NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/soc/roots/7642

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-17 | 16.8 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Fred Rump from home)
Newsgroups: soc.roots
Subject: Re: Welcome back, Fred! (Article #2)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 17 Nov 92 03:56:56 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>     <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: CompuData Inc.
Lines: 266

[e-mail] (Jim Eggert x6127 g41) writes:

>Speaking of Germany, Fred didn't you just get back from a trip to
>Germany?  I'd love to hear some commentary on any genealogical work
>you did over there.  I'm hoping to go to Germany next year too.

I left my wife alone for a few hours at a time for her to catch up on the
whatever 4 sisters talk about and went on some sidetrips from Essen.

My records indicated that Clamor Haemmerer married (1836) and died (1863) in
Krapendorf. Well, there is no such place. But there was a St Andreas church in
Cloppenburg. So off I go to find this church. On the way into town I see this
Wirtschaft (local inn) called 'Alt Krapendorf'. I take pictures. Cloppenburg
is a county seat and a fairly large town but across the street of the bar is
what seems like an ancient Westphalian farm house with huge oak trees and all
the paraphernalia of a working farm.  I imagine that this is how it must have
been and that Cloppenburg just swallowed this Krapendorf up.  I'm off to find
a bookstore.  What do you have about Krapendorf.  Strange looks!  I explain.
But they don't really know and the owner/manager is called for help.  He
brings out a book from the rear which I'm offered to read but not buy.  It is
the last copy of an old history reprint.

It turns out that Krapendorf or Crapendorf was already a Wigbold in 1688 in
that the place could run its own affairs and deal directly with the higher
authorities of the times and that the Flecken (literally spot) Krapendorf was
united with Cloppenburg in 1855. Of course the name was used by residents for
long thereafter. The records are not available at the church but I buy several
other books on local history.  Apparently the Muenster Diocese has had the old
records tied up for two years in a copying effort. But I take pictures of the
church the baptismal font and leave with many books on various surrounding
communities where somebody may or may not be found.

I make a trip to Berge and Lohne and check out Steinfeld, Holdorf and the
Damme area for fellow soc.roots folks (Kortenkamp & Schulte). I buy books
everywhere they had any.

We now leave the area to do my thing with the father/grandfather research. We
stop in Hilter south of Osnabrueck where my Haemmerer guy who married and died
in good old crapsville was baptized and presumably born. I find the church and
the Lutheran parish center where I buy another church history and am directed
to the Gemeindedirektor.  This business of being from America to do research
works well.  I buy more books in the city hall and am directed to a bookstore
that has more.  The city hall is in a beautiful building that used to be the
Vogt's (local administrative lord) house.  Upstairs they have a model of the
village before it burned down in 1752 with all the buildings and owners
listed.  The Herr Direktor shows me all around and I film.  The Herr Hartmann
who sold the house to the town in the 60's has done his own two volume
genealogy.  Very impressive with many charts and on glossy stock, 8 1/2 x 11
format.  'Must have cost a small fortune', I said.  'Oh, yes.  It is said that
the crow can not fly into Hilter without crossing his land'.

I finally get to the Mrs Pastor at her home and office. The records are locked
in a safe and she does not have the key. 'Have they ever been copied? Are
they available elsewhere?' No. This is the only copy. I buy another book and
give her 20 Marks so that she would take the trouble to get the key and do
some looking for me. I've yet to hear anything.

It seems that the Haemmerer name is simply not local. None of all the books
mention him as existing. He must have come in to work the local saltworks or
the coalpits. They mined coal way back when to heat the water that made the
salt.  Later an Ironworks was established which resulted in the town
Georgsmarienhuette in the area.  Hopefully the records of the church have
something of significance as to the origin of this fellow and his wife.  I
need to establish a connection between a Haemmerer clan out of the Palatinate
that goes way back as another genealogist has traced in Germany.

We continue our tour in the direction of Nordhausen/Harz where Pop was
baptized at the Cathedral to the Holy Cross. It is difficult to find
accommodation but finally a nice hotel in Osterrode am Harz (this side of the
old border) is found.  The TV there had this fantastic show about the
Sauerland on.  As tired as we were, this could not be missed.

In the morning we were off to cross the border that did not exist any more.
One could still see the towers and the streets were still being made to join
again. Construction was everywhere. We arrived in Nordhausen without a map. We
looked everywhere for one.  Maps were not something to easily be made
available in the old GDR. We tried stopping several times but could not park.
There simply was no parking. We got caught in this slowly moving chain of cars
seemingly going nowhere. Again and again we'd wind up in some jam where all
cars were shunted down to one lane and roughly 10 traffic light changes were
required to get across the next road.

