Family History | European Focus

Archive for Family History

Symbology in Religion – the Protestant Church of Heiningen, Germany

By jim · Comments (0)

Saturday, May 18th, 2013

The crucifix as we know it was developed in Spain in the 14th century to punish the Jews for their mistreatment of Christ

May 18

The Evangelical Lutheran Michaelskirche

Out of the 27 different villages we have visited in the past eight days, one stands out as being particularly interesting. The tour we enjoyed the other day of the very old church of St. Michael in the village of Heiningen, located in a shallow valley in the rolling hills of the Schwaebische Alb northeast of Stuttgart.

We were met at the parish house by pastor Hauff and retired pastor Wagner, who had come from Stuttgart to work on a special project with the current pastor. As the current pastor admitted, he has only been in the parish about 18 months, and did not feel he knew enough about the history to conduct a tour. And so, the four of us went into the church, former pastor, two visitors from America and the current pastor. At least three out of the four of us were about to learn a great deal about symbology and religion in the 14th century.

The term “Biblio Publico” refers to paintings, statues and other objects to show those who could not read the stories of the Bible. The masterpieces of art that covered the walls of the church were like splashing huge pages of a comic book up on the walls for the 3rd grade education level of the people. Huge on one wall, St. Christopher. He’s bigger than life, and dominates the wall near an entrance. Why? Because obviously people in the 14th and 15th centuries had difficulties with child mortality and the death of the mother in childbirth. Over on another wall, a depiction of Christ on the cross, hands outreached with no sign of the nails and instead of a crown of thorns, a rainbow above his head. This is how Jesus was portrayed before the Spanish started showing him as the tortured Christ on the cross, bloodied and torn. Why the change? Politics. The Spanish wanted to remind the people of the evil deeds of the Jews. Flogging the Jews daily over their treatment of the Savior was one ideal way to get out of paying debts. The Jews held the title on people’s lives, their homes, their businesses. Remind the people of what evil people the Jews were, and it was easier to chase the banker out of your city, rather than repay the debt.

The architect created a statue of himself in the choir

We learned about the placement of various saints in the church. St. Michael Archangel is the patron saint of this and many other churches. Every time one sees a church named for this saint, one can assume that a pagan place of worship used to stand in that spot. St. Michael with his spear stabbing the heart of the dragon is the destroyer of pagan religions. Another saint is shown holding up the diamond-shaped choir, a “later” addition from the 15th century to this very old church. The people in this region had problems with rheumatoid arthritis and their had hogs that came down with sickness. There’s a saint for that, too, and they are depicted in the ceiling of the church plus a wonderful bust of the architect in the choir. He used to hold plans in his hands, those have been lost due to one war or conflict among many.

A cemetery used to be located around the church. That cemetery was moved due to hygienic reasons to a location outside of town. But a stone reminder remains in the form of a small chameleon, easy to miss entirely if it were not pointed out to you. The chameleon, Pastor Wagner explained, represents the rebirth which would follow death. The room beyond the doorway where you find the chameleon used to hold the bodies of the deceased before they were moved out the side door to be buried.

A stone chameleon above the entrance to the storage room for bodies before they were taken to be buried

Finally, we learned that there are more than 1,000 ways to tell a story by the way a person is holding their hands in a painting. We saw one such painting, done around 1400, and the women are all holding their hands in slightly different ways. All of these tiny details in an ancient church, easily missed but for the excellent “Biblio Publico” in the mind of this kind, retired pastor who took his time to show us signs from the past.

The 13th century font shows a three-sided triangle for the Holy Trinity and a four-sided triangle to represent the Four Elements of Fire, Air, Water and Earth

Comments (0)

Categories : Family History, Germany Tours

Tags : evang, heiningen, michaelskirche, protestant, symbolism

A New Englander’s View Of German Food

By jim · Comments (0)

Saturday, May 18th, 2013

May 18

By Margaret Weiler

Currently on tour with European Focus founder James Derheim in the Schwaebische Alb region of Germany

White asparagus in season usually from early April to June 23 is a delicacy enjoyed by many who come to Germany from abroad and who are only familiar with the green variety

One of the pleasures of revisiting Germany is reconnecting with German food. In the United States good German food is hard to find, at least where we live in New England, and it is usually a poor imitation of the real thing. It’s a special pleasure to be in southern Germany in the spring.

