Who Are These People?

I have been deep down in family history again, nostalgia. I am continuing to scan and organise my mother’s and father’s old photo albums. I have taken it upon myself to document and safeguard information which otherwise might get lost before long. There are quite a few albums, but I am nearing the end now.

Most people I recognise and identify, either through my own experience or logical thinking, deduction and a lot of staring at the same images over and over again. I look for hair styles, wedding rings and other clear indicators, who else is in the picture, which location, time of year, items in the background, notes on the back, anything printed in a corner by a professional photographer and so on. It is pure detective work most of the time.

It does not take long before you get to know somebody’s facial features, so you can recognise this person in another photo, which might be out of focus or damaged. You compare noses, eyebrows and mouths to determine relationships. Also somebody’s position in a group photo at a wedding in 1918, can determine the identity after having ticked off everybody you are sure of. Conclusion, this must be my grandmother’s only brother, for instance.

After a while I feel like I know some of these people who lived long before my time, but of course I don’t really. However, if I then come across some old letter written by one of them, suddenly this person takes on another dimension. I have found copies of letters, one of them 125 years old, regarding the death of my great great grandmother in 1885, and another from my grandparents to my grandfather's mother describing in detail what my toddler father had been up to in 1923. Quite sensational. Here he is that year on his mother’s knee.

Obviously there are many anonymous people who not even my old mother is sure of any more, some of them before her time, some before she knew my father. Then there is this very old photograph.

Who are these people? Well, they must be my relatives. My next assumption is that they most likely are in direct line, because why else would someone treasure an old photograph like that for so long? So they would then be my great great grandparents. Both sets of great great grandparents were born around 1820, and I guess they are roughly 50 years old in this picture. Then this was taken around 1870, but I could be out by 15 years easily.

Are there any clues in the way they are dressed, I ask myself? Probably not, because one of these men was a shopkeeper and the other one was a shoemaker, and one must assume they have got their Sunday bests on anyway. Does the man in the photo look six years older than his wife? If so, that would point towards the shopkeeper, whose wife was the one mentioned in the letter referred to above. My grandfather never ever met those grandparents because of the geographical distance, since they did not have a horse and cart. So did his grandparents therefore have their picture taken to send to the grandchildren? Does that sound plausible?

On the other hand, the shoemaker lived and worked in the small village of Bjellerup. My grandfather chose that to become his new surname in 1907. Is that connection why the photograph has been kept all these years. My father had it, and before he passed away five years ago, I seem to remember he told me it was the shoemaker in this picture. But I cannot be absolutely sure about it. Who can tell me? Can I phone a friend?

Don’t You Just Love That Hat?

My mother is still going, not strong perhaps, but she is going. Yesterday she turned 88. Sadly I could not be there, but I will see her in two weeks’ time.

I was in fact frantically scanning old photo albums so I can return them when we go for Christmas. That’s when I came across this wonderful almost 69-year-old picture of her and her best friend at teacher training college. She was still 19 years old that summer when she graduated. I believe this photo is from early spring 1942. So elegant, a real class act! (She is the one on the left by the way.) The hat might be dated, although beautiful, but the rest of her outfit would have done a modern business woman proud. What a good dresser she was!

Three Stolpersteine

Almost two years ago I blogged about Stolpersteine (please click and read). Some time ago I came across three more. They are next to each other for obvious reasons.

I tried to avoid writing about them, but then these three people just would not leave my mind. For a long time I have had this picture as a thumbnail on my screen reminding me, prompting me to look into this issue again.

If you read my earlier post you will see that it is a German artist who has devoted himself to this cause.

From the information on these Stolpersteine, metal cobbles, and some internet research (just google “Chelmno” and you will see) I have come to the following conclusion:

Fanny Levison was born Leubsdorf in 1878. At the age of 28 in 1906 she gave birth to Reinhold (my educated guess). In 1941, when she was 63 years old and Reinhold was 35, they were picked up by the Nazis from where they lived in Düsseldorf and deported to the growing ghetto in Lodz, Poland. The Nazis had established this ghetto from which they systematically transported people to the nearby extermination camp in Chelmno.