We kept trying to find the various church towers we could see from afar. They
seemed to be cut off from any way of getting there. Round and round we went.
Finally we got up the one hill to this huge tower. It happened to be the
highest point of the old city (Altstadt). It no longer was a church but rather
just a tower, the remnants of the St Peter's Church dating back to the 13th
century. In 1522 the first Lutheran sermon was held here by Luther's friend
from Wittenberg, the ex-Augustinian monk Lorenz Suesse. The church also used
to contain the largest bell in Nordhausen. It was made in 1653 and weighed
3600 kg. A little reading reveals what happened in Nordhausen during the last
week of the war. It happened that 433 British Heavy bombers were sent to
destroy this little town with explosives and phosphor. They did their job with
devastation expertise after missing the whole town the first time they tried.
It was easy to miss.  A week later Patton rolled thru without a problem.

If we consider that Dresden lost 5% of its civilian population from that
terrible firebombing, in Nordhausen at least 14% lost their lives.  Many
thousands of refugees, POWs, foreign workers and 1300 inmates of the
Concentration camp outside of the town were also killed.  76% of the town was
levelled.  This compares to Berlin's 32%.  More bombs, more planes were used
against this ancient little city than were used against such major cities as
Mainz.  Only 2300 apartments were left unscathed somehow.

I know this has little to do with genealogy but for me it had a dramatic
impact because I wondered whether anything as far as records went survived
this holocaust where people basically suffocated from lack of oxygen from the
huge fire that ate the city.  I thought not.

Anyway, back into the city where we followed signs to the train station.
There was an Auskunftsschalter.  (information) They only had a tourists guide
map which sort of describes places to go and see but doesn't tell you how to
get there.  Wonderful.  We ask about the location of the Dom.  We should take
to trolly car left and this and that because there is no parking there and
it's too far to walk.  Well, baloney on that.  I've never yet been kept from
my wheels.  Besides we parked illegally as it was.

So we roamed in the drizzle.  It was always doing that.  There was this stand
- free enterprise where this lady was selling all kinds of stuff in the
trainstation.  Do you have any maps?  Of course the lady had maps.  10 marks
and you had a map.  We also bought 5 pounds of bananas cheaper than we can get
them here.  Our only bargain in Germany.

We then went to find our way back to the car.  But a train came in.  We
wondered what that smell had been.  It was a good old fashioned choochoo train
bellowing smoke like there was no tomorrow.  More pictures.  Then another one
came in.  Big black and then grey clouds of smoke puffing into the sky.  They
said 'Deutsche Reichsbahn' and DB on all the cars.  I thought maybe these were
touristy types of trains that they managed to find from the Third Reich
somewhere.  But apparently not as normal people seemed to get off and on.

We finally found the Cathedral.  It was an old place dating to 1130.  Much of
the old stone walls and the oldest Crypt survived intact.  The church, of
course, was hit and burned, but the walls mostly stood.  The roof was finally
restored in 1964.  Now scaffolding was all around the place.  It had survived
numerous fires and attacks by all kinds of people.  It's priests were dragged
out by the Nazis (first the SA and later the Gestapo) for interrogation and
banishment from the area.  One priest died during one of those
'interrogations'.

I found the rectory and the pastor was a young man named Arno Wand, about to
eat his midday meal. I offered to wait but he would have none of it and wanted
to see what I wanted.  After I showed him my dad's baptismal certificate he
went to get the original book out.  'Yes, all the church records had been
taken to safety outside of town.  Individual farmhouses were always safer from
attack', he said.  I photographed the original entry where it said my dad was
really named Augustinius Carl Gustav Fritz.  There was no mention of a father.
It simply said illegitimate.

It had been rumored that the father was a Von and that he was Lutheran and
that was why he could not marry my real grandmother. But nobody had known
about the Augustinius, not even my dad. It was always simply Carl Gustav
Fritz.

Now it was out of there and we had to find this place of insignificance called
Neustadt am Hohenstein or Neustadt, Kreis Ilfeld or Neustadt/Harz. It is on
very few maps and some discussion about it's location has transpired here.

It's sort of off a side road that is a side road. It rained. A tiny church
stood among a handful of houses. There was not a person in sight. But at least
we could park all over the place. I ran over to the church to check it out. It
was closed as almost all churches we found were in Germany. But the vestibule
was open and it mentioned Katholische Messe. Shit - that threw a wrench into
my thoughts. Why would they have gone all the way to Nordhausen if they had a
Catholic church right here? Maybe the thing about the guy being Protestant was
bull, right? And maybe they only wanted to hide the shame in another town.

I read thru all the names listed as having died in the various wars. There was
no Wienrich. It must be remembered that I had little expectation of finding
one. Neustadt had been a Luftkurort (an airy health resort of some kind) where
wealthy people were supposed to come to breathe fresh mountain air. And there
was one rather large building as we drove into the place that could have been
such a resort type place. I thought for sure that this Wienrich guy was just
someone who came and went and that my search would get nowhere.