Driving around in the countryside you see field after field of crops growing, sometimes the bright yellow rape, sometimes green and hard to identify this early, and sometimes spargel which is asparagus grown under long rows of white plastic covering so that the result is white and soft. It needs to be peeled which is a lot of work. When cooked properly it is delightfully tender and a bit sweet. In Ulm I had a meal consisting almost entirely of spargel.

During this trip we have gone to several restaurants where I have had wonderful spaetzle, an egg noodle which is wonderful when cooked properly and served with a delicious sauce. At home I have tried making it myself or buying dried, with poor results. At a restaurant in an old mill I had the best brats ever, incredibly tender and tasty with a light sauce. One noontime we just went into a metzgerei (butcher shop) where they had a little table where I sat and ate a delicious leberkase (sort of a ham loaf) and potato salad.

Tender brats with a light sauce and salad at the Herrenmuehle near Adelberg

The salads here in the Kirchheim unter Teck area are interesting. At first you only see a pile of lettuce of various varieties with an oil and vinegar dressing. Underneath are little collections of interesting things like shaved carrots or cabbage, tomatoes, or potato salad.

The author at left with Jenean Derheim, European Focus, at the Herrenmuehle

Comments (0)

Categories : Europe Tours, Family History, Germany Tours

Tags : alb, asparagus, brats, bratwurst, Food, german, potato, salad, schwaebische, weiler, white

The Origin of the Crucifix

By jim · Comments (0)

Friday, May 17th, 2013

May 17

In the 12th-14th century church of St. Michael in Heiningen, Germany

On tour with genealogist Margaret Weiler in the Schwaebische Alb of Germany, we learned yesterday something very interesting from the former pastor of a very old church in the town of Heiningen. “Crucifixes were developed in Spain at the end of the 14th century to remind people of the hideous treatment of Jesus by the Jews,” said former Pastor Wagner. “Before then, the only depictions of Jesus found in churches was as the shepherd.” This really made an impact, as the only image seen in most churches is Jesus on the cross, in great pain, bloodied, torn. To know that this was a political statement carried around the world made one think.

Comments (0)

Categories : Family History

Tags : crucifix, origin, spain

A Visit to Dettingen unter Teck, Germany

By jim · Comments (0)

Thursday, May 16th, 2013

May 16

By Margie Weiler

The center of Dettingen unter Teck

This is my 4^th tour with James Derheim, who has taken me to many ancestral villages, both mine and my husband Bill’s, in many south and western areas of Germany and the Zurich area of Switzerland. I always have had a wonderful time seeing for myself where these ancestors lived and learning a lot about how they lived. Usually I had been able to learn about their pedigrees using the LDS microfilmed church records before I visited the village, but this year the records for one village, Dettingen unter Teck, had been lost for some unspecified reason. This trip was crucial to learning what happened to the records and to learning enough to be sure that this was the correct village and even to be sure of the location within the village. Usually I can be sure only that they must have come to the church and sometimes that they were baptized in the font that is still there in the church.

Before 1945

Bill’s grandfather emigrated from Schlierbach ,in Wurttemberg, in 1891, and his 3rd great grandmother Christiana Barbara Haubenestel married Leonard Weiler there in

1815; she was said to be the daughter of Johannes Haubenestel from either “Dettingen” or “Schlossberg” both of which were said to refer to Dettingen unter Teck which is a small village near Kirchheim unter Teck. The LDS records only include very late records except for a familienbuch which gave some information about Christiana Barbara’s family including a birth date of her father Johannes of May, 1750 (the day was cut off in the image).

It took a visit to Dettingen u. Teck to find out that the records had been destroyed by Allied bombs in 1945, having been brought to the church for safekeeping because the Allies had said that they were not targeting churches! But we did find in a map of the village that “Schlossberg” was a very tiny section of the village just across the Lauter River on the road up the hill (“berg”) to a long-destroyed castle (Schloss). An old map in the Heimatbuch, (purchased next door to the church in the town hall) shows a tiny cluster of small houses just at the foot of this hill so I can be sure that Bill’s Haubensetel ancestors lived in one of those houses.

Margie Weiler and Frau Lauk, left, going over the old plan of the town

A view of Dettingen from the “Teck,” a high hill to the east. The location of the ancestral area “Schlossberg” is indicated

This was one case where I really needed to visit the village and especially needed Jim’s help in talking to the people there, since my German is limited at best.

