On Sunday we went to church at an LDS branch in a town called Jena. The branch was a little difficult to find because it meets on the second floor of a city building. I found it, though. And I am still immensely pleased with myself for being the one to spot some LDS type-setting and know that we had arrived at the right location. (If we had stood around on the street long enough we would have seen people who we suspected to be LDS headed into the building, but we were there a bit early.) Also, mine and Eric's headsets didn't work, and I didn't want to bother anyone to get different ones, so I spent my sacrament hour looking through the German hymnal identifying which hymns corresponded with their English versions, and which had no English versions at all. Eric was better at this game than I was, but he also had studied German for a few years in school.
After that, we headed to Eric's ancestral towns (through his maternal grandmother's side). First we visited Walldorf, where Martin Heiner was born. He is Eric's fourth-great-grandfather, and we visited his town on his 200th birthday. Below is the church. The original was burned down when it was stuck by lightning a few years back, and they have been slowly rebuilding it.
We happened to arrive there just as the gardeners were coming to tend the garden, and they let us come in and look around. It has been redesigned to be eco-friendly with a huge stork-nest outside, as well as nesting places for various birds and bats. It has gorgeous stained-glass windows.
Then we headed to Wasungen, where Martin's wife, Adeldunda, was born, and where Martin and Andelgunda were married. It is a beautiful church. They were Lutheran, so their churches are not as ornate as some of the larger Catholic cathedrals. Still, it was so nice to visit this place. We were there with a local historian, and he gave us a tour of the church and the crypt).
Then we toured the town of Wasungen, again with our local tour guide. (He's an archivist, and he's been instrumental in helping Eric's mom and others coordinate the research in these towns. It is an area of Germany where the record-holders are notoriously difficult to work with.)
We saw the home where Adelgunda was born and raised.
We also visited a local museum for the town. I really put my father-in-law's translation skills to the test with all my questions to the archivist. I was curious about what records were used to ascertain certain data, especially for information from the pre-1500s. We just don't have those kinds of records in America. (Insert the extreme crying emoji here.)
After the ancestral towns we headed to our hotel in Bergen, Germany.
1 comment:
I love the crypt. I always thought that our graves should be by the church. I am sure your MIL was thrilled about all of the data you were helping to collect. You must be living a genealogist dream.
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