Can Love last 100 years? November 18, 1910-November 18, 2010

Funny thing about love. We know it when we feel it. We know it when we see it.  

I can see it in this postcard, mailed one hundred years ago today, November 18, 1910, by Josef Gärtz to his sweetheart, Elisabeth Ebner (ABEner) to celebrate her Name Day. Josef was twenty-one. Elisabeth was twenty-three. Within a year they would marry and eventually become my grandparents.

But I didn't always know about the love expressed in language as flowery as the blue-bedecked bicycle pictured on the front. In fact, before last year, I didn't know this postcard existed.


It was one of scores of missives my grandmother had saved for almost seventy years. "Trash or treasure?" My brothers and I debated, in a frenzy of sorting after my mother's death. We squinted at the illegible writing, written in an ancient German script that most present-day Germans can't read much less a German major like me. We decided to keep them, but I figured they'd languish for years in "Box 14, Gartz Correspondence"  and end up summarily tossed.


Enter fate.


My brothers and I traveled to Transylvania in 2007 on a family roots-finding mission. In Sibiu (called Hermannstadt by the Germans), we met Professor Uli Wien who was researching the history and immigration of Siebenbürgen Germans -- people like our grandparents. Uli asked for our email addresses. 

Serendipity had begun its subtle work.


I forgot all about Uli until the summer of 2009, when he emailed me. “Do you by any chance have any letters to or from your grandparents?” 


Did I have letters!  My heart leapt at what this meant. Perhaps Uli could help me decipher the inscrutable writing!  That put me on a mission to look at the letters closely for the first time in the fifteen years since Mom's death -- and I began to tease out some authors' names. 

The address on this postcard was clear:


F[räulein]Elise Ebner 
Reisper Gasse [Street]
c/o Mr. Ji[c]keli [the family my grandmother worked for]
Hermannstadt
Nagyszeben

(yet another name for Hermannstadt / Sibiu: Nagyszeben is the Hungarian name)


I recognized my grandfather's signature: “Josef Gärtz," and I knew I had a treasure. 


Printed under the bicycle on the front: 


Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Namenstag. “Heartfelt Good Wishes for your Name Day." 


I sent a xerox of the writing to Uli, and he deciphered into modern German those words written one hundred years ago today. I translated Josef's sincere, flowery note into English, its tinges of 19th century formality not diminishing its sweetness:

"I wish you much happiness and best of health on your cherished Name Day, so you can keep this happy day blooming for many years into the future. A joyful “Hail! and Cheers!” rings out on this day of the flower. [He may be comparing Lisi to a flower]. Long live the pretty girl and faithful Lischen [an endearment for  Lisi -- like  sweet Lisi]. 

With greetings and kisses
Yours faithfully,
J[osef] G[ärtz]
Neppendorf, November 18. 1910"

[Neppendorf was my grandfather's home town]

Celebrating one's Name Day has been a European tradition for centuries -- and was a bigger event than a birthday. Parties, gifts, candy, and cards like this one, all were part of the day. Josef and Lisi were Lutherans, and on the Lutheran calendar, Elisabeth's Name Day is November 19th. Josef mailed this postcard a day ahead, his loving words now reaching us across the span of 100 years. 


I know love when I see it. 

Welcome to Family Archaeologist

My family’s ancestral roots are in Transylvania -- known more for its Dracula legend than the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans, like my father’s parents, who had made it their home beginning in the twelfth century. One hundred years ago, my grandfather headed for America from that stunning land of rugged mountains and lush valleys, armed only with youthful optimism, confidence, and a fierce work ethic, determined to succeed in America. My grandmother followed, and they built a life interwoven with the historical events of the decades to come.

I knew the broad outlines of the family story, but details were scant. Until I started the Dig. 

After my mother’s death in 1994, (Dad had died five years before), my brothers and I dug through the artifacts our parents left behind, separating trash from treasure. We found the latter, tucked into the corners and cobwebs of their attic. A trove of diaries, letters, documents, scribbled notes, and photos had lain entombed for decades. Relating on a personal scale to Howard Carter's utterance at his first glimpse into King Tut’s tomb, we, too, felt we were seeing “wonderful things” -- the detailed gems of family -- and twentieth century -- history. 

So many in my family were compelled to write: letters to and from the homeland spanning almost seventy years, close to 300 letters exchanged with my uncle, Lt. Frank Gartz,  a B-17 navigator in World War II, diaries dating from the 1920s to the 1980s. All these missives and journals reflect on the personal and historical:  World War I, the stock market crash,  the Great Depression, the Second World War, the 1950s, racial strife and riots of the 1960s in our changing neighborhood of West Garfield Park, and into the '70s and '80s.

During the last several years, I’ve pored through the written records of several lifetimes, making astonishing discoveries along the way. What has been laid bare is not just my family’s secrets, but the kind of drama, joy, sadness, and triumph that underlie all our families' experiences. Their records reveal the daring-do of youth and young love, labor, laughter, madness, illness, war, death, riots, generational tugs-of-war, and marital strife. The experiences may be particular, but the themes are universal--now known only because my family refused to relinquish its history to the trash heap of time.

As the Family Archaeologist, I’ll be sharing with you not just letters and diaries that span much of the last century, but also the excitement of discovery and revelation that sparks my archaeological dig. I hope these finds will create a resonance with your own family’s past and engender curiosity about how history is not just textbook dry, but the fabric into which our families' lives are woven.

This is not a genealogical site per se, but in the course of unraveling the past, I’ve turned to many genealogical resources: Ancestry.com, census reports, ships’ manifests, death notices, gravestones, interviews with family and friends, and a roots-finding pilgrimage to my grandparents’ home towns in Transylvania, where some startling discoveries awaited my brothers and me.

Stick with me, and through the power of recorded words, you can experience the lives of real people as they were really lived. Without the fakery or hype, it’s a “reality show” of the last century.