Comments (0)

Categories : Europe Tours, Family History

Tags : dettingen, family, haubenestel, history, schlierbach, schlossberg, teck, unter, weiler

Oberwaelden – a village with more than 850 years of history

By jim · Comments (0)

Monday, May 13th, 2013

May 12

Sketch of the village from the 1600s

View of the village taken in May, 2013

We are on the trail of ancestors with genealogist Margie Weiler in the area around Goeppingen, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. One of the highlights of Sunday was a visit to the hilltop hamlet of Oberwaelden. The church there, St. Nikolaus (built pre-Reformation in the early 1400s) is brilliantly decorated with paintings in its ancient tower, which is even older than the rest of the church building. The tower, known in German as a “Wehrturm,” was used for observation and also as a last point of refuge for villagers who felt threatened during a time when every neighbor wanted what every other neighbor had. Built at a time of strife between descendants of the ruling Staufer dynasty, the church tower could be as old as the late 12th century. Documents show that the tower as seen today dates back to about 1284. The village called “superiori villa Waldiu” became “obere Dorf Waelden” as part of the extensive holdings of the nearby monastery at Adelberg, which through a trade between Kaiser Friedrich I Barbarossa and Herzog (Duke) Welf VI.

The painting on the choir window, left side

Precious paintings such as what survive in this church can thank their state of preservation to the Protestant Reformation and what followed. Hundreds of frescoes all around this area were whitewashed over, as the strict teachings of Martin Luther pointed out that the word, and not symbols, were the most important part of being devout. Thanks to being whitewashed, the paintings survived. Painstaking and modern restoration methods have brought these beauties back to life.

The paintings show scenes from the Bible plus representations of the Four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Painted deep within the niche on either side of the narrow choir window, facing east of course, is a vivid depiction of Christ being nailed to the cross. The entire area is lit by spotlights thoughtfully installed by the parish, which has its main office in a nearby village. A sign on the exterior of the church tells the visitor where to go to find a key. Of course, the ability to read German is vital, as all of the directions are in German.

The church ceiling, in the ancient tower

The rest of the historic village has plenty of 300 and 400 year-old barns and houses plus a bonus – the village bake house, still in use, right next to the bus stop. It’s common in this area for village women to get together from time to time and bake the round loaves of “Bauernbrot,” (Farmer’s Bread) together on weekends. If one is lucky enough to pass through on one of those days, a hunk of this bread, still warm, with “schmaltz,” or lard with onions and apples is a delight that cannot be easily captured on a blog.

Village bake house at left and a view to the church of St. Nikolaus

Comments (0)

Categories : Family History

Tags : adelberg, church, nikolaus, oberwaelden, oberwalden, paintings

The Church of St. Margaret in Wahlhausen, Germany

By jim · Comments (0)

Monday, April 29th, 2013

Magnolia tree near the church

April 29

The little church in the riverside village of Wahlhausen, Thuringen, Germany is a testament to what a lack of heating can do to preserve art.

The Church of St. Margaret was built on the bank of the Werra River in 1718 through donations by the local ruling family, the von Hansteins, who had a huge castle in the vicinity plus some 30 other villages under their domain. In 1775, a local amateur artist by the name of Johann Endtler decorated the balconies and the ceiling, in fact, just about every available surface of the church with paintings depicting saints, sinners and stories from the Old and New Testaments. The paintings have survived mainly due to a total lack of heat in the church, which helps cut down on the expansion and contraction of the wood used to build it, according to the man who was tending the church on the day we visited.

St. Elizabeth

Part of the ceiling

The church fell into disuse during the years 1976 to 1986 when the first restoration activities were started. Things picked up after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and reunification in 1990. Nowadays, the church is still in use as a parish church with a relatively few half a dozen or so in attendance during Sunday services from Easter to Christmas, when the church is full.

This magnificent church is open to the public on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday from 2:30 to 4:30.

Painting of Bible story

The pulpit and reserved seating for the von Hanstein family

Comments (0)

Categories : Family History

Tags : church, germany, margaret, wahlhausen

Hasselbach and Allendorf Ancestral Discoveries

By jim · Comments (0)

Saturday, April 27th, 2013

April 22 and 23

Dennis Jenkins from Grand Junction, Colorado wanted to find out more about his ancestral ties to the hamlet of Hasselbach near Weilburg, Hessen, Germany. Dennis takes the record for waiting the longest between first learning about European Focus Private Tours (1998) to actually stepping off the plane to begin his personal journey. Starting from his landing and soon after, within an hour or so, Dennis was walking the quiet lanes of tiny Hasselbach, a sleepy little “Dorf” with a name which is tied to the history of a certain kind of bush (called a hassel) growing here with brown berries. “Hassel,” and “bach” for stream – Hasselbach. Such is the origin of village names in Germany. While walking around the village we encountered a local who told us that administratively, the village belongs to Weilburg. But the villagers attend church in another, closer village called Allendorf, just a couple of kilometers over the hill to the north.

