Follow your Dreams!

This is Sophie Regula Gubelmann. She was my great-great-grandmother. I know so very little about her. She was born in Switzerland and was married young to my great-great-grandfather Carl Stange who was 16 years her major. I was told she had reddish hair. I think I inherited the form of her hands. That’s pretty much all I know.

I once dreamed of her. I met her in the store in Stralsund that she ran after her husband’s early death. She wore a black dress as widows did, with a lot of underskirts. She walked up to me and told me to continue my search and not to give up. I awoke and wondered what this was all about. But it had felt very real.

The following week, I went to Stralsund to find out more. I went through the church records of St. Nicolai at the parish office, looked at the death records and found my great-great-grandfather’s cause of death and his place of burial in 1899. The next step was to find his youngest daughter Antonie’s confirmation record from around 1890. These records were kept at the church itself and the clerk was kind enough to go there with me and let me have a look. I stood in the sacristy, opened the book of confirmations on page 172 in the year 1893 and immediately saw a surname that sounded familiar. The record stated that this child named Sophie Charlotte Stange was the daughter of Carl Stange, born in 1879. But I had never heard of this girl before. I went back to the other records again and found her death at the age of 20 of consumption. And in fact she had been Carl and Sophie Stange’s daughter and my great-grandfather’s youngest sister. Only that no one had ever talked about her. I asked my mother, aunts and uncles, no one had ever heard of her. I called my grandfather’s cousin who had done research in this part of the family and could even remember her grandmother and her great-aunt Antonie. But she had never heard about this child either. 

She sent me a picture of two girls whom she had considered to be the oldest daughter Maria and the youngest Antonie. But as Maria had been 9 years older than Antonie and handicapped after a fall, it simply was more likely that these two girls actually were Antonie and Charlotte.

I still am puzzled by the fact that this child never was mentioned. I am sure that this was rather normal in those days, even though the child was certainly was loved and missed. But one person did not forget her and made sure that we started to talk about her again. And that was her mother Sophie Regula Stange, née Gubelmann, born in Switzerland, married young, with reddish hair.

And Who Might You Be?

Are you planning on going to Germany in 2016? And are you looking for the graves to visit and for cousins to say hello? Things might turn out to be a bit difficult for both.

I wrote about the difficulties of finding your German ancestor’s grave on August 31, 2015 in my blogpost “Finding your Ancestor’s Grave (Or Not)” which you can find here http://bit.ly/1O2Lyi2. But finding relatives actually isn’t that easy either.

The main reason for the difficulty of finding German relatives simply is privacy. Not only are the privacy laws in German very strict and it is complicated, time consuming and sometimes simply impossible to find information on living people. But even when you manage to find them, you might not be able to get in touch with them or even be invited to their house. The reason for this is that Germans like to keep their privacy. They like to stick with their own family and friends and are rather reserved with getting in touch with people they do not know. And most of them simply aren’t looking for new found cousins, be it first, second or third.

Another reason is that in Germany genealogy is a more or less exotic thing to do. Remember, Germans usually stayed put and think they know where they come from. There simply doesn’t seem to be a need to know more and dig deeper. Therefore, most Germans aren’t even aware that they have relatives abroad. It happens quite often that I find relatives but they simply are unfriendly and hang up, making it very clear that they aren’t interested.

Often, there are no relatives in that area, their ancestors simply moved and their descendants are impossible to trace. The earlier emigration took place, the harder it is to find relatives.

But there still is hope and it is in fact possible to find relatives that know about the emigration and welcome you to Germany (which does not mean to their house). These are some examples where I found family members:

The emigrating ancestors had come from a small village close to the Dutch border with a very active Historical Society. They had information on everything a genealogist could ask for and knew directly which family member had emigrated and what became of the siblings. And as it was a Historical Society of a small village, many of its members were related. It only took one phone call and the research was more or less completed. And within 2 months about 200 family members from all over Germany met and welcomed their new found family member from America!

The emigrating ancestors came from a small village in Baden. I found out that there was a journalist living in the village, who also wrote about the old houses in this area. He agreed to meet my client and it turned out that they were distant cousins.

The family moved overseas in the 20^th century; therefore the memory of them simply was alive and the remaining cousins knew about them and wanted to meet (but not in their home). I was only able to find them, because I turned every (and I mean EVERY!) stone around.

Once, I found the name in an online family tree; a sibling had married into this family. The researcher had more information and put me in touch with the lady who had provided him with that part of information. It turned out that she not only was a distant cousin of my client, but also a genealogist and archivist who had actually wondered what had happened to the cousin who all of the sudden vanished.

So, you see, it is possible to find relatives, but you really need time, know your way around, be creative, and, most of all, you need luck! Without luck you will not be able to get there!

But even without meeting your relatives, you will meet a lot of kind and friendly people in Germany. And who knows, maybe it turns out that you are related?

Enjoy your trip! 

Take a Walk on the Wild Side!

