THE WITTGENSTEIN CORNER - Die Wittgensteiner Ecke

Introducing a new page for our DDFA website, The Wittgenstein Corner, researched and written by Ardis Dreisbach Grosjean. As Dreisbachs, we are very connected to the part of Germany known today as Siegen-Wittgenstein and which includes the district (county) called Wittgenstein. Yet many of us have very little idea of where Wittgenstein is, have little idea of its history and indeed, very little idea of its importance to our family. Ardis Dreisbach Grosjean wants to remedy this by providing a series of short articles about our homeland in The Wittgenstein Corner/Die Wittgensteiner Ecke.

Welcome to The Wittgenstein Corner / Die Wittgensteiner Ecke

What is it, and why will it be unpredictable?

Many readers of this new site will be Dreisbach/Dresbach descendants who have known or heard that their Dreisbach ancestors came from a territory called Wittgenstein somewhere in Germany.  There is a fair amount of material on this tiny territory and its inhabitants, available mainly in German archives and in German publications.  Such information, whether surprising or dramatic or quaint, is for the most part inaccessible to our DDFA readers in North America.  Therefore The Wittgenstein Corner (or Die Wittgensteiner Ecke, or simply Die Ecke) has come into being as an informal meeting place somewhat like a corner at a village crossroads where our readers are welcome to listen and learn about events and conditions of life in Wittgenstein: work, servitude, courtship, feasts, famine and more. 

            Our brief texts are based on printed sources and on research results communicated by our Wittgenstein friends.   These Ecke pieces aim to be informative but not academic in style. Nor is it necessary that historic events be discussed in chronological order.  Footnotes will probably be scarce.  Each Corner/Ecke will be numbered and may appear on our website one by one, or as one of a small group of texts. Keep a watchful eye on the DDFA for new topics at The Wittgenstein Corner. Welcome!  Willkommen! (by Ardis Dreisbach Grosjean)

MOST RECENT ADDITION TO THE WITTGENSTEIN CORNER IS BELOW

The Wittgenstein Corner (Die Wittgensteiner Ecke) No. 5

Is there a Dreisbach hometown in Wittgenstein?

Yes, and it is celebrating 500+ years of its existence on September 17, 2022. 

There was a time in the 1400’s, when many farms, hamlets and villages in the territory of Wittgenstein were abandoned.   There is no specific information on the cause, though decimation by plague has been proposed.  Among those locations mentioned in 1518 as having become a neglected wilderness were Balde and its neighboring small settlements.

            A turning point in Balde’s case came soon after 1518, as can be seen in a 1521 document preserved in the Berleburg Archive (see endnote).  Here two men, a Herman and a Thonges, appear in the 1521 administrative records in Berleburg (the seat of the counts of northern Wittgenstein) as paying the annual fees connected with the Count’s tracts in Balde on which they lived and farmed. It was this documentation of the ‘rebirth’ of Balde in 1521 that provided the exact point-in-time on which to base a 2021 celebration of the 500 years of Balde’s existence. 

            Then came COVID.  The 500th anniversary came and went, uncelebrated.

           *  *  *

             (And what did the Dreisbachs have to do with all this?  Nothing, actually.) It was not until some eighty years after 1521 that a (Dreisbach) resident of Balde first appeared in a local record.  At that time (1605) most villagers did not use family names.  This future Dreisbach appeared on a Balde list of pig-holders as one “Görg” (Georg) showing that he and his fellow pig-holders had paid the fees allowing their pigs to root in the Count’s forest. This Görg was also referred to as Görg of Balde when, in 1516, his son Johan married a widow and became the new ‘houseman’ of her considerable property in the village of Amtshausen.  Johan seems to have been one of the earliest to adopt or use the family name ‘Dreisbach’ (as did his many descendants, one of whom was the Simon Dreisbach who emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1743).

