Introducing new book—My family’s history over four centuries

In 2025, I published the history of my family—from 1560 until 1945, over twelve generations—as a book with Wallstein Press (“Von Armut und Aufstieg: Die Geschichte einer Familie über vier Jahrhunderte” ). More information is on the publisher’s website. Since many friends, family and colleagues do not read German, I translate parts of the introductory chapter into English here.

CHAPTER 1—INTRODUCTION

Germany’s history we find in two forms. For one, there is the history of the rulers—of kings and emperors, princes and bishops, generals and warlords. Also the history of their architects, artists, musicians and courtesans. This is the story we hear from museum guides who take us through the hallways and chambers of opulent palaces and fairy-tale castles; we learn where George III enjoyed violine concertos, where Frederick II issued his marching orders, that Wilhelm II had running water. We hear about the darlings of our historic yellow press, from Luise of Prussia, who stood up against Napoleon, and the dazzling life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. But this is not the story of those who built these palaces, who died in the wars, whose harvest was collected every year by the feudal lords and the king’s tax collectors. The history from above is entertaining, tangible, important because of its long-term effects on politics, business and art. But it is not the story of more than 99 percent of those who live in Germany today.

Then there is the social history of our professional historians. We read learned books about peasant life and infant mortality, social stratification and rural migration, medical progress­ ­and witch hunts, church disputes and folk religion. These history books are valuable, yet they lack life. We get dry statistics and abstract scholarly analysis where we look for people—the real people of the old villages and hamlets, walled towns and small marketplaces.

This is what this collection of stories seeks to do. A book about people. Two dozen portraits of real people who once lived, who dreamed and loved, migrated and struggled. Not those of kings and princes, but of those who our history books too often forget. Biographies of day labourers, blacksmiths, linen weavers, servants, locksmiths, salt workers. For example, Arndt Blome, a farmer with an old musket, born in 1565, whose old homestead still stands today. Or Diederich Trage, born in 1658, who worked his way up from shepherd’s servant to master shepherd and farmer (and whose landlord’s decedents kindly subsidised my book). Or Anna Blume, of whom we know from dusty church records that in 1719 she fell in love with a farmhand named Heinrich and gave birth to a child “in dishonour”—and who, due to dramatic developments, nevertheless later took over her parents’ farm.

I also share biographies that were more unusual. From the officer Christian Blume, who fought in the 1690s in Greece for the Venetians against the Turks. About the peasant girl Marie, who in 1822 might have had a love affair with Goethe’s later secretary. About the shepherd Heinrich, who amused with his captivating stories a three-year-old boy named Werner von Siemens—the later entrepreneur. And about the teenager Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Eickhoff, who emigrated in 1881 to America, all alone at the age of 17, changed his name to Fred and settled in Iowa as a shoe merchant.

These people are often called “the little people”. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. They were great men and women—the ones who shaped our lands, cleared the forests, and built the cities, cathedrals, and palaces we still marvel at today. This book tells their stories, recounts their lives and families, their daily labours, their hopes, and their fears.

The evidence behind these family stories is scarce and scattered. I pieced together what I could from dusty old church registers, handwritten tax rolls, and military muster lists—basic records of births and baptisms, marriages and deaths, and places of residence. Occasionally, other traces surfaced: emigration documents, field hospital logs, property deeds, and, in more recent times, oral histories, photographs and family heirlooms. Although the sources are fragmentary, this book is not a work of fiction. It rests on facts carefully preserved and transmitted through the centuries, even if a bit of interpretation—and at times, a touch of speculation—was unavoidable. Wars swept across these lands, leaving entire villages looted and burned. Lives were torn apart by illness, death and widowhood, or brightened by weddings and births. Many personal details have vanished with time, yet our understanding of rural life and village economies in bygone centuries allows us to recover a sense of context—and, with it, a glimpse into the real lives that unfold in this book.

This life was hard. No portrait in this book is about people in wealth. We are dealing with poor people mostly without land in rural areas. Many children whose fathers we don’t know. Women who give birth to a dozen children. Also a lot of child mortality. Migration is frequent ­in search of work and a simple place to live and survive, first within the villages and in the 19th century to the booming cities with their stinking factories and smoky blast furnaces.

