Hidden Message Behind Women's Work

Jickeli Household Help. Lisi Ebner seated 2nd from left. Mrs. Jickeli, center in black. 

This post was originally published on December 19, 1910

This photo hung in my grandmother’s house for her entire life. The image has been carefully stylized to depict what women did in at the turn of the last century, but hidden on the back for 100 years was an inscription that gave insight into what they believed.

Women’s work: peeling potatoes, mixing ingredients, grinding meat, baking (a large container labelled “Zucker” [sugar] sits on the table), cooking, spinning, knitting, washing, and ironing [two irons were used, one heating on a stove to be switched out with the the one in use when it cooled off]--all tasks necessary to keep a household running smoothly in the early 20th century.

My grandmother, Lisi Ebner, is seated second from left, whisking up something in a bowl. In the center, dressed in black, is Berta Jickeli, the employer of the women in the photograph. It’s hard to see, but she’s holding knitting needles in her hands. My grandmother adored Mrs. Jickeli, as she always called her, and was devoted to her daughter, Lisbeth [LIZ-bett], the little girl at the washtub, for whom she was governess.

Uli, the professor whom I met on the 2007 roots-finding mission, told me that the Jickelis were a prominent and wealthy family in the area. Mrs. Jickeli’s husband, Carl Friedrich Jickeli, owned a large hardware store in the center of Hermannstadt. Their children were educated and accomplished. Mrs. Jickeli’s nephew, her sister’s son, was Hermann Oberth, known as the “father of rocketry/space travel.”

Clearly impressed, Uli asked how my grandmother obtained such an excellent position. “She was smart, loyal, and had an abundance of focused energy,” was the answer I knew to be true.

After she left for America, Lisi corresponded with Mrs. Jickeli for more that forty years and with Lisbeth for more than 60 years. She saved every letter, and through them I’ve come to understand the love they shared for each other and how much Mrs. Jickeli depended on Lisi’s intelligence and devotion. The letters are a chronicle of these European women's lives through the first half of the 20th Century and a first-person view of the devastation visited upon my grandparents' homeland in the aftermath of two wars.

A few months ago I removed the photo from its frame to make a digital copy. On the back, hidden for 100 years, was an inscription and date! I discovered for the first time that this photo was a gift to Lisi from Mrs. Jickeli, inscribed with two verses (more like aphorisms) that undoubtedly were intended to help guide Lisi through life. (I later learned the verses were written by Georg Scherer, 1808-1909).

Kommt ein Lichtgedanke dir,

Laß ihn nicht entschweben,

Eh` du ihm die helle Zier 

Klarer Form gegeben.

Und wenn auf dem Pfad der Pflicht

Dir ein Leid begegnet,   

Ring mit ihm und laß es nicht, 

Bis es dich gesegnet.

  

If a clever thought comes to you

Don’t let it disappear

Before you share it with others.

And if on the path of duty

You still have troubles

Wrestle with them; don’t allow them [to get you down]

Until you turn them into blessings.

In other words, share your good ideas, and when life is hard, don’t give up. Endure! Fight against your troubles until you can find some good in them. It’s a philosophy that would serve my grandmother well as as she struggled to make a new life in a foreign country.

In the bottom right hand corner, Mrs. Jickeli signed the photo with the following message:

Ihrer lieben Lisi zur Erinnerung an viele Jahre

treuer, gemeinsamer Arbeit.

Weihnachten  1910  Berta Jickeli

To my dear Lisi -- to remember many years of faithful work together.

Christmas, 1910     Berta Jickeli

It was the first time I learned the date of this iconic photo, a century after it was taken. Perhaps Mrs. Jickeli realized that Josef would be leaving soon for America, that Lisi might soon follow, and gave her this photo as an early farewell gift. 

In fact, Josef would leave sooner than anyone expected, and he and Lisi would never spend another Christmas together in their homeland.

Merry Christmas - 2010

German Mojo Defeats Cryptic Cursive

portion of my Grandfather's letter to view cryptic cursive

Cryptic cursive was the number one barrier that held a century of letters hostage. The second, less daunting, but still real barrier, was the language, German.

