That's it! Your history!! And mine!

When we grew up and went to school, there were certain teachers… No, wait; that's a line from Pink Floyd.

When we were growing up in the late sixties and the seventies, our German dad told us firmly that he was the oldest son of the oldest son of the oldest son… going back to a Johann-Christoff von Schildt, who in 1630 had received special commendation from the Spanish emperor (Franz Ferdinand), and/or the HR emperor, for Nixonian dirty tricks done on His Highness's behalf.

Part of this commendation was an awesome document: several large pages of vellum/parchment, in a purple-felt -bound book. I've seen it; I held it in my hands (last time was maybe twenty or thirty years ago), and turned the stiff pages with awed fingers. The thing had been written up by a talented scribe, then signed by the emperor in a huge, ornate scrawl that filled half a page.

The document (now, I believe, in the hands of our uncle in Germany, Dad's younger brother) set out a great array of privileges for Johann-Christoff and his descendants through eternity – e.g., exemption from taxes, imperial conscription, and so on. Likely (though Dad didn't say) there was a title and some lands that went with this commendation (hence the "von" added to our last name).

Dad's grumble was that an egalitarian descendant – great-grandson, I believe – about a hundred years later repudiated these rights and privileges (and I guess at that point dropped the "von"), and restored us to our rightful place amid the greater unwashed, common masses. Thanks, Gramp!

This was a great family-history tale Dad told us… but how true is it?

In 1989, a gentleman by the name of Felix von Schroeder privately published a family history in Germany. The second of two (?) volumes is the one of interest; it's titled: Die Familie Schröder - von Schroeder aus Königsberg i. Pr., Band 2: Die Geschwister Felix, Heinrich, Irene v. Schroeder – Ahnenlisten, Stammlisten, Nachfahrenlisten. I translate this as: The Schröder / von Schroeder Family of Königsberg, Prussia, Volume 2: The Siblings Felix, Heinrich, and Irene von Schroeder – Ancestors, Family Trees, and Descendants.

It turns out that this genealogist's grandmother was the sister of Dad's grandfather. If you do the math or charting, you'll see that one quarter of his ancestry is the same as Dad's; so a fourth of his book is quite pertinent to my family – my brothers and sisters, and our own children, as well as cousins back across the water.

The last falling-out I had with Dad was about 1990, when during a visit with him I had a chance to look over his copy of the history. I could read German well enough (even better now) to get the gist of what von Schroeder had laid out – this was fascinating stuff! So I asked Dad if we could make a quick trip to the university down the road (where he was teaching) and run me off photocopies of some particularly interesting pages.

Dad rudely (it seemed) pulled a technicality on me, his own son, at this reasonable request. He pointed coldly at the copyright clause right there on the back of the title-page. It said clearly: "Alle Rechte, auch des Teilabdrucks, der Vertonung, Verfilmung der fotomechanischen Wiedergabe usw. vorbehalten"… which meant he was forbidden by German law to make me any copies at all, of any pages; he refused.

Yes, Dad, I fully intend to take those pages and publish them around the world and make a great profit, at the expense of our cousin's many decades of work. No; I would like copies of select pages and sections to translate them – there just isn't time right now to read it all; it's for private usage, not for publication.

Dad was as inflexible, cold, and adamant as the brick wall that makes up part of our family crest, and gives us our last name. How about the simple and obvious legal expedient of copying that caveat-page and keeping it with the other pages? (I'd seen him do this before, when photocopying copyrighted material for his students.) No. I gave up, got up abruptly, and left.

We didn't stay fallen-out of course. His declining years and my adult years were a great span in which to bury many hatchets, and to forgive him his utter cluelessness in how to be a parent (and my jerkiness as a kid and adolescent). I doubt I told him I loved him, though, until the solitary, haunting hour I spent alone with his body in 2003, waiting for the rest of the family to arrive at the church for his funeral.

