit connections in Hugo's ancestry (source: NDB):

2. Albert Hugo Asbach, carpenter at Cologne
3. Helena Schmitz
4. Hermann Asbach, Privatsekretär
5. Agathe Heinen (Heiden)
6. Theodor Schmitz, Tagelöhner in Kierdorf (Kreis Euskirchen)
7. Anna Maria Liesenberg

For reference, Hugo Asbach's birth year of 1868 fits in the generation of my great-grandparents, which to me is just yesterday. He is younger than Adam the baker of Lorsch and his wife but older than the other six. The distiller in my family tree was four generations further back: Johann Gottlieb Weiß (1736-1800).

One interesting aspect, however, is the name Asbach, which the family shares with a village not so far from Cologne and Rüdesheim. The name does not, as one might think, reference a small watercourse (Bach). Instead it derives from a Franconian word indicating a type of small village. So the village is indeed ancient, even if the eponymous distillery business isn't.

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

nuns on the run

In the whole network of Lutheran clergymen I have been unpicking this year, three separate lineages lead back to clergymen who were contemporaries of Martin Luther. Peter Siegel studied with Luther, the other two may or may not have met him. In the case of Johannes Andreae senior we know that his son, Johannes junior, studied at Wittenberg in the 1550s (after Luther died) and worked as Melanchthon's assistant. Obviously this could have been facilitated if his dad already had a connection to Wittenberg.

Church historians have recorded the employment histories of these clergymen, which enabled me to write their CVs, but the women of the time only appear on the record if they marry another priest. This is unfortunate, because the novelty of clergymen having wives and children, setting the image of a "model family" was arguably a major factor in the spread of the Reformation and the emergence of a new educated middle class. The culture of the Pfarrhaus family was in many cases handed down in matrilinear succession, i.e. vicars' daughters became vicars' wives - but where do the matrilines start? In this context, a comment under this blog post drew my attention to the nuns who escaped from convents after hearing of Luther's Reformation.

In the most famous case, 12 nuns left the convent of Nimbschen (Marienthron) in 1523. Only three were accepted back by their families, the other nine took refuge at Wittenberg under Luther's protection. He ended up finding husbands for all of them except for Katharina von Bora, who then suggested marriage to him.

Ruins of the convent of Nimbschen.
Source: Wikipedia: Von Dguendel - Eigenes Werk, CC BY 3.0

As we know virtually nothing of the wives of our protestant priests in the time of the Reformation, there is the intriguing possibility that there might be an escapee nun among them too. So I tried to find the names of the nine nuns of the first group (other breakouts followed later), but haven't found all of them yet. Here's my list in case anybody knows more than I do:

Katharina von Bora first lodged with the family of Lucas Cranach and then married Martin Luther. Her aunt Magdalena von Bora later also left the convent to join the Luther household. Katharina and Luther had three daughters and three sons. Two of the daughters died young. Descendants of the surviving children are listed eg in GedBas.

Ave von Schönfeld married the physician Basilius Axt. They had three sons and a daughter. The daughter married the Lithuanian writer and Reformator Stanislovas Rapolionis. In a letter, Luther later admits that if he had been inclined to pick a wife for himself out of the nine refugees he would have chosen Ave.

Margaretha von Schönfeld (Ave's sister)

Magdalena von Staupitz married Tiburtius Geuder and settled at Grimma, where she became the teacher of the town's first elementary school for girls. The couple didn't have any children.

So that's four out of nine.

 

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While I'm rounding up women of the Reformation, other women mentioned in Katharina's biography (by Lisbeth Haase) include:

Katharina Schütz, wife of Matthäus Zell, priest at Strasbourg. The couple visited the Luthers at Wittenberg in the 1530s.

Argula von Grumbach (nee von Stauff) championed the Reformation at the expense of her wealth and status, met Martin Luther at Coburg in 1530, from where he followed the developments at the Reichstag of the Augsburg.

Elisabeth Cruciger (nee von Meseritz) escaped from a convent in Pomerania to follow a priest Johannes Bugenhagen who moved from there to Wittenberg. Married one of his disciples, had a son and a daughter. Famous as a poet and hymnwriter.

The book by Sonja Domröse: Frauen der Reformationszeit, Gelehrt, mutig und glaubensfest. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-525-55012-0 (which I haven't got) includes biographies of:

Elisabeth von Braunschweig-Calenberg-Göttingen, Ursula Weyda, Wibrandis Rosenblatt, Olympia Fulvia Morata, Ursula von Münsterberg (another runaway nun, from a Freiberg convent) as well as the above-named Katharina Zell, Elisabeth Cruciger, Argula von Grumbach,

There is also a list of women of the Reformation in the German edition of Wikipedia.

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

the first Caesar

From correspondence following my earlier blog entry on the lives of the Caesars, I learned that the use of the Latinised name goes back even further than the first Lutheran vicar in the lineage, Johannes Keyser / Caesar (ca. 1480-1543). According to a newspaper piece from 1925 referring to documents in the town archives of Nördlingen, Johannes's grandfather Jacob Keyser used the name Caesar as his scholarly name (Gelehrtenname) when he published a book about herbs. The paper did not approve of the fad of taking Latinised names.

After I posted the original "lives of the Caesars" entry, the next street library I visited at Düsseldorf had the matching book ready for me. The background is formed by two copies of my favourite Latin dictionary, Stowasser, in the Hundertwasser edition (it came in four colours but I have only got two of them so far).
Own photo.

 

Based on this information, we have another little CV to write:

 

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Jacob Caesar (14th/15th century)

If Jacob really was the grandfather of Johannes (estimated birth year 1480) we have to stack up two rather late fatherhoods, say each at age 45 to arrive at an estimated birth year of 1390, which would fit the first thing we actually know about him:

Jacob Keyser came to Nördlingen from Ulm and swore the oath (Bürgereid) to become a citizen of the free city in 1409. The 1925 article claims that the relevant document was still in the city's archives at that point. I understand the archive survived WW2 unscathed so I assume it's still there. At the time, there were an average of 23-24 new citizens coming in per year, with nearly half of them arriving from other cities, like Jacob. Becoming a citizen invoked a fee, and moving away again was also taxed.

Later on he received money from the city council for the writing of a book about herbs. We don't know when. And I haven't been able to find the book (yet).

Nördlingen had been a Free Imperial City since 1215. Note that in 1409, many of the major historic buildings were yet to be built. With around 6,000-8,000 residents in the 15th century (extrapolated from the number of tax payers, which was 1294 in 1404), the town was smaller than regional cities Augsburg, Nürnberg and Ulm, but it was located at an important crossroads and became a significant location for trade especially for the locally produced fustian fabrics.

Construction of the gothic St. Georgskirche began in 1427. Jacob can't have lived to see it completed in 1505.

Nördlingen saw a rise in population until 1437, when harvest failure led to a regional famine. At the end of the 1440s, regional wars between cities led to further population losses. It took until 1480 to recover the population strength it had in 1430. In 1494, there was an epidemic (possibly the plague), which again led to a fall back in population.

For our grandfather connection to work, Jacob must have had a family in the 1430s and at least one son must have survived the famine. Unfortunately, there were no church records for Nördlingen at that time, as they only started in 1579 (still quite early compared to most places).

The only thing one could probably find in the city archives is his tax record and those of his sons and grandsons. Tax records are nearly complete from 1404 onwards.

