Kurt of Gerolstein

It took many years for me to become interested in my forefathers, and in any possible living descendants therefrom.

My parents didn't seem to know, or want to know, or want me to know, much about that sort of thing. Their were very, very few jolly tales from the family past. And father told an inquiring little me, brusquely, of my Austrian family, 'all dead'.

First coat of whitewash. And, I think, the only time I ever heard Fred (ex-Fritz) tell a blunt lie. Of course, I didn't know it was a lie at the time, I just accepted it.

Fred's dissembling did have a sort of a reason. When he left Austria via Bishop Stortford, for New Zealand -- as far away from Vienna as possible -- in 1939, he seemingly intended never to return. One of the reasons for this can be seen on his immigration document. Where he had filled in his nationality as 'German', an official had scrubbed that out and replaced it with 'Hebrew'. Gánsl. Yes, well it would be. I have Fritz's birth certificate, where he has seemingly angrily obliterated the name Ganzl, and replaced it with 'Gallas'. When a cousin was wed, later that year, he signed the witness's box 'Fritz Gallas'. Ganzl was to be forgotten ... until I started nosing around. And here is the official document ... the name change had been instituted as early as 1933. Why? And Jewish father Pepi was 'konfessionlos'. He had withdrawn from the Jewish religion ... What had happened?

Where does 'Gallas' come from?, I inquired. 'Another family name'. More whitewash. When I, many years later, visited Vienna on business, I walked past the Palais Gallas, on my way to the Volksoper. Admiral Gallas. Dad? 'Not that one'. In other words, 'forget it'.

I sometime wonder how much of all this my mother knew. Of course, there were the old photo albums. Mostly mountains. And the diaries. In antique cursive German. And, eventually, Rudi, Fred's mother ... who -- to mother's despair -- spoke to him in German, until her English improved ... came to New Zealand. She called herself Rudi Ganzl-Gallas at the time.

When Fred retired, in the 1960s, my parents took a long trip round the world. Nancy -- who had never been outside New Zealand -- had to fight (which she very rarely did!) to get Vienna included on the itinerary. I never heard much about the visit. I think they may have met up with Dad's school chum, Maria ... but family? No. 'All dead'. NOT SO.

Here is, perhaps, the place to say that when, a decade ago, I finally filled in a rainy week researching such family details as could be had, gratis, on the internet and composing a Family Tree on geni, my years of genealogical experience produced a pretty fair result. The Jewish side (ie father's father) clicked into place beautifully. The Scottish side (ie mother's parents) harboured the odd strayed to foriegn-parts husband, but otherwise was without problems. I'm still happy with those. Then there was Nana Ganzl's family. And, there, I committed the genealogist's cardinal sin. 'If it don't fit, squeeze it, ignore contrary and contemporary evidence, pummel it until it DOES fit'. 95% of the time, it will be wrong. I was.

My error in delving into my roots was not helped by our favourite bit of contemporary evidence, a C19th Stammbaum, apparently drawn by Nana Rudi's father when he was a youngster. That is a guess! But dates later than 1877 have been added in modern pen.

Well, it has taken me decades -- between times -- to get this thing sorted out. It's simple, when you know the facts, the answers, but ... it was so easy to go wrong.

Here goes.

Josef STOJETZ or STOGETZ is the unnamed paterfamilas at the head of this tree. He wasn't born a Viennese, but in the town of Miletitz in Bohemia (now part of Czechoslovakia) on 17 December 1817.

Miletice (sic) two centuries later. Small?

His father was one Georg Stojetz (or, occasionally, Stogetz) 'chalupener' (Chriz Zwarg tells me that is a kind of small tenant farmer), and his mother Susanna née Sasama. Of whom I, so far, know nothing more. He was, according to couple of wee mentions in the Vienna press, a sämmtliche Schlosser, ie a general locksmith. Latterly at the Nationalbank.

He was also decidedly uxorious. I finally sussed out that the duplicate 'Mütter's on the Stammbaum didn't mean that all these children had two mothers. Josef just had two wives. In succession.