            It is not known when the house which the Dreisbachs had occupied since probably the 1590’s  had acquired the name Wahnersch.  This name implies that the house was at some period the residence and workshop of a wagon-maker, and that the name had remained attached to the house thereafter. It has been assumed that it was this Görg who lived in the house Wahnersch in about 1600, and that his Dreisbach descendants continued to remain there until near the end of the 18th century.

  *  *  *

 (Back to 2022.)  On August 8, 2022 an e-mail message arrived from the organizer of the 500 Year Balde Celebration.  This village jubilee would now be celebrated this year on Saturday, September 17th.  It would begin in Balde at a chapel near the house Wahnersch where Dreisbachs had been the ‘householders’ for generations between ca. 1600 and ca. 1800.   The 2022 celebration would then move on from the chapel in Balde to a hamlet called Leimstruth (which might be considered a sub-division of Balde). 

            The email message did not expand on the activities involved in the celebration, but it did say that we Dreisbachs would be mentioned there!! (Thus, on Saturday the 17th of September, after awakening, you may wish to reserve a segment of your awareness for the success of the once-in-500-plus-1-year commemorative activities in Balde. It is, after all, a cradle of some significant early Dreisbachs.  And Görg of Balde may well be the ancestor of many who have wandered into this segment of the Wittgenstein Ecke.) 

End-note.

Our Dreisbachs and Dresbachs owe a huge gratitude to the various Wittgenstein researchers who have enriched our knowledge through the years, in particular to Heinrich Imhof, the Wittgenstein expert on emigration from Wittgenstein to North America and also the expert on the contents of the Wittgenstein archives. 

                                                                                    Ardis Grosjean Dreisbach, Stockholm, September 5, 2022

The Wittgenstein Corner (Die Wittgensteiner Ecke) No. 4

 MARTIN DREISBACH’S TWO LIFE-CHANGING DEPARTURES (first in his youth, then as a family man)

  1.)  Martin Dreisbach (1717-1799) had two “home towns”, and he left both of them.  He was born in the village of Raumland in northern Wittgenstein on 24 May 1717, the youngest of nine children.  His mother died while he was a toddler, and there is no known paper trail to help us follow young Martin from his childhood in Raumland to his marriage on 9 November 1742 to Anna Eva Hoffman in Krombach in northern Siegerland (Nassau-Siegen). 

            Among Martin’s numerous Dreisbach/Dresbach descendants in Pennsylvania, Ohio and elsewhere, there have been family historians who were aware of Martin’s marriage in Krombach and the children born there. There was also a family tradition that Martin and Simon Dreisbach were first cousins. (They were, in fact, third cousins.)  In any event, how Martin, a Dreisbach from Wittgenstein, came to marry the well-connected Anna Eva Hoffman in Krombach is perhaps on the way to being explained.  What does seem certain is that it was Martin’s choice to work in Nassau-Siegen (and, it may be, to emigrate to Pennsylvania).

 2.)  In the summer of 2019 Marcia Dreisbach Falconer released the results of her far-ranging research: The Life and Times of Martin Dreisbach (1717-1799).[1]  Here the many aspects of Martin’s long and active life are treated in detail. Marcia has investigated and described in depth what Martin’s early blacksmith (Hammerschmidt) career may have been like, starting with his apprenticeship, most probably in Wittgenstein.  Later, during his journeyman years, he will have furthered his abilities, leading to some form of involvement in the Siegerland iron industry.  Marcia has also suggested certain local connections which can have led to Martin’s being considered a suitable partner for Anna Eva Hoffman of Krombach.    

            It has not been possible to pinpoint the time at which young Martin went to Nassau-Siegen, but the record of his marriage in Krombach indicates that at twenty-five he was prepared to shoulder family responsibilities there. Church records of the baptisms of five children and burials of two of them imply that Martin was now well rooted among the burghers of Krombach. After the long apprentice and journeyman years he now had a more settled existence, having become a resident of his wife’s home town. 