Sources:

Ingrid Bátori: Herren, Meister, Habenichtse. Die Bürgerschaft der Reichsstadt Nördlingen um 1500. In: Rieser Kulturtage Bd. VI/1, Nördlingen 1986. S. 252–269

Ingrid Bátori Daily life and culture of an urban Elite: The imperial city of Nördlingen in the 15th and 16th century History of European Ideas 1989, 11, 621-627

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

a moral minefield

Some thoughts on

Children of radium: A buried inheritance
Joe Dunthorne
Hamish Hamilton 2025

Waterstones

Carl Auer von Welsbach (1858-1929) was an Austrian chemist who discovered several elements and patented a new kind of gas light using a fabric mantle known as the Welsbach mantle (Auerstrumpf in German). The Auergesellschaft (originally called Deutsche Gasglühlicht AG, DGA or, as if to sound out the letters: Degea) was set up in 1892 to market this innovation in Germany. Osram was a later spinout from it.

The mantle in the original Auer gaslight typically contained thorium dioxide, and there are many other aspects of the company history that are a bit radioactive. During the Weimar Republic, it became a leading manufacturer of gas masks, which defined the company's identity to the extent that its in-house magazine was called Die Gasmaske. As research into the effectiveness of gas masks required the handling of all of the dangerous substances that the mask was meant to filter out of the air, the company had a good excuse to handle dangerous gases including those that had been used as chemical weapons in World War I and whose use was banned in Germany under the Versailles Treaty.

Under Nazi rule, the company was “aryanised” and affiliated with Degussa. Together with Goldschmidt AG, it set up a new company called Orgacid at Ammendorf near Halle in 1934, which produced chemical weapons including mustard gas “just in case”. Although Hitler famously rejected the use of chemical weapons at the front, there were some in the military who wanted to have the option if needed. And the research also fed into the mass murder conducted in the gas chambers of the concentration camps.

Meanwhile, at a separate site in Oranienburg, just north of Berlin, the company hoarded uranium for nuclear fission research. We now know that it was insufficient for atomic bombs, but during World War II, its presence earned the town a massive bombardment leaving it one of the most contaminated places to this day. (There's a brand new paper in PNAS Nexus showing the German atomic bomb project couldn't succeed, but I recall others reaching the same conclusion a few years ago when I wrote a feature about nuclear forensics.)

As if to put a bright smile on all these dealings with death, the Auergesellschaft also developed a radioactive toothpaste called Doramad, which was sold from 1940 until the end of the war. The news from Hiroshima and Nagasaki presumably along with the emerging fate of the "radium girls" dying horrific deaths from chronic radiation exposure made it sufficiently clear that this product wasn’t such a bright idea.

The toothpaste is also where Joe Dunthorne starts his exploration into his Jewish-German family’s involvement in this history. He knew that his grandmother grew up brushing her teeth with Doramad, and that her father had been in charge of developing it. Apparently, the family took stacks of the radioactive material with them as they emigrated to Turkey in time to avoid persecution for being Jewish. At the start, the author seems to have expected to find a romantic story of a lucky escape from the Holocaust, maybe like “When Hitler stole Pink Rabbit.” It turned out to be a very different story.

Siegfried Merzbacher (1883 - 1971), the author’s great-grandfather, left a memoir of several thousand pages which nobody had read. Hidden behind endless pages of irrelevant memories and information copied from encyclopaedias, Dunthorne discovered the admission that Merzbacher had taken part in chemical weapons research at Auergesellschaft and was also closely connected to the colleague Karl Quasebart who set up the production facility near Halle.

The presumed escape to Turkey, it turned out, was a relocation paid by Auergesellschaft, which also continued to pay part of his salary while he continued to work on chemical weapons in Ankara, and regularly corresponded with Quasebart. The notorious massacre conducted by Turkish authorities against the Kurdish village of Dersim in 1937-38 may well have been the result of this German-Turkish co-operation on chemical weapons, as the author finds out on visiting the location.

After the beginning of World War II, the contact was lost (Turkey remained neutral for most of the duration) and the Merzbachers were stripped of their German citizenship for being Jewish. Nevertheless, Siegfried Merzbacher helped out his old friend Quasebart after the war by testifying that he had always supported Jewish colleagues. It was just a bit unfortunate that he also helped to develop Zyklon B, the poison gas used in the Holocaust. Quasebart died before his denazification procedure was completed.

Although Siegfried Merzbacher and both his sisters got out of Germany in time, there are also Holocaust impacts on the family which the author reveals in the final part of the book. Siegfried’s sister, Elisabeth Kitzinger, ran a Jewish orphanage in Munich, which was so successful it eventually cared for children of all ages and even young adults, eventually accommodated in its own building with 20 rooms from 1926. After it was closed by Nazi authorities, Elisabeth’s close friends and long-term coworkers Alice Bendix and Hedwig Jacobi were deported with the last 12 children in their care and presumably murdered at Auschwitz.

The author stumbles through this minefield of moral complexity like an inquisitive but endearingly clueless family history researcher depending on luck more than on expertise, accompanied by snarky comments from his mother who, he writes, insisted on remaining anonymous. While the resulting book is a gripping read I feel the material deserves a more academic treatment. At the time of this writing, Siegfried Merzbacher does not even have a Wikipedia entry in German or in English. The genealogy is online, however, and his son, physicist Eugen Merzbacher (1921-2013) is in Wikipedia in nine languages. Heck, even Siegfried's father Eugen Merzbacher, his grandfather Abraham Merzbacher, and his nephew Ernst Kitzinger are in Wikipedia so I'm beginning to find it suspicious that Siegfried isn't.

I am sure Siegfried's life straddling the moral divides of the Holocaust would make a fascinating PhD project for a more expert historian.

PS I'm intrigued to see that a German translation has appeared the same year as the English original:

Kinder des Radiums: Auf den Spuren meiner jüdischen Familie Piper Verlag 2025

 

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My brand new list of book reviews is here.

when one in three brides were pregnant

In her book The female line, which I read and reviewed recently, Margaret Ward mentions that (in Britain)

"in the first half of the 19th century, about one third of first children were born within eight months of marriage. It was a 'custom' in some areas (particularly when children were valued for their earning capacity) for marriage only to take place when a woman was pregnant, the idea being that she had thus proved her fertility."

Well,this was news to me, but around the same time I realised that we have a blatant example of a very pregnant bride in the September 1826 wedding in Krefeld. Ward's remark made me wonder if I can back up this observation with statistics from my family tree. So let's see.

Trouble is there weren't many wedding photographers in the first half of the 19th century (with photography only having been invented in 1824), so here's a Victorian wax model instead, from an exhibition on medical illustrations I saw in the Science Museum London in 2012. Own photo.

Among my own great-great-grandparents, we have eight weddings happening between 1850 and 1880, including:
3 cases where the gap to the first birth is less than eight months,
3 where it's more than 9 months, and
2 cases where we're data deficient.

Of the three pregnant brides, one must have been quite obvious, with the child born two months and four days after the wedding, one was intermediate with five months two days to go, and the last had six and a half months till giving birth. Note that if the oldest child we know about was born several years after the wedding, that counts as data deficient, as there may well have been a pregnancy before that one.

One generation back, we have 14 happy couples (16 minus two serving duplicate functions because of cousin marriages two generations down) getting married between 1820 and 1852. Here we have:
4 cases including 3 pregnant and one with a child born before marriage
6 not pregnant
4 data deficient

Among the pregnant brides, the record keeper is the very fertile mother of the Krefeld clan, who gave birth eight weeks and two days after her wedding. Close behind follow my Silesian name line ancestors with three months and eight days gap. The third pregnant bride gave birth seven months and three weeks after her wedding.

One generation further back we have 28 weddings between 1788 and 1823, of which:
2 pregnant
3 not pregnant
23 data deficient

One pregnant bride was the mother of the Krefeld one above, and similarly advanced, giving birth exactly two months after the wedding. Those Catholics at Krefeld appear to have had a special take on the moral norms of their time ... The other had 5 months and 23 days between marrying and giving birth.