His first wife was Margarethe née Böhm, listed as from Alserdorf, but actually born, also, it appears, in Bohemian parts, 4 November 1829, of father [Georg] Adam Böhm 'former farm owner' and mother Barbara née Härtl. The couple were married 30 January 1853, at Alserdorf, when she was 23 years of age

Mararethe had nine children. before her death 8 November 1865, aged 36, from tuberculosis of the lungs. Alas, as you can see from the Stammbaum, only two babies survived infancy -- Franz Josef and Eduard -- and Franz died, at the family's longtime home at Florianigasse 46, at the age of 19, also of tuberculosis.

Barbara

Ernestine

Marie

Aloisa

Adolph Eduard

EDUARD JOSEF

Franz Josef

Ludwig

Josef

But there are two more children on the Stammbaum. And need, here, for just a dab of whitewash.

Josef was evidently still feeling uxorious. He got a 36 year-old lady named Theresia Feigl (b 23 October 1829; d Vienna 20 December 1918) in foal, but married her before the birth of their first child.

*I note a marriage witness was one Josef Sazama .. unusual name, that ..

Theresia was the daughter of one Johann Feigl and his wife difficultly decipherable as Theresia ?Schierxl. She obliged with two more children

Hermine

Karl Josef

And here the Stammbaum led me awry. Hermine survived. Nana's great aunt. Referred to in family papers as Hermine Hecher. MEA CULPA. I 'assumed' (NEVER assume) that Hermine was a child of a previous marriage of Mrs Stojetz Mark II. But she wasn't. She was the really truly, if rather too quickly, daughter of great-great-grandfather Joe! It was all there .. but the paper and the say so didn't tally ... and I took the easy option. Fool!

So who, then, was the Max Hecher who features so prominently in the Ganzl family story. Her brother? Impossible. A cousin? ... well, the evidence was staring down my blouse. That rather plain lady in the family photos, who, I had ASSUMED, was a maiden aunt? 'Maiden' my menopause!!! The handsome, clever, artistic Max Josef HECHER was Hermine's husband (1899). And they had a daughter, Hermine Maria (1 September 1900).

In the photo album (pictures coming) Hermine features. So does Max ... and so does a child, about ten-years older than my young Dad. She is captioned as Mizzi. I am in no doubt, as from this week!, that that this child is the 1900 Hermine Maria Hecher.

Three Hechers, 2 Ganzls, 1 Stojetz: Max, Hermine and Mizzi; Fritz and Rudi, Marie ..

ggMother Marie with her brotherinlaw, Max

Father witnessed Mizzi's 1936 marriage to the widowed Herr Johann Franz Lohner ... and Frau Lohner was well and truly alive at the time of my visits to Vienna in the 1980s et al. And Fred and Nancy's, too. She lived to the age of 94 (d 4 March 1995). 'All dead'? Why was great-aunt Mizzi whitewashed out?

My Father witnesses Mizzi's marriage

* note the address of Hans Lohner. The Hecher home.

Mütter Theresia and her daughter and son-in-law lie alongside one another in Vienna's Simmeringer Hauptstrasse Friedhof. I wish I had known. I hope it's not the unmarked grave ... I've had enough of those in the family already ..

Perhaps there was no whitewash left. Hermine's brother Eduard had needed it a little more than she.

Eduard married only once. Because he got it so, so right. I just have to look at the photos of Marie née Baumgärtner to say 'that is a darlin' lady'. Dad even softened enough, on one occasion, to tell young me that his grandmother was warm, loving, kind and wise ( 'jovial, rather stout ... over a cup of coffee and some freshly-made Gugelhupf woul dispense more wisdom than a library of books'). Her photo is on my desk to this day.

But in 1898, this was she:

Father wrote in his later days 'my maternal grandmother came from Switzerland (Engadin and Kierwaldstätter See) but for some reason, probably early death of her parents, she was brought up by a Mrs Tesar, referred to as 'Aunt Tesar', although I don't think she was related..'. Switzerland? Errrrrr... wot? A little more whitewash? Her wedding registration says otherwise. As we shall see, Marie was, simply, illegitimate.

