My Ancestors E-Book

Horst H. Geerken

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 779

Beschreibung

Letters, diaries and documents from many centuries in the past provided the details for this enthralling read, but it is no ordinary collection of dry-as-dust facts. It is a chronicle stretching back into the Middle Ages, the history of a fascinating, influential and many-branched family with exciting life-stories to relate. The authors grandfather was the artist Johann Hinrich Geerken, and his aunt was housekeeper to Albert Einstein. This richly illustrated volume tells the tales of farmers and inventors, artists and artisans, but also of courageous women who had to see their families through difficult times alone. Among the ancestors described are the famous master tower-clock maker Johann Michael Mannhardt, whose clocks continue to tell the correct time, and Wilhelm Emmanuel Johann Mannhardt, an academic and Mennonite whose works are still published today. The book takes us to Meiji-period Japan, where Carl August Schenk the scientist taught at the University of Tokyo and is still honoured as the father of Japanese mineralogy, to Indonesia where the author lived and worked for many years, and on to Australia, America and Greece, where many of the family live today. Many interesting historical anecdotes and illustrations make the book well worth reading - not just for the family. It is a document of modern and contemporary history.

Leseprobe

Only those who know where they come from know where they are going!

This book is dedicated to:

my beloved daughter Regina Permata in Australia: She is now an admirable mother herself, and asked me to write this family history for future generations, and to her husband, my son in law Gregory. Also

to my grandchildren Thomas, Oskar and Skyla Blue, a promising trio, who are following in the footsteps of their forebears,

posthumously to my maternal grandfather, Karl Martin Mannhardt, who was the only one of my grandparents whom I knew in person,

posthumously to my dear, caring parents, who were a formative influence on me,

posthumously to my sister Gudrun, who looked after me when I was a child,

also to the other members of the direct family who are still alive, such as

my brother Hartmut, who has been a constant source of support and help in researching our ancestors, and his family, and

my cousin Cynthia Zipf in the USA, who made many documents that had belonged to her grandmother, my Aunt Athene, available to me.

I also dedicate this book to all the generations yet to come, in the hope that the chronicle of our family will be continued for many more generations. This book is intended as a foundation for that undertaking.

Table of Contents

1.0 Thanks

1.1 Translator’s Foreword

2.0 Foreword

3.0 Geerken/Gerken, my Paternal Ancestors

3.1 Johann Hinrich Geerken (1855–1925)

3.2 Exhibition of the Works of Johann Hinrich Geerken (1855–1925) in the Heimatmuseum in Wiefelstede

3.3 The Children of Johann Hinrich Geerken (1855–1925) and Marie Christiane, née Thiel (1859–1923)

3.3.1 Marie Luise Dörr, née Geerken (1886–1949)

3.3.2 Helene Margarete Lorch, née Geerken (1889–1966)

3.3.3 Else Geerken (1893–1983)

3.3.4 Lydia Bauder, née Geerken (1894–1973)

3.3.5 Athene Vetterlein, née Geerken (1896–1980)

3.3.6 Heinrich August Geerken (1898–1990)

3.4 The Children, Grandchildren and Great-Grandchildren of Heinrich August Geerken (1898–1990) and Lina Klara, née Mannhardt (1896–1986)

3.4.1 First Marriage: Gudrun Leonhardt (divorced), née Geerken, Second Marriage: Gudrun Grell, née Geerken (1928–2002)

3.4.2 Horst Heinrich Geerken (born 1933)

3.4.2.1 Regina Permata Tothill, née Geerken (born 1964), Daughter of Horst Heinrich Geerken (born 1933) and Hannelore, née Frick (born 1936)

3.4.3 Hartmut Geerken (born 1939)

4.0 Thiel, the Ancestors of my Grandmother Marie Christiane Geerken, née Thiel (1859–1923)

4.1 The Children of Heinrich Christian Thiel (1806–1872) and Sibille Dorothea Thiel, née Häbig (1818–1891)

4.1.1 Marie Christiane Geerken, née Thiel (1859–1923)

4.1.2 Heinrich Thiel (1849–1915)

4.1.3 August Thiel (1861–1920)

5.0 Mannhardt, my Maternal Ancestors

5.1 Johann Michael Mannhardt (1798–1878)

5.2 Jacob Mannhardt (1801–1855) and Wilhelm Emmanuel Johann Mannhardt (1831–1880)

5.3 Karl Martin Mannhardt (1864–1941), my Grandfather

5.4 The Wives of my Grandfather Karl Martin Mannhardt: My Grandmother Emma Barbara, née Oechsler (1868–1905) and her Cousin Martha, née Oechsler (1880–1912)

5.5 The Children of my Grandfather Karl Martin Mannhardt

5.5.1 Karl Martin Mannhardt (1892–1979)

5.5.2 Emma Fanny Büchler, née Mannhardt (1894–?)

5.5.3 Lina Klara Geerken, née Mannhardt (1896–1986)

5.5.4 Hedwig Mannhardt (1898–1940)

5.5.5 Otto Mannhardt (1906–1940)

6.0 Schenk, the Ancestors of my Great-Grandmother Sophie Christine Schenk (1838–1903)

6.1 Carl August Schenk (1838–1904). A Forgotten Pioneer During the Meiji Period in Japan

7.0 Further Branches of the Family

7.1 Geerken/Gerken, Line Bäke I

7.2 The Geerken/Gerken/Franneck/Fournarakis, Line Bäke II

8.0 Afterword

9.0 Appendices

to 3.0: Die Doppelringwallanlage Bokeler Burg – das älteste Kulturdenkmal des Ammerlandes [The Bokeler Burg Double Ring Fort – the Oldest Cultural Monument in the Ammerland]

to 3.3.5: Athene Vetterlein, née Geerken: for my Siblings in Germany, Written on the 3rd of December 1941

to 3.4.3: Diary Entry by Karl Kompe

to 5.1: Johann Michael Mannhardt (1798–1878)

to 5.5.4: Hedwig Mannhardt (1898-1940)

to 5.6.3: Lina Klara Geerken, née Mannhardt: My Last Letter to my Mother

to 6.1: Carl August Schenk (1838–1904)

to 7.2: From Wikipedia: Joachim Ger(c)ken (died 1544)

10.0 Genealogical Tables

Genealogical Table I (re Chapter 3.0 and 3.1)

Genealogical Table II (re Chapter 3.3)

Genealogical Table III (re Chapter 3.4)

Genealogical Table IV (re Chapter 4.0)

Genealogical Table V (re Chapter 5.0, 5.1 and 5.2)

Genealogical Table VI (re Chapter 5.3, 5.4 and 5.5)

Genealogical Table VII (re Chapter 6.0 and 6.1)

Genealogical Table VIII (re Chapter 7.2)

Genealogical Table IX (re Chapter 7.2)

1.0 Thanks

First of all, I must thank my brother Hartmut for countless conversations about our ancestors, during which we continually recalled many a previously forgotten anecdote. All the documents and photographs used in this book are – unless otherwise mentioned – in the possession of my brother’s and my family.