So overall, we have data for 21 brides, of whom eight were pregnant (38%), one had an extramarital child. So yes, I can confirm the statistic. I realise that this calculation excludes the married couples who turned out to be infertile, but there is plenty of space left to support my headline claim of one in three. Searching for this online, I also found claims of 40% of first children being born suspiciously early. Also, if premarital sex was used systematically to avoid infertility, it must have had a significant effect on bringing the risk down, so I feel this all fits together quite nicely.

Note that these ancestors are spread out over five different regions (all except Hunsrück and Palatinate). We have two couples from Krefeld, three from three different places in East Westphalia, and one each from Odenwald, Baden and Silesia. There were Catholics involved in four of the marriages, two mixed, and two purely Catholic, all others were Protestants.

So this small sample is geographically representative. For a larger sample specific to one place, one could look at the residents books listing all the births/baptisms of each resident family, ideally together with the wedding date, so from these one could get a lot of datapoints very quickly.

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

the teacher of Simmern unter Dhaun and his family

Moving on through the Weiß lineage, after the vicar's and the destiller's we now arrive at the teacher's family.

 

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Christian Gottlieb Weiß (1782-1867) and Anna Gertrud Keuert (1777-1858)

Christian Gottlieb Weiß was born 12.5. 1782 at Pferdsfeld as the sixth of the seven children of the mayor / teacher / distiller Johann Gottlieb Weiß and his wife Anna Katharina Andrae. He is the earliest born ancestor of whom we have a photo.

Like both his (older) brothers, he became a teacher. This may mean that he studied at university, which I consider likely given the abundance of vicars in his ancestry, many of whom worked as teachers before finding a church job. However it wasn't a given at the time, as there were village school teachers without academic education. He had his first teaching position in Hellenthal (Eifel). This is where he seems to have found his wife. On 13.7. 1806, he married Anna Gertraud Käuer (1777-1858; alternative spelling: Keuert) at Kirschseiffen. Her parents, Tilmanus Keuert and Regina Catherina Freischmid were from Hellenthal and her ancestry is solidly from that area.

The first two children, Karoline and Maria Magdalena, were born at Hellenthal in 1807 and 1809, respectively.

In 1809/10 the family moved to Raversbeuren (Hunsrück), where the next five children were born between 1810 and 1819 (see the list below).

The last of the eight children, Henriette, was born in 1822 at Simmern unter Dhaun, where Christian Gottlieb taught from 1819 until his retirement in 1853. This village is today known as Simmertal, renamed to avoid confusion with the main town of the region which is also called Simmern. They are both on the same little river, the Simmerbach, but Simmern unter Dhaun is close to where it joins the Nahe river (near Kirn), while the town of Simmern is upstream, on the highlands of the Hunsrück. Relative to Christian Gottlieb’s home village of Pferdsfeld, Simmern unter Dhaun is just 5 km SSE, so he may have jumped at this opportunity to work closer to his family home, after the previous jobs were much farther away.

The school at Simmern unter Dhaun can be traced back to 1563, for which year the village chronicles record that a teacher’s salary was paid. In 1824, five years into Christian Gottlieb’s tenure, the “protestant elementary school” had 126 pupils. The following year, 14 Jewish children joined them as well. In 1838, the position of a second teacher was approved, and in 1841 a Mr Schneider was hired.

The school at Simmern unter Dhaun, now a private residence. Photo by Jörg Groß.

In 1846, the school house, dating back to 1747, was extended with a second storey. Since then, it had two classrooms and two flats for teachers, plus a barn and stables. However, as these buildings were too small to get a proper farm going, the school's land was leased to local farmers. We don’t know whether either of the flats was occupied by the Weiß family (whose children were all grown up by then).

Christian Gottlieb’s earnings at that point were:
* 47 Thalers from the Fabry foundation
* free residence, firewood, small amounts of natural produce;
* as a sacristan, bell-ringer, and organist for the local church he also got 1 Thaler in cash and
* 22 Thalers worth of natural produce.

In 1851, Christian Gottlieb built a house with barn and stables where he then lived with his wife and the growing family of his daughter Henriette, who had six children with her husband Friedrich Kaiser. One of them, Johann Kaiser, moved into the house of his parents in 1913, after retiring from his job as a teacher in Cologne. The house stayed “in the family” for more than a century, until 1961.

In 1852, the government of the Kingdom of Prussia, of which the Hunsrück area was now a part, politely enquired whether Christian Gottlieb didn’t want to retire from his teaching job, as he was already 70 years old, and there had been complaints about him. He retired the following year, after 34 years as a teacher at this school. Mr Schneider took over as first teacher for a year, but in 1854 new teachers were appointed to both positions. He received a decent pension and was able to celebrate his golden wedding anniversary in 1856.

Anna Gertraud died in 1858, aged 81. Christian Gottlieb died in 1867, aged 85. The school house survives to this day, but is in residential use today.

Portrait of Christian Gottlieb Weiß taken in 1866, at which point he was retired, widowed, and a little bit forgetful, but otherwise fine, I guess.

Christian Gottlieb and Anna Gertraud had eight children and at least 20 grandchildren. The fifth, and to some extent also the second child will be of interest for further developments, while the seventh is the author of the Weiß chronicles.

1. Karoline (Kornelia) Weiß, 1807-1877, married farm labourer and coachman (Georg) Philipp Fuchs, at Simmern unter Dhaun. Reportedly, there have been troubles related to alcoholism and tuberculosis in that family, but they still managed to have 11 children, born 1829-1851.

2. Maria Magdalena Weiß, 1809-1885, married Peter Schmidt from Hahnenbach. They had one daughter, (Caroline) Wilhelmine Schmidt, * 1848, who married Ferdinand Weirich, and from whom the Weirichs and Giloys at Hahnenbach are descended, who who kept the village inn until the late 20th century.

3. Johannetha Weiß, 1809-1879, married Friedrich Dick from Monzingen, reported to have set sail for America with “a stable full of children.” (Possibly because of the famine of 1845/46 triggered by potato blight.)

4. Karl Weiß, a railways man at Hamm (Westfalen), married Wilhelmine Schmidt from Hamm, had one daughter.

5. Katharina Sophia Weis * 25. 3.1815 Raversbeuren + 8. 1.1862 Simmern, married the shoemaker Mathias Kauer in Simmern, at which point our lineage becomes the Kauer clan. All their descendants are listed here.

6. (Regina) Wilhelmine Weiß, 1817-1865, did not marry. (the birth and death year are from the residents book of Simmern unter Dhaun, suggesting she lived to 47 or 48. Johanna Kauer wrote that Regina died at age 20. Not sure who is right.

7. Christian Gottlieb Weiß, born ca. 1821, in 1844 married a widow, Maria Katharina Kessel (1810-1880), had two sons and two daughters. He is the author of the Weiß Chronicles written in Eckweiler in 1891. His daughter Sophie Weiß married Franz Philipp Kehrein at Eckweiler in 1875. Their son Karl Kehrein (1880-1942) married Lina Martin. According to Johanna's version of the Weiss Chronicles, she was his second cousin also a great-grandchild of the teacher C. G. Weiß (via his 5th child, Sophie, see here), but the Kehrein descendants have a different Lina Martin. Given that Johanna knew both Karl and Lina personally and talked about family history with them, I tend to stick with her version. Anyhow, through Karl Kehrein, who was a baker at Kirn and knew my great-great aunt Johanna Kauer, the Weiß chronicles came to our knowledge. Sadly, however, Karl Kehrein’s descendants don’t know what happened to the original.

8. Henriette Weiß, 1822-1895, married Friedrich Kaiser, had 6 children: Karl, Fritz (2 children), August (3 children), Johann, Hermann ...

