What a shame!

Yesterday's trip to the Standesamt unfortunately didn't deliver much, although we did get a lead for another archive to try: The Evangelische Zentralarchiv in Berlin, which contains the church records, such as the baptism and wedding records of members of the Lutheran church. Their records should go farther back than those at the Bundesarchiv, but we'll have to leave it for when we return to Berlin before our flight back to Cape Town as we have run out of time in Berlin!

Herr Schultz, the researcher at the Standesamt, was very  helpful but unfortunately couldn't find any records on any of our family members. As he was looking up the towns and names, he kept on shaking his head, saying "Schade, schade" (meaning shame, shame). For example, he wasn't able to find the death records for Johann Friederich or Josefine, as the records they had of Buschvorwerk ended in 1909, while Johann Friederich only died 5 years later in 1914, and Josefine some time after that.

The other problem was that we don't know where either Johann Friederich, Josefine or their two daughters were born, and the whole system at the Standesamt is set up in such a way that you can only look up any information by place of birth. So if place of birth is what you want to find out at the Standesamt, you're out of luck!

We've had a slight change in plans, so today we're headed out to Dresden first by train, where we'll stay for 3 nights before leaving for Poland. Besides being a really interesting city by the looks of it, Dresden is also where Johann Friederich's daughter, Amalie and her husband, Paul Engler lived, according to my grandfather's family history book. My grandfather had a photograph of his father and his aunt, Amalie (along with two unknown possible members of the family) from the time the South African Meissners came to visit Amalie in 1925. My grandfather said that after the war (WWII) they never heard from her again. Of course, most of Dresden was destroyed in an arial bomb attack in the war in 1945, with  up to (or even more than, according to some records) half of its population killed.

Would the city have records of the civilian people killed during the war in Dresden? And would Amalie and her husband be among them? That's what we'll try to find out in the following days...

Dead ends

After a weekend of sightseeing, orientation and jet lag recovery, we finally got a chance to head out to the Berlin-Lichterfelde Bundesarchiv after a wholesome breakfast at our hotel. While the archive is located on the outskirts of the city, we chose to go to this particular archive first, as it is supposed to house the largest collection of data of all the Bundesarchiv locations. Before we left the hotel, we also spoke to a Herr Ludwig at the Bildagentur fur Kunst, Kultur and Geschichte on the phone, to find out whether they had a copy of or information on the photos Johann Friederich took of the crown prince at the opening of the Suez Canal in 1868. Herr Ludwig took down the details, and promised to email me back by the end of today.

To reach the Lichterfelde archive, we took the S-Bahn to Sundgauer Strasse station, and from there caught bus 184 which dropped us off right in front of the archive building, where I nearly got run over by a bicycle again, as I'm still looking in the wrong direction for oncoming traffic! At the entrance we were given tags and keys to enter the building, after handing over our passports, and from there proceeded to the archive on the other side of the premises.

Unfortunately, here we received our first blow of the day: the researcher told us that the records they have do not go back far enough to find Johann Friederich or Josefine on the system. After making a phone call, she gave us the address for the Standesamt I in Mitte, Berlin, where they might have some information for us on Johann Friederich. The Standesamt apparently keeps information on German citizens who lived abroad - and they could have Johann Friederich in their records, as he lived both in Egypt and South Africa before returning to Germany. We decided that we will explore this avenue tomorrow to see what it turns up.

As we exited the building, my mom's foot caught the side of a wheelchair ramp, and having her hands full with notes and papers, she had no way  to stop her fall. Within seconds blood was gushing out of her finger, elbow and knee, which had made contact with the ground first. Having my own hands full with tissues to try to stop the spate of hay fever that had overcome me on the way to the archive already, I wasn't in a position to break her fall either. What a sorry pair we were - this was not a good start to our research!

On our return to the hotel, and after we had stopped off at a pharmacy to pick up some plasters and disinfectant, I checked my email and saw that I had received the following message from Herr Ludwig:

"Dear Ms Mulder,

thank you very much for your mail. I am afraid we do not hold this photograph or, as far as I can see, any others by Johann Friederich (Fritz) Meissner."

Strike two! This is proving more difficult than I anticipated. Will all of our efforts lead to dead ends? Will we ever be able to unravel the story of my great great grandfather and Josefine's lives? The answers remain to be seen in the upcoming days of our trip. We have booked an extra night at the hotel in Berlin and plan to travel to Wroclaw in Poland on Wednesday, if all goes well (better than today, at least!).

