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| Having a merry Christmas |
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| 1982 H.S. graduation - Diana looks exactly the same! |
Dec 22-29th
Christmas with Old
Friends and Family reunion
Germany…the first week with our “own wheels” since leaving the US in
August.
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| Enjoying a snowy walk |
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| A magical snowy walk in the woods |
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| Tiny chapel, well cared for |
The cost to rent a car from the airport in Luxembourg, where we landed was
quite expensive. Instead we opted
to make our way to Trier (about 25 miles) using public transport and rent a car
from there. We’ve found that
initiating a rental from a smaller town and returning to a large airport (Bonn-Cologne airport)
is often a real bargain (150 Euros from Trier, returning to Bonn Airport vs.
450 from Luxembourg). We spent
Christmas with my wonderful friend Diana, whom I’ve known since middle school
in WI. Diana, Helmut, and
their 3 kids live in a picturesque small town in the Eiffel, a hilly, volcanic,
heavily forested region with rivers and lakes in abundance. Diana did exactly what her mother told
her not to do…fall in love with a German while on a Fulbright scholarship in
Germany 25 years ago. Of course,
her mother did the same with an American several decades before. Things have a way of coming full
circle. This has become kind of a
“theme” in my life, and certainly a theme on this trip. We spent 5 days
enjoying each others company, peeling vegetables, playing games, taking walks
together; the house was full of happy people, with Diana’s family, niece,
nephew, and brother in law, there were 10 of us all together. Diana made it look easy, cooking us feast after feast,
always with a smile on her face.
Events of the week included: cutting the tree in the forest, carrying it
home with the tractor, Andrea and I decorating it together, attending midnight
mass in a medieval monastery (lights low, incense permeating the air), singing carols
around the Christmas tree by candlelight in English and German, daily walks in
the fresh air and SNOW. One
afternoon Drew and I set out to explore and within minutes found ourselves at Murlenbach Castle, one of several places thought to be the possible birthplace of
Charlemagne(c.742-814) Christian king of the Frankish Germanic tribes, that
eventually conquered the pagan Saxon Germanic tribes. He was made Holy Roman Emperor under Pope Leo III, and ruled
from Aachen, Germany. He has been
called “the father of Europe.” (http://www.history.com/topics/charlemagne).
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| Andrea, Judith, Diana, and Michele |
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| Cozy Christmas |
On the 27th we said farewell to our friends, and headed
to Kirf. This was a trip I had
been anticipating for 1.5 years.
Here is a little background information:
Several years earlier I decided to digitize 1500 of my dad’s old
slides that he had stored in an old military trunk, to create a CD for him to
enjoy. I asked him to explain some
of the slides…who were these people in Europe? I knew nothing of the family history. My great grandfather who left Germany
in 1880 never returned, but kept in touch by mail. In 1953 my dad was doing his army stint in Germany. He decided to search for these distant
family relatives, using an address on an old letter. He showed his military ID to the people who opened the
door. They welcomed him with open
arms, seeing he was a relative, gave him schnapps, and took him to a
cemetery. He couldn’t speak German
and they could not speak English. Unfortunately
60 years later, my dad didn’t remember names of people or specific places. However, coincidentally, at about the
same time a heretofore, unknown cousin from Texas, who had been deep into
family genealogy, contacted the Milwaukee branch (our family), and shared some
very interesting information. He
had created a virtual book of information with town names, old letters, and a genealogy
chart dating back to the 1700’s.
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| Feels like we are back in Wisconsin |
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| snow is coming |
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| Wow! From green to white overnight |
In the summer of 2013, while visiting Diana, we decided to go on a
mission to see if we could find these blood relatives. With Diana acting as translator and fearless “door knocker,” we made
our way to the tiny village of Biebelhausen, where we stopped a postman. He gave us a lead, pointing to a house
50 meters away. Within 5 minutes
we were talking to a “Jacoby”… my great great grandfather’s brother in law’s
family. He remembered as a boy
going the “Düro” family house in the nearby village of Kirf with his
mother. He also knew a direct descendent
and promised to give her (Martina) my e-mail address. He then directed us to the “family house” location from memory
in Kirf. He told us we were lucky
we came when we did, as he was moving to Luxembourg in a few months.