Using three specially adapted Renault vans the Nazis murdered, gassed, 150,000 to 300,000 Jews, gypsies and others before they tried to get rid of all incriminating evidence of their evil activities.

11,700 Jews were deported from Lodz to Chelmno between 4 and 15 May 1942, among them Fanny Levison. But before her gruesome death in one of those gas vans, she will have experienced having a granddaughter, Chana, for roughly two months.

The little baby succumbed to starvation or some decease (another assumption) about one month after her grandmother had been murdered. Reinhold, the father, lasted another two months and a week in the horrible conditions in Lodz.

What happened to granddad? Who was the mother? What happened to her? These three sad cobblestones cannot tell us, but you do not need much imagination to understand what terrible tragedy they are evidence of.

When will mankind ever learn?

How History Made Me Swedish

This fat king on his fat horse, a quote from an old friend's (Mikael Wiehe) song when he turned 55, actually made sure I was born Swedish and not Danish.

It is very appropriate to mention him now in this cold weather because in January 1658 he (or rather his generals) took his army across the ice between some Danish islands and secured victory. They had come from Poland, where they had been fighting earlier, and attacked the Danes from the least expected direction. He was Karl X Gustav.

They had arrived when the water was open, but decided to try the ice when it just kept freezing. Nearly all the army made it across, only a couple of German squadrons fell through the ice and drowned, but what the heck.

That cunning plan surprised the Danes, who had to fight the enemy coming from behind. The peace treaty that ensued gave the southern parts of the Scandinavian peninsula to Sweden, and this statue stands in the main square in Malmö, my home town, to commemorate this historical event.

By the way, I am sure I would have been happy to be Danish as well!

Fougères Castle

Not far from our place in France is Fougères, just inside the Brittany border. I think we have taken nearly all of our visitors through the years to the impressive castle there. In medieval times it was the eastern stronghold of the Duchy of Brittany, trying to keep the French out, which eventually failed. But to this day Bretons have a very strong regional identity. The links with people on the British Isles with a Celtic ancestry are strong and obvious. For instance, whenever there is some cultural celebration you can bet your last cent there will be bagpipes.

Nearly all of the outer wall of the castle is still intact and several towers are also in very good condition. You can hire equipment to go on an audio-guided tour and enjoy a history lesson on-the-go. Or you can do as I did, let your camera lead the way and forget about your company for a while, just wave at them every now and then when your paths cross.

If you want more facts I suggest you google it. In the meantime you might enjoy some of my snaps from last month.

 

Family Tree - Genealogy (Update)

A year ago I wrote a post about having discovered a new web site (geni.com) where you can build your family tree. After having gone through all available family documents, including deceased relatives' research, I have come as far back in time as possible without doing more extensive, genuine research in Sweden. I have selected a few interesting facts to blog about.

One of my great grandfathers married four times because three of the wives died prematurely. *My* great grandmother died of pneumonia shortly before her 25th birthday. She had by then given birth to my grandmother and her older brother, who himself died at the age of 18 in 1909. He was in the merchant navy and worked below deck as a stoker. He caught pneumonia in the winter from moving up and down between deck and the hot fire he was stoking in the belly of the ship. The four wives gave birth to a total of six children. Only three survived into adulthood; one of the wives lost her two infants in some epidemic.

Even worse was the situation for another couple (he was born in 1827). They had nine children, and when the youngest one was still a baby all the other eight children died within a short period of time. Epidemics, which we today can prevent, swept the country regularly. Can you imagine losing eight children, more or less in one go? This is Thérèse, the only surviving child, as a young woman.

Then we have the the person at the top of the tree, as far as known birth date goes. He was a soldier called Elg, which means elk or moose, a typical name given to a soldier in those days. Since everybody was either "son of" or "daughter of" the father, they had names like Persson or Persdotter. This naming convention lasted into the late 19th century, and Icelandic women still have names ending with "-dottir". These short soldiers' names were intended to make it easier for the officers to shout and also differentiate between men with the same father's name. So when you joined the army you were simply given a name, and that was that! Many of these names live on in Sweden to this day, and are quite easy to recognise; they are often mono-syllabic and/or with a military connection.