 3.)  Nevertheless, in 1751 when Martin was thirty-four he uprooted himself, his wife and their three young children and left Krombach to travel down the Rhine to Rotterdam and take passage to Philadelphia.  Marcia has connected this with the negative effects of the new and less favorable circumstances at the principal forge that was used by many local Hammerschmidts in that part of Siegerland. 

            In addition Marcia has learned that at least one ship owner in the trans-Atlantic trade also had economic interests in Pennsylvania forges.  He would have the authority to offer somewhat favorable travel conditions in exchange for five or so years of blacksmith work in a Pennsylvania forge.  Direct proof may never be found, but such an arrangement could help explain why Martin was ready to expose his wife and three children, the youngest of which was only five months old,  to the Atlantic crossing and the unknown conditions ahead.

 4.)  Martin had departed for good from Anna Eva’s home town and family, but not from his early career in metalworking.  Marcia Falconer has found no record of Martin’s existence in his first five years in Pennsylvania, but he may well have been working to repay the expenses of the family’s journey.  Then, in 1756, he appears in a tax record for West Cocalico Township in Lancaster County, which may indeed mean that Martin was now running his own life.  From then on Martin’s career in Pennsylvania has many aspects, of which blacksmithing is only one. 

            At this point Martin Dreisbach’s life can be followed in the extant records.  He is shown to be a master of many skills, selling his property after a time and purchasing new land elsewhere.  It is a remarkable story as he moves first eastward to Alsace Township in Berks County, then northward to Buffalo Valley in what is now Union County where life in the 1770’s and 1780’s could be dramatic and dangerous and involve flight back to Alsace Township.       

5.)  Martin Dreisbach’s life in Pennsylvania no longer included the defining notion of a home town.  Here and there a tavern, a few houses and perhaps a church could be found at a crossroads, but the majority of settlers were farmers living separately on their land.

            However, there was in fact an original Dreisbach home town.  Its name was, and is, Balde, and the 500th anniversary celebration of its having appeared in the Wittgenstein records for the first time on September 4, 1521 was scheduled to take place on September 4, 2021.  But the Covid epidemic has put an end to it (at least temporarily).

            The Wittgenstein Corner may have more to say about all that. . .

                                                                                     Ardis Dreisbach Grosjean, September 3, 2021

   [1] Well researched and richly illustrated, this not-for-profit publication was released by Marcia Dreisbach Falconer at the 2019 DDFA Reunion.  It is available by order on line from Lulu.com

 The Wittgenstein Corner  (Die Wittgensteiner Ecke) No. 3

 The Early Dreisbach Emigrants to Pennsylvania and their Home Towns

 1. Simon Dreisbach (1698-1785)

 Simon Dreisbach’s relationship to his home town, Oberndorf, was eclipsed by great pain on a much larger scale.

 Simon Dreisbach was born in 1698 in Oberndorf in southern Wittgenstein. As its name indicates, Oberndorf is a village situated above (ober) or higher than a related village (dorf), which is the nearby Ruppershausen. These two communities have always been closely associated. 

            In 2015, during four days in the month of May, the villages of Ruppershausen and Oberndorf jointly celebrated the 650 documented years of their existence. (Both villages were mentioned for the first time in a document from the year 1365.) It is thus that Simon Dreisbach’s birthplace has joined the many other Wittgenstein villages which have celebrated the anniversary of their considerable age by organizing a Dorfjubiläum.[1]

            Simon Dreisbach was definitely a son of Oberndorf, but only because his father Gurg (Georg Wilhelm) Dreisbach had had no prospects of inheriting the house of his birth in the village of Steinbach. Gurg married Margreth Sassmannshausen of Oberndorf who stood to inherit the house she was born in, and its associated lands. This house was situated on the outskirts of Oberndorf on a gentle rise south of the village. Like all village houses in Wittgenstein it had a name. The hill on which it stood was the Aberg, and the house was known as Am Aberge, meaning (the house) on the Aberg hill. 