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| serene |
We drove to the even tinier village of Kirf, knocked on the door and
were greeted by octogenarian, Edmund.
Diana explained who I was.
Boy was he surprised. He
thought the family name had completely died out. He explained that his wife was a Düro, and the last
male Düro, her brother, died in WWII just at the very end of the war. He promised to pass my e-mail address
on to his son Peter. He lived in the
“Düro” house that dated back to “1741.”
He pointed out the keystone with the date and carving of Bacchus god of
wine, holding a cluster of grapes.
He said the family had always had vines and made their own wine. This intrigued me…could the very un-German
name (the name of a river, and famous wine region in Spain) be somehow
connected to the Roman roots of the area (Nearby Trier is the oldest city in Germany, and was inhabited by the Romans over 2000yrs ago)? Before
the end of the evening, I was contacted by both “distant cousins!” It was too late to meet with them, but
I told them to do their homework, dig through old photos and papers, and I
would be back in 2014 to meet them.
In the meantime I e-mailed them my dads old photos, and asked if
they could identify any of the people in the photos. Peter and I were both really surprised…the woman next to the
tombstone in one of the photos was his mother! Apparently Peter’s mom played tour guide to my dad when he
was in Germany.
So…there we were Dec 27th
2014, driving to Kirf in deep anticipation. We were going to complete the circle. Peter invited us to dinner and to spend
the night. Peter’s, and Martina’s
families, and 86yo Edmund, sharp as a tack and fit as a fiddle attended. I scanned the photos and documents
Martina brought, and asked lots of questions. We determined that Peter, Martina and I are 3rd cousins. It was a rich evening, and we were made to feel so at home. Peter and his wife converted the old
barn into a beautiful home, maintaining the old world charm, but creating a
home that is really a work of art.
Unfortunately no ghosts visited me that night. I slept like a rock.
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| Our wonderful hosts |
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| coming full circle...Kirf |
The following day Peter and Edmund took us to Kirf’s church, and described
to us how it “used to be”…after church all the men would go to the tavern. It was the center of social life. Now the tavern is gone, all these small
towns are losing their shops, and services, and becoming more like suburbs of
Luxembourg (which is too expensive for even most Luxembourgers to live). We went to the cemetary, and looked at local war monuments (scanning the names). Edmund
told us that prior to WWII the town of Kirf had a large Jewish population (I
learned that Jews came to the area in the 1600’s). Most left just prior to WWII as the writing was on the wall. Peter’s Grandfather (mom’s dad) had been the town’s mayor
before the war, and was forced to step down, as he, like most Rhinelanders, did
not support the Nazi party. They
supported Catholic Center party.
Apparently it was only after Hitler abolished all other parties, that
the Nazis got a hold over Rhineland, and I recently heard that Kirf never
actually did vote Nazi (wonder if it’s true, and if so how it was avoided). Peter and Edmund took us to several
places related to WWII, including the abandoned remains of a “road” of concrete
barriers, now covered in moss, put in place by slave labor to keep American
tanks from crossing into Germany (I don’t know if it worked). They took us to the site of a war
monument near the border where a horrible winter battle was fought. It was bitterly cold; we stood there
shivering, imagining how those poor soldiers had to not only fight their
enemies, but had to fight the weather to survive. This region is on the “cider trail”, close to Remich(Lux) on
the Moselle River, and is very picturesque area, popular for biking. It is hard to imagine how this piece of
heaven must have been transformed into a kind of “hell” during wartime. Peter later took us on a tour of nearby Saarburg, a
gorgeous little town on the Saar River, known for its Reisling wine. We climbed to the top of the ruins of a
10th century castle for a view of the town, which dates back to the
1200’s. Peter invited us back in
the summer…so much more to see, do explore, you bet we’ll be back!
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| Kirf church |
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| Helmshen and Dianshen |
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