What do you write about on Halloween, when the country you live in has no tradition on celebrating Halloween and nothing you can think of qualifies as spooky? Write about something wild and crazy! And what is better than writing about the Berlin directories! About the wild and crazy Berlin directories!

Some of you might have worked with the Berlin directories before and got a bit confused by the way of sorting. For those who haven’t, I have good news. The Berlin directories sort the names in alphabetical order. So if you know the German alphabet there should be no problem.

Should. Because while other directories sort by surname and then first name, the Berlin directory sorts by surname and then occupation and then first name. Oh, and the first name is mostly abbreviated. And before I forget, first come the gentlemen and then the ladies. No, I’d better say first come the men, then the married ladies and then the Fräuleins. Each group of women is sorted by their occupation as well. If the widow had an occupation of her own (like seamstress, midwife or sales women), she is listed by her profession. If she has no occupation, she is listed by her late husband’s profession. But what if the husband’s profession is unknown? Then she is listed by her status as a widow (Ww. (Witwe)).

This can be a rather disappointing experience when you are looking for a rather common name and don’t know the occupation. You have to go through many pages and in the end will not be any wiser. And if you need to search a period of time of 20 yearsit will leave you rather frustrated. Of course you can save a lot of time if you know the occupation and are looking for a baker (Bäcker) or a pharmacist (Apotheker). 

But sometimes it gets really tricky. We’ll just take a look at the name Krause in the directory of 1880. We have 4 pages of Krause, none of them related to me (I think). 

You are looking for Heinrich Krause, an honorable importer of good Cuban cigars? Try your luck with looking for importers (Importeur). Nope, not there. Next try – merchant (Kaufmann) maybe? Looks like you’re running out of luck! Why not check cigar, and there he is – Cigarren- und Tabak-Importeur – listed under the letter C, right where it belongs (or not).

Let’s look for Wilhelm Krause, a Schuldiener (school servant). Of course you have learned from your first experience and look at school (Schule). Wrong again! He is listed under servants (Diener).

Good thing is that from 1925 on, things are handled normally. First surnames, then first names.

Now this little story about the Berlin directories is of course nothing compared to a state of the art Halloween party, but then, it’s not too bad for a country that is known to be incredibly well organized. Except for the wild and crazy Berlin directories.

Finding Your Ancestor’s Grave (Or Not)

Many of my clients come to Germany to find their ancestor’s graves. Unfortunately, in Germany graves are cleared after a few decades (20 to 30 years) to make room for new graves. Therefore, you will hardly ever find graves of your ancestors, who died some 100 years ago. 

    Berlin-Friedrichshain, Friedhöfe Friedenstraße / Landsberger Allee ©Angela Monika Arnold

Also, sometimes when a grave is cleared, the name is mentioned on a family gravestone, but this does not mean that this person is actually buried there. Actually they might even have been buried in a different town.

If the family had a large monument next to a cemetery wall it is often kept and sometimes even sold to other families who keep it and pay for the maintenance; they either to use it as a place of burial for their own family or just to see to it that it is saved.

Berlin-Friedrichshain, Friedhöfe Friedenstraße / Landsberger Allee ©Angela Monika Arnold

 

Also often graves of famous people are taken care of by the municipality, this grave, for example, is kept as a grave of honor.

Berlin-Kreuzberg, Friedhöfe vor dem Halleschen Tor ©kvikk

  

Therefore, before you come to Germany, it may be wise to check with the local church or, if the cemetery belongs to the local community, with the so called Friedhofsamt. You will find the way to contact them through the website of the municipality. Some municipalities (for example Berlin) do charge a fee for this kind of information, others do not. Also be aware that it might take time until they answer, in some parts of Berlin it can take about 6 months as they have to take care of burials as well, which, obviously, has first priority.

Sometimes the cemetery has seized to exist. In the past the cemetery often was close to or even next to the church. The graves were marked with either stones or wooden crosses that simply were destroyed due to the weather and then removed. Later a new cemetery was set up but the graves were not moved so you will be walking over unmarked graves.

The church of Groß Leppin, Brandenburg ©Ursula C. Krause

However, sometimes, if you are lucky, a new cemetery is set up and the old one in not cleared and falls into a deep sleep. Maybe the grass it cut, maybe some stones are removed, but you will still see that there once was a cemetery.

    The old cemetery of Groß Leppin, Brandenburg, situated on the Mühlenberg ©Ursula C. Krause

It is different for Jewish cemeteries. These graves were principally not cleared, however, many Jewish cemeteries were desecrated and destroyed during the Third Reich. Sometimes the cemetery ‘simply’ was destroyed and the tombstones knocked over, sometime the tombstones were taken and used for road construction (which was actually done with Christian German tombstones in Poland after the war). Today, many people are involved in saving the Jewish cemeteries and honoring those who were once buried there and most cemeteries are under preservation.

 Berlin-Weißensee, The Jewish Cemetery ©mazbln

Even if you do not find the graves of your ancestors, do take a look at the local cemetery, often they are a beautiful place to sit down and simply take a break from all the noise and the hurry.

    Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf, Brandenburg ©A. Savin