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German Roots Trip 2003 - Contents

SEEKING OUR GERMAN ROOTS

Chapter II    
May 15, 2003

Schoenberg

Thursday, May 15

We were wide awake at 4 a.m., listening to that early bird, the Amsel, singing his fluty song in the garden below. We got out our maps, Karen’s bird check lists and my trip log notes, doing "tourist paper work" until the hotel’s breakfast room opened at 7 a.m.

We decided that we wanted a second day here, rather than heading for Wismar this morning. This gave us time for a visit with the pastor at the local church. We had been told that he would be able to help us find genealogy records, but after several phone calls, he said that all local records had been moved to a central location in "Bad Sederburg, some 60 kilometers away. We quizzed the pastor a bit--asking about this village--what keeps it going? There is some light industry here--one company makes computerized navigation controls for large transport ships--most of their clients are in Asia. There is still some farming, but many commute to Kiel every day.

At the top of today’s activities was finding an ATM machine and withdrawing more Euros. Friedrich-Franz had warned us that outside of the big cities, we would need cash to pay for hotels, meals, gasoline--and he was right. We walked the two blocks from Ruser’s Hotel to the main street of town, quickly found a bank with the necessary ATM machine, put in our bank debit cards and pulled out Euros. Very easy, and apparently not too expensive. We had only a $1.50 charge added to our withdrawal back in the USA.

Up and down the cobblestone main street, vendors were busy setting up their stands for today’s "Markt." Apparently twice a week there is market day in downtown Schoenberg. All types of merchandise, clothing, leather goods, jewelry, farm produce (yes! Spargel was being sold!), fresh-baked bread were being readied for sale.

We resisted temptation, and headed for the "Heimats" museum we had spotted yesterday. This museum consisted of a former farm, owned by (who else?) a family named Goettsch. On the death of the last family member, it was donated to Schoenberg to be used to demonstrate earlier days and earlier methods of farming. The museum, officially called "Probstei-Museum" has a great website with many pictures.

This Goettsch family had several enterprises, including grain storage and a bakery. Two of the larger buildings were covered with thick thatched roofs, made of hollow reeds. It must be quite an art to thatch a roof--and obviously it is not a lost art, as we saw lots of relatively new buildings with a thatched roof. The Goettsches also had cattle and in typical German fashion, the house and barn were attached, with a little "mud room" between.

In conversation with the museum docents we learned that in earlier times this part of northern Germany differed in some respects from its eastern neighbor, Mecklenburg. In Mecklenburg the nobles were in control of the land and the serfs who lived on it. But in Schleswig-Holstein the church was the major property owner. The people living on the land and working it were in essence long-term leaseholders and paid a certain percentage of their profits to the church as rent. They could not buy the land from the church, but they could will their lease to their heirs or even sell the farm. This brought up the subject of inheritance of property and we were surprised to learn that in this area, it was the YOUNGEST, not the eldest son who inherited the estate. If there was no youngest son, then the eldest daughter became the heir.

We had noticed that two nearby beaches were called "California Strand" and "Brazil Strand." These names seemed greatly out of place! The docents said, "two ships ran aground on those beaches--one was named California and the other was named Brazil. Mystery solved.

After touring the outbuildings, noting all the interesting tools that farming and baking once required, we entered the main museum building. They had a collection of books about the area, and in perusing them, we were startled to see a picture of a little old lady with the caption: Anna Goettsch, who lived overseas for one year. She returned to Schoenberg and from then on was called "Anna Amerika." The caption even noted that Anna lived at "14 Strandstrasse" in Schoenberg. Bingo! We were certain that this was the Anna who left her estate to heirs, including Glenn’s grandmother, Mary Halliday.

When we excitedly showed the museum docents the picture of Anna in their book, we started an immediate chain reaction. One docent called in another, who was a longtime Schoenberg resident. When I pulled out my genealogy charts showing other surnames in Glenn’s family tree, they recognized that a woman named Brigitte Boeckel was a direct Goettsch descendant. Within minutes, they had set up an evening meeting with Brigitte and her husband, Herbert, at our hotel dining room. They also told us that the banker, Heinrich Lange, was gone, but his son was alive and living in Ploen, about 20 miles away. Talk about German efficiency!

With our evening date with relatives set, we left Schoenberg and headed for the Baltic coast and another wildlife refuge, near the mouth of the large bay leading to Kiel and the famous "Kiel Canal" that cuts through the peninsula dividing the Baltic and North Seas. Standing on the protective dike above the beach, we could see huge ocean-going cargo ships sailing out into the Baltic, after completing their passage from the North Sea. We could also feel a biting, cold wind and from time to time, a brief shower as a rain cloud moved ashore.

A bird-watching oddity was a group of beautiful white Mute Swans bobbing about among the whitecaps near shore! Their more usual habitat is a still pond or calm river. We never knew they enjoyed surfing!

It was a slow day at the beach, but there were several large RV camps nearby and an occasional hardy walker or biker coming along the paved path atop the dike. This is ideal bicycling country and apparently young and old often take their vacations by biking through the countryside. We saw bicycle paths alongside most of the roads we traveled in Schleswig-Holstein state. Looking north up the beach we could see a huge vertical pillar in the distance--the marker for the resting place of the German U-Boat made famous in the movie "Das Boot." This is a tourist attraction now.

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