            Gurg Dreisbach’s father-in-law Johannes Sassmannshausen was said to be a cooper or barrel-maker in Oberndorf. He was also a master builder of half-timbered houses typical of the region. As time went on there were three generations living in the Am Amberge house, and one wonders if Johannes Sassmannshausen may possibly have added some enlargements to the house.  This we cannot know, however, for a reason to be made clear in a future Ecke. In this house Simon Dreisbach was born, and here he lived with his wife Katarina (Kette) and their children until the night in 1743 when they slipped away and started the long journey to Philadelphia.

            Simon’s career as Hausmann or leaseholder did not begin until about 1729 (after the deaths of his father, his step-father, his maternal grandparents and last of all his mother). This rental arrangement was an agreement between leaseholder and count, renewable every eight years, with conditions of payment which included making various edible contributions to the kitchens of Castle Wittgenstein, and also obligatory manual labor by all the village’s leaseholders. Until 1735 Simon Dreisbach had the life of an ordinary villager who was expected to meet the requirements of the Count, work hard on the lands associated with the house, attend Sunday church services in Feudingen and abide by the rules of the Church and School Ordinances which had a history going back to 1565. And then Simon Dreisbach’s world collapsed.

            In 1735 Simon was imprisoned after having participated in some amateurish local attempts to produce counterfeit coins. Despite mitigating circumstances and false information from a fellow suspect, Simon was condemned to one and a half years of hard labor on a construction site in Castle Wittgenstein. Having asked for and obtained a slightly earlier release from prison for the necessary spring plowing at home, Simon was ordered to ‘reimburse’ the Count for his absence from the castle’s work force. It was also stipulated that he was to make certain other ‘contributions’ to the Count’s coffers for the rest of his life.  It is less than surprising, then, that just six years later Simon and his family fled from their home in Oberndorf to start anew in Pennsylvania.

            Simon Dreisbach’s reputation among his fellow villagers in Oberndorf would have been ‘contaminated’ by his relatively minor illegal actions in which he was almost never alone, and was never the leader. The whole family doubtless lost in local esteem. The two eldest sons were teenagers in 1735-37, and can have been subjected to much unpleasantness when not at home in Am Aberge.  

            Six years after his release from Castle Wittgenstein Simon Dreisbach, then forty-five, took his family to North America. There were now six children in the family, as a daughter, Anna Catherina, had been born a year after Simon’s return. In Pennsylvania’s Northampton County these young Dreisbachs would be able to follow their individual paths without the burden of being known as the sons or daughter of a man who had spent a year and a half in prison.

                                                                                                Ardis Dreisbach Grosjean, 4 July 2021

 For documented accounts of these events in the life of Simon Dreisbach see the DERR articles on this website, in particular DERRs no. 11, 12, 13, and 14.  Thanks to our “distant cousin” Heinrich Imhof of Weidenhausen in Wittgenstein we have photographs of a number of sources of information on Simon and other Dreisbachs.  They are found in holdings WA D 14, WA D 53 and WA P 464 of the Princely Archive of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein in Bad Laasphe.

[1] In a coming Ecke there well be information on a Dorfjubiläum of Dreisbach interest later in 2021.

The Wittgenstein Corner  (Die Wittgensteiner Ecke) No. 2

 MAY 16, 1743: A Day to Note in Dreisbach History

 Why May 16th?  This day is a ‘watershed day’ for the descendants of Simon Dreisbach.  In 1743 on the night of May 15-16, Simon, his wife Kette, their six children aged six to twenty-two, a young woman and various farm animals had successfully made their secret and definitive exit  from Simon’s house on the outskirts of the village of Oberndorf.  Early on the sixteenth they would begin the first stage of their trek: from the small territory of Wittgenstein to the Rhine River and its barges which could take them to the principal port of departure, Rotterdam.  The long journey to Philadelphia had indeed begun.  We would know nothing about the details of this secret event were it not for a written report sent to Count Friedrich in Castle Wittgenstein.  After almost 280 years this report can still be found in the holdings of the Princely Archive in Bad Laasphe.[1]