I finally saw a workman get something out of a truck and disappear back into a
house. I followed him right in and asked about the rectory or any official
place in town where I could get some information. The rectory was right across
the street, next to the church. I knocked and a man answered. He was not
dressed as a priest. So I asked him if he was the priest here. 'No, I'm not a
priest, but I am the pastor here.' Hmmm! I mentioned the sign in the church
about the mass.  'Oh, that's just for the Catholics we share our church with'.

Oh. I explained my mission and he looked at me rather suspiciously. I asked if
he had ever heard of a Wienrich family. There was no time to worry about an
answer as he said, 'Sure!' immediately.  I got out my birth certificate copy
and then the suspicion ended.  He went to the books in a huge closet.  Lots of
books I thought for such a little place.  Have they ever been copied?  'No,
they never will either.'

We spent an hour or two searching thru birth, death and marriage records but
were still unable to really make sense out of who was who with all those
Wienrichs, Weinrichs and Wienerichs. But there was that Friedrich Theodore
Karl Wienrich whose name my father obviously had.  (His brother was one Carl
Gustav.)  Fritz married 15 years later. Oddly an Elise Rumph. My mother was
Luise Rump. Weird shit happening here.

So, our pastor then suggested I go and see Robert Wienrich and ask him
directly who all these people are. Surely he would know. This was strange.

Supposedly the family had knocked down the old family house right after the
wall fell and built a new house in its place. I missed seeing the house my
father was born in by two years but surely I'll get pictures. So I knock on
this new house. No bell. No answer. I go next door. Same thing. I'm about to
try the other side when this little man comes out the door. I ask him if he
knows the Wienrichs and could he tell me where they live. 'Well, right here',
he says. 'Well, could I speak to them?' "But I'm he", he says.

I had to beg my way in the door while standing out in the rain.  The 'I'm from
America routine' did not seem to have much impact with him. He was suspicious
and I could not have been up to any good. But I persevered and in we went.

We walked thru this little hall type room where he had an electric cooker on a
table and a little kitchen cabinet.  (About 6 by 6.) From there was his room
where he had a table and bed and a nice warm stove. It was obvious that the
man lived there full time.

Again, I showed the old birth certificate and the funny face started to melt a
little.  I explained several times receiving the same incredulous questions:
"you mean you're from America and you came to see me?"

I don't think it ever really sunk in.  His wife was in a hospital.  His uncle
lived in a nearby town.  The uncle was really a half-brother to my father. The
uncle had children who would be fairly close relatives to me. It was all
amazing. We left pictures which he could show his family to prove that he
hadn't gone crazy.

Now what had happened?  Apparently my real grandmother (the daughter of our
man from Krapendorf) answered an advertisement around 1895 to work as a
Hausverwalterin (sort of the female ward of the farm) in this beautiful area.
There were three boys in the family.  Whatever happened.  She became pregnant
in 1906 by the Friedrich guy.  My man in Neustadt wondered how we knew it was
him and not one of the other brothers.  I showed him the birth certificate
again.  He had heard that the family had a Haushaelterin.  This was apparently
a sort of a status symbol.  He also had heard of the pregnancy but I wonder
whether he just said that to sound informed.

The man was 67 and retired. He was rather bitter about everything. The
Communist had taken his farm early on and made him and his son work on his own
land as state employees. His son wanted no part of that and learned a
different trade. Now, they have their land back but don't know what to do with
it. He is too old to do anything. He says his life is now over. He owned both
houses at one time but now his son owns the new one. He still lives in his
room because that is what he was assigned by the state as an old couple.
Supposedly they only needed one room and two other families were moved into
the house. Now he's used to it and the rent helps him survive. He's got 20
hectares or forest and 11 hectares of tilled acreage.

We left and promised to write. I left the pastor with 50 Marks and he promised
to look into the family records once I was able to sort things out a little
better. The Wienrich family is quite old in these parts and I should be able
to trace the ancestry back at least two hundred years. Before that the books
burned when someone made a mess while making plum wine. The whole town burned
down along with the church records.

We took off towards Berlin.  63 Kilometers from our designated Autobahn exit
we hit a stoppage.  It took us 5 hours to cover those 60km.  We wound up in
Berlin after midnight and had to rouse my cousin from a deep sleep.  We could
not get thru on the phone earlier because that is something that only works
sometimes in the old Eastern areas.  Everything is overburdened.

More on Berlin the next time.

Fred


--
W. Fred Rump     office:       [e-mail]     'mans feet have grown/so big
26 Warren St.   home: [e-mail]  that he/forgets his littleness'
Beverly, NJ. 08010                                  Don Marquis
609-386-6846    bang:uunet!cdin-1!icdi10!fr