Note that Christian Gottlieb is the last academically educated ancestor in my lineage, after ten generations with lots of vicars and teachers (often connected matrilinearly). After him we have three less than academic generations ending with Helene who wanted to be a teacher but wasn't allowed to study - for economic reasons mainly. She made sure that all her three children (including two daughters) got the opportunity she missed out on. Helene's lifespan did not overlap with that of her great-grandfather Christian Gottlieb, but she would have known that he was a teacher, and others in the extended family were teachers as well, including her uncle, the pioneering special needs teacher Friedrich Kauer. Friedrich is a grandson of Christian Gottlieb via his 5th child, Katharina Sophia Weiß.

Also, thanks to Anna Gertrud Keuert, I have 1/64 of Eifel ancestry, which I should subtract when I say that 3/16 of my ancestry is from the Hunsrück. Together with 1/64 from Idstein, this is the biggest outside influx absorbed into the Hunsrück family tree, leaving me with 5/32.)

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

the female line

Some thoughts on

The female line: Researching your female ancestors
Margaret Ward
Countryside Books 2003

One of the many books I picked up from the clearout where I also boosted my Bloomsbury collection, this is one I read immediately as it chimed with my findings around the vicar of Eckweiler, namely that the women in the vicars' families helped to uphold the Lutheran traditions in matrilinear networks.

Ward's book is about the lives of women in Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the ways in which family history researchers may find out interesting details that may not show up in the official records. As such, a lot of the specific information on British sources and circumstances weren't particularly helpful for my research, but it was a fascinating and inspiring reminder of how much information about the lives of women in past times we may be missing. And what kind of questions we might be asking ...

World of Books

Some of the things I did not know were that

• in the first half of the 19th century premarital sex was widespread and almost the custom in some areas, in an effort to avoid any surprises regarding infertility (we have an example of that in the 1826 wedding which gave us the Krefeld Clan - the first child was born eight weeks and two days later);
• as recently as in the Napoleonic wars, some soldiers' wives were following the regiment although that was forbidden by law.
• In the early 19th century, there wasn't a law specifically banning women from the vote. If, for instance, a woman's name appeared on the voters register by mistake, she was actually entitled to vote.

Some employment stats were also quite impressive verging on scary, eg relating to the army of servants, and to the prevalence of prostitution.

I was a bit disappointed to find no reference to the issue that I'm currently researching, ie the matrilinear networks of vicars' wives, but otherwise I found it a quite inspiring read. It contributed to my decision to give the wives co-headlining status in the ancestors' biographies I am currently publishing in the Thursday series (starting with the vicar of Eckweiler). And I've also launched a systematic search for pregnant brides in the 19th century, watch this space!

the distiller of Pferdsfeld and his family

Reworking the biographies of the main line of the Weiß Chronicles, we now move on from the vicar of Eckweiler to his son. We had him tagged as the mayor of Pferdsfeld (next door to Eckweiler) but it turns out he was also a teacher and a distiller making brandy (Branntweinbrenner). We have a few village mayors across the family tree, but he's the first distiller I come across, so that will be his USP from now on.

We also found out that his wife may have had more vicars in her family tree than he had. All of which warrants a new (joint) biography (replacing the one in this blog entry, which was basically a transfer of an ancient page from my old website when it went offline):

 

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Johann Gottlieb Weiß (1736-1800) and Anna Katharina Andrae (1742-1816)

Johann Gottlieb Weiß was born 9.11.1736 at Dörrebach as the second child of the vicar Johannes Weiß and his wife Katharina Elisabeth Ebener. He grew up in Eckweiler and went on to become the mayor of the village of Pferdsfeld (which, like Eckweiler, was evacuated and demolished in 1978-82 because of the military airfield).

The Weiß Chronicles only describe him as the mayor of the village, which was more of a part-time job considering how small it was. According to this GedBas entry, Johann Gottlieb was mayor from 1778 until 1782, and also a teacher and a distiller of brandy.

The job of village teacher was often a first employment for theology graduates fresh from university while they were hoping to get on the career ladder of the church or at least become a village vicar. Although we don't know for sure if and where he studied, given that his father was a vicar and both his brothers studied, this is the most likely career path. He just got stuck on the teacher stage - maybe he liked it or there was a shortage of church positions at the time, seeing that many of the existing clergymen were busy trying to get all their sons into the system.

An 18th century distillation apparatus at a museum in Bitburg, Eifel)
Source: Wikipedia Von Foto: B. Kaufmann - Template:Kreismuseum Bitburg-Prüm, CC BY-SA 4.0,

In 1765 he married Anna Katharina André (Andrae, Andreae) from Gebroth (a tiny village, just a few kilometres east of Eckweiler). The Weiß Chronicles contain no info whatsoever about her family, but it turned out to be quite amazing, with lots of clergymen and other interesting connections. Recent blog entries about the Andrae ancestry are now here and here. The family name has survived at Gebroth to this day. Note also that Gottlieb’s older sister Johannetha had also married someone from the same village (see here), so there may be some sort of pattern.

Following the example set by his parents, they had (at least) seven children, born between 1768 and 1786.

Note that all three sons of the family became teachers, so we have a phase transition from an ancestry of Pfarrhaus families to a population of teachers. Among them, my ancestor 6. Christian Gottlieb, who will get a separate entry as well.

He died 1.4.1800 in Pferdsfeld aged 64. His widow died 6.1.1816 in Schauren aged 73. So presumably she lived with her daughter Maria Katharina and her family, who emigrated to Brazil 13 years later (see number 7. below).

There is some info and pictures of Pferdsfeld in this family history page, from a family whose ancestors emigrated from Pferdsfeld to England in the 19th century, when the Hunsrück area was hit by a famine.

The next generation(s):

1. Johann Philipp Weiß *24.4.1768 a teacher at Weiler on the river Nahe, married Anna Margaretha Kaiser, from Merxheim (Nahe). According to the residents book of Weiler they have four sons born 1822 -1830 and a daughter born 1834. At the time of Johann Philipp's death, 15.6.1853, his wife and all five children are alive. Nothing further is known about them.

? The residents book of Pferdsfeld notes a son called Johannes born 14.7.1770 who doesn't show up in the WC. If correct, he may have died young.

2. Johannetha Weiß * 4.7.1772 married Leopold Wagner from Winterburg.

3. Magdalena Weiß * 28.2.1774 married Johann Fleischer from Pferdsfeld.

4. Philipp Weiß *4.5.1775 a teacher at Gödenroth, and later at Winningen (Mosel), married Katharina Petermann from Allenbach.

5. Regina Katharina Weiß * 10.9.1779 married Johann Fuchs from Eckweiler. Not sure if and how he's related to Johannes Fuchs from Allenbach (number 4 in this Fuchs family tree) who had lots of sons at Eckweiler. They are all called Johann something, but are a bit younger than Regina Katharina. The oldest one who is not otherwise married is Johann Peter (1788-1860).

6. Christian Gottlieb Weiß, born 1782, became a teacher at Hellenthal, Raversbeuren and Simmern u. Dhaun. He married Gertrud Keuert from Hellenthal and they had eight children. Their joint biography is now here.

7. Maria Katharina Weiß, born in 1786, married a parson called Ried from Schauern (Hochwald) and went off to Rio de Janeiro, according to the Weiß Chronicles. In fact, they arrived in São Leopoldo on 25.5.1829 (here's their emigration story). The husband and sons are: Georg Philipp Rieth (1784-1843).

1. Philipp Christian Gottlieb, * 25.4.1811 in Schauren, oo 17.10.1838 in São Leopoldo Maria Elisabeth Schiehl, 11 children
2. Johann Friedrich * 20.12.1814 Schauren, Holzschnitzer, Sattler, Tischler + 27.2.1866 in São Leopoldo oo 30.11.1841 Mariana Caroline Rieth (1825-1898), 10 children
The family is in GedBas as well (ancestry is a bit sparse).

