these are the last pictures from Hanfeld. After we left the site of the Streicherhof (which was torn down, at some point in the old guy’s life time, although I couldn’t tell when or for what reason), we passed the cemetery. I asked where the Lutherans or Mennonites would have been buried—the Oesches passed as Lutherans, as Mennonitism was not allowed in Bavaria at the time—and I am pretty sure that he said, over this hill, or at least we thought so because the flowers grew particularly well over this area. he conveyed this by turning his hands up, facing himself, and wriggling his fingers as he moved them up, and saying “die Blumen,” which is apparently the international sign language for “the graves of the religious dissenters made the flowers bloom most prettily, according to the apocryphal tales of my German village.” (If I ever manage to put a video up, I’ll try to remember to do this bit on it, it generally kills in person.) We wandered around for a bit while he told me things in German I didn’t understand, and then I asked if could use the telephone to call a taxi. He said something I didn’t understand at first, and after he mentioned “der autobahn” I realized he was offering to drive me back down the mountain. I hesitated for a second, but I figured if he was going to chloroform me and bury me alive, he probably would have done so already. I hopped in and we drove down the hill. In struggling to converse in German, I didn’t really notice as we zoomed through Starnberg towards Percha, on the Munich road, until we were over the bridge over the Wurm. He was driving me all the way back to Munich, about a half an hour drive! I told him that was unnecessary, that I would get out in Percha, that I wanted to explore a bit more that day, and he let me out on the Hauptstrasse. So, all in all a successful day: family history located, no chloroform used.
Hanfeld! I wish I hadn’t taken so many pictures in Bavaria, since my linear self wants to do this all in order, and it is creating a blogging bottleneck (blottleneck? bloggleneck?). In any case, this set is the first ten from Hanfeld, another tiny village now incorporated into Starnberg. Hanfeld is up in the hills near Starnberg, and it definitely felt very mountainy, in terms of air quality, temperature, snow on the ground, and so on. So: the branch of my family that settled around here were Mennonites who were living in Alsace, in France. They left Alsace sometime around 1800/1815, very possibly in response to the turmoil of the French Revolution/Napoleonic wars. Johann Oesch, who was my great-great-great-grandfather, settled his family in Hanfeld, where, according to family history, he built a farm called the Streicherhof. When I got to Hanfeld, via bus from Starnberg, I was let off on the Haupstrasse, but there were basically no businesses. I walked up to the church, thinking maybe a priest would be around, but no such luck. (As the Oesches were not Catholic, the Bavarian churches were generally unhelpful on this question.) I wandered over to what looked to be a woodworking shop, where a round little old man was standing nearby. He spoke no English, so we had to rely on my German speaking skills, which are pretty bad, and my comprehension skills, which are markedly worse. I did manage to ask him about the Streicherhof; wonder of wonders, he understood me and knew where it … had been. The pictures of an empty field with snow in it is where the Streicherhof apparently was; the concrete pillars and gate were part of the Streicherhof. That’s the little old guy; that’s your charming narratrix.
This is the last of the Percha pictures. Most of these are of the boathouses on the lake, most of which are from the nineteenth century, and so would’ve been part of the Oesches’ landscape. The family history by my g-grand-uncle talks about how he served as a guide for tourists on the lake, including Richard Wagner, and how his siblings also had a lot of contact with the hotels over the lake, so it’s easy to imagine they’d be around these boathouses. other pictures are from the walk between Percha and Starnberg along the lake, mostly of other 19th century buildings.
More Percha. Half of these are from east of the Haupstrasse, up a hill towards the older part of Percha. (The white building with green shutters is apparently the oldest house in Percha, if the Denglish (portmanteau of Deutsch and English) I spoke with some Percha residents is to be trusted.) the building with the onion dome is not old enough to have been there when my ancestors were living there, but it dominates that part of Percha from its place on top of the hill. The other pictures are views of the lake from Percha, walking west towards Starnberg.
This is the first set of Percha pix. Percha was the little village that my branch of the Oesches settled in during the mid/late nineteenth century. Percha was once a separate municipality from Starnberg, but has now been absorbed as a part of the larger town. They do not seem to be too happy about this in Percha; local sentiment seemed to be running pretty high over the construction of a tunnel. I failed to get pictures of the signs about it, unfortunately. Percha is over the Wurm river from Starnberg; my great-great-uncle’s family history says that my great-great-grandfather owned a farm on the eastern bank of the river. The first few pictures in this set are of the eastern bank. Then there are a couple of pictures of the Hauptstrasse, or main street, of Percha. The family history and my grandmother’s records, which I carefully packed from California to Berlin and then completely forgot from Berlin to Bavaria, say that the Oesches lived on the Hauptstrasse (now called Wurmstrasse, since Percha has been combined with Starnberg, with its own Hauptstrasse), in a building that was a post office when my grandmother visited. Today the post office is located in a building from the 1970s, and all the street numbers are different, so I’m not sure if the building in question still exists, and if so which one it was. I did see a “Freistaat Bayern” sign, which is kind of like having a “California Republic” flag or whatever it is they do in Texas to indicate “state pride.” (They say Bavaria is kind of like the Texas of Germany—Southern, rural, wacky, kinda racist.) Also, people selling honey out of their house.
these are some pictures from Starnberg, which is now a ritzy Munich suburb. (Jürgen Habermas lives there. I don’t think I saw him, but basically unless he walked up to me and said, “Guten tag, ich heiße Jürgen Habermas,” I wouldn’t know either way.) It’s right on the Starnberger See (Lake Starnberg), which backs up into the Alps. My great-grandmother Anna Klein, née Oesch, was born in Percha, which used to be its own small town but is now a part of Starnberg, so I took a couple of day trips from Munich to go check out the location. Starnberg was a big nineteenth century vacation spot. Most of these pictures are of the lake, and some are of Percha across the lake’s shores. One is of the Lutheran church in Starnberg; this building was built after my family emigrated to America, but they would have been part of the community that built it, and I think (although my German is not good enough to be sure) that there was an earlier church on the same location that they would have been around for. And then, there’s the weird Christian message in the middle of the state bus schedules; always happy to have an occasion to be grateful for the First Amendment. Percha pics to come.
this graffiti means, “no McDonald’s in Kreuzberg.” Kreuzberg is sort of the gentrifying hipstery district in Berlin. I live in a district called Neukölln, but the neighborhood I’m in is nicknamed “Kreuzkölln” because it’s inheriting Kreuzberg’s hipstery overflow.
1. ate spaetzle at the spaetzle express.
2. bought a bicycle on the Frankfurter Allee.
3. did the double air kiss.
4. went to Woolworth’s (which still exist in Germany) where every checker was a Turkish woman wearing a head scarf.
5. went to an experimental sound/music/dance performance.