Alas, she was long dead before I was born. Naturally, Eduard doesn't seem to have evoked quite such a loving response from the little boy ... he looks nice, though .. and sporty ... Perhaps it was the politics. Or, perhaps, little boys prefer their mothers! But they remained decidely close till the end of Großvater's life.

Eduard's story I have yet to work on. Fred's stories ('I remember his telling me stories of his wanderings') don't quite tally. But, once he finished his locksmith (naturally) apprenticeship, and did a bit of wooffering, he came come, married, and he and Marie ran a shop ('carpets, horsecovers ...') in Floridsdorf (in Marie's name, I can only guess why). Latterly he worked in the savings bank.

Marie's shop, decorated for the accession of Franz Josef

But his 'fame' did not come from his day job. The centre of his life, outside the family, was elsewhere. 'Genosse' Stojetz was a pillar of the Viennese tramping, climbing, skiing and left wing political scene ... which is a whole article or three in itself. Some of which I have already written. And others of his family followed him to the mountains and (some) to the left.

Rewind.

Eduard, himself, is no 'technical' genealogical puzzle. It is the lovely Marie. And here, again, I, originally, erred. I assumed? I mis-read ... I know, now, that I wasn't far off the truth, but I was wrong. And I hav'n't got it quite sorted out yet.

I have Eduard and Marie's marriage announcement. She is billed as Marie Baumgärtner-Tesar. She was brought up, not by her parents, but by one Adalbert Tesar. Why? Why did her parents give her away? Answer: because there was only one admitted parent. I had read the marriage register inscription to read 'daughter of Jozsef Baumgärtner'. That little squiggle at the end? It's a sütterlinnish 'a'. She was the illegitimate daughter of Jozsefa Baumgärtner, does that say 'widow'??????

Well, I guess it didn't matter. Half the children born in the parish of Alserstadt around this time seemed to be 'unehelich' of parentage ... but the fact was whitewashed out of our official family history. Even though the Baumgärtner family wasn't!

Eduard and Marie had two daughters, Rudi and Minna,

The Stojetz family and friends at the opening of the Naturfreundhaus am Padasterjoch (12 August 1907)

Eduard and his girls (Minna, Marie and Rudi) at another

Rudi and Minna with .. whose children? (September 1904)

Rudi (extreme left) and ?Minna ...

It has just dawned on me. In spite of the uxorious activities of the nineteenth-century Stojetz family there are, in 2025, only two surviving direct line descendants of gggrandfather Josef the locksmith. Unless Hermine Lohner bred. Which is unlikely. And unless cousin Minna's only child, Tom Stern's daughter married. Those two are two grandsons of Eduard and Marie, via their daughter Rudolfine.

John Gallas (75) and Kurt Friedrich Gänzl (79). Yes, both happily married ... to men. So, no whitewash needed in 2025 ...

OK. This little article is for the Stojetz family. So I don't go on, here, to the Stojetz girls' husbands and families. That's for another time.

I'll get back into the photo albums tomorrow and see what's there ....

OK what's this? 1908. Place settings for a dinner party. On 10 October? Well, it's not Rudi's birthday. Or Minna's. Nor Müter's, nor Vater's. Nor Pepi Ganzl's.

1908? Fritz? Pepi's younger brother? (yes, he is referred to in the diaries as 'Onkel Fritz') Beppo? Errrr.... one Josef too many? The diary doesn't begin till 1911. I do spy a floating Onkel Josef. WHOSE Onkel? Bit stumped here.

More photos of the girls ... mostly Rudi ... mostly of when she lost her 'baby fat' and became a very lovely young woman (see above). Lots of photos of Pepi. I never realised quite how attractive he was as a young man.

O! Mein [Groß] papa ... I believe that hat may have survived to rest on my New Zealand head ... do I still have those badges ..? I'll look tomorrow.