Anyway, among Dad's impressively disorganized jumble of books and papers were two copies of that family-history book; one I now have (it belonged to Dad's mother, our sweet Oma, who died in 1996), and the other (Dad's own copy) is with my older brother. If there's even one more copy in the US, it would be with Dad's sister, who moved to the US in the late 1960s.

About a year ago I set to translating the pertinent quarter of the book, and found some wonderful stories – from the achingly sad (plague victims, deaths in childbirth) to the noble, and everything imaginable in between. (None of this I'd heard before.) Most of this I've translated and charted out, and will soon pass along to the rest of the family.

Some of the material could indeed make a great novel, maybe even a movie; might just take a stab at fleshing it out myself. I do plan to post extracts and (rough) translations here… unless the publisher (a J. Ebner in Deggendorf) feels I'm overstepping my own personal rights to the information, at which point I'll drop them… though I may squawk a bit.

NB, though: I'm not going to stick any of that history in my "Steal My Stuff" category; this belongs to my family, not to me, so don't get any bright ideas: it'll be here for your reading enjoyment and education only, okay? Thank you.

Anyway, though my dad was indeed the oldest son, von Schroeder's history shows that Opa (Dad's dad, 1899-1965) had an older brother, about whom I'd never heard, and who appears to have perhaps become something of a persona-non-grata in the family. This bears digging into. More at some other point; this man's children are alive and publishing, themselves, in Germany… though with a double last name.

And according to von Schroeder's research, there really was a Johann-Christoff… but he's given the vital dates of 1748-1810 (and his father was Christoff Johann, 1713-57); our direct ancestors in 1630 were a Claus (1581-1640) and his son, Nic/kolaus (1613-96), grandfather of Chrisoff Johann. First Guess is that Dad mixed up some names and or dates… except that as I recall it clearly, that aforementioned imperial decree clearly gives our 1630 ancestor's name (and, yes, the date is included) as Johann-Christoff von Schildth. (slightly more archaic spelling to the last name).

And, yes, though the original document is missing (again, probably in our uncle's hands), I did find a photocopy in Dad's papers, and will try to transcribe and translate that also when I find it again.

Dad never shared the information in that family-history book with us, and it soon was buried in his mess of books, papers, magazines, and so on. This was to our collective loss, and I don't think that was his intention. So my personal aim (until I enter the monastery/seminary) is to set this right by making sure all my immediate relatives, my generation and the next, have copies in German and English of Herr von Schroeder's work.

Levels of interest among them vary, of course (and I certainly have precious little time to devote to this), but the information has to be spread out to the rest of us, or we will all lose a dimension of our inner being.

I've found some corroborations online (bear in mind that some ancestral lines go back to the fifteenth century, and a bit earlier), and reestablished some family connections with other lines that our family married into (or that married into ours, depending on your viewpoint).

Besides birth/baptism and death/burial dates, von Schroeder provides many little details on our ancestors' / relatives' various professions, dates of high school and university acceptance and graduation, in-laws, terms and types of military service, recorded purchases of homes, businesses, estates, etc., etc., going all the way back to the earliest records available to him.

Some of von Schroeder's asides are worth noting and even repeating: here and there are details on sad/tragic deaths (and a bizarre one or two), an ancestor rising into (or falling from) the nobility, and so on. For instance, of one ancestor, Conrad Gotzsche, who lived from about 1570 to 1660, von Schroeder mentions: "One of his successors in office…, Adam Friedrich Körber, used the 1618-1652 pages of the church registry-book to light his pipe!" ("Einer seiner Amtsnachfolger in Krölpa, Adam Friedrich Körber, verwendete die Blätter des Kirchenbuchs 1618-1652 zum Anzünden der Pfeife!" Schröder - v. Schroeder, p. 152)

Since these civil record-books were among von Schroeder's prime sources of names and dates in his research, one might imagine this tale is at least as horrifying as amusing to him. And, as I said, I'd like to share some extracts of von Schroeder's research here. So now and then I'll drop in translated bits, and thoughts/reflections on these people.