So when was soldier Elg born? In 1688! He fought, I assume, with the famous (or infamous) Swedish warrior king Karl XII, whose soldiers were called Carolines, and did battle with the Russians, the Danes, the Norwegians and many more. Karl XII, just like Napoleon later, was stopped just outside Moscow and had to retreat in freezing winter conditions losing most of his men. He later died in Norway, possibly from "friendly fire", or not so friendly, because the debate still goes on whether the bullet that killed him was fired from the Norwegian side or from his own. Many were tired of all the fighting and had reason to get rid of the monarch. There have been conspiracy theories ever since.

Something else which has emerged from the documents, is spelling problems. In 1794 a priest misheard/misspelt Lönberg, and wrote Lundberg, which still today is the family name for some of my relatives. Oops, sorry, from now on you are Lundberg!

Also within the same family, the name was sometimes spelt differently. In 1907 my grandfather and his brother lost patience with the issue and registered a new name, which still is my surname. Their three sisters kept the original family name, which confused me as a child!

I take consolation from the fact that even the Great Bard, Shakespeare, spelt his name, and other words differently sometimes. If you have spotted any "alternative spelling" in this post, it is simply because I got into the spirit of my ancestors.

Stumbling Blocks

Walking along the pavement of the famous Königsallé in Düsseldorf I saw two metal cobbles next to each other. I had to bend down to take a closer look and see if there was any inscription. Yes there was, and it revealed the names of two people who had lived there; they were not famous people, but people who somebody wanted to remind the world about. The message was instantly clear to even a non-German speaker.

The place names on Hulda Hornstein's cobble were all too familiar. When I researched the names on Walter Erle's cobble I found out that Heilanstalt Grafenberg was a mental hospital on the outskirts of Düsseldorf and Hadamar was a similar place a little further away which was part of the Nazi euthanasia program between 1941 and 1944. Out of more than 5000 Jews, only 57 returned after the war to Düsseldorf.

I also found out that these cobbles or blocks are called "Stolpersteine" (stumbling blocks) and that there are more than 100 of them all across the pavements of Düsseldorf, and they are part of an art project by Cologne-based artist Günter Demnig.

These chilling reminders of past history are today at the feet of all the Christmas shoppers in Königsallé with its posh, up-market establishments. With all the brightly-lit shop windows, does anybody look down long enough to discover these shiny "Stumbling Blocks"?

For more information:

www.stolpersteine.com

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolpersteine

Historic Memories

... this week features two photos in fact. The first one is taken in August 1968, five years after the second one. 1968 was the year of student revolts in many countries and the year when the Soviets crushed Dubcek's dream of a better life for Czechoslovakia after his "soft revolution", the Prague Spring. I was sitting in a 5th Avenue lunch bar in New York at the time with my sister when suddenly people started flooding in. There was a tangible buzz in the air; everybody was talking about the big news; the Russians had rolled into Prague to smother any chance of "socialism with a human face", as it was called. Shocking news!

That summer I was staying with my sister in Washington D.C. for eight weeks. I enjoyed the company of a group of Scandinavian air hostesses and their friends. I had a great time. My sister took me sight-seeing, as one does, and I saw all the sights, including a three-day trip to New York.

Looking at this picture, with my sister walking towards the Lincoln memorial in Washington, I can't help but think about today. At the time, I was obviously thinking about the events that had taken place five years earlier (second picture). Martin Luther King had been standing on the steps of that historic building in the background delivering his momentous "I Have A Dream" speech, which still today can bring tears to my eyes. I was walking where all those people had been standing, and I had a feeling of something I could not find words for then, and not even today.

But today when Barak Obama is waiting to take over and I look at this old slide photo, that same feeling comes back. President Obama, will he perhaps have a memorial building named after him in the future? Who knows?

On The Right(eous) Way

Signposting is not always easy, and it never was. How did our ancestors find the way when they travelled long distances? They could follow a river or the coastline, aim for some hills or mountains or walk along a winding path. But if they travelled over land in particular, and they had many days or weeks ahead of them, how did they find the way? They would most likely be dependant on guides or people who pointed at an object on the horizon.

