Thursday 10 April 2014

Sepia Saturday 223: Four photos

Sepia Saturday is a great thing!  Click here for more great photos and the stories about them.

The following is a set of four photos which are related to each other and which I scanned together at the same time, thereby creating a four photo postcard effect.  They are of the Friedelsheim Mennonite Church in the village of Friedelsheim, Germany. They are not old photos as I took them on a trip there in 1999, but they show quite old buildings.




The top left photo is of the inside of this small church.  My ancestor Jakob Ellenberger used to preach in here in the mid 1800s.  There was nothing ostentatious about it when I went for a look back in 1999.  I don't think the mennonite religion was that way inclined at all!

The second photo at the top is of a plaque on the outside wall of the church.  I was told what it said at the time, but most of it was lost in translation and now almost completely gone with time.  The bottom photo underneath the plaque photo is of Jakob Ellenberger's house which housed a family of 13!  It was tiny and they were so poor but they were pious and dedicated to God and from what I've learnt, were generally very happy.  The family didn't believe in war, so when Jakob's son, Jakob Nathaniel Ellenberger was called up for compulsory army training he instead emigrated to NZ in 1863, taking his sister (my great great great grandmother) Elise Katharina Ellenberger with him.  Because there were so many people to support in the family it was better for some of the family to move away and make their own fortunes elsewhere, so quality of life was also a big issue for the family.

The fourth photo of the stone tower is meant to be part of the old castle that stood in Friedelsheim.  I have a feeling this was partly rebuilt and is not the orginal by any means.  It is behind the small Ellenberger house.  In front of the house is a small courtyard and then the church.  These buildings are all part of a complex.

I visited in summer.  There were shady trees and vines in front of the entrance to this church and some of the Ellenberger women used to sit there and do their craftwork.  One can just imagine the relaxing slow pace of life that they would have experienced.  The simple life!

The buildings have changed somewhat from when my ancestors lived there, but hopefully not too much. 







15 comments:

  1. Great buildings, thanks for sharing the photos.

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  2. What lovely buildings and how lucky you are to have been able to identify and visit them. So many things have changed since the mid 1800s!

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  3. I wonder - did Jakob & Elise and the rest of the family ever see each other again? Hopefully they were able to keep in touch, writing? I can't imagine having my children go off & never seeing them again, but I know it happened often enough back then.

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    1. We have seven amazing letters from family in Germany dated from the 1860s and 1870s which are looked after by another family related to Karl and Elise. So we know they kept in contact. They have been fully translated and give insight into their lives in Germany. But Jakob Ellenberger Snr died just before his daughter Elise and she never knew he had died as the letter came after her own death. Letters took three months one way, so you could write and not hear back for six months. Very sad!

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  4. Yes, it is a fascinating collection of images of what looks (and sounds) like a fascinating building.

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  5. Amazing to walk where ancestors walked, especially that far back in time.

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  6. Glad you could visit, Bel. There's something wondrous about stepping in the same places our ancestors stepped, sitting in the same pews...

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  7. Thanks for sharing photos from your trip through time when you experienced your ancestor's home/church and remembered their stories. So very glad you wrote about their correspondence in comments, now comments are almost instantaneous as opposed to the long time span of shipping mail overseas.

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  8. Interesting photo group and your bits about their life make them even more so.

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  9. I enjoyed reading about your ancestors and seeing the great foursome photo!

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  10. Photographing the detail in buildings like this is one of my favourite things to do when I'm on holiday. The trouble is it takes forever to walk down just one street :)

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  11. How wonderful that you have been able to visit and fantastic also that the letters have been retained in the family.

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  12. Great to be able to visit a place where your ancestors once lived and worked.

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  13. I've been doing German research all week for a fellow member of our Family History Society. It's interesting all the different reasons that motivate people to emigrate isn't it? Conscription was certainly a big one.

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  14. An interesting post - always a very rewarding experience to be able to visit the home towns of our forebears, we have been fortunate in that regard too.

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