Postcard of Frauenkirche
 from my Scrapbook 1969-70
"Ein Jahr im München" 

As I mentioned in a recent post, I chose German as my major in college and spent a year studying in Munich. Then twenty-five years passed. Poof! German had barely crossed my lips until an extension class at a nearby high school caught my eye: “German for Parent and Child.”

My first son, Evan, was six, and I thought, “What a fun way to spend quality time with my boy, introduce his pliable brain to a foreign language, and indulge in a little refresher for myself.” The class was tiny -- about 4-6 couples of parent and child. The teacher, Antje, a native of Germany, delightful. She filled the class with games and activities through which vocabulary was painlessly introduced and learned. I couldn’t have pulled most of those basic words from my quarter-century-old studies, but I was amazed at how simple reviews reignited long dormant brain cells. It was the start of my German language revitalization!

Family members at funeral of Lillian Gartz, 8/1994

My mother’s death in 1994 also drove home what we all acknowledge, but only truly absorb through personal experience: Life is short. Death is final. It was time to stop talking about travel and do it! I planned for the whole family to go to Germany the following summer, lest another 25 years zoom by.

Visiting Gärtz family in Crailsheim Germany. 2nd from left
is Hans Gärtz, whose grandfather, Michael Gärtz, was my
grandfather's half brother. Far right Hans Jr., my generation.

So in June, 1995, we landed in Munich’s airport and drove to Crailsheim, where, for the first time, I met my distant cousins -- the Gärtz family that had lived in the same Romanian town, Neppendorf, and the same house as my grandfather, Josef. This branch of the Gärtz family is descended from Josef’s half-brother, Michael Gärtz, twenty-two years older than Josef. Their father had remarried in his 60s, and Josef was the result.

Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, giving last
speech on12/21/1989 in Bucharest. He misread the
increasingly hostile.  crowd. The next morning, he
was whisked away by helicoptor. He and his wife, Elena,
were tried and executed on 12/25/89.
http://visualcultureblog.com/tag/nicolae-ceausescu/

After enduring the brutal Romanian dictatorship of Ceausescu and his lunatic wife, thousands of ethnic Germans, including my cousins, reversed the immigration process of the previous 800 years and left Romania, returning to their ancestral Germany, where they were guaranteed citizenship as ethnic Germans.

Maria, my second cousin, twice removed, is my only contemporary female relative. (I have no aunts, no sisters). We hit it off immediately, and I feel I found in her the sister I never had. Speaking the language all day with my extended family abroad oiled up my German skills.  I realized how much I liked expressing myself in a foreign language and how it breaks down barriers when traveling. Upon our return home, Evan and I continued the German classes for six more years, building my vocabulary, comfort level, and confidence with the language.

Left: me; right: my 2nd cousin twice removed, Maria Gärtz,
 visiting Würzburg, June, 1995

Fast forward to 2009. That summer is when I received the email from Uli, the German Professor we had met on our roots-finding trip to Romania, asking me if we had any letters. Realizing he might be able to help a bit with illegible German, Uli’s email was the spur I needed to look at the letters more closely.

Approximately 35 old letters were found bunched together
in a  second Missler Wallet in Box #14 "Correspondence"

So how to begin? On September 9, 2009, I hauled out box #14 and began looking through the piles of letters. One group stood out--folded inside yet another Missler Wallet.

(Remember the one in which I found my grandfather’s diary? Well, one of the ubiquitous Missler wallets came to America with my Grandmother too, and she used it to store some of her most precious letters).

Stuffed inside, folded together into thirds were a fat bunch of missives. Amazingly, most were not brittle or yellowed. I can only assume the paper back then was far more acid-free than today.

In grease pencil, she had written across the bottom of the one enfolding the bunch:
“From Jickeli, Lisbeth, Mutter Gärtz (Josef’s mother) and Father Ebner (her dad). All very good”

This seemed a fine place to start. At least I knew what signatures to look for. I found more than I had ever dreamed existed, but plenty of unknowns remained. In the near future, I’ll share my first stab at unravelling the mystery of the authors.