The originals of the oil paintings and portraits created by my grandfather Johann Hinrich Geerken, as well as all his paintings on glass, are on permanent loan to the Heimatmuseum [Local History Museum] in Wiefelstede near Oldenburg. After this book is finished I shall donate further items, such as my grandfather’s family Bible and his wife’s autograph book.

My especial thanks go posthumously to Herr Wolfgang Hase of the Heimatmuseum in Wiefelstede for his co-operation – he organised the exhibition of my grandfather Johann Hinrich Geerken’s paintings in the museum in 2001 – and also to his successor, Herr Herbert Heinen and his successor, Herr Eckard Klages. They were all exceptionally helpful to my research into the branch of my family in the far north of Germany, and were always ready to help with my inquiries. As the photographs of my grandfather’s oil paintings which were produced by a professional photographer for the 2001 exhibition were lost after Herr Hase’s sudden death, Herr Klage has kindly said that he is prepared to have new ones made for this book. My especial thanks to him for this.

When I lost my way in the labyrinthine family connections of the Mannhardt branch, my cousin Martha Ladenburger, née Mannhardt, was often able to help me on my way. My heartfelt thanks to her for this.

Special thanks, too, to Cynthia Jones-Zipf, the daughter of my cousin Jean Zipf – now dead – in the USA. Jean Zipf was the daughter of Athene Vetterlein, née Geerken, who emigrated to the USA with her husband Ernst. Jean Zipf and her daughter have given me many photographs and documents relating to the Geerken family’s history. Much of this information has been included in this book. I have known Cynthia since she was a baby and we still maintain a close family relationship and regularly visit each other.

My especially hearty thanks to Dr Takeshi Ozawa in Japan, who has shown an unswerving interest in the story of Professor Carl August Schenk and has given me interesting information about the time he spent working at the University of Tokyo1 in Japan. He spent eight semesters at a Japanese university and two semesters studying physics in Munich University. In the pursuit of his research into German scientists in Japan during the Meiji period he has made repeated visits to Germany. He is a member of the Japanese Society for the History of Science and researches and publishes on the history of science in Japan.

I would also like to thank my second cousin Wolfgang Menz very much. From him I got photographs from Japan which Carl August Schenk gave to his sister Sophie Christine, my great-grandmother, in 1892. Perhaps she received them even earlier, during his time in Japan, by post or courier. The photographs and prints date from the 1870s and were lent to me by Wolfgang Menz for the purposes of this book. His mother Hilde Menz and grandmother Lina Friedel were also able to tell me a lot about our great-grandmother Sophie Christine.

Thanks to Anne Schlichtiger-Mason for editing my father’s hand-written notes.

I would also like to thank the always friendly staff at the Town Archive in Heilbronn on the Neckar, the Department of Culture in Schwäbisch Gmünd, the mayor’s office and Department of Culture in Strasen/Neustrelitz in Mecklenburg, the Town Archive in Wesenberg, the Town Archive in Friedrichstadt, the Institute for Research into the German Nobility, the Oldenburg Society for Family Research, the Mennonite Research Centre/ Mennonite Historical Society in Bolanden-Weierhof, the Lutheran Parish of Aalen, genealogical researcher Dr Arthur Mez in Oberkochen and the City Archive in Schwerin. They have all patiently provided me with information and allowed me to search through the documents available.

I would also like to thank Herr Wilfried Harms, who has worked intensively on local history in Wiefelstede and Bokel and wrote the book Wiefelstede gestern und heute [yesterday and today]. He has contributed valuable information about the history of the region.

The Oldenburg Society for Family History2 in Oldenburg was particularly helpful. They gave me important information about emigrants called Geerken and Gerken, as well as about our ancestors in Wiefelstede and the communities of Rastede und Varel.

Many thanks to the head of the Cologne Cathedral Archives, Herr Dr Klaus Hardering. He kindly made documents concerning the tower clock in Cologne cathedral, commissioned from my great-grandfather’s brother Johann Mannhardt in 1876, available to me. In his company I was allowed to visit the Uhrenboden [‘clock floor’: first floor of the tower] in Cologne Cathedral, where the tower clock continues to perform its function to this day.

Many thanks, too, to Herr Gerd Gerken of Wiefelstede and his wife Annegret for information about the Bäke I line of the family, descended from Johann Friedrich Geerken, my grandfather’s brother. Johann Friedrich Geerken was Gerd Gerken’s great-grandfather. During my research trips to Wiefelstede they were both very hospitable and helpful. They set up contacts with people who were important to my research and made my stays in Wiefelstede as comfortable as possible. Gerd Gerken and I share an ancestor, Friedrich Geerken (1817–1894).

I would like to thank Carmen Fournarakis for the information she was able to contribute to this book. It was only after starting my research that I discovered that in her we have yet another distant relation in Athens in Greece descending from a further branch of the family, Bäke II. Her grandfather was the Bremen banker who accommodated my grandfather Johann Hinrich Geerken on the Freigut Strasen estate near Neustrelitz in eastern Germany and supported him financially during his studies at the Munich Academy of Arts and his creative activity in the region.

Thanks, too, to Bill McCann for taking on the challenge of translating this book.

Last but not least, I would like to thank Michaela Mattern for proof-reading and Barbara Bode for second proof-reading and producing the book block. Both have provided me with excellent support in this extensive and labour-intensive book project.