We learn from the old records about the professions of the men. The role of women, however, often remains vague. The old patriarchy made women systematically invisible. Children are sometimes brought to baptism under the name of only their fathers. In death entries, we occasionally read that “Heinrich’s wife” was buried—without her name being mentioned. Sometimes the pastor wrote simply that “a poor old widow” had passed away. Nameless. The arduous work of the women and girls remains invisible as well. Unpaid ­agricultural work, maintenance of the gardens, food preparation, manual work for the family and the market place, such as weaving and spinning—all this took up a large part of their time. In addition, children were often born one to two years apart. They had to be cared for. […]

The biographies of the people in this book are inextricably linked to the political, economic and cultural upheavals of their time, which thus became part of my stories as well. Without an understanding of historical developments, we cannot grasp the fates of the ‘ordinary people’. The devastating wars—from the Thirty Years’ War to the Battle of Waterloo to the Second World War—left bloody traces. The complex feudal system of the early modern period, the land reforms of the 19th century, and the later industrialization and urbanization form the historical setting of these life stories. And even though my focus is on the simple farmers, shepherds and craftsmen, historical figures such as Napoleon also play a role—because many emperors, kings and rulers once roamed the dusty streets of the small villages I write about.

The many people in this book, in all their diversity and individuality, have one thing in common. All are related to each other. They form a dense ­family network over twelve generations and four centuries, with over 1300 verifiable people. Only a few knew each other personally. No one will ever have spoken more than his grandparents or his grandchildren. So the question remains, what does kinship mean here.

DNA is shared, it is passed on. But can we speak of shared history? Is there something in common that has an effect over generations? What do the peasant farmer Jürgen from 1560, the young maid Ilsa from 1780 or the socialist salt-mine worker Heinrich from 1870 have in common with their descendants living today? The connections are not inevitable. They can be easily negated. Do we feel connected to those who are in fact our great-great-great-great-grandparents? What do they tell us, what do they mean to us and to us?

The many people in this book form a specific, unique network: it is my own family, whose story spans the period from the 16th to the 20th century. And yet, they are representative of millions of other people who once lived in Germany. With smaller side lines here and there, another cousin here and another aunt there, these are the portraits of the ancestors of countless people alive today. In Germany, in Europe and often also in America or Australia. Thousands can form their own relatives­ from their own combinations of Hartmanns, Böckers, Trages, Meiers, Schultzes, and so on.

The heroes of this book have ancient German names—from Friedrich ­and Heinrich to Sophie and Dorothee. They spoke old low German, which is extinct today, and almost no one has ever left the plains of northern ­Germany. But even for the many immigrants today, the portraits are not meaningless. I am writing about the lives of those who once built the old chapels, who cleared the forests, planted the fields and ultimately generated what we admire today in museums, palaces and state monuments. The kings and princes gave the building order—the poor farmers, shepherds and craftsmen whose lives I share had to pay for it.

And even then there was a lot of migration. First, migration from village to village in search of work, or to the brickworks and salt mines in the vicinity. Often also flight from war, military service or social ostracism in the event of illegitimate births. Later, the great migration to America, even if, because of the mutilated entries in the passenger lists of the emigrant ships, it is usually impossible to determine which Friedrich or Heinrich really dared to make the leap across the great ocean. In the imperial era and its industrialization after 1871 then the great inner-German and European migration from the poor regions of Germany, Poland or Italy to the booming industrial cities, to the coal mines, iron smelters and sweaty factories with their endless working days.

This migration was drastic and not without friction. There was much exclusion, prejudice and hostility against migrants­­­ also then—and the snobbishness of the villagers who looked down on the newcomers in the proletarian housing estates and tenements on the old farm lands. There were too many ‘outsiders’, was how a village men’s choir justified in 1890 the exclusion of potential singing brothers from the other, the proletarian side of the railway line. But this migration and mixing, with all the social conflicts­ between the classes of that time, make this book with all its Friedrichs and Friederikes still highly topical for us today.

The complete book can be accessed at the publisher’s site here.