But first, I'm starting a regular weekly post, "Traveling Tuesday," to share the discoveries of our roots-finding mission to my grandparents' native land as well as to introduce the beauty and historical sites of Transylvania to anyone who loves travel. Read about it on the introductory post next Tuesday, 1/18/11.

Hidden Message Behind Women's Work

Jickeli Household Help. Lisi Ebner seated 2nd from left. Mrs. Jickeli, center in black. 

This photo hung in my grandmother’s house for her entire life. The image has been carefully stylized to depict what women did in at the turn of the last century, but hidden on the back for 100 years was an inscription that gave insight into what they believed.

Women’s work: peeling potatoes, mixing ingredients, grinding meat, baking (a large container labelled “Zucker” [sugar] sits on the table), cooking, spinning, knitting, washing, and ironing [two irons were used, one heating on a stove to be switched out with the the one in use when it cooled off]--all tasks necessary to keep a household running smoothly in the early 20th century.

My grandmother, Lisi Ebner, is seated second from left, whisking up something in a bowl. In the center, dressed in black, is Berta Jickeli, the employer of the women in the photograph. It’s hard to see, but she’s holding knitting needles in her hands. My grandmother adored Mrs. Jickeli, as she always called her, and was devoted to her daughter, Lisbeth [LIZ-bett], the little girl at the washtub, for whom she was governess.

Uli, the professor whom I met on the 2007 roots-finding mission, told me that the Jickelis were a prominent and wealthy family in the area. Mrs. Jickeli’s husband, Carl Friedrich Jickeli, owned a large hardware store in the center of Hermannstadt. Their children were educated and accomplished. Mrs. Jickeli’s nephew, her sister’s son, was Hermann Oberth, known as the “father of rocketry/space travel.”

Clearly impressed, Uli asked how my grandmother obtained such an excellent position. “She was smart, loyal, and had an abundance of focused energy,” was the answer I knew to be true.

After she left for America, Lisi corresponded with Mrs. Jickeli for more that forty years and with Lisbeth for more than 60 years. She saved every letter, and through them I’ve come to understand the love they shared for each other and how much Mrs. Jickeli depended on Lisi’s intelligence and devotion. The letters are a chronicle of these European women's lives through the first half of the 20th Century and a first-person view of the devastation visited upon my grandparents' homeland in the aftermath of two wars.

A few months ago I removed the photo from its frame to make a digital copy. On the back, hidden for 100 years, was an inscription and date! I discovered for the first time that this photo was a gift to Lisi from Mrs. Jickeli, inscribed with two verses (more like aphorisms) that undoubtedly were intended to help guide Lisi through life. (I later learned the verses were written by Georg Scherer, 1808-1909).

Kommt ein Lichtgedanke dir,
Laß ihn nicht entschweben,
Eh` du ihm die helle Zier 
Klarer Form gegeben.

Und wenn auf dem Pfad der Pflicht
Dir ein Leid begegnet,   
Ring mit ihm und laß es nicht, 
Bis es dich gesegnet.
  
If a clever thought comes to you
Don’t let it disappear
Before you share it with others.

And if on the path of duty
You still have troubles
Wrestle with them; don’t allow them [to get you down]
Until you turn them into blessings.

In other words, share your good ideas, and when life is hard, don’t give up. Endure! Fight against your troubles until you can find some good in them. It’s a philosophy that would serve my grandmother well as as she struggled to make a new life in a foreign country.

In the bottom right hand corner, Mrs. Jickeli signed the photo with the following message:

Ihrer lieben Lisi zur Erinnerung an viele Jahre

treuer, gemeinsamer Arbeit.

Weihnachten  1910  Berta Jickeli

To my dear Lisi -- to remember many years of faithful work together.

Christmas, 1910     Berta Jickeli

It was the first time I learned the date of this iconic photo, a century after it was taken. Perhaps Mrs. Jickeli realized that Josef would be leaving soon for America, that Lisi might soon follow, and gave her this photo as an early farewell gift. 


In fact, Josef would leave sooner than anyone expected, and he and Lisi would never spend another Christmas together in their homeland.

Merry Christmas - 2010