Horst H. Geerken

Bonn, Summer 2020

1 Tokyo was at that time called Yedo

2www.auswanderer-oldenburg.de

1.1 Translator’s Foreword

This is the fifth book of Horst’s that I have translated, and by far the most challenging. Though the archaic language of some of the documents has not been much of a problem (I have studied and taught all periods of German from the earliest to the latest), other aspects of the text have taken me into areas way beyond my comfort zone: marine microbiology, Swabian dialectology (it took ages and help from former colleagues to discover what Hechtlesmacher actually means literally), historical geography (where is the Maguia Gorge (Illustration 3.1-45)?), and last but very far from least, 19th- century technology (especially clock-making) and accounting in the sad story of Johann Michael Mannhardt and his bankruptcy (5.1).

Nevertheless, it has been a fascinating journey with the Geerkens, Mannhardts, Thiels and Schenks. Often amusing, many times bringing a tear to the eye. Amazing how many interesting and talented ancestors Horst has managed to track down!

A word about the way I have proceeded:

Firstly, anything in square brackets [ ], except the few explicitly labelled ‘Author’s note’, is by me.

It is usually translation (of book titles or dialect words) or explanation of ideas or customs that did not need comment in the original German. Where I have translated a book title, particularly in the case of Wilhelm Emmanuel Johann Mannhardt (5.2) I have not repeated the duplication of title and translation when the book is mentioned later in the chapter.

If you are comparing this translation with the original German, you will find that the chapter and illustration numbering matches, but the footnote numbers do not. This is because Horst sometimes uses a footnote to translate or explain an English term which is not needed for an English speaker, and because I have used footnotes to do the same thing for German terms/words which are self-explanatory to a German speaker, but not to an English speaker, for example Polterabend (footnote 187).

For Horst’s grandchildren: I have assumed that where family jokes or family poems are concerned, you might like to see what the original German looks/sounds like, and so in many cases have retained the original text with a parallel translation.

It seems ages (and is probably at least ten years) since Dilys and I first met Horst and Annette in Bonn. In the meanwhile, both those wonderful women have been taken from us.

But this book is a celebration of life, and survival under the most difficult of circumstances, and though this translation could not be completed in time for Horst’s 85th birthday, let it be something he can enjoy for his 87th!

A final thought: is one explanation of my feeling of affinity the importance of the month of August in our families (my elder son’s birthday is the 13th, like Horst and Regina, mine the 27th, like Skyla Blue, which makes me exactly 9 years and fifty weeks younger than Horst)?

Many thanks, Horst, for your trust and patience in waiting so long for the work to be completed. I hope the end result will make it seem worth while.

Bill McCann,

Abertafol, July 2020

Ill. 2.0-1: Die Hartjes, 1929 edition, with signature of Frieda Gerken and Heinrich Geerken in Wiefelstede in July 1986

2.0 Foreword

The Hartjes, a family novel by the regional writer August Hinrichs, is of major importance when considering the history of the Geerken family. With a certain degree of poetic licence it tells the story of the ancestors of the Geerkens in the far north of Germany, in the vicinity of Wiefelstede, Gristede and Bäke.

The author, who died in 1956, was regarded as the leading regional writer in north-west Germany. His experiences in his grandparents’ nearly 400-year-old family home near the Geerken homestead remained permanently imprinted on his memory. As I heard from Frieda Gerken and other older inhabitants of Wiefelstede, he is said to have been a regular visitor to the Geerkens’ farm in his youth, as a result of which he was very familiar with their family relationships. The connection between him, his family3 and the Geerkens/Gerkens is said to have been particularly close in the 1920s, which is why he took their story as the basis of his novel4. The name Hartje was also intended to show how close Junker Geertje, the protagonist of the novel, was.

The feeling of belonging, of home, is the emotional heart of the novel, which describes the characters and the environment in which they were born and lived. Hinrichs said of The Hartjes: “I have not enjoyed working on any of my books as much as this one, and none is as dear to me.”

Ill. 2.0-2: Die Hartjes 1949 reprint5

Ill. 2.0-3: Die Hartjes, 1956 reprint

Ill. 2.0-4: Dust jacket blurb, 1956 reprint

As I said above, Hinrichs used the name Hartje for Geerken in the novel. In my short retelling of the story in Chapter 3 I have therefore used the original name of Geerken.

Some years ago, together with my brother Hartmut, I opened an exhibition of the paintings and glass paintings of my grandfather, the artist Johann Hinrich Geerken, in the Heimatmuseum in Wiefelstede. While preparing for this, I found it very difficult to discover any details about his life. Johann Hinrich Geerken died before I was born, and he’d broken off all contact with his wife and children long before his death. And during the First and Second World Wars many documents, letters and other material were also destroyed or left the possession of the family. So my knowledge about his life is based solely on the fragments I have so far been able to discover, and also from stories told by my father and other close relatives.

By lucky chance I came into contact with Dr Takeshi Ozawa from Tokyo, who was collecting information about German scientists who had worked in Japan in the mid-nineteenth century under the auspices of the Japanese government. At the time I was working on the life of Professor Carl August Schenk, my maternal great-grandmother’s brother6, who had been working in Japan as an academic at the University of Tokyo7 at precisely the same period. Coincidence or fate?

Dr Ozawa asked me if I could help him with information about Carl August Schenk for material he was preparing for the Imperial University of Tokyo. I was very happy to do so! Our information fitted together perfectly, as he knew very little about Schenk’s time and family circumstances in Germany, and I knew equally little about his time in Japan and his subsequent life.

In the past there were, of course, family trees for the Geerken/Gerkens and Mannhardts, but they were incomplete, or even partially incorrect – and they did not go back far enough. And there was unfortunately very little information about the interesting lives of the inventors and great minds among our ancestors, some of whom are still remembered in their chosen fields. And very few documents have come down to us: some of them must surely have been lost in the many wars of past centuries. Since I also had many family stories from my parents, all my aunts and uncles and also more distant relatives – both by word of mouth and on paper – I have collected and arranged all these fragments in a coherent narrative. They were voices from the past that whispered many new and previously unknown things in my ear.

Among the men of the Geerken/Gerken branch of our family tree the forenames Friedrich, Heinrich/Hinrich and Johann/Johannes recur with great frequency. It was an old European tradition to give male children the first name of their fathers or grandfathers. It was a matter of honour to pass the names on, at the very least as a second forename. But perhaps the Geerkens/Gerkens were a little too bound by tradition – the same names passed alternately from generation to generation! This led to a certain degree of confusion which made it both complicated and difficult to maintain a clear perspective. For that reason I have often, for the sake of clarity and simplicity, given birth and death dates in brackets next to the names. There is also the fact that the names were sometimes written as Geerken, and at other times as Gerken: registry clerks and clergy were not over-concerned with consistent spelling in those days.

