In my last posting here I said I was going to go and see about my family’s past. Mrs. ruleoflaw and I did just that, along with a little beer and castle sightseeing. the experience was profound and we can learn a lot from the Germans. Yes, many Germans wanted to ask me about Trump, but we can discuss that in the comments.
Most of this story is true but some of it is utter bullshit. I leave it to your discernment, wise reader. In addition the rich local history provided by Ernst Kandlbinder, this story could not have been written without the work of Historian Dr. Friedemann Fegert and Genealogist Kenneth Madl.
The bullshit was all mine.
Deep in the Forest
Maestro,
Once upon a dark age, the Bohemian Forest was home to cave bears, ogres, dragons and humble woodcutters. The humble woodcutters stayed humble because bears, ogres and dragons had to eat something. It was best to keep a low profile and not complain when the goat went missing. Goat can be awfully bland, so salt was as good as gold in places like Pilsen, Prague, and points north. Caravans of salt traders plied their trade across Bohemia. Great wealth was possible but not without risk.
Nearly as bad as the bears and such, were the roving bands of robbers. Armed with axes, these bandits would fall upon an unwary salt merchant. They then arose, dusted themselves off and tapped the merchant on the chest with the aforementioned ax. “Stand and deliver!” growled the bandits and so it was that hard currency recirculated in the local economy.
When officers of His Excellency the Prince-Bishop of Passau came asking questions, the humble woodcutters shrugged. “We didn’t see any bandits.” Laying aside their axes, the woodcutters broke for lunch. Over beer and goat, they opined, “It must have been the bears or the ogres. Maybe even dragons, yeah, that’s it, dragons. Pass the salt please.”
Wishing to create a more secure route for pilgrims and salt caravans, the Prince - Bishop came up with a plan. Most of the route traversed mountains and forests. By establishing settlements along the way he created safe havens for traders and their merchandise. Having rid the region of bandits, His Excellency turned the salt caravans over to the professionals who established a toll collection point. The German for toll is “Maut”, a toll collector is a “Mautner”. The toll station became known at Mauth and though a toll is no longer collected there, the name stuck. Mauth, Pop. 2407, sits perhaps a dozen miles from the Czech border.
This road His Excellency developed through the Bohemian Forest was called Am Goldenen Stieg, which translates loosely as “On the Golden Mountain Path”. Nowadays the Golden Path is known as Strasse 2127 in the county of Freyung/Grafenau, Administrative Region of Lower Bavaria. The scenery on this road is lovely but I did not see any actual gold.
Back to our tale.
Tired of just goat, the humble woodcutters and Mautners of Mauth needed bread and cheese, and pork with sauerkraut to round out their diet. They asked the Prince-Bishop, “Please your Excellency, send us some farmers to grow cabbage and raise cows and pigs.” His excellency obliged. In the year 1699, He offered free land to 12 farmers. The Golden Path runs along a ridge north of Mauth. Small streams run in the valleys on either side of the ridge. The 12 farmers were each given a plot of land that ran for seventy meters north-south along the Golden Path. The east and west boundaries of each plot were the streams in the valley bottoms. Each man had to clear off the trees and rocks, build a house and plant crops. The result was a village with 12 houses, 70 meters apart along the Golden Path.
What with clearing the forest and fending off ogres, the farmers were too damned busy to think up fanciful names for their village. “Call it twelve houses and be done with it!” said Georg, as he finished off the last ogre with his ax. That was how the village came to be called Zwölfhaüser.
Georg lived at Number 7, Zwölfhaüser. His full name was Georg Kandlbinder. Full disclosure: He was my 5x great-grandfather. Further full disclosure: We have no solid evidence that Georg Kandlbinder actually killed an ogre with an ax. He may have used a hayfork or an umbrella. Some guys even used their bare hands. Show-offs. Had there been better documentation, I’m sure someone would have written an opera about Georg Kandlbinder, or perhaps a Manga.
We actually know very little about Georg. We do know that he would have been around 22 years old when he came to Zwölfhaüser. His wife was named Regina Puffer. She was about 19 when the young couple set up housekeeping on the Golden Path. The house did not acquire a name of it’s own until after the birth of Georg and Regina’s grandchild, Peter. The place is known to this day as “Peternbauern”, that is, “Peter’s farm”. (Yeah, my family isn’t much for naming places.) It still belongs to a member of the Kandlbinder family. Peternbauern sits on the highest point of the ridge. It’s always windy up there. The original house was built of wood. On a windy day some time around 1900 it burned to the ground and was rebuilt with stone.
Down in the valley, on the border-stream, the farmers of Zwölfhaüser built a dam with a flour-mill. It was run as a co-op with a house on site for the miller. The house is called Waldmühle (Forest Mill) It is still there. My Grandma was born in that house. The dam is gone and now an electrically powered sawmill occupies the site. We visited on a Sunday so the mill was quiet. Just the stream and the breeze to hear, to understand.
I stood in front of Waldmühle with my cousin Ernst on one side of me and Mrs ruleoflaw on the other. It was as if my toes were sinking into the soil, pulling my feet to this home-earth. Under the gray sky a raindrop touched my cheek. The light on Ernst’s face reflected my father’s eyes. In every moment the world gets smaller and my family keeps growing, branching into the past as my daughter waits on another child, due this October.
Almost all of the true facts in this story were told to me by Ernst. He too is a Kandlbinder and is the mayor of Mauth. He is a very good guy with a beautiful little family. He is justly proud of his town and his neighbors think well of him. We had coffee with his Mom and his Oma. Mom makes an excellent strawberry upside-down cake. She speaks no English but she made it quite clear that I would eat a second piece of cake, with whipped cream. I have known many firm-willed German women and she did not let the side down. I don’t think she would slay an ogre, but she would make him wash his hands, clean his plate and say danke!
I ate the cake. It was delicious.
The town board has Conservatives and Socialists, but potholes know no party. They argue and discuss and back-scratch and at the end of the day they agree on what’s best for their little town. I went with Ernst and some of his colleagues to the Volunteer Firefighters picnic. Folks from both parties drinking beer together and talking shop. One of the Volunteer firemen is also the “Youth Member” on the town board. One seat on the board is set aside for a person under 25.
I keep liking this place more and more.
In Mauth, there is a church called St. Leopold’s. My Oma was baptized there. On one side of the church there is a cemetery. Many Kandlbinders are buried there. On the other side of the church, across the alley, is a monument listing the names of local men who died in the World Wars. My Great-Uncle, Vincenz Kandlbinder is listed there. Across the ocean, Oma’s sons lie beneath flags in Illinois and Wisconsin. Like Uncle Vincenz, their wars are over.
Deep in the forest, long before Georg, before family names were invented, a journey began. A Kandlpinter was a person who wove protective wire baskets around clay pots. His trade became his name. The work didn't come to him, so he set off. Now he has descendants on at least two continents.
I don’t know where his journey, my journey, will end. My atoms will probably be rearranged, littered like flakes of ash in the weave of the earth, scattered across time with the atoms of Ernst, Dad, Oma, Peter and Georg. Identity binds our atoms and ashes in a name, holds us in a mesh of connections across time and distance. As long as we search, we never stop learning who we really are.