Driving from Euskirchen - more Genealogy

I asked the Voice to take me to Bad Ems first, another location in the Loth pilgrimage. 

Bad Ems is a beautiful town, a place to “take the waters”, situated on the River Lahn, about 20 ks from Koblenz.  Adam Loth was born (1831) in Oberelbert in the neighbourhood of Montabaur, a small village about 20 kilometres north-east of Bad Ems.  He had moved up to the Rheinbach area, and married Margaritta Crèmer in 1855, in nearby Neukirchen, the first of their six children being John Adam.   In the mid1870s it seems, the family moved back to the Bad Ems area, perhaps to be closer to the Loth family, perhaps for work, perhaps in reaction to the deaths of two sons  - Herman Joseph, (born 24^th September 1860, who died in 1874) and Hubert Joseph ( born 15^th March 1865 who died in 1875).  It is not known how the boys died.

John Adam was by that time a young man, and perhaps he remained in the Rheinbach area.  Certainly he married Anna Gertrude Breuer, in Rheinbach, in 1877 (or 1879?). But the couple must have also moved to the Bad Ems area, as their German children are recorded as being born and baptised in Bad Ems. (Except for Jacob, who was baptised there, but not born there).  These recorded German children are John Adam (b. 29.1.1880), Jacob (b. 24.5.1881), Quirin Josef, (17.7.1882), Elisabeth (b 6.6.1886) and Valentin (b. 14.8.1887). 

The interesting thing is that when Elisabeth was born, the priest at Bad Ems made a note in the Church Register:  “This is the fifth child of John Adam and Anna Gertrude Loth, but only three children are alive”.  However, the records show only three children born before Elisabeth, not four.  Yet two children had died before mid-1886.  One of them was Quirin.  The other child is not recorded as having been born in Bad Ems (as Jacob was not), and there is no record of the two children dying in Bad Ems. 

The story in the family has always been that the two who died were twins, a boy and a girl, who died by drowning in the Lahn River, at Bad Ems.  But the lack of a record at Bad Ems raised the possibility that the deaths occurred at Nassau, a smaller resort town very near to Bad Ems.  This story came from the daughter born to John Adam and Anna Gertrude in Australia in 1895 – Mary, who became Sr. M Dorothea of the Townsville Sisters of Mercy.  Mary thought the children died around 1888, but must have been incorrect in this, as the church record says they had died before the birth of Elisabeth in 1886. There is a photo kept in the family (see above)  of the children laid out for burial; they could easily be twins.

This sort of discrepancy within the historical records and between the records and family oral history, of course invites speculation.  If twins, the children could not have been born in different places.  But if twins, why was only one birth recorded?  Was the second child, the girl, sickly at birth and not expected to survive, and hence not recorded.  That does not seem likely, a sickly child would have been baptised very promptly, and hence recorded.  Were they in fact not twins, but very close together, and the second was not born in Bad Ems?  Possible – Jacob was not born in Bad Ems, but in Longeville-les-Saint-Avold, (known then as Lubeln) in Lorraine (Lotharingen in German).  

We do know that John Adam was drafted into the Prussian Army, though he would have been too young to be involved in the Franco-Prussian war.  He could, however, have been posted to Lubeln in Lotharingen after the war, when the territory had been taken from France.  Possibly, another child was born while the family was temporarily absent from the Bad Ems region.

Obviously, there are still mysteries to solve.  

The Bad Ems region is very beautiful, near where the Lahn and the Mosel meet the Rhine, rolling farmlands, woodlands, and nearer the Rhine, vineyards.  After leaving Nassau, the Peugeot continued at the direction of the Voice, following along the Rhine, until the Voice said “Turn right and board ferry”.   What! A ferry!  I see no ferry.  But there down by the quai, there were cars waiting, so Peugeot got in line.  And for three euros eighty cents, we were carried across.  There followed a glorious 10 k drive along the other bank of the Rhine, all the time wondering just where we were, (the crossing was at Trechtingshausen, I have since discovered)  until we hit Bingen.  Of Hildegard fame. I made a silent salute.  A spectacularly located town, stunningly beautiful in the afternoon light. Followed the A61 from there, down towards Karlsruhe and eventually Strasbourg.  But somewhere along the way, we had to sit for 3 hours in an Autobahn carpark, which I heard on the radio, stretched for 36 ks.  The reason was roadworks which narrowed the autobahn, and then a big truck had broken down at a critical point and stopped everything.  I was so glad to have the Kindle in the car.  Never go anywhere without it.  Waiting is part of the travelling game.  (As QANTAS clients are now experiencing )

Bonn - all about Beethoven

The Beethoven festival is over for 2011.  It is held in Bonn annually, in late September and early October.  Nevertheless, there are still concerts, two or three a week, in Bonn, featuring the music of their greatest (to the fly) citizen. 