With Carmen Fournarakis’ help I have also succeeded in reconstructing a third branch of the Geerken family, Bäke II. This line takes us to Greece and was previously unknown to me. In the course of my research I discovered that, as well as his brother Johann Friedrich, my grandfather Johann Hinrich had another brother, Gerhard. Even my father and Frieda Gerken – who should actually have known this – never mentioned him. Since I don’t want to overload this book I will not say a great deal about the Bäke II branch of the family, and leave it to their descendants to consider adding to the information to be found in this book.

Even for the Bäke I branch I do not have all the necessary information about the grandchildren of Hans-Friedrich, Heinz and Gerd Gerken, so that for the same reason the addition of any other information has been left to the descendants of this branch. One reason for this is that I plan to have this book completed and in my hands for my 85th birthday on the 13th of August 2018. And time is pressing!

Because of the new discoveries I have had to partially revise and make additions to the genealogical tables produced for the exhibition of my grandfather’s paintings in 2006. The tables were also expanded by the addition of the Bäke II line, which leads to Greece. The surname Geerken/Gerken is lost in the Bäke II line, and it will also disappear in my main Geerken line in Australia, since there are no male descendants after me with the name of Geerken. My brother’s grandson Jonas has adopted his mother’s maiden name so that the name of Geerken will not be handed on in that line either. Only Djamila and Ramon, the children of Anita Geerken, my brother Hartmut’s daughter, can pass the name on. So that the genealogical table – now complete – can be shown in this book, I have had to divide it into the different branches. Since detailed information about date and place of birth and profession – where available – has been given in the body of the text, I have left it out in the genealogical tables and simply included the years of birth and death.

I have not included children who were stillborn or died soon after birth in the tables as otherwise they would be overloaded. According to what my paternal grandmother told my father, stillborn children resulting from home births were often simply buried in the garden without being registered with the church or the authorities, so that they aren’t even officially documented.

I want my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to find it easier if for any reason they wish to learn about their ancestors. And so I am trying, as well as I can, to give my ancestors back their history. It has always been important for me to know who my ancestors and their families were. Unfortunately, the impulse to write this book only came now, when my parents, aunts and uncles – whom I could have asked for more detailed information – are all already dead.

My brother Hartmut has written the text about him and his family8 for this book himself. At the moment he is working on an extensive autobiography. I’m sure more information will be available when it is published.

I have collected the statements made in this book from countless different sources, from archives, church registers, register offices, ethnological societies and the Heimatmuseum in Wiefelstede and other institutions. It was like a huge jigsaw in which even my own life is only one small piece. This book includes data that goes back in an unbroken series to the 17th century. That’s almost 400 years. I thought that was enough! Of course, there are some gaps that could certainly be closed by further research. But to go back another one or more generations would require the investment of a lot of time in intensive research. As a result, there is a large gap between the farmer Johann Gerhard Geerken in the 12th century and the 17th century. Nevertheless a few individual 15th-century documents in which the name Geerken appears have been preserved in Wiefelstede.

In the course of my researches I have often crossed the paths of my ancestors in north, south and eastern Germany, in Switzerland, in the USA and in Japan.

My parents, and to some extent my ancestors on both sides, loved travel. This has given me an international turn of mind. Since the wider Geerken/Gerken, Mannhardt, Thiel and Schenk families have drifted further and further to all the continents as a result of globalisation or marriage, there is a danger that this information could be permanently lost to future generations. Perhaps this is the last chance to collect and publish all the information known today in a book. From generation to generation it will become increasingly difficult to find the relevant documents, accounts and references.

The grandchildren of Heinrich August Geerken and Lina Klara, née Mannhardt, my parents, are already spread all over the world. They hardly know their own cousins any more, let alone their parents’ cousins. Family bonds which previously – until my generation – were very close have unfortunately already been torn asunder. This made it all the more important to me to write down the story of our ancestors as far as it is known.

The generations that follow me should know that they bear the inheritance of good and interesting forebears. They should know that they were admirable, successful and strong. Our families have many mettlesome genes, whose positive qualities are still being passed down. The achievements of many of them still live on today.

Because of their extreme age, some of the photographs could not be reproduced any better, and so I would ask forgiveness for the poor quality of at least parts of some of them. I leave the power of the photographs to speak for itself, even if some of them are very faded and will, in a few years, be unusable.

The photograph of my grandfather Johann Hinrich Geerken as a child was taken as early as 1855 on a glass plate coated with light-sensitive emulsion9. This produced a negative measuring about 12x16 centimetres. It has survived extremely well. How my great-grandfather, a simple farmer from the far north of Germany came to have one of the earliest photographs taken of his son is a mystery to me. This glass plate is presumably the earliest photograph ever to have been taken in Wiefelstede still to survive today. After the book is finished the glass plate will be handed to the Heimatmuseum in Wiefelstede for safe-keeping.

Ill. 2.0-5: Picture of Johann Hinrich Geerken by the Daguerrotype process, about 1855

Very few photographs survived the Second World War. Firstly, there was the simple struggle for existence, and secondly many photographs and albums were destroyed when our home in Stuttgart was bombed. Fortunately, there were photographs among my Aunt Athene’s papers in the USA which duplicate those lost in Germany.

I was able to reconstruct much of the data on the basis of notes on the back of the photographs. All this data has been included in the book to the best of our understanding on the basis of the current state of knowledge.

Inevitably there are many places where parts of the text overlap. A few photographs have also been reproduced twice to avoid tiresome searching and leafing back and forward.

The artistic talent of my grandfather Johann Hinrich Geerken means that there are portraits of our ancestors – still in existence – so that we still know what they looked like. We can also draw conclusions about their character from their facial expressions.

This book about our ancestors contains information that I had already collected over several decades without thinking that I was going to publish it in a book. It will only be of interest to a small circle of people, even though it contains information about artists, academics and inventors who are still respected today. Because this means a small print run, and because of the many illustrations, the price is unfortunately correspondingly high. I hope that those who are interested in reading it will understand. My contribution is the years of intensive research I have put into working on this family history. So that all who are interested can acquire the book, I have published it using the publishers BoD in Norderstedt and it can now be purchased at any time, anywhere in the world in bookshops and innumerable online services.

