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.

Ancestor Approved, Surprises, and Sharing Award

Recently I've received the Ancestor Approved Award from Nancy at My Ancestors and Me. Thank you so much for making Family Archaeologist one of your choices. My hope is to create a link to all of our ancestors' experiences, and our common humanity, through the words expressed in the diaries, letters, and documents I'm sharing.
This award was created by Leslie Ann Ballou at Ancestors Live Here. Leslie asks that the recipients list ten things that they've learned about any of their ancestors that have surprised, humbled, or enlightened them AND pass the award on to ten other bloggers who are doing their ancestors proud.


Here are my ten surprising, enlightening, or humbling discoveries:


1. Surprised: By searching through my trove of ancient letters, I was surprised to discover what a prolific correspondent my paternal grandmother, Elisabetha (Lisi) Gartz was. She corresponded for sixty years with the little girl for whom she’d been governess, for forty years with that girl’s mother, Mrs. Jickeli, (my grandmother’s boss in Hermannstadt, Transylvania/Siebenbürgen), and for decades with range of family and friends from the old country. The scores of letters they wrote in return, and that my grandmother saved, are proof of their lasting affection for all those decades.
2. I was shocked to find the loving, devoted, prayerful letters my grandmother composed to my uncle as he trained for and served in World War II. She was rather distant and uninvolved with her grandchildren, and I never saw this side of her. 
3. I’ve been humbled by the work ethic of my grandparents and parents -- learning more through notes and letters about their ability to work unceasingly, without respite, for most of their lives. I also realize now this maniacal devotion to work, while serving the new immigrants well, could have used a little tempering.
4. I was surprised to find the level of note-making and labeling on family photos and miscellaneous documents. It’s almost as if everyone was planning to to communicate with the future.
5. On my roots-finding trip to Romania in 2007, I was awestruck by the beauty of the homeland , Transylvania / Siebenbürgen, my grandparents left behind.
6. Finding out that the original Gärtz who emigrated to Transylvania came from Gerstheim, in Alsace-Lorraine, was a real surprise.
7. I’ve been humbled by the beautiful, loving letters, so sweet and sincere in their expression of love, between my grandmother and her little charge, Lisbeth.
8. I was stunned to find my grandfather kept a diary of his trip to America, and wrote a letter to Lisi just before boarding the ship (see previous posts) confirming the story he often told us when we were growing up.
9. I was surprised to find my dad kept diaries: from the ages of 19-21, in the 1930s, and again from 1950-1956, starting right after I was born. I was enlightened to learn about his youthful dramas and what life was like when I was too young to remember.
10. I was surprised to find out my grandmother had several siblings who died as infants or very young. She never spoke of them.


I'm passing on the Ancestor Approved Award to the following blogs. I chose them because their content is interesting and/or informative and fun to read. As far as I could tell, none have the "Ancestor Approved" logo on their sites. 

Elyse’s Genealogy Blog

Footnote Maven

Greta’s Genealogy Bog

SpittalStreet

100 Years in America

Gene Notes

Circle Mending

Everything's Relative

Tangled Trees


Olive Tree Genealogy

Landing the Dream

Today is the 100th anniversary of Josef Gärtz, my paternal grandfather, arriving in America, losing the umlaut over the "ä" and becoming Gartz. My guess is that he didn’t record his first impressions because he was too excited and overwhelmed upon landing to be scribbling in his diary. So without his words to guide me, I’m going to try to briefly reconstruct what he, and all of our European ancestors who entered through Ellis Island, probably endured as initiation into this new land.

Let’s join Josef as he disembarks from his ship, Friedrich der Grosse on January 11, 1911, and get just a little flavor of our ancestors’ arrivals.

Passengers disembarking from barge at Ellis Island ~1910
From Library of Congress collection

After passing the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, steerage passengers (undoubtedly how Josef traveled--the cheapest) are loaded onto barges, transferring them to Ellis Island, where they will undergo a number of inspections before being admitted to the United States.