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

a 200th wedding anniversary

Tomorrow (21.9.2026) will be the 200th wedding anniversary of the founding couple of my Krefeld Clan:

Wilhelm Düselmann * 13. 8.1804 Krefeld + 17.12.1865 Krefeld

and

Elisabetha de la Strada * 17.12.1804 Krefeld + 15.12.1882 Krefeld.

I blogged a list of the descendants we knew back in 2009 in one of my first blog entries on family history, and this has led to to additional information (we now know of 13 children, with the girls brought up catholic and the boys protestant to reflect the different confessions of the parents, 32 grandchildren, and hundreds of fascinating people further down the line) as well as to real life meetups with several relatives I was previously unaware of, so this wedding held in Krefeld 200 years ago is a bit special. I was slightly tempted to try and organise a family event for the occasion, but that would have required actual people skills which I don't have so I'll just commemorate the day with another blog entry.

Sadly we don't have photos of bride nor groom, although both lived long enough to suggest they may have had a portrait taken in their old age. Incidentally, the oldest surviving photographs made by Nicéphore Niépce date from 1826 as well. A wedding photo or our couple would have looked interesting, because the first of the 13 children was born eight weeks and two days after the wedding, on 18.11.1826.

What we have is the actual marriage certificate:

Photo of a photocopy of what appears to be the original marriage entry in the archives of the town, with the signatures of the newlyweds and their witnesses, and surviving parents. First we have what must be the presiding official. Then, in larger handwriting, Margaretha Düselmann (nee Wilsberg, mother of the groom), Wilhelm Düselmann (groom), Hermann Düselmann (brother of the groom, born 1798), Elisabetha Delastrata (bride), then in the bottom line Heinrich Siecher (?) or something similar, who allegedly was a brother in law of the bride but I don't have a matching name on my records. And the last name I can't decipher at all. Even though the mother of the bride, Margaretha de la Strada (nee Giesen) was present as well so should have signed.

The fathers of both families had died a few years before the wedding. Note also that Elisabetha's older sister Maria Catharina de la Strada married Jacob Joseph Nolden at the same time.

I've blogged about Krefeld as one of my "lost cities" here (although it is not quite lost, some distant relatives still live there).

Further revelations relating to the Krefeld Clan are tagged #düsselmann.

the vicar of Eckweiler and his family

After I discovered so many clergymen in the family network around Johannes Weiß (see the preliminary list at the bottom of this blog entry), I had another look at his biography and at what became of his children. Note that his wife is at the core of a matrilinear transmission of Pfarrhaus (vicarage) traditions, so she becomes a co-headliner.

So here comes a revised and updated version of the biography (replacing the one in this blog entry, which was basically a transfer of an ancient page from my old website when it went offline).

 

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Johannes Weiß (1704-1772) and Katharina Elisabeth Ebner (1712-1790)

Johannes Weiß was born on 29.9.1704 at Königsberg (near Wetzlar, today Hessen) as the son of the merchant Johann Justus Weiss (ca.1675-1740) from Silesia and Maria Elisabeth Straus from Königsberg. His confirmation was at Seibersbach (Hunsrück) in 1717, which suggests there may have been family connections to that area where he later worked. He studied theology at Gießen and came as a parson-in-training (Pfarrkandidat) to Dörrebach near Seibersbach. There he was appointed a vicar in 1729. The job also included the parish of Seibersbach, and I understand that the vicar had to live in the Pfarrhaus at Seibersbach as the one in Dörrebach had been usurped by the Catholics since 1703.

In 1732, while serving at Dörrebach/Seibersbach , Johannes married Katharina Elisabeth Ebener or Ebner, born at Trarbach in 1712, the daughter of the vicar of Alterkülz (Hunsrück), Philipp Ebener (~1681-1734). Previously (from 1708 to 1720), Philipp had been a teacher at the Lateinschule in Trarbach, like his father before him, see my biographies of Ebner father and son here. A potted history of Trarbach and the Lateinschule is here. So Katharina Elisabeth Ebenerlived at Trarbach for the first eight years of her life. With three university-educated men in her immediate ancestry, and many more in the extended family (including the illustrious Arnoldi clan), she had a Pfarrhaus background while her husband was a newcomer in this scene. Considering this imbalance, I would suspect that her family picked him on the grounds that he was an eligible Sponheim vicar who wasn't a blood relative.

Johannes and Elisabeth had seven children that we know of, with the first five born at Dörrebach/Seibersbach between 1734 and 1739. See the list of their descendants below.

The church of Eckweiler, the only building left standing of the historic village. In 1979, the village was officially dissolved. Following the introduction of Phantom fighter jets on the nearby airfield of the Bundeswehr, the noise had become unbearable. The last 250 villagers were relocated to a brand new suburb of the nearby town of Sobernheim, and all buildings except for the church -- not the original building, but the same location where Johannes had held his service some 250 years earlier -- were demolished. Too hastily, as it turned out, as the end of the cold war also saw the Bundeswehr selling off the airfield to a car manufacturer who planned to use it as a test course, but never did. So Eckweiler, known locally as “the church without a village” is very nice and quiet nowadays.
Source: Wikipedia / Von Devlaminck - Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 4.0,

In May 1740 (according to the Eckweiler book, the Weiß Chronicles claim it was 1742), he moved to become the vicar of Eckweiler (some 20 km deeper into the Hunsrück), where he remained in office until his death in 1772. In fact, one of his great-grandsons wrote the Weiß Chronicles in that very same village nearly 120 years later.

The last two children we know of were born at Eckweiler in 1742 and 1751. Seeing that their mother only turned 30 in 1742, there may have been children in that interval who didn't survive?

According to the Eckweiler book, Johannes Weiß was a very assertive type of person, who would always make sure that everybody got their due. In first years of his 32-year tenure, he had the church renovated inside and out. His lasting legacy, however, was to be the village school, built in 1770. Documents relating to the funding for the school house reveal that Eckweiler at the time was the poorest parish in the district.

According to the same book, Eckweiler had 157 inhabitants in 1769, all of whom were protestants. Johannes’s parsonage also extended to the neighbouring village of Daubach, with 80 inhabitants including 36 protestants.

Johannes Weiß died on 4.1.1772 aged 67. In 1773, his son in law, Philipp Bauer, was installed as his successor.

His widow continued to live at Eckweiler with her daughter and son in law. She died there on 1.8.1790 aged 78 (or just under).

In 1818, Philipp Bauer was the first vicar of Eckweiler to retire from the position, as he was deemed unfit to carry on at age 85. He died later the same year. Note, however, that according to this Gedbas entry he only lived to age 83 (however, that entry doesn't know about his marriage, so it may not be a reliable source). All vicars of the parish are listed here.

The next generation(s):

1. Christian Weiß * 1734 died 1754 while a student at university.

2. Johannetha Weiß * 1735 married a forester named Federkeil, at Gebroth (Hunsrück). Familysearch offers a plausible match in Johann Andreas Federkeuel who married Johannetta NN, with a son Johann Christian Federkeuel born in Gebroth in 1761.

3. Johann Gottlieb Weiß * 1736 the future mayor of Pferdsfeld. He married Anna Katharina Andrae from Gebroth, who turned out to have lots of clergymen in her ancestry (as well as a brother who studied theology). Funny that the author of our Weiß Chronicles (WC) showed no curiosity in her ancestry and doesn't even mention her parents. She was his grandmother! According to this Gedbas entry, Johann Gottlieb was also a teacher and a distiller of brandy. A separate blog entry about him and his family is now here.

4. Regina Catharina Weiß * 1738 married a Mr Weimar from Dörrebach. There are a few Weimar / Weymar families in that village listed in Gedbas to the extent that in there was a wedding when bride and groom bore that name in different spellings. One suitable candidate who isn't otherwise married would be Valentin Weimar the elder, who had a daughter Johannetta born 1766 Dörrebach, who then went on to marry Valentin Weimar junior and had at least nine children with him.