I have written in detail about my younger years and my evacuation in the Second World War in my book Missbrauchte Kindheit – Geboren im Jahr von Hitlers Machtergreifung [Abused Childhood – born in the year Hitler seized power]10. The story of my professional career, especially my time in Indonesia, can be found in my book A Gecko for Luck11. I will therefore only give a short account of those periods.

As I do every year, I travelled in the winters of 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 to my second home on the island of Bali in Indonesia12 where from 1963 on I worked for nearly two decades and also spent several months every year on holiday. On both these two visits to Bali I was laden with thick folders labelled Geerken/Gerken, Thiel, Mannhardt and Schenk. I sat in tropical Bali, going through the many items of information and trying to reduce them to book form. I was anxious to produce not just a dry collection of facts about our ancestors’ lives but – as far as possible and where we knew about it – to get the highs and lows of their lives down on paper and to give them a voice again.

Which of my ancestors – farmers, court officials, coachmen, brewers, white tanners, painters, clock and watchmakers, scientists and academics, inventors, writers and architects – would have believed that one day one of their descendants would be sitting under palm trees on a tropical island in South-East Asia only a couple of degrees south of the Equator, trying to write about their eventful life stories? I don’t think any of them would.

Almost in the last minute before the final production of the book I received a message from my Aunt Athene’s grand-daughter, Cynthia Athene Jones-Zipf, that completely by chance she had found several boxes of her grandmother’s papers in the attic of her mother’s house in the USA. I immediately flew to New York and looked at the boxes with her – they hadn’t been opened for more than 50 years. My Aunt Athene, my father’s sister, had meticulously stored documents, letters and photographs, and we found information we had previously been unaware of and other treasures that I felt I must at all costs include in this book. Since I had already numbered the illustrations in series in my draft of the book, there was a problem. As I didn’t want to alter the sequence of the illustrations by adding new pictures and documents, I will number the previous illustrations with the suffix (a) and give the new items the same numbers with the suffix (b), (c), (d) and so on. Nevertheless, I will only include the most important of the newly discovered documents here.

With this book I wish to give future generations of our family a foundation of knowledge about or ancestors in the hope that this chronicle will be continued for hundreds of years by those who come after us.

3 August Hinrichs’ Parents: Hermann Dietrich Hinrichs and Margarethe (called Meta), née Siemen

4 Information from Frieda Geerken, Wiefelstede. Interview July 1986

5 Editions of Die Hartjes: 1924, 1926, 1929, 1949 and 1956

6 Sophie Schenk (1839–1903)

7 Then: Yedo

8 Chapter 3.4.3

9 By the Daguerrotype process. Expert opinion by Dr Bodo von Dewitz, Museum Ludwig, Bonn. Another expert from the German Photographic Society, Professor Leo Fritz Gruber (died in Cologne in 2005), was however of the opinion that this was one of the first photographs taken with the new glass photographic technique of Niepce de St. Victor.

10 ISBN 978-3-8423-4909-4, BoD Norderstedt 2011

11 ISBN 978-3-8391-5248-5, BoD Norderstedt 2010

12 See my books A Gecko for Luck, Hitler’s Asian Adventure and Indonesia Then and Now.

3.0 Geerken/Gerken, my Paternal Ancestors

The cradle of the Geerken family lies way up in Frisia, in the north of Germany on the Waterkant [the waterside or water’s edge]: this is the name given to the strip of North-Sea coast where they speak Low German. For centuries, my ancestors lived and loved on this flat marshy moorland with its wild forests of scrubby pine and birch trees among the giant trunks of the ancient oaks. It was strewn with ponds and lakes of boggy water. There were secret paths over the moor, narrow tracks between the bushes, and quiet country lanes fringed with willows. It was the realm of the bears, wolves and birds of prey – and the rough, salty North Sea with its thundering waves was not far away: just 40 kilometres. This impassable area in North-West Germany – today it looks like a nature park – is called the Ammerland.13 This is the ancestral homeland of the Geerkens/Gerkens.

In the Middle Ages wolves were a widespread pest in the area. Wiefelstede’s coat of arms has a double wolf-trap at its centre. Today this symbol can still be seen on a farmhouse dating from 158714. In the past these traps were used to catch wolves. After being baited the barbs were hung up so high that the wolf had to jump up to snatch the bait. The wolf’s muzzle would get caught on the barbs and it would hang there until it died an agonising death. According to one legend, it was the wolf-hunter Wibilo who gave his name to the village of Wiefelstede.

The dark magic of the marshy forest instilled fear in the people who lived there. In these uncanny woods they would hear the muttering and whispering of the spirits, and in their fear they saw tiny goblins and veiled marsh-women gliding along the narrow marshland paths.

Ill. 3.0-1: Wiefelstede’s coat of arms with the double wolf-trap

Ill. 3.0-2: 16th-Century Map of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg15

You couldn’t stray off those damp, slippery paths for fear of sinking forever into one of the gurgling bog-holes or deep, bubbling marsh ponds. You had to be extremely careful where you trod, and continuously test the ground with a stick at every step. It feels very uncanny in this dark landscape, in the terrifying solitude. The marsh, with its springy, boggy ground is fertile soil for the growth of superstition. They were trying to come to grips with an incomprehensible world. They believed in rituals which would protect them from misfortune and evil. For these people in the Middle Ages it was not just a matter of black cats16, or horseshoes17, or spilling salt18, no, everyday life was influenced by superstitious rituals from morning to night. Superstition was an aid to getting through life.

Winters were dark and gloomy. There was thick mist, and the sun was rarely to be seen. When, in the unfathomable silence of the dark depths of night, the scanty, flickering light of the candles and the oil lamps was reflected in the windows, people’s hearts were seized by dismal fears. In the Middle Ages, superstition had deep roots. Now, at dead of night, the witches were abroad with their familiars, black cats and crows. And the goblins were cavorting on the narrow, springy marshland paths beside the treacherous, deep black waterholes. Danger lurked everywhere!

The peasants’ livestock was a valuable asset and had to be protected. They used to sprinkle the walls of the animals’ stalls with the water in which they had boiled the Easter eggs, to protect the beasts from sickness. Another way of doing this was to take a handful of earth from the grave of a newly buried person and scatter it on the floor of the barn. If there was an epidemic of animal disease, the first beast that died was buried outside the barn, in the direction of the barn’s longitudinal wall with its head facing away from the building. The straw on which the coffin had rested during a funeral was on no account allowed to be brought back into the house or the barn. There were thousands of things to look out for!