In many ways, Josef is typical of the immigrants arriving at this time. Like Josef, most of them (68-90%) fall between the ages of 14 - 44. He is 21. About half of the men in this age group are single, like Josef. But his skills aren’t typical: about one fourth of the immigrants, the largest percentage, are “common laborers,” while about 15% are “skilled laborers.” As a master carpenter, Josef belongs to the latter group. That probably bodes well for finding decent work. The others are primarily farm laborers or servants. Only one percent describe themselves as “professionals.”

Eye Inspection at Ellis Island 1913
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

"Doctor's inspection of suspects for skin diseases, etc."
Ellis Island 1902

After all the health inspections, inoculations, and eye examinations, Josef has already endured before arriving in America, he, and everyone else, is once again subjected to prodding, peering, and poking, and all are further questioned as to their ability to support themselves. Failing these tests ends the dream.

Great Hall - Ellis Island

In the twenty years from 1892-1912, 169,312 aliens were refused entry, overwhelmingly for three main reasons: likelihood of becoming a public charge, affliction with “loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases,” or due to being “contract” laborers (why this last one kept out almost 13% of immigrants in 1910, I haven’t a clue.)



It has to be nerve-wracking to wait in these endless lines, to wonder if some small oversight will send you back across the ocean. But all goes well. Josef overcomes the final hurdle and enters the United States of America. I can only imagine the elation and anticipation. (I'd love to hear from any of you, Dear Readers, who has a note, a diary or a memorable story passed down as to what  an ancestor's first emotions were upon realizing he/she was actually starting a new life in America.)

Next stop: Cleveland, Ohio, where a “Landsman” (another Siebenbürgen/Transylvanian German, from his home town of Neppendorf) will welcome him into his home, help him get on his feet, and teach him the ropes.

So it was with so many who sought out friends and relatives from the “Old Country” who could ease their way into the “New Country.”

In the near future, I’ll be posting some of the missives that went back and forth between Cleveland and Romania, and how Josef pulled out all the stops to get his Lisi to join him.

But before we get to those letters and postcards, I want to get back to what I promised to write about in my last post: how I got my German mojo back which allowed me to tackle these letters that allow us to peer into the minds of two young immigrants a century ago.

Note, except where noted othewise, the Ellis Island facts and photos included here come from this site: Gjenvik-Gjønvik Archives. The site provides footnotes at the end of its pages.

Mystery Writing

While Josef makes his way across the Atlantic to America in early January, 1911, I thought I’d use his “travel time” to fill you all in on some details of this family archaeologist’s dig. First--a little more about the unreadable letters, diaries and documents.

21, 16, 4, 23, 24, 2 ... Who needs Numerical Order? Boxes
I access regularly are in my office. These... stored away.

In my first Welcome post, I told you that my brothers and I sorted through the remains of several lifetimes in my mother’s house after her death in 1994. We filled two dumpsters, had a huge house sale, and still had family treasure enough to fill twenty-five bankers’ boxes. (Here’s a photo of just some of the stored boxes.)

Box 14 became the repository with this label: “Joseph and Elisabeth Gartz, Correspondence and Memorabilia.” (We used the Americanized spellings of their names.)

My older brother, Paul, gets the credit for the letters’ continued existence. Both my younger brother, Bill, and I could have been persuaded to toss them. Paul wanted to keep everything that could be remotely related to family. We sighed. “No one will ever be able to read them!” I declared.

Now I’m the only sibling that has even passable German language skills. (For lack of a better idea, I chose German as my college major. Within a year, I got the payoff for that impulsive decision: I spent my senior year studying at the University of Munich, which fixed the language into the deep recesses of my brain, even when surface knowledge was forgotten).

In 1994, after almost a quarter century hiatus from German, raising two young children, acting as executor for my Mom’s estate, and with a newly gutted and renovated house that required serious attention, I looked at those letters and prayed for dispensation. I was certain I could never endure the agony (with my creaky and diminished language skills) or the time (see above) of translating the undoubtedly mundane details from the lives of people of whom I had no knowledge. Were they even relatives? Oh...and then there’s the ILLEGIBLE part.

Just to give you a sense of what I’m talking about, here’s a little book my grandmother kept, copyrighted 1881.The title: ABC Buch und Leseübungen für Schule und Haus: (Book and Reading Practice for School and Home). Its intent was to teach children to recognize both printed and handwritten letters of the alphabet in late 19th Century German. It shows the physical style of writing my grandparents, their friends, and relatives would have learned. This little book shows the handwriting used in the letters.