Off the train, take a mental snapshot of the location of the station  so that it can be found again later, and head in the direction of the Tourist Information Bureau  (standard procedure, that).  Have to pass by the Square with a massive statue of Ludwig van before getting to the Bureau, where, immediately inside the main doors, is another statue of himself, in a very fetching blue cloak with music printed all over it.  The map of the inner city area is exemplary.  Not only does it list the ten-top-things-which- flies- with-only-one-day must see, but it maps them out in a logically sequenced walking tour.  (Note to the French –  something to be learned from the Germans here).  

A re-fuelling stop first:  hot chocolate (still mostly eschewing the coffee, though it is not as strong as that stuff in Canada) and some ‘gebacke’ product – I point at something I have not yet tried.  This one was very ‘heavy’, deep-fried, a bit like French toast, and I only managed one of the three pieces they served me. Sat out in the square with Beethoven to eat this, read from my Kindle, and batted away the leaves swirling onto my lunch-plate. (Kindle has proved to be the one thing without which I will never travel again.)

The Beethoven Haus.  By the time Ludwig was born, his family had been church and court musicians for several generations, and were reasonably well set-up.  The house is big, with many rooms, a courtyard and a garden.  Beautifully maintained, it has many original manuscripts on display, as well as various instruments he played including his two grand pianos, which are set up facing each other as he always had them.  Also a number of the ear-trumpets he used, without much success, in the last twenty years of his life.  Heavy brass things, ugly and uncomfortable-looking.   His ‘conversation books’ became his means of communication. Beethoven left Bonn in 1794 at the age of 24, propelled by French incursions into the area after the Revolution.   He moved to Vienna, and never did return to Bonn.  

A look at the Rhine as it flows through Bonn was compulsory.  Again a wonderful Promenade; much river traffic, several bridges.  One of the newer bridges had solar panels right across the structure on the south side.  

Koln

There is an hourly train service between Euskirchen and Koln.  And fortunately the Hauptbahnhof in Koln is right beside the Cathedral, which was my main reason for visiting. 

Before going into the cathedral, I took a little tourist train, along the Rhine Promenade and to the Chocolate Museum  - Lindt.  Work colleagues would agree that a former Senior Manager, who had a great proclivity for Lindt, would be proud of me, which would be a new thing for both of us.  Did not actually “do” the museum, not all that keen on chocolate sculptures of the Cathedral figures,  but had lunch in the restaurant, overlooking the Rhine.  Quiche, which had frozen peas and carrots in it, so less said the better, but the hot chocolate with grand marnier and cream was to die for.  

The Rhine was very busy – there is a great deal of traffic, long flat-bottomed transport barges,  always at least three in sight.  Numerous pleasure boats, on the river and moored along the bank.  Big ones that do the popular Rhine cruise, and smaller ones offering a dinner and show cruise to Dusseldorf.  Lots of tourists along the Rhine Promenade, being herded by leaders with umbrellas and all wearing their name tags – I heard American and Australian voices in the biggest group.  

The German Olympics Museum is next door to the Chocolate Museum , but alas,  too many kids  – they were making more noise than all the flying foxes in Gayndah .  I  had to leave.

The Cathedral   -  Kolner Dom - so satisfying – it has two spires!  Begun in the C13th, finished in the C19th, this is the highest of all the Cathedrals, and maybe the most ornate.  Every elevation is equally covered with carvings.  A number of sections are also faced with scaffolding shrouded in netting – restoration is probably an ongoing activity, like painting the Harbour Bridge.   On the side one approaches from the Station, however, touristy-type shops have been built right against the Cathedral wall – that was unexpected.  And at the doors of this cathedral, as in Strasbourg, homeless people were set up with their cardboard coffee cups held out in supplication.  (One was not very convincing, having snuggled in either side of him two very sleek and well-fed looking Alsatian dogs).

In the Square at the front entrance, people strolled, took pictures, stopped to watch/listen to buskers – a West Indian playing a whistle, a pavement artist doing 3D works in chalk, a chap with a xylophone and a classical repertoire, (percussionist from the Koln Symphony moonlighting?), an organ grinder, a puppeteer.  The day had started cold and overcast, but the afternoon turned into a beautiful blue day, and people were out to enjoy it. 

Inside the Cathedral, huge numbers, but all tourists – groups of  Japanese, Americans,  but also many Germany families, mum, dad and the kids. (There are a lot of kids around, maybe it is a mid-term break or something).  There is a separate side chapel, where those who actually wish to pray may go.  There were two women there. 

A special group had been allowed into the sanctuary to get close to the conservators – art students perhaps.  There were three platforms set up within the sanctuary area, each with three or four levels, where conservators were working on statues. They had powerful halogen lights as well as head-lights on like miners.  I watched them for a long time: they consulted their “patterns” much more than they actually applied paint.  How slow and painstaking a task!  All the time with tourists wandering around below, photographing them, gazing around.  But what must the task have been for the original workers on these buildings, who did not have OH&S approved platforms with safety nets, nor halogen lights to help them see what they were doing, nor, probably, an admiring crowd to watch them. 

Looked for the organ, of course. There is not an organ loft at the back/front(?) of the Cathedral.  The organ is a recent installation, high up on a platform suspended from the ceiling. Really  breathtaking.