If a young farmer wanted to marry a particular girl, he had to try and have three of his hairs secretly sewn into a shift that the girl wore next to her bare skin. If that didn’t help, then on a specified day, you had to bury a frog, enclosed in a box with holes in it, in an ant-hill at a crossroads. After just a day, there would be nothing left of the frog but bones. You then had to touch the object of your affections with a particular bone to make her amenable.

If none of that helped, you would turn to magic, spells cast by wise women, witches’ potions and all kinds of other remedies. If crows circled around a house, it meant that there was a witch there, because crows and cats were the witches’ familiars. If a woman was bent and hunchbacked with work, the simple peasantry believed she was definitely a bride of Satan. In the Middle Ages these women were mostly doomed to be executed.

There were many things, dark powers that were mysterious and uncanny. A village pastor would have his work cut out to combat these superstitions in the minds of his peasant congregation. He would employ all his spiritual strength to curse widespread superstition, mostly without any lasting success.

The Frisians were brawny, bold, strong folk, hardy, hard-working and somewhat rough and ready people, full of a ribald lust for life. Life was hard, and the winters were long. Frequently April took its time leaving to finally make way for the summer. But when the smell of the ripening corn wafted over the fields, existence was nothing but work.

So the Geerkens grew up in the wild forest lands, a self-willed and canny tribe, as capable with the plough as with the flashing sword. Unlike other families, the Geerkens hadn’t spread their many sons and daughters far and wide over the country, but mainly remained true to their native turf in Wiefelstede and the surrounding villages.

They lived in their dark houses with the thatched roofs that reached almost to the ground under the tall, gnarled oaks. The low overhanging roofs gave the people who lived in the houses a sense of security and protection. Behind the tiny windows, often only as big as loopholes, the women sat at their spinning wheels in the gloomy candlelight, while the men met in the inn when work was done to play dice and cards. According to legend, these ancestral Geerkens were involved in all kinds of things: love and jealousy, happiness and misfortune, slander, arson and intrigues. They had an exciting life!

Compared with today, Germany at the time was practically uninhabited, and over 90 per cent of the inhabitants lived on the land. Vehicles were only occasionally to be seen on the unmetalled streets in the villages. Most journeys were made on foot. The measure of distance to the fields or the next village was measured in the hours it took on foot.

Until 1930 Wiefelstede consisted of nothing more than the old church and a few surrounding farms, just like in the Middle Ages. At the time the population was only 250. Today Wiefelstede has around 4,500 inhabitants, a total that is brought up to about 15,000 if you include the incorporated villages like Gristede, Bokel, Neuenkruge and Spohle.

An early ancestor of the Geerkens was a lusty, handsome young squire called Geertje. The hearts of all the prettiest girls in the area fluttered when they looked into his eyes, and there were the most interesting rumours about him. They wouldn’t put anything past him, and in spite of all his chances with the women he remained unmarried till the end of his life. They thought that this famous line would die out. But only when he died did they discover that he had had many secret liaisons with the young women in the vicinity. They found a document, in which Geertje acknowledged a fine young man in each of seven surrounding villages as his illegitimate son and bequeathed each of them an equal seventh part of his great wealth. However, there was one condition attached to the inheritance: each of the seven young men had to give up half his own name and use instead half of Geertje’s – either the ‘Geer’ or the ‘tje’.

The young men from the other six large farmsteads adopted the second half of Geertje’s name, and so the names of all the following generations and the farms contain ‘tje’ as their final syllable. For example, Friedrich Geerken (1721–1799) purchased the ancient Femtje farmstead in Gristede. This branch of the families with the ‘tje’ in their names is also related to the Geerken branch by blood, but it would be going too far to investigate all these other complicated relationships.

The Geerken family coat of arms19 was designed by my cousin Walter Dürr, a graphic artist who was killed in the Second World War at Stalingrad in 1942. I don’t know what documents or heraldic sources were used as the basis of this design. Where the German nobility is concerned, one can always assume the existence of a coat of arms even today, but with middle-class families the possession of armorial bearings – which even in the present day are inherited in the male line in accordance with medieval custom – depends on their previous social status. Since – as we will soon hear – the Geerkens played a prominent and respected role in legal proceedings from as early as the 13th century, it could well be that the family crest has its origins back in the distant past.

The centre of the armorial bearings is an escutcheon bearing a spear, which in earlier German was called a ‘Geer’. Since it is a small, short spear, it would have been named in the diminutive form ‘Geerchen’ or in North German ‘Geerken’, and so there is a direct connection between the family name of the Geerkens and their family crest. The great helm in the achievement provided protection to both head and neck: it is the oldest form of heraldic helmet.

Ill. 3.0-3: Geerken Family Coat of Arms

There are a lot of dark rumours about the Geerkens. For example, the first Geerken is said to have diced away a part of his farm in the inn next to the church in Wiefelstede: built of rough-hewn blocks of stone, this solid church was consecrated in 1057 by Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen. You can just imagine the farmers in their heavy clogs sitting gambling in the smoke-filled parlour with smoked eel and warm beer in pewter tankards. Drinking heavily after a good harvest, many of them forgot their responsibility for home, farm and family and had to be dragged out in a drunken stupor.

Ill. 3.0-4: Wiefelstede20Church

St. Johannes’ Church in Wiefelstede, with its narrow windows, is now almost a thousand years old. It’s an awe-inspiring feelingto stand in this old church, where my grandfather, my great-grandparents and many other ancestors have stood before. Here they found consolation and forgiveness.

Ill. 3.0-5: Masonry

Ill. 3.0-6: Gravestone

Ill. 3.0-7: Gravestone

The masonry, built of rough-hewn rectangular ashlar blocks, is three metres thick in the lower parts and 1.4 metres thick in the upper courses. It is indestructible and will – if there is no outside interference – survive another thousand years. What sights these moss- and lichen-covered stones have seen. What stories they could tell us!

Along the wall of the church tower we still find old gravestones from the 17th century with their archaic inscriptions, but I have been unable to find any gravestones of my Geerken ancestors in the churchyard.

Ill. 3.0-8: The ancient Church of St. Johannes with its altar and chancel from the year 1057

When you enter the church, your attention is immediately caught by the wonderful carved wooden altar, dating from about 1520: its 12 panels depict Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. Above that hangs the 120-centimetre 14th-century crucifix. You are also struck by a 17th-century Last Supper, and the font, whose finely carved oak pedestal is dated 1637. The carved pulpit, also of oak, was made in 1644. Another of the church’s treasures is the organ, built by Christian Vaters21 in 1731, most of which is still the original.

