As a storyteller, it is no wonder to me that I was sucked into the fascinating stories of my ancestors at such a young age, and have now - by two aunts - been tapped to continue to the record-keeping for both sides of my family. What has become a wonder to me is: Why me? Why, of all of us, am I so rapt with the stories that have survived, and the artifacts, and the photos ... ?? I can only assume that there is something within these treasures that will help me understand. So, I keep researching (thank you, ancestry.com), keep sorting those photos, and writing down the stories as I hear them.
This is the house my great-grandmother grew up in. The second floor windows have been added, and the straw roof restored in an extensive and fabulous renovation by the current owners.While living in Germany, my aunt back in the States made a genealogical connection that sent me to a family reunion on the Bodensee (Lake Constance) to meet relatives I never knew I had. I was so inspired, I decided I had to do it again, and engaged in a search for another branch of the family. Through the very roundabout workings of snail mail, chance encounter, and email, I have come in contact with folks who - in this strange tradition - invited me to attend their family reunion over in the east of Germany.
Unfortunately, I had already left Germany when I received the invitation, but this year, I was able to cash in my airline miles and go "back to the roots", as the Germans are so fond of saying of us emigrants. I was accompanied these past weeks by my aunt and uncle, who oh-so-gladly chauffered us along the Autobahn in a rented Mercedes. We retraced the residences of my great-grandmother in the north, and of my great-grandfather in the east, where we met those descended from distant lines of my great-grandfather's line. It was quite a whirlwind, but, on my return, this is the story that remained (shared at our October story swap):
Why do we tell each other stories? What lies within a story that allows two people or two million people to feel more deeply connected to each other? Can we trust stories to be concrete enough to found new relationships, or to connect us to those we have never known?
I am a storyteller, yet I know all too well that the power of stories far exceeds anything the most wise teller could conceive of. I can only surrender myself to them, letting them tell themselves, thus completely negating the very identity I claim to have. Yet, without tellers, stories would not exist. And without stories, I don't think any of us would be where we are today.
Without stories, I would never have found myself in a most unspectacular courtyard, completely overwhelmed with how much it meant to me.
I was in Germany, in the small eastern town of Zeitz (pronounced Ts-eye-ts). It was no beauty of a town, with several abandoned buildings and an obviously struggling economy. This was the town my great-grandfather had left all those years ago to sail the seas as a merchant marine, and, eventually, to settle on a distant shore. One by one, he organized for each of his sisters and his parents to join him.
Almost a hundred years later, I stood in front of what used to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse 54, and contemplated the former abode of this family. It looked so normal, so typical for a German apartment house: a storefront on the ground floor, neatly stacked residential windows above, and two great iron doors on the far end of the front wall. Behind those doors, I knew there would be a courtyard, the real meeting place of the families that had lived there, the real personality of the place.
The iron doors were locked, and with only two names on the list of buzzers, the chances of gaining entrace were not good. Just at the moment when I was ready to step away, something caused me to lose my balance and lurch forward, leaning onto one of the great iron doors. It gave way.
It opened.
I stared at the wonder: an open door ... a door I had assumed would be locked.
I walked in, past the residential entrance, to the back courtyard. There was a greatly distressed brick wall to the right that indicated the property of the next apartment house over. The ground was paved asphalt, obviously catering to the cars that were meant to occupy the row of carports that extended to the building on the other side. Next to the carports, the outer wall of a brick building showed the outline of where a building used to stand next to it.
It was such an unspectacular sight. The 360-degree turn I felt obliged to take must have seemed an act of graciousness. There was really not a lot to look at. Yet I felt as if I could feel the entirety of the world beneath my feet, as the one great circle that it is ... just one circle, but a circle that was whole and complete.
We ate lunch at a nearby hotel restaurant on the Altmarkt - the old market place. As the exotic Americans, we were greeted with enthusiasm, treated to the house Federweisser wine, and we ate, drank, and spoke merrily. As we left that afternoon, I leafed through a book I had bought with historical photos of Zeitz, and came across a picture of the hotel restaurant from almost exactly the year of my great-grandfather's emigration. It occurred to me then that the family would have walked by that restaurant every time they went to the market. I don't know whether they ever ate or drank there - surely, they could not have afforded it. But I like to think they would have been as happy as we were - perhaps even proud - to know that we did eat there. That we are well. That we are who we are because of who they were: because of the lives they lived and the decisions they made.
Now, when I remember that courtyard, I wonder whether we seek the stories of our ancestors so as to know them better, or to know ourselves, and understand where we come from. All that held me there, still, in wonder, was a story. But it was because their story in that place that I not had a story in that place, too.
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