Lots of side chapels, in which are the sarcophagi of various saints and bishops.  Notable was that of Saint Richarda who lived in the C10th – she is depicted with a Bishop’s crook in her hands.  Back then, women abbesses could have ecclesiastical authority on a par with the men.  The later Middle Ages whittled that away very effectively. 

The windows are wonderful, of course.  But words can do nothing with them.  Like music.  Except to acknowledge with reverence the unimaginable effort that must have gone into their creation.  (there are some photos, in the folder on picasa;  but they do no justice to the reality)

Later, in the Hohenstrasse shopping area, I saw in a tourist shop one of those laminated placemats that abound in tourist-land showing pictures of Koln in 1945, and every building around the Cathedral had been bombed to oblivion.  Only the Cathedral stood intact. (One cannot help remembering that the bombing raids over Coventry in England did not show the same restraint towards the Cathedral there.) 

The  Hohenstrasse  goes off from one corner of the Square.  It is one of several pedestrian only streets in a huge shopping precinct.  I bought some cards from a young Thai man in one shop – before I had even opened my mouth he spoke to me in English.  I asked how he knew I was an English speaker, and he had no idea.  He speaks Thai, and German, French and English.  Learning languages, he told me, is a ‘test of character’.  I would say his character is well-tested.  He not only speaks the languages, he can pick which language to use with whom.  

German Genealogy

Today I have visited Kuchenheim, just a few kilometres from Euskirchen.  It is these days really a comfortable looking dormitory suburb.  Its streets are named for musicians, - Bachstrasse, Beethovenstrase, Mozart, Vivaldi, Offenbach, etc…  My guess is that it was very small, and as it has grown only  in recent times, it has footpaths, and the houses have their own front gardens.  There were a (very) few old houses.  Kuchenheim was the birthplace, on 21^st April, 1854, of my maternal great -grand-mother, Anna Gertrude Breuer. 

I moved on to Rheinbach, about nine kilometres away. Rheinbach also has lots of streets named after musicians.  This led to a distraction – thoughts about street naming.   In France, streets are named after great philosophers, writers, statesmen, with the occasional General thrown in. In Ireland, Saints, of course.  What do we do, I wondered?  We have Kings and Queens of England in our capital city,  hmmmm….., (But then also some notable early Australian figures have been honoured in Sydney and Melbourne),  then we also have suburbs where streets are named for native trees or flowers, or (as in the case of Clifton Hill, where we lived in Delville Avenue) for the battlefields in France of WWI, the suburb being developed soon after), or suburbs with streets named for alcoholic beverages (Tequila etc….), or for the women (mother, wife, daughters, sisters…)  in the life of the developer who opened up the suburb hmmm…..    In the US, streets have compass points and numbers East 1^st, West 19^th, Fifth Avenue,  all set out on a grid.  Theoretically, you should be able to find your way to an address without a Voice, in America.  (I am not convinced of that, really)   I decided there is as Ph.D. in street names and what they say about places.  Probably someone has already done it.

 Anyway, here in Rheinbach, in 1877  Anna Gertrude Breuer married John Adam Loth.  (The church there is also St Martin’s . And the church in Bad Ems where some of the children of JA and AG were baptised is also St Martin’s.  He must be a favourite around here. ) Their second child, Jacob, was my grandfather.  They came to Australia in the late 1880s, John Adam via Chile where he had been working as an engineer on a mining project, and Anna Gertrude, with the four remaining of her six children, (at that stage – four more “Australians” were later born to the couple),  escorted to Australia by her brother Heinrich to join John Adam in North Queensland, where he had been sent to work on the mines. 

Just a very few kilometres from Rheinbach there are three tiny villages – Irlenbusch, Neukirchen and Kurtenberg.  The first two almost merge into each other, the third is a little way apart.  This cluster takes us back yet another generation.  For it was in Kurtenberg, on 16^th February 1831, that my great-great-grandmother was born, Margaritta Cremer. Margaritta married Adam Loth (born in 1831 in Oberelbert, near Bad Ems) on 17^th February 1855. (Adam Loth had been working around Irlenbusch and Neukirchen as a blacksmith. It was a mining area.  Though today I saw farmlands, with, to be sure, lots of horses.)   Their son John Adam Loth, (he who in the previous paragraph married Anna Gertrude Breuer and eventually came to Australia) had been born the year before, and entered into the church registrar as Cremer. He was then legitimized and his name changed to Loth by his parents’ marriage.  

It took not very long at all to cover just about every square metre of these three tiny villages.  In fact Kurtenberg consists of about 8 buildings.  On the main road there is an Inn, and a sign to Kurtenberg.  So you go off along the road, and then you turn into another byway which takes you into Kurtenberg.  When you come to a dead end in someone’s driveway, you turn around and come out again.  It is that tiny.  There was one very old (white with black timbers) house, and I looked at it and wondered …1831?  I did not even see a living person.  Perhaps those who live in the houses now work in Rheinbach, and surely some of them still run the farms.  If I had seen anyone I would have asked if the Cremer name still lives on in the district. 

There are beautiful woodlands nearby too, and driving through them in the autumn, with the wonderful range of warm colours, was magic.