Who wrote the report?  (Having received a jolt on May 16th.)  In the town of Feudingen, a short distance from little Oberndorf, there lived a man of some local importance named Herman Junck (pronounced Yoongk).  Being the area’s Schultheiss he was, in a sense, the long arm of Count Friedrich.  It was his task to maintain order and to see that fees, contributions in kind and physical duties required by the Count were paid, presented or performed.  On the morning of May 16th Junck received information which jolted him into action: Simon Dreisbach had illegally abandoned the property which the Wittgenstein Counts had leased to his forebears and to him.  Junck’s task was to investigate.

We can assume that by late afternoon Schultheiss Junck was back at his house after a day filled with investigative duties in two villages, as well as the necessary inspection of the abandoned farmhouse.  Count Friedrich who was Simon Dreisbach’s landlord and in effect his liege lord, had to be informed.  The letter which Schultheiss Junck wrote later that day would presumably be delivered to Count Friedrich in Castle Wittgenstein the following morning.[2] 

The text of Schultheiss Junck’s report: I must hereby humbly report that this morning I learned that Simon Dreisbach of Oberndorf this past night fled from his house with his family and all his movable things, taking along a cow and a calf and a horse and two carts, in  sum all that he had, and his eldest son also took along a female servant from Oberndorf who is the daughter of Johannes Wolf of Glasshütte; further, Conrad Wied of Weide who already absconded yesterday in the afternoon from the Hackler house in Oberndorf, leaving the territory with his wife; however he left behind nothing but a chest with clothing, concerning which his mother-in-law refuses to say where he can have left such a chest; and it is probable that the two runaway subjects (of the Count, i.e. Dreisbach and Wied) took the way via Lützel and then through the territory that is governed by Cologne.  This morning I was in Weide and Oberndorf. I have personally inspected such things and closed up the Dreisbach house. Most humbly, Feudingen, the 16th May 1743, Herman Junck Schultheiss of Feudingen.

(Translation by Ardis Dreisbach Grosjean)           

May 16, 1743: The journey begins.  Simon Dreisbach and young Conrad Wied, who had left with his wife earlier on the fifteenth, had surely agreed upon a meeting-place the next day so they could all travel together.  Conrad Wied does indeed appear on the ship’s list of the Lydia  together with the Dreisbachs, and was among those disembarking in Philadelphia.  The young woman taken along by Jost Dreisbach has not been found in Pennsylvania.  (Jost Dreisbach later married his neighbor’s daughter, Elizabeth Dieter.)

Where can Junck’s report of May 16th be found? It is beyond all expectation that this brief report should still exist as part of a voluminous archival holding in the Princely Archive of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein in Bad Laasphe.  Yet there it is, in Herman Junck’s script, one of many documents, proceedings and interrogations in a holding with the following signum and title:   WA D 53 – Dreisbach Simon / dessen Guth betr.e 1743 – (which means:  Dreisbach Simon / concerning his house-and-tracts 1743 to 17--).

Here we can follow deliberations in the Count’s administrative chamber concerning Simon's abandoned property and the need for a contract with a new Hausman, given that a significant part of the Count’s income was dependent on the fees paid into his coffers and the value of various contributions and tasks imposed upon the lease-holders.  Here are also problems with Simon’s two brothers involving inherited pieces of land which had not been regularized with the Count’s administrators.  Such matters were eventually settled, and of course had no significance for Simon in Pennsylvania.

May 16, 2021: Looking forward.         

‘Cousins’ Imhof and Sassmannshausen continue to share their knowledge.  They have supported our efforts to learn about, examine and publish information on the early Dreisbachs, whether in Wittgenstein or in North America.  An on-going example is the DERR (Dreisbach Emigration Research Report) where the individual articles about Simon Dreisbach and his family in Wittgenstein are firmly undergirded  by the archival information which especially Heinrich Imhof has uncovered and graciously supplied to researchers .