5. Maria Anna Dorothea (WC: Marianne) Weiß * 1739 married Johann Georg (WC: Philipp) Orth from Weiler near Martinstein, on the river Nahe. He is number IX-59 in the Orth genealogy, to which we also have connections here. They have six children and 17 grandchildren according to the Orth page. Four of the children died before reaching school age, only two sons survived and got married:
Philipp Georg, * Weiler 31.1.1760, + …, ∞ Weiler 24.2.1784 Catharina Elisabeth Keip (Geib) from Staudernheim, 7 children; only one marriage and no grandchildren reported.
Andreas, * Weiler 16.1.1763, + Weiler. 14.10.1839, church elder. ∞ Weiler … 1787 Maria Elisabeth Waldmann, * Weiler 8.4.1770, + ebd. 20.12.1842, 10 children, only three marriages (two daughters to the same man) and four grandchildren reported.
Although these families don't seem to be doing very well, I have been contacted (separately) by two people counting Maria Anna Dorothea Weiß as their ancestor, so some people did make it through the hard times.

6. Maria Elisabetha Weiß * 1742 married Philipp Jakob Bauer, a vicar at Enkirch, who later took over the position of his father-in-law at Eckweiler. Two children were born 1773 and 1781 but died in infancy. Maria died in 1819.

7. Philipp Theodor Weiß * 1751 became a private tutor for the counts of Solms, he drowned while hunting wild ducks in the back waters of the river Rhine, according to the WC. The church records of Pfalzdorf, the colony of thwarted emigrants where his aunt Anna Maria Ebner and her husband Carl Morlang (1720-1799) had settled, note that he served with the family Bilgen at Schmithausen castle (Kleve district) when he drowned on 2.1.1777. No mention of ducks there. Ironically, his employer, Geheimrat Casimir Bilgen, was appointed by Frederic the Great as the administrator in charge of the water regulation and dyke construction on the Lower Rhine.

Thus, it appears that all three sons may have studied to follow in their father's footsteps, but two died young and the surviving one only became a teacher and mayor. Of the four daughters, one married a vicar, one married a descendant of the Orth family which includes lots of clergymen in earlier times, and the other two appear to have stepped out of the circle of clergymen marrying each other's daughters, although we're not sure what Mr Weimar's profession was.

Thus we can clearly see the ambition to carry on the Lutheran Pfarrhaus tradition, which was quite possibly her idea rather than his, but the family suffered a series of misfortunes which led to the tradition dying out in this branch.

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

the people of the echoing valley

In a letter about the discovery of the Weiß Chronicles, Johanna wrote that the teacher Christian Gottlieb Weiß (1782-1867) had his first teaching job in "Höllenthal" - which would suggest the etymological interpretation as "Hell's Valley". I had always assumed that this was the historic name of the village now known as Hellenthal (Eifel), but Wikipedia seems to think it's got nothing to do with hell, and that it's all about the Hall you hear in the valley, ie the echo (Old High German hellan, to sound, resonate). As there was a lot of mining and metalworking in the area, the valley may have been echoing with the clanging of hammers and anvils.

Anyhow, Christian Gottlieb, who is also the earliest born ancestor of whom we have a photo, found himself a wife at Hellenthal. In 1806, he married Anna Gertraud Käuer, (1777-1858; alternative spelling: Keuert), whose ancestry is solidly from that village. Coming out of the Weiß family that is crawling with clergymen (up to 13 among his direct ancestors, many more in the extended family), he is the first in our lineage to leave that tradition behind and marry somebody with no church family background whatsoever. Also, he married outside the (former) Sponheim territory, where the whole clergy marriage network operated. And she was four years older than him.

Back in the noughties, my father hired a professional genealogist to look into the Hellenthal ancestry. He drew up a report on Anna Gertraud's family and found 14 of her 16 great-grandparents. No academics in sight but a few metalworkers. And a very tightly knit community where the family names like Vader(s), Pieroth and Bastert occur in duplicate in the generation of the great-grandparents. I was reminded of that fact when I updated my list of family names recently, so am now looking into the Hellenthal family tree again in the hope of discovering common ancestry for those pairs of great-grandparents sharing a surname.

My scan of a tourism brochure from the 1990s.

So here comes a little family tree for Anna Gertraud:

1. Anna Gertrude Keuert (Kauer) * 8. 3.1778 Hellenthal; ~ Gemünd + 7. 4.1858 Simmern u. Dhaun (80)

 

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2. Keuert Tilmanus * 24. 8.1749 Hellenthal + 8.12.1819 Hellenthal (70) smith, agricultural worker

} oo 29. 5.1777 Gemünd

3. Regina Catherina (Maria Catherina) Freischmid * 14. 5.1747 Hellenthal + 28. 3.1813 Hellenthal (65)

 

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4. Johann Peter Keuert * um 1725 Hellenthal + after 1759

} oo 11. 2.1748 Gemünd

5. Anna Catharina Dresen (Drees) * 4. 3.1715 Hellenthal (if no. 10. correct) + after 1759

 

6. Paulus Freischmid * 23.12.1696 Hellenthal + 1. 5.1752 Hellenthal (55)

} oo 21. 5.1724

7. Maria Piroth (Pyroth) * 25. 4.1705 Hellenthal + Hellenthal (73) [] 3.10.1778

 

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8. Mattheis Keuer * 27. 8.1690 Hellenthal + after 1737 Hellenthal

} oo 29. 5.1719 Gemünd

9. Elisabeth Bruch (Bruich) * 26.12.1698 Kirschseiffen + after 1737 Hellenthal

 

10. Jacob Drees * 9. 2.1681 Hellenthal +

} oo 1. 5.1708 Gemünd

11. Gertrud Lüperts * um 1685 Hellenthal + before 1748

 

12. Paul Freyschmidt * around 1675 Hellenthal + 1724 Hellenthal

} oo

13. Elisabeth Pyroth * 1676 + 1705-1724

 

14. Johann Pyroth * 9. 1670 Hellenthal + after 1715

} I.oo around 1704

II.oo around 1707 Maria Hellenthal in Hellenthal

15. Elisabeth Thus (Theissen) * 10.12.1677 Hellenthal + 1705-08

 

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16. Tilmann Keuer * around 1660 + after 1696

} oo before 1682

17. Gertrud Vader * around 1660 + after 1696

 

18. Peter Bruch * around 1660 Heimbach ? + after 1702

} oo 1683-87

19. Ida Bastert * 8. 3.1662 Kirschseiffen + after 1702

 

20. Johann Drees * around 1650 Bronsfeld +

I.oo before 1672 Catharina Huperts

}II.oo 1680

21. Margaretha Kuhl

 

22. Arnold Lüperts * around 1650 Bronsfeld + 1688-1708

} oo before 1672

23. Maria Huperts * around 1650 Hellenthal + after 1688

 

24. (Freischmidt)

} oo

25.

 

26. Firmondt Pieroth

} oo

27. Cathrin Basters

 

28. Paul Pyroth (junior) * before 1650 Hellenthal ? + after 1678

} oo before 1668

29. Johanna Balters * + after 1678

 

30. Heinrich Thus * + after 1686

} oo around 1675

31. Maria Vader * before 1660 + after 1709

 

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38. Johann Pastart (ert) *

} oo vor 1660

39. Elsgen Bungart

 

40. Thonnes Dreßen * Bronsfeld near Schleiden (recorded as a godfather in 1671)

56. ?Paul Pyroth (seeing that 28. was referred to as Paul Pyroth Junior?)

Note that there is a family tree on familysearch which is much less complete and deviates in the paternal grandparents and their parents. They also have a wrong year of birth and death for 2. Tilmanus - according to them he would have been 9 years old at the birth of his daughter. My guess is they picked another person also called Tilmanus Keuer and thus ended up with a different set of ancestors on the paternal side. So I guess we can safely ignore that dataset.