Only a few metres away from the church stands the brick bell-tower, which was only erected in the 15th century. The old bells, cast in 1503 and 1507 by Master Johann Frese, have fortunately survived the Second World War unscathed and still ring out – though over 500 years old – to call the faithful to prayer. I have often listened in admiration to the pure, chiming sound of the bells.

Ill. 3.0-9: The Bell-Tower, separate from the Church

In the bell tower there is an old clock. The original chiming clock with its single finger, which is over 300 years old, was replaced in 1903 by a new, more modern clock, whose 50-kilogramme weight has to be raised by hand by a crank even today.

Because of my researches into tower clocks22, this subject was of particular interest to me. The new clock was manufactured in a workshop in Bremen, and the old one was made in Bremen in 1716 by the master clockmaker Johann Middelstorff. This is described in the following text from the Wiefelstede church archives. It would have been too much of a coincidence if I had found a clock made by our ancestor Johann Mannhardt here.

Ill. 3.0–10: Bell-Tower with Clock

Ill. 3.0-11: Clock mechanism from 1716, Heimatmuseum Wiefelstede23

Ill. 3.0-12: Transcript of the information about the St. Johannes Tower Clock in the Heimatmuseum Wiefelstede

Heimatmuseum Wiefelstede

Church tower clock mechanism

From the church in Wiefelstede

Manufactured by: Master Clockmaker Middelstorff, Bremen

Year of manufacture: 1716

According to the documents in the Wiefelstede church archives, ‘Junker [Squire] von Westerholt donated a large striking clock to the church in 1702, which for the benefit of the inhabitants of the parish was to be mounted with all expedience in the most suitable position and set in motion.’

The purchase price was 74 reichsthalers, which at the time was the equivalent in value of 3 fatted oxen. In 1841 it was repaired for 60 gold thalers, remaining in service until 1903. In that year a new clock was purchased, which still shows the time in the belfry of the church in Wiefelstede and strikes the hours to this day..

We assume that this clock with its wrought-iron frame and iron gear mechanism, installed in 1716, is actually Wiefelstede’s first church tower clock. A few years later, in 1727, the parish benefited from another modern invention of the period. Another aristocrat, Junker Wolf von Böselager of Lehe, bequeathed 300 reichsthalers for the acquisition of an organ. This instrument is still in Wiefelstede church.

This clock mechanism has been generously loaned to us by the Lutheran Parish of Wiefelstede. In 2002/2003 it was voluntarily restored and conserved by Harm Schmidt of Wiefelstede and Ihno Fleßner of Rastede.

While the men were relaxing after work in the inn next to the church, the women and the maids saw to the cattle. When they had finished that, they sat beside the gleaming turf fire at their spinning wheels with bent backs and busy hands. As they let the slender threads slide between their fingers, the only thing to be heard was the gentle whirring of the spinning wheels. The farmhands, who couldn’t afford to go to the inn, sat in the background and wove seed baskets out of flexible young willow stems.

Their proximity to the North Sea, der Waterkant, also inclined them to seafaring. Beside the centuries-old, firmly-rooted farming tradition, there was also the more precarious life of the seaman. According to stories told in our family, Klaus Störtebeker, who lived from 1360 to 1401, was also an ancestor of ours. He was the most famous pirate among the freebooting24 captains who preyed on the trade routes of the North Sea and the Baltic. Among his accomplices were the Counts of Oldenburg. By a conspicuous display of pilgrims’ badges and crucifixes, they attempted to present the impression of a religiously inspired organisation.

Carmen Fournarakis has carried out extensive research into the connection between the names Geerken/Gerken and Störtebeker. She writes:

The village of Ruschvitz on the island of Rügen, the city of Wismar, and also Rotenburg an der Wümme have all been suggested as Klaus Störtebeker’s birthplace. In this context, it is interesting that a distribution map of the name Gerken shows that most of them live in Rotenburg an der Wümme, one of Störtebeker’s presumed birthplaces. Most people with the name Geerken live in Oldenburg.

The name Gerken occurs most frequently in the following administrative districts25:

Rotenburg (Wümme) (291)

Cuxhaven (140)

Bremen (133)

Osterholz (128)

Stade (126)

Hamburg (126)

Verden (104)

Paderborn (87)

Stormarn (79)

Ammerland (69)

The name Geerken occurs most frequently in the following administrative districts26:

Oldenburg (54)

Bremen (17)

Emden (12)

Oldenburg (in Oldenburg) (12)

Vechta (11)

Wesermarsch (8)

Steinburg (8)

Osterholz (7)

Hamburg (7)

Stormarn (7)

In his early years, Störtebeker’s field of activity was the Baltic. In 1396 he fled to the North Sea, where he found shelter in the Frisian trading port of Marienhafe, as the Frisians were at war with the Hanseatic League at the time. Marienhafe was then, because of a heavy storm tide, directly open to the North Sea. Today Marienhafe lies a few kilometres inland from the coast.

In Marienhafe Störtebeker married the daughter of the Frisian leader Keno then Broke. He and his companions began to extend the old 13th-century church tower. At a height of 80 metres the tower was a prominent landmark. As it had lost its function as a landmark with the passage of time, it was reduced to its present height in 1829 for safety reasons.

Ill. 3.0-13: Medieval Marienhafe showing the port and the Marienkirche27

The Störtebekerturm is still Marienhafe’s landmark, even if it is not as tall as before. On the first floor you can still see what is called the Störtebeker chamber, where he is supposed to have lived. One of the canals in Marienhafe is still called the Störtebekertief.

Ill. 3.0-14: Relief of Störtebeker28 at his supposed birthplace in Wismar

When Hamburg took military action against East Frisia in 1400, Störtebeker escaped and raided Hanseatic merchant vessels from a base in Holland.

If you have this information, and consider that the distance from Wiefelstede to Marienhafe is a mere 75 kilometres as the crow flies, and the fact that settlement was very sparse in those days, then it becomes just about plausible that Störtebeker and his descendants could have been ancestors of ours.

