Autumn sunshine has been bathing much of France lately. In Alsace, bright blue skies and sunshine have accompanied much cooler temperatures. Minimums of around 3 degrees, maximums about 12-13. Beautiful crisp days. Would that this could go on forever. But not to be – le meteo warns that the next week or more will be overcast and showery.
A fair bit of territory has been covered during these sunny days. The most picturesque village of them all (perhaps? – so far, anyway) turned up on Tuesday. Riquewihr. As with a number of the villages here, the real inner heart is still surrounded by a wall, and one can drive through the portal, usually surmounted by the Village clocktower, and make your way up through the cobbled streets. The issue is of course finding a park for the Peugeot. There do not appear to be any rules about parking – certainly the idea of parking only in the direction of the traffic is unknown here. It is just a question of tuck the car in wherever you can. In many instances, shop-owners have countered this tendency by strategically placing huge concrete tubs of flowers. Anyway, Riquewihr, being a super popular tourist village, has woken up and set up paying parking areas just outside the walls. The place is all charm – cobbled streets, old buildings, a vigneron every second place, (the vignerons are both workplace and dwelling place. My gite in Eichhoffen is over the “cave” where the barrels of fermenting wine are stored. The family lives in the adjacent building, and behind is the building with the processing machinery – I do not know the correct terminology, obviously), lots of restaurants offering tarte flambé, which is an Alsatian specialty, and of course the various white wines which are their best. Fly succumbed, in a lovely little shop, to yet another tapestry. (How many walls are there in my house?) It is a medieval setting of a woman playing some sort of keyed instrument (cross between an organ and piano?) and a young man playing an early version of the violin. It will look magnificent hanging over the piano at home.
However, great excitement when the fly noticed a poster advertising the galerie of ‘Artist Contemporain’, Michel Loth. The first sighting of the name in Alsace. Hastened to the galerie, looked at the pictures, and met the man himself. He has had exhibitions all over the world, so must be an artist of note. If you look at his website, you can see the style of his art. His partner is also an artist and she does works depicting Alsatian life in a naïve style. We had a lovely chat, and will meet up again. He knew of only one other Loth in Alsace, was himself born in Metz, which is in Lorraine.
This encounter set the genealogical antennae a-quivering. There is a small mystery in the family tree which has troubled fly. Grandfather Jacob is recorded as being born in Lubeln, Lotharingen (Lorraine) in 1881. Even Google Maps could not find a Lubeln in Lorraine. Lubeln is in up in the north-east of Germany, a very long way from where the Loths were. So once more I set about worrying at this problem on the net. And this time with results, perhaps being in France and being served up French sites as hits. There is a little village in Lorraine called “Longeville”, full name “Longeville-les-Saint- Avold”. It is near Saint-Avold, obviously. But it turns out that after the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), when Alsace and Lorraine went back to Germany, the name was changed to Lubeln (roughly the same meaning as Longeville). Stayed thus until the end of WWI (when Alsace and Lorraine went back to France again – their history has been a yo-yo). Grandfather Jacob was born in 1881, place given as Lubeln, Lotharingen. So now we know where it was! Of course, the next day was spent on an expedition to Longeville. It is not all that attractive a village. The church was easily found, but any thought of getting information from church records was squashed when the notice on the presbytery door advised that there was someone there between 9 and 10.30 am on Saturdays. Obviously not too many priests in that diocese.
Of course, it is still interesting to wonder what Jacob’s parents were doing in Longeville, Lorraine in 1881. It is a considerable distance, for those times, from Bad Ems, where they were married, and where Jacob’s siblings were born. Saturday, as a practice run for exploring the German side of the border, I ventured over to Freiburg. It is only 1.5 hours drive from here. But I could not even get out of the car! Traffic was horrendous, and even the parking stations were full up, with queues of cars waiting to get in when someone left. After meandering around and giving The Voice a lot of frustration as instructions to turn right at the end of a dead-end street could not be followed, I decided to escape and spent my Saturday at Colmar instead.
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