Below are just a few examples:  Page 6: Look how “u” “e” and “o” are written in longhand. Huh? No semblance to our way or writing. At the very bottom, you'll see pages 10 and 11 displaying even odder renditions, to our mind, of cursive letters.

So why would I want to keep correspondence, the handwriting of which was almost as inscrutable as hieroglyphics? To keep peace in the family. We dutifully stored the letters, giving them their very own box. At the time, I was sure they would never again see the light of day.

Next post, I’ll tell you how I got my German mojo back, how I began to unravel the letters' mysteries -- and then struggled to keep the work organized. It may offer you some ideas as to how to approach your own document quandary--or you may have better ideas!

Left: t, k, s, st.  Right: f (recognizable) h, and ch (a common combination
in German. I find it interesting that an American flag is used to
represent the letter "f." Promoting the dream?

Atlantic Crossing in Winter

Friedrich der Grosse. from www.norwayheritage.com

Crossing the North Atlantic in the heart of winter was a grueling experience, as Josef reports in his diary.

The first and second days were fine, but the other ten days we had very stormy weather so that not a single person remained healthy or found any joy or pleasure on the ship. The ship flew up, then down, and made us completely dizzy. I was only sick the first two days, [perhaps he means the first two days of stormy weather], and then I got used to the ship’s movements. Still, to travel over the water in winter is gruesome. The weather was so stormy that we could only see 80, 100 meters at the most, and the water flew about.

Besides the weather, other unpleasantries accompanied Josef's journey:

Another problem on the ship was eating. As long as I had mother’s bread and wurst, it was ok, but when I had eaten all that, I just stood there and didn’t know how to get something to eat because the cost [of food] is miserable on the ship.

It’s quite possible Josef ate sparsely for the entire trip as he had very little money. We heard that when he first arrived in America, he would buy a loaf of bread and a salami, and portion it out over a week. No wonder he was so skinny.

This is the last that Josef writes in his diary about his journey. I feel a little cheated, but don't want to be greedy either. I would like to have learned more about how he felt seeing the Statue of Liberty, pulling into the port of New York, and enduring more health inspections at Ellis Island. But then I'm grateful to have the records he did make --and that have been amazingly preserved for this past century. It is so much more than I even imagined existed. I hope you readers have felt a kinship with the efforts your ancestors made through Josef's trials and exhilarations as he made his way first across Europe -- and then across the Atlantic.

According to the Ellis Island Ship’s list, Friedrich der Grosse arrived on January 11, 1911. Thanks to Monika Ferrier, I was able to find Josef's name, name and age mis-transcribed, on the ship's manifest.

While Josef continues his journey, the next few posts will share more finds that shed light onto the process of my "archaeological" dig, along with a bit of history thrown in for good measure.

Out to Sea

12/30/1910 First page of letter
from Josef to Lisi on  F. Missler stationery

Once Josef arrived in Bremen, and his path to America seemed clear, he wrote to Lisi. Not only had Friedrich Missler,  probably Bremen's most successful ticket agent, given thousands of passengers a brown, canvas wallet like the one in which I found Josef’s diary, he also provided stationery emblazoned with “F. Missler” and the agency's address at 30 Bahnhof Strasse [literally: Train Station Street], proving Missler was a marketing wizard of his day. Many descendants who have these wallets have mistakenly thought "Missler" was the name of the ship pictured and researched in vain to find it.

Here’s the first page of Josef’s letter to Lisi, written on Missler stationery. If you look closely, you can see the date at the start of the letter (the date is first and the month follows in Roman Numerals).

30/XII 1910
December 30, 1910

Dear Lisi,

I want to tell you that I have arrived in Bremen happy and healthy. Now I want to tell you about my nightmare trip.

At this point Josef describes his misadventures and narrow escapes, which have already been shared in previous posts, so I’ll skip over that part and start with Bremen:

Thank God I am here, and I thank our Lord God again many times for the good thoughts he gave me. But such a trip! I thought it would undo me!