 

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A few leads for further investigations:

Bastert (yes, the name means exactly what you think): There is a Pastert ironworks tradition in this area, see for instance Peter Pastert (1641-1728) in Schleiden (northern neighbour of Hellenthal). Also, a Bastardt family near Schleiden has been involved in a long running inheritance dispute in 1618-1628.

Pyroth / Pierot: The spelling varies wildly, but our genealogist and others have speculated that these people go back to a francophone lineage of Pierrot (derived from Pierre, the French version of Peter). As Hellenthal is a mining and metalworking town, this name could be from migrating miners coming in from Wallonia. We have some of these elsewhere too, eg in Fachbach.

Vaders: The genealogist said there were several Vader families in the previous generation and he couldn't establish a specific connection to any of them. There are seven GedBas entries for a (Peter) Reinhard Vaders born Hellenthal around 1635 who in 1674 married Anna Magdalena Lang from Neunkirchen (Saar) and moved there, producing lots of Vaders descendants. Seeing that he was around 40 at the time of this marriage, he could very well have had a previous family at Hellenthal, from which 17. Gertrud or 31. Maria Vader could be his children. Or his nieces. His parents were Franz Vaders and Evgen NN. All the Gedbas profiles seem to come from Saarland descendents not too interested in Hellenthal, so this trace goes cold very quickly.

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

naming names

Reading (most of) a book about German family names I got inspired to update the list of names I had left unattended in the depths of my family history file for many years. The version I started from had 162 names, and the one I ended up with now (see this page) has 326 names, so yes, it's been neglected for too long.

Some of the most common German surnames.
Source: RossiLeone, Wikimedia Commons.

To give a rough indication of how close or distant in history these names are, I included the Kekule number of the last carrier (except for the immediate family up to the generation of my grandparents). By default, these carriers are all women. There are only a couple of cases where a male line took on a new name (eg after marrying into a farm and adopting the name of the farm, see Wolff). I've ignored the previous names in these cases as we typically don't know much about them. Similarly, I have also ignored the (speculative) previous life of Johann Dopheide, who may or may not have been identical with Jean d'Oppède. If he was, the family tree wins dozens of additional ancestors in the French nobility going back to the crusades, but that would be an entirely different story to the rest of my family history, so I'm tending to ignore that.

After adding the numbers for multiple occurrences of the same name, we end up with around 375 name lines ending in a woman, or 375 female ancestors whose maiden name we know. There are probably as many with only a first name and no known family name, and many more males, so these named women are a minority and it was an interesting experience to go through the list and acknowledge their existence one by one by copying over their number into the names list.

I also spotted quite a few cases where the same name occurs several times in the same geographic area without being a very common name like Schmidt or Mayer. I am planning to look at these cases again to find out if I can find evidence of shared ancestry between the women sharing those names.

The page serves as an index to blog entries where I have explored the origins of specific names (like eg Bitsch) and/or the biographies of several generations in an extended name line.

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

a village called Weiler

The German word "Weiler" means small village (or hamlet) and is often included in the names of villages such as Adamsweiler, Annweiler, Belgweiler, Birkweiler, Eckweiler, Nickweiler, Ohlweiler, Rießweiler, Sensweiler, etc. - all these place names actually occur in my family tree.

There are also quite a few villages just called Weiler. One of those is on the river Nahe, downstream from Kirn, between Martinstein and Monzingen, and on the opposite bank to Merxheim. It used to be one of the places that I knew nothing about even though they pop up several times in my family history. A helpful reader of my blog who has an ancestor from Weiler pointed out to me that it is missing in my list of places. Here I am compiling all references to Weiler, so I have something to link to when I add it to the list.

So far, I have no known direct ancestors with biographical dates located at Weiler, but I have found three instances concerning siblings of my direct ancestors, one more remote link, and one relating to the Fuchs family tree which I researched for somebody else.

The historic Sponheim vineyard at Weiler.
Source: Wikimedia, photo by giggel.

In 1749, Anna Maria Ebner, daughter of the vicar of Alterkülz Philipp Nikolaus Ebner, married Carl Morlang from Weiler and had four children with him. The family settled at Pfalzdorf in the Lower Rhine area, together with a whole group of would-be migrants who had wanted to go to America via Rotterdam but only got that far as the Netherlands refused to let them pass. Carl Morlang's father came from Dhronecken (Hunsrück), but his mother, Anna Sophie Cullmann was a Weiler native.

In 1758, Marianne (Maria Anna Dorothea) Weiß, daughter of the vicar of Eckweiler, married Johann Georg Orth from Weiler near Martinstein, on the river Nahe. He is number IX-59 in the Orth genealogy. This means that he is a 3xgreat-grandson of Baltahasar Orth, the second protestant vicar of Kirn, and the nameline goes via Jakob junior, born at Kirn, then Hans born at Merxheim, and another three generations born at Weiler. There are dozens of Orth people listed in the residents book. Note that Marianne Weiss and Johann Georg Orth, although both related to me, were not related to each other as far as we know. (Their lineages in my family tree only meet in the next generation, when the mayor of Pferdsfeld Johann Gottlieb Weiss marries Anna Katharina Andrae from Gebroth, who has Orth ancestry.) They have six children and 17 grandchildren according to the Orth page. Note also that our Weiss Chronicles state that Marianne's husband was called Philipp Orth, but I tend to trust the modern research over our cherished old document in this case. Johann Georg in the Orth genealogy did have a younger brother called Philipp, so it isn't completely ruled out that she could have married one after the other.

One generation further down in the Weiß chronicles we have Johann Philipp Weiß,the firstborn son of the mayor of Pferdsfeld Johann Gottlieb Weiß and Anna Katharina Andrae from Gebroth. He became a teacher at Weiler and married Anna Margaretha Kaiser from Merxheim (on the opposite side of the river Nahe). I still need to find out whether she was related to our Caesar / Kaiser ancestors.

These three siblings of ancestors moving to Weiler are all linked to the lineage described in the Weiß Chronicles. More surprisingly, they are all closely connected to one person, Katharina Elisabeth Ebner (1712-1750), who married the vicar Johannes Weiß, in a kind of matrilinear way (Katharina Elisabeth is also at the centre of my matriline of Lutheran vicar's families!). They are, respectively, Katharina Elisabeth's sister, daughter, and grandson. When this penny dropped late at night, I had visions of Katharina Elisabeth conspiring with her sister to arrange the marriages of her daughter and her grandson, but sadly she didn't live long enough to do this. And Anna Maria migrated to the Lower Rhine anyways, so the accumulation of Weiler links may in fact be a coincidence. Also, it's not that far from Eckweiler and Pferdsfeld to Weiler and Merxheim, maybe around 10 km for the shortest link (Pferdsfeld to Weiler) and no more than 15 km for the longest (Eckweiler to Merxheim).

Separately, one of the vicars of Eckweiler (1674-1690), an ancestor in the Fuchs family tree, Johann Justus Leyendecker. Born ca. 1642 in Trarbach, he was the vicar of Eckweiler 1674-1690, was then moved to the parish of Weiler, where he died 28.11.1699, aged 57. (The regionally common name Leyendecker describes a roofer specialising in slate roofs.)

 

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There is a book of residents of Weiler (1667-1900) available online here. I'm struggling to get much info out of it because by the time I've located the page I want the site starts blocking me for making too many requests. It also contains a short history of the village, which appears to have been the source for the slightly shorter history here.

The village which today has around 450 residents is a prime location for wine growers in the Nahe region, which explains that all three feudal authorities that ruled the Sponheim territories over the years have set up a vineyard here. There is the Badische Weingut, the Sponheimer, and the Schmidtburger one. The brief history of the village here (and in the residents book) notes that the wine growing tradition may go back to Roman times as some Roman artifacts were found in the ground. This lovely video from the regional TV channel SWR presents the current family businesses residing in the three feudal vineyards.