Taking photos of the war memorial

We went to Allendorf and quickly found the church, located in the center of the small village. The pastor was not at home, but the church caretaker was. She cheerfully let us into the old church with its precious “Koehler” organ from the early 1700s, one of only two in the Nassau region of Hessen. The church is well-maintained and dates from the early 1700s. It is not the first church to stand on this spot. At least two others have stood here, and the old stone baptismal font is from one of those earlier churches, and dates from the 1200s.

We learned from the pastor that records have been microfilmed and are kept in the archive in Darmstadt as well as copies held by the LDS church.

The church

Front of church

The early 1700s Koehler organ

Comments (0)

Categories : Family History, Germany Tours

Tags : ALLENDORF, family, germany, hasselbach, history, tour

Finding Ancestral Connections in Frankenthal, Germany

By jim · Comments (0)

Sunday, April 21st, 2013

Gerhard Nestler, right, explains the history of the town to the

April 17

Paul Skelton wanted to see where his German ancestors lived before emigrating to Australia. And so, as part of an extended multiple week long trip that also included England and Ireland, Paul and his wife Rhonda and their son Andrew booked a short week-long tour with European Focus which revolved around a visit to the town of Frankenthal in Rheinland Pfalz, Germany.

As part of the preparations for the visit of the Skelton Family to Frankenthal, European Focus owner and leader of most of our genealogy trips James Derheim made a trip to Frankenthal in early September, 2012 while in the area on other business. Contact was made with Gerhard Nestler, who works for the town. Through Herr Nestler, the Skeltons were able to learn much more about their ancestral origins in Germany.

We enjoyed a walking tour lasting nearly two hours on a bright and sunny April 17. Herr Nestler met us in front of the Rathaus, or town hall, where he works. We learned much of the history of Frankenthal.

Details of the 12th century monastery west wall.

We learned that the town has its origins in the founding of a monastery by Erkenber, who lived in nearby Worms. A monastery was already established in Worms, but Erkenber wanted to spend some of his fortune establishing a new one on lands he owned to the south. That monastery was built and filled with monks, some of whom were engaged in the illumination of manuscripts.

The monastery thrived. A second one, for nuns, was established on the south side of the village. Craftspeople arrived, along with farmers who all worked for the monastery on the surrounding lands. The land was fertile and fed by the Rhein, which at that time ran right past the village and monastery. Today the course of the river runs ten kilometers to the east

Fast-forward to the 1500s. The Protestant Reformation came to this region and the monastery was emptied of its monks. A huge property, valuable, was gathering cobwebs. The owner, descendent of the founder, wanted to fill it with people. And so, he welcomed refugees from the Netherlands. Some of those people who had to move for religious reasons found homes in the monastery buldings. Among those people, the Skeltons now believe, were their Behagel ancestors.

Another 125 years or so later and the War of the Palatine Succession of 1689 destroys Frankenthal along with nearby Worms, Mannheim and Heidelberg by the French. The village of Frankenthal is nearly empty. All Dutch influence ends at this time. When the town is rebuilt the monastery buildings are absorbed into new uses.

The Speyer Gate from the late 1700s

A second destruction of the town takes place in 1943 during the Second World War. Airplanes bound for the chemical factories at Ludwigshafen follow flares dropped by scout planes but the problem is, the flares were dropped too early due to heavy flak from Mannheim. Bombs are dropped on little Frankenthal, which has no military significance. The town center is destroyed and 32 people lose their lives. It’s another tragedy in a world war full of millions of them.

Even with all of this destruction, Herr Nestler was able to show us many remnants of the past. We saw remains of the old port and waterway which once led to the old sugar factory. We saw two town gates from the fortifications erected in the 1700s. And of course, we saw remains of the walls and west portal of the monastery from the late 12^th century.

More about Frankenthal can be learned on the Wikipedia web site, which is in English.