Missler Emigrant Hall, Bremen, 1907
Perhaps this is where Josef sat with his new-found friends

We’re sitting here at F. Missler, and already it’s going a bit easier because each person [fellow travelers he’s met] makes the other happy, and so we are getting along fine.

Tomorrow, December 31, 1910, we’re going to board the ship, as long as we remain healthy. Every day we are checked by a doctor, and up to now, I am completely healthy. Many people, who got sick on the trip, have already been here in Bremen for eight weeks. One woman, who had eye inflammation [probably trachoma--pink eye] has already been waiting here four weeks. She’s finally received authorization to depart for America.

With heartfelt greetings, I end my letter. Please, dear Lisi, tell me in your first letter what you have heard of my colleagues.

With greetings to all,
Gärtz, Josef, Bremen

We must look to his diary now, to see into the heart and mind of a young man, his written emotions  a reflection of what thousands of others must have felt at this point in their journeys, as he travels the final leg that will transport him to an unknown land and future.

Friedrich der Grosse, ship that brought Josef Gärtz
to America. Thanks to Norway Heritage for image

December 31, 1910

Early Saturday morning at 4 am, we saw a doctor who looked us in the eyes and inoculated the left hand with four shots. At 7a.m. we took a two-hour train to the ship. We boarded the ship at 10:30 a.m., and at 11:30, it departed directly for America.

Throngs at the Port of Bremen. Not the era of Josef's
departure, but gives a sense of the kind of crowd
 he describes. 
(From the collection of Maggie Land Blanck)

I was moved by sadness, joy, and fear as the mighty colossus pulled us far out over the waves of the great sea. Everyone on land waved after us with their handkerchiefs as they wanted to share with us a last and friendly farewell. They know such a trip deals with life and death, and we’re never certain if we’ll see each other again.


Josef truly rang out the old on New Year’s Eve, 1910, departing from everything familiar -- and hoped to ring in 1911 with a new life in America. But first he had to endure the harsh winter crossing over the frigid, stormy Atlantic seas.

Threats to the Dream-Vienna to Bremen

Josef wrote both in his diary and to Lisi about his terror atop the train from Pressburg (Bratislava) to Vienna, one corroborating the other, but each using slightly different language. In the diary he wrote:
I thought the sharp wind would throw me under the fast train like a piece of paper, but I held tight until we were in Austria. Then I came back down into the car and was very happy, but also distressed because my colleagues weren't there, and it was very much fun to travel as a threesome.

In his letter to Lisi about this moment, he was more emotional and wrote: Oh, no! My colleagues had disappeared, and I stood crying in Vienna. Nevertheless, I pulled together some fresh courage and waited two days in Vienna, thinking perhaps my friends would come, but it was in vain. I had to set out further alone.

He must have arrived in Vienna, late December 26th or early December 27th because he wrote,
I departed Vienna Wednesday evening [December 28, 1910] at 10 pm. On Thursday [December 29, 1910] at 11:00 am, I arrived at the German border, where it got dicey again. There the border officer asked me how old I was. I answered 24 years [he was only 21]. Then he asked for my passport. I said, 'Immediately, Sir. My passport is in my suitcase.

I used that brief moment to step off the train and remained standing there until he went into the other car. I came inside again and laughed from heartfelt joy at my second clever ruse.

Making it successfully across the German border reduced the threat of Josef being sent back to Transylvania, but more threats to his dream of America still lay ahead.

Beginning in the late 19th century, the United States had pressured European countries to require increasingly stringent medical exams for emigrants before they even boarded a ship to America. A sure-fire way to be left behind was a diagnosis of trachoma, pink eye, highly contagious and, in those days, incurable. Sure enough, the medical exams begin well before getting to the port city of Bremen.

The trip continued to Leipzig where we got out and had a medical examination by an eye specialist. From there we traveled directly to Bremen. We arrived in Bremen on Friday [December 30, 1910] at 9 a.m.

It was from Bremen he wrote the letter to Lisi from which I've been quoting portions. How he began that letter and what happened after its completion will be published on December 31, 2010. He, along with hundreds of others, still had hurdles to jump before boarding the ship to America.

New Year's Eve in 1910 ushered in a new year with a completely unknown and uncharted future for Josef's -- and therefore, Lisi's -- life.