On May 16th this year it may be rather early to look forward to the completion of ongoing  projects, but it is a good moment for taking stock and for doing what one can. We might also appropriate a little of Simon Dreisbach’s positive approach to change and his confidence in the coming May 16, and add: whether it be 1743 or 2021.

                                                                        Written by Ardis Grosjean Dreisbach, Stockholm, May 14, 2021  

[1] The Archive is no longer in the castle itself, which is now an international school, but is in a separate building somewhat farther down on the road leading up to the Castle. 

[2] The discovery of this report (and also of many more Dreisbach-related documents) was the result of a chain of email inquiries and responses in 2010 and 2011 between the present author and two distant Wittgenstein ‘cousins’.  They are the knowledgeable Andreas Sassmannshausen and his historian colleague, Heinrich Imhof, the designated ‘Thursday expert’ at the very archive where information on the emigrant Simon Dreisbach was hoping to be found. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION - on this site go to the DERR, Volume 2, “The Night the Dreisbachs Left Wittgenstein”

BELOW: Photo of Schultheiss Junck’s report, photo by Heinrich Imhof.

  The Wittgenstein Corner (Die Wittgensteiner Ecke) No. 1.

 From Widekind to Wittgenstein.  How did the territory of Wittgenstein get its name?  

 The name Wittgenstein goes back to the Middle Ages, possibly to the mid- or late 1100’s.  It is a combination of two words: the masculine name Widekind (pronounced VEE-duh-kint) and the word Stein, a stronghold or fortress. Widekind, was not an unusual name, and was in use at least as early as the eighth century.  We do not know who the early Widekind was whose name was attached to the fortification, but we do know that in 1190 there was a Count Werner of Battenberg who was in control of part of today’s territory of Wittgenstein, including the hilltop fortress which had already acquired the name Wittgenstein.  Werner was the first to call himself Count Werner of Wittgenstein (comes Wernerus de Widechinstein).     

There seems to be no sure date for the construction of the original fortress.  Its placement was strategic, providing an excellent view of the Lahn River wending its way eastward toward Marburg, accompanied by an early east-west roadway of possible military importance. It is not certain when the village of Laasphe came into being.  Situated between the Lahn and the foot of the fortified hill, Laasphe became a walled town of some importance, as seen in the engraving below by Matthäus Merian made about 1650.  

            The Merian engraving also shows that high above Laasphe the former military stronghold had developed into a stately, complex and turreted residence.  What the engraving does not mention is that shortly after 1600 the palace’s principal occupant was the ruler of only half of Wittgenstein.  In the years 1603-1605 the territory had been divided so that three brothers would each have a territory to rule.  One brother received a territory outside Wittgenstein. One received the northern part of Wittgenstein with the town of Berleburg as his seat. This ‘county’ became Wittgenstein-Berleburg. Further south, the eldest of the brothers remained in the traditional family seat, Castle Wittgenstein, from which he governed southern Wittgenstein (officially Wittgenstein-Wittgenstein). 

            View of the walled town of Laasphe on the Lahn River in the (then) County of Southern Wittgenstein, with Castle Wittgenstein on the somewhat stylized hilltop.  Engraving by Matthäus Merian Sr. (1593-1650) or his son Matthäus Jr., who published it in 1655 in Topographia Hassiae, a collection of Hessian engravings.

  The Wittgenstein Corner will have something gripping to say concerning Castle Wittgenstein and the Simon Dreisbach family in the 1730’s.  It will also reveal (in part) how it was that a German photo of Schloss Wittgenstein appeared on every cover-page of the short-lived Dreisbach Family Journal (Vol. 1, October 1913–July 1914, and Vol. II, Oct. 1914–Jan. 1915).