Note also that it is close to the upper end of the Nahe wine region, travel further up to Kirn you'll find hops and the brewery.

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

1664: something brewing in Strasbourg

After discovering various ancestors in 17th century Strasbourg (still a Free Imperial City at that point), it occurred to me that Kronenbourg, having named one of their beers "1664" might have been around at that time too. Unfortunately, the history of the brewery doesn't appear to be very well presented anywhere (it is extremely thin on the company website), so I'll use this entry to compile the bits and pieces I find.

Von Florent from Paris, France - 1664, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10911888

In 1664 Geronimus Hatt IV (Jérôme Hatt in French; 1633-1675), son of a dyer, started brewing in a house called Zur Kanone (cannon) at the square Rabenplatz (now known as Place du Corbeau). It was named after the raven as in the Middle Ages this area was the place of executions and the birds came to consume the dead bodies. More recently though, this has become a very desirable address, just across the river Ill from the cathedral (reached via the raven's bridge). The brewery business stays in the possession of the Hatt name line until 1977, across more than three centuries and eight generations, which is very impressive. According to his French Wikipedia page (no other language versions available at this point), he had obtained his brewer's licence the same year, whereas this F1 fan page suggests a slightly different version.

According to the F1 page, his son Claude took over the brewery in 1683. However, this name and date doesn't appear in the Wikipedia overview of the family history. There, many different descendants are brewers in various places in Strasbourg and beyond, so to simplify things I'll try to pick out the lineage that leads to the last owner of the family business.

1) Jérôme Hatt IV (1633-1675) marries in 1664 Marguerite Hamm, daughter of the baker Johann Hamm. As described above, he starts brewing in 1664 at Rabenplatz (Place du Corbeau). The very amazing website Maisons de Strasbourg has info on the house numbers 1, 7, 8 and 9 and none of these had a Hatt person (nor a brewer) in the 1660s. The numbering around the square (see the map) only went up to 9, so that only leaves numbers 2-6. Number 5 is huge, so for the humble beginnings of a newly licensed brewer I'd imagine one of the smaller houses.

2) Jérôme Hatt V (1668-1734), brewer renting the house Zum Vogelgesang / Chant des Oiseaux in 1692 (7 quai des bateliers, just a few doors down from the Rabenplatz), marries Catherine Boch the same year. In 1713, he inherits the birdsong house from his mother, who had married the owner Hans Jacob Verius in 1675 and bought the house with him in 1689 when the previous owners filed for insolvency.In 1716 he marries Catherine Goll, mother of brewer number 3). She was previously married to a priest called Georges Frédéric Leonhard, and in 1736 marries Philippe Guillaume Milius In 1746 her son, the brewer Jean Daniel Hatt and his wife (oo 1740) Susanne Marie Kammerer inherit the house. It stays in the Hatt family until 1759. Search "Hieronymus" on the page about the house to find 25 entries relating to the Hatt family. For instance, in the 1730s they also buy neighbouring properties and apply for permission to knock through walls to expand their business space.

3) Jean Hatt (Strasbourg, 14 août 1720-Strasbourg, 29 octobre 1753), founder of the brewery l'Espérance en 1745 à Strasbourg then at Schiltigheim. Marries Marguerite Barbe Heyl 1746 at Strasbourg. Rents the basement of 6 rue de la Croix in 1747. (There are many more hits for Espérance on the website, probably enough info to reconstruct the history of the breweries operating under that name.)

4) Jean-Louis Hatt (Strasbourg 1752 - 1804), brewer at l'Espérance. Marries Anne Barbe Kellervitter in 1780 at Strasbourg.

5) Philippe Jacques Hatt (Strasbourg 1787 - 1862), brewer at l'Espérance, founder of the brewers' association of Strasbourg. Marries Marie Catherine Rothenbach (1791-1838) 1812 at Strasbourg.

6) Philippe Jacques Hatt (Strasbourg, 16 november 1813)

7) Frédéric Guillaume Hatt (Strasbourg 1849 - 1916), leads the brewery at the Kronenbourg quarter of Strasbourg. Marries Eugénie Boersch (1854-1883) 1874 at Strasbourg.

We have a bit of a consistency problem here, as the company website claims that Frédéric Guillaume Hatt moved the brewery to Kronenbourgh in 1850, at which point he would have been around one year old. Maybe he had an uncle with the same name who is missing in the wiki family history. That would also fit the counting of generations on the website as they say sixth generation. The reason for the move was the flood risk in the city centre. The Kronenbourg district is on hills and thus safe. Wikipedia gives 1862 as the date of the move (still inconsistent) and also mentions that hills enabled the use of cellars for cold storage during longer brewing procedures.

8) Maurice Jérôme Hatt (Strasbourg 1869 - 1958), acquires the brasserie du Tigre and creates the brand Tigre Bock. Marries Hélène Nessmann 1897 at Strasbourg, then after her death, Valérie Fischer 1911 à Strasbourg.

9) Jérôme Maurice Hatt (Strasbourg 1912 - Perthuis 1998). The last leader of the family business.

Production at the Kronenbourg site ceased in 2014. All brewing is now happening in Obernai.

Which is all very interesting but not much use for my family history. I need to find the first three bearers of the name Geronimus Hatt, as they would have overlapped with our goldsmith Franz Bolion von der Rosen and his wife Ottilia Flach.

 

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Stop Press: This Lutheran vicar Matern Hatten (1470-1546) moves from Speyer to Strasbourg and marries Barbara Hager from Regensburg has a son called Hieronymus, who marries Agnes Stock and again has a son of the same name, and he is a dyer. Now that looks very promising.

In the history of the birdsong house we find the marriage entry of Hieronymus Hatt IV with the name of his late father given as Hieronymus Hatten.

With the search term Hieronymus Hatt (as opposed to Geronimus which I had from the wiki page of the first brewer) I also found a family tree for the brewery founder in Geneanet. So, going backwards now, we have:

1. Hieronymus Hatt IV (1633-1675)

2. Hieronymus Hatt 1596-/1633 (this marriage in 1630 also in Gedbas)
3. Maria Gassner /1613-

4. Hieronymus Hatt 1573-
5. Susanna Jung 1575-/1625
6. Daniel Gassner †1631/
7. Anna Maria Mischler (according to GedBas)

8. Philipp Hatt /1550-/1611
9. Dorothea Windisch 1552-
10. Martins Damian Jung /1540-1595/
11. Margaretha Jud /1549-/1576

18. Matthes Windisch †/1577
19. Ursula Baldner †/1558
20. Martin Jung †1566/
22. Jacob Jud /1507-1566/
23. N Post /1510-

Sadly, Geneanet runs out of Hatt ancestors at this point, although we're still one Hieronymus short, if the one born 1633 is the fourth. I think this fits quite plausibly with the son of the vicar mentioned above though. So if we trust the numbering of the Hieronymuses, we could fill in Hieronymus I as number 16. and the vicar would be 32. Actually, Wikipedia says that Hieronymus (son of Matern Hatten) had sons called Hieronymus and Philipp. So that works. We then have, based on that Wiki entry:

16. Hieronymus Hatt + after 1566
17. Agnes Stock + before 20. Mai 1546

32. Matern Hatten * around 1470 Speyer + 14. März 1546
oo before July 1537
33. Barbara Hager * Regensburg

64. Matern von Hatten (from the place Hatten near Wissembourg?)
65. Margarethe Reuß (from a family with lots of clerics at Speyer)

While these brewers are not attached to my ancestry (yet), there are parallels to the history of the Kirner Pils brewery, where we have a known family connection, so I do have an excuse for being nosy.

PS: Here's an interesting page about historic buildings in Strasbourg that are no longer there - most of these would have been there at the time of the old brewers.

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events