According to the weather report, tomorrow will be another scorcher, and the local news channel told of an outbreak of a bacteria-born illness that has caused 14 deaths in Germany in only two weeks, with thousands falling ill and contracting permanent kidney damage. The report warned people to avoid raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce, which, as luck would have it, was exactly what we had for lunch! Before casting any further doom and gloom on our trip, I will sign off with a reminder to myself to maintain a positive attitude for the rest of our time here. We're on an adventure into the past, after all!

Tales of tragedy and the promise of finding a living relative! (Pre-departure research)

Only one day to go before our departure, and already there is a big cloud hanging over our plans - a volcanic ash cloud, that is! If the expert opinions are to be believed, the ash should have dissipated by the time we get our connecting flight from Doha to Berlin, so let's hope they're right!

This morning we got a call from my aunt Elke - the same aunt who initially gifted the notebook to my grandfather with the instruction to write down our family history. She wanted to wish us safe travels, and to find out if we had followed up on her phone call to Frau Anders in Germany.

How I initially got put into contact with Frau Anders is a story of modern technology, humanity and chance, as well as a newfound sadness over a part of German history that I had known nothing about.

Before embarking on this trip, I wanted to find out more about the places where my ancestors had lived: Schmiedeberg im Riesengebirge, where my great great grandfather (Johann Friederich), his wife (Josefine) and three children (Emma, Amalie and Friedrich Wilhelm) lived, Wernersdorf, where their son, my great grandfather Friedrich Wilhelm and his wife, Marie, were married, and Buschvorwerk, where Johann Friederich was buried.

As it turns out, I found out a little more than I bargained for. It seems one cannot look deeper into the history of any town in the erstwhile Prussia, without uncovering some of its war-time atrocities - tales of power, loss and grief.

While my great great grandparents were "lucky" enough to have died before the start of WWII, the war's aftermath had a direct impact on the area they were from. In my research I learnt that the towns I mentioned above were all in close proximity to each other in the Riesengebirge or Giant Mountains (Karkonosze in Polish), a mountain range in the south-west of present-day Poland that divides Poland and the Czech Republic. After the war this area was returned to Poland, all German citizens were driven out by brutal force, their tombstones removed, their existence wiped out and their towns renamed. It was a typical tale of retaliation - an eye for an eye - with the victims so often the ordinary people who had wanted nothing to do with the war in the first place.

While I have cried many times before over the horrific and undeserved fate of so many Jews during WWII, I now also had reason to cry for the ordinary Germans - perhaps people known by my family - who were murdered, raped, dispelled from their homes or put in concentration camps, in the aftermath of that dreadful war. And because their stories did not make it into the official history books, it is incredibly hard to find out what happened to these people, as if they just disappeared off the face of the earth.

My mother and I were also very disappointed to learn about the destruction of the German tombstones along the Riesengebirge, as this meant that not even my great great grandfather's memory survived the Second World War, even though he died in 1914 already (we're not sure when or how his wife, Josefine, or his daughter, Emma, passed away). We had anticipated going to look for their graves, but this new information made this hope fade quickly.

Wanting to find out more about the Riesengebirge during and after the time my ancestors lived there, I found a website in German on the Riesengebirgler (people of the Giant Mountains) and promptly wrote an email to the administrator to find out if he knew anything at all about Schmiedeberg or Buschvorwerk. Although his research covered mainly the Czech side of the mountains, he was kind enough to advise me of a mailing list for Lower Silesia (the province which covers the Riesengebirge) whose members one could send your request to.

Not expecting much, I sent out my request. To my surprise I had three responses by the next afternoon! The listies were eager to help. One sent me the name of a book about Buschvorwerk from the war years to the forced removals. Amazingly, this book is still in print and available from Amazon. Someone even e-mailed me from Cape Town, offering to help with maps or translations! My greatest surprise was when I received an answer from a very kind man who had contacted an old resident of Schmiedeberg, who in turn contacted Frau Anders of the Schmiedeberger Kulturbund, from whom he found out that not only did she find a reference to my great aunt Emma Junge (Meissner), but also a living relative of mine! I was overwhelmed.

Through my subsequent correspondence with Frau Anders, as well as my aunt's phone call to her, I found out that legally she was not at liberty to give me the information, and that we would have to go to a town called Brilon and enquire at the Rathaus to find out who this living relative was. Unfortunately Brilon is not anywhere near the rest of the places on our travel itinerary, and I'm not sure if we'll be able to make a plan to get there, so my hope at this stage is that the relative returns Frau Anders' message (that she left on her answering machine) and decides to get in contact with us. We'll see!

But for now we've still got a lot of packing and finger-crossing to do before our flight tomorrow. May the wind blow the ash cloud out of hope's way!