For the pilgrims of the past there were markers on the ground that led them on the right way, to the next cathedral or perhaps even to Santiago de Compostela.  Scallop shells on the ground would guide them, eventually all the way to, what is supposed to be, the relics of St. James. Still today you can find metal markers in the shape of a scallop shell in many European villages, towns and cities. This one I spotted in Liège, Belgium.

From Lo-Tech To Hi-Tech

I have had one of those philosophical moments thinking about technological development. I thought of my grandfather, who was twenty years old when the brothers Wright managed to fly an aircraft for the very first time on 17 December 1903. Well before he passed away in 1976 he had also seen the first man on the moon. Isn't that a wonderful, fantastic thought? In his lifetime mankind developed the technology to put a man on that mysterious round disc illuminating the night sky. However Leonardo da Vinci, that multi-talented brainbox from half a millennium ago with his many ingenious ideas, did not always get it right. Like this one ...

So I started thinking about technological milestones in my own life, so far. Typing this draws my mind back to when I was a little boy. Then I used a pencil for most writing; on the odd occasion we used metal-nibbed pens in school for handwriting practice. Later the fountain pen, despite the danger of making a mess of your shirt pocket or your pencil case, made it much more user-friendly since you did not have to dip the nib into a bottle of ink every five seconds. My first fountain pen though, was of the kind that you had to fill, sucking the ink up with a pulling movement. When the ink cartridge was introduced some time later you felt that things were really moving on. Then there was the ballpoint pen, the greatest of them all. How that has revolutionised writing by hand! They were initially not really affordable to the average person, but these days most people would not care if they lost their ballpoint pen.

Long before these relatively modern writing tools, the quill pen was the only alternative, the forerunner to the metal-nibbed pen. I still remember how, when I was thirteen, I had found a big wing feather from a buzzard or similar bird of prey, and I made my own modern ballpoint quill pen out of it by inserting the ink tube with ballpoint into the shaft of the feather. Genius, I thought.

As a lucky seven-year-old I was sometimes allowed to use my fathers typewriter. Remember them? When the ribbon got stuck, entangled and messy? And the arms with the letters on them jammed completely if you tried to type too quickly! Much better when the electric ones with the spinning ball were introduced. There was no stopping the world's typists then. The employers could demand even higher speeds, as long as you did not forget to put in the carbon sheet so you got a copy, because this was when photo-copying was relatively new and expensive. Do you remember those days?

I was a newly appointed deputy head teacher when my head teacher said I needed a calculator for my work. I would be reimbursed, he assured me, otherwise I might have hesitated. This one had solar cells, and I was so impressed by the whole idea that I asked the shop assistant how long the solar cells would last?! I still use my second calculator, which must be at least twenty to twenty-five years old; and the cells have not given up on me yet!

Thinking of sunlight, makes me think again of my grandfather, how he went about taking photographs. It was a slow process; at least that was what we children thought as we stood there waiting to have the group picture taken. The technology in my digital camera is quite different.

Then we have communication technology; remember telex machines? The sender had to either type, punching a tape that then (I think) was put into another machine producing typed text, or it was received as it was typed in at the other end. After telex came fax; what a revolution! You could send any document over the phone?! Unheard of! Put the sheet in the facsimile machine, watch it being pulled slowly through and then phone to check that it had been received alright. You could not really trust the fickle fax!

These days we just attach a document to an email, but hey, that was almost surpassing the computer! Young folk nowadays have little understanding of how quickly things have moved on with computers. The computer on the first lunar landing craft, The Eagle, had less memory than a modern mobile phone. I remember buying my first PC nearly twenty years ago, how I said that I did not want to become a second class citizen, I had to learn about this new technology. How things have moved on since!

In the beginning the features of a computer were extremely limited and when the internet started up it was a desperate struggle to find anything since search engines were in their infancy as well. Those of you who also know the whole development would probably agree when I say it has been mind-boggling.

I must not forget to mention mobile phones; texting, sending pictures, taking photos ...

We have come a long way from the bricks of the eighties to the iPhones. It is amazing; and you wonder what will come next. Did I forget the iPod?

And here I am blogging about it all in my personal little space in the blogosphere.

C u l8r!