Other stories circulating by word of mouth in the Geerken family suggest, however, that our ancestor was Klaus Störtebeker’s opponent, the Hamburg sea captain Herman Nyen-Kerken29. In favour of this theory are the final syllable (ken) and the similarity of the name to Gerken. An anagram of the name Geerken, Neekerg, is very similar to Nyen-Kerken.

In old records Nyen-Kerken is mostly mentioned in connection with Simon of Utrecht, who was engaged by the City of Hamburg around 1400 to command the fleet that defended Hamburg’s trade with England against pirates in the North Sea30. They worked closely together. I have not so far been able to find any documentary evidence of any connection between Klaus Störtebeker or Nyen-Kerken and Geerken/Gerken.

My maternal grandfather31 often told me the story of Klaus Störtebeker’s execution, together with his companions, in Hamburg in 1401. At the trial, Störtebeker, after being condemned to death, was granted the concession that that they would pardon those of his fellow pirates he could walk past after his execution. And after being beheaded, he did indeed walk past eleven of them, and was only halted when the executioner tripped him up. To deter others from imitating them, the heads of all the executed pirates were stuck up on posts all along the Elbe. It was always a rather gruesome goodnight story, which made me so agitated that I took a long time to go to sleep.

In Hamburg’s Hafen City there is still a Störtebeker Memorial. And there are others all over North Germany, including in Marienhafe – statues, reliefs and fountains, or even street names – commemorating Klaus Störtebeker. They also have Störtebeker Beer and Störtebeker Festivals. There have been several films about his life – as well as many books and ballads, and even a two-act opera! He’s also given his name to many ships sailing all the oceans of the world.

Ill. 3.0-15: Execution of Störtebeker and his “Victual Brothers” on the Grasbrook in Hamburg. Broadsheet from 170132

So much for the legends that surround the Geerken family name. The first traces of the Geerkens go back to the 12th century and the prosperous farmer Johann Gerhardt (also called Gerd) Geerken. He owned the ancestral Geerken-Hof in Bokel near Wiefelstede, and – so the story goes in the family – he is supposed to have been very well-off. This is the original home33 of the Geerkens. On the death of Johann Gerhardt Geerken his son Berndt took over the farm.

A contractual document from the year 1498 is still extant. It mentions the name ‘Geerken zu Bokel’.34 That’s a good 50 years before Copernicus published his theory that the world turns on its axis and orbits the sun: Australia was a long way from being discovered. It was not until 272 years later35 that James Cook landed on the east coast of Australia.

Ill. 3.0-16: Geerken-Hof in Bokel, according to the inscription from 1746, photographed in 1911

Ill. 3.0-17: Geerken-Hof, and old photo with great-grandfather Friedrich Geerken (1817–1894)

Ill. 3.0-18: Geerken-Hof in Wiefelstede-Bäke, by Hans Gerken, oil, n.d., ca. 192336

Ill. 3.0-19: Geerken-Hof in Wiefelstede-Bäke, signed by Heinz Gzikew (?), 1923

Ill. 3.0-20: Gerkentorsweg with Hein rich August Geerken37 and his wife Lina, July 1986

As early as 1277 the Counts of Oldenburg had the right of jurisdiction in the Ammerland. Documents of 1498 and 1531 mention that ‘legal sessions according to the customary law tho der Bokelerborch38 took place in the Geerken Huus’. When the Count attended the court in person he was quartered in the Geerken/Gerken Haus.39 It is thus obvious that the Geerken/Gerken of those days must have been a respected and influential personage.40 The first Count of Oldenburg mentioned by name was Eglimar I who lived from c. 1040 to 1108.

The Bokeler Burg, founded around 850, was the site of the local court for Wiefelstede and the surrounding area. It consisted of a double concentric fortification of which only the earthworks and some evidence gained from archaeological investigations remain. Even today, the Burg is shrouded in myth and legend. Some of the legends which have survived among the Geerkens/Gerkens concern this site, where a treasure is said to be buried, about which we can read in Wilfried Harms’41 local history of Wiefelstede:

Another passage regales us with a further legend:

On another occasion, also on Midsummer Eve, Gerken’s farmhand came walking along the pathway that leads past the Bokeler Burg. It was dark, but the man wasn’t thinking about the mysterious things connected with that night, and continued unsuspecting on his way. When he got to the Burg, he found the whole wall covered with hard, shiny thalers, one coin right next to another, without a soul to be seen. He happily scraped a whole pile of them together with his feet, filled his hat and his pockets with them and hurried home. When he went to look at his treasure early next morning, however, they’ d all turned into pebbles. So he decided to get rid of them before anyone noticed. But one shoe was pinching, and when he looked into it, there was one shiny thaler there, which had got in as he scraped the others together. But the pebbles didn’t change back into thalers.42

The tales about the Bokeler Burg are mostly set on midsummer Eve, the 24th of June. It’s St John the Baptist’s Day, and also the Summer Solstice. It’s the day when all dark and occult powers rule, and this day and the following night were very important in the Middle Ages for the curing of sickness. Witches were out and about on this night, and children born on midsummer Eve were supposed to have magic powers. These old tales were handed down from generation to generation. In his book43, Wilfried Harms writes:

The name Geerken from the old farm in Bokel is even preserved in a local folk idiom: the Low German saying, ‘Wi sünd noch nich bi Geerken Door vörbi’ [We haven’t passed Geerken’s gate yet] was used in the old days to express the weariness of people who were indeed slowly approaching their destination in Wiefelstede along the long and arduous Kirchweg, but would only see the top of the Wiefelstede church tower after they passed the gate to Geerkens’ farm. The expression was still being used until quite recently by older people in the region to refer to a difficult situation which still needed to be dealt with.44

Egon Strauß has written a pamphlet about the Bokeler Burg’s concentric fortifications, which was published by the local civic society in Bokel. Sections of it which mention the name Geerken can be found in the Appendix, Chapter 9, 3.0.

Around 1950 there were still over 30 bronze age tumuli, dating back to between 1500 and 500 B.C., in the Wiefelstede district. These tumuli, arranged like a string of beads, mark the millennia-old trade route called the Friesische Heerstraße [Frisian Military Road/Warpath]. The grave goods show that as early as the Bronze Age there was close contact with distant culture groups, which influenced social, religious and cultural relationships in the Ammerland.45

It’s astonishing that the family history of the Geerkens/Gerkens can be traced so far back, given that two hundred years later in the devastating 30 Years’ War (1618-1648) so many church registers were destroyed. As a result, family history research in most cases only begins with the 17th