Here are Eduard and Marie , with their two daughters and baby Fritzl in 1913 ...

Lawks, there are hundred and hundreds of photos in the first bag. 1913 to 1939. Beautiful photos. But -- typical of the Stojetz/Ganzl families -- the mountains and valleys and tramps, skifields are other 'spots' are all carefully named, but the people ...? Nope. My mother and her biro have had a go at some. Mother, dear, we KNOW which are photos of dad, his parents, of Minna and Richard and their little Tom. I've now sussed Hermine, Max and Mizzi. It's the OTHER folk ...

Bag 2. A bundle of photos from 1939. Passau, Cambridge, Bishop's Stortford, and then the trip to New Zealand. Fidgi! Those are for later. 1937 .. trips to Egypt, Dubrovnik, Greece .. etc ...

Bag 3 looks older. Here's a good one of Eduard taken in 1905 ...

Eduard Stojetz (1905)

Here is the only photo I have found so far of Mütter Theresia. It is labelled 'Die ganze Familie am Nussberg' and dated May 1915.

Marie at the top. Hermine looking busty, her mother, Theresia who was now in her eighties, next row Richard Stern .. oh, or is it Max Hecher? .. and Rudi, next row Minna and little Fritz, then Pepi looking at the ground and Eduard gazing into the future.

Where's Mizzi?

I have a few photos of this house and farmlet on the Danube. I don't know when (and how) Eduard bought it, and how long the family had it. Quite a while, I think. I remember in the 1950s, when there was a policy of repatriation of property taken over by the Nazis, father got some sort of communication from the Austrian government asking him to reclaim what I understood to be 'the farm in Styria'. He could have asked me! I would have snapped it up. But, in his forever mindset of Denial of the past, Fred tore the letter up ..

This one seems to be a year or two later. It is labelled 'Kartoffelnbau'. Yes, they grew potatoes through the war ... and all the family lent a hand to hoe ...

This one is dated:

Oh dear, I've wandered terribly. I had better stick to the 19th century.

Last box. A lovely little velvet and gilt autograph book, in its original box. A gift to Rudi at Christmas 1894. Eduard has signed the first page "Sei immer gut ..."

Marie, naturally, has page two ....

Then comes ... no, no grandmother Theresia ... she's page four .

Page 3 is devoted to 'Tante Hanni'. Who? Hang on. Rudi doesn't HAVE a Tante. Well, Hermine, I suppose is a half-Tante. A grand-Tante then? Hanni is surely not a nickname for Hermine? Our other family Hermines are 'Minna' and 'Mizzi'. Johanna ...? Johanna who?

A Baumgärtner? Could it be ... no, I'm not assuming ... Mrs Tesar ... no. That hand is rather too steady ... well, one can dream. Let's see if Tante Hanni turns up in the semi-readable diaries ...

Who else? Apart from the Messrs Skriwanek, none tinkle. But Rudi used the little book for pressing an edelweiss

The diaries. I hav'n't enough years left to me. It's a double-translation job. First the script, which, at the moment, is as dense to me as Linear B or Greek (no, Greek is miles easier!). Then having penetrated the calligraphy, I have to translate the 110 year-old German ... I should have done this decades ago, when my eyesight was better, and my wits sharper ...

I see references to great-grandmother ('ugroßmutter') -- 'for Christmas 1911, she gave Fritzl 'a practical plate -- keeping the food warm by a hot-water jacket' --, and the Stojetz grandparents 'in Floridsdorf' (the Ganzls are, of course, dead) who look after the baby, while parents have a few days respite in the mountains. There is many a mention of Minna, and a friend 'Englinger' ... and 'Professor Adler' in Hinterholz in Kinderstetten ..

I wrote a little about him eight years ago, during an earlier attempt at decipherment ..

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2017/03/hero-or-murderer-or-which-adler-were-you.html

Oh help! Who is Tante Gusti (Xmas 1912). I am becoming convinced that these Tantes are honorary!

And what is this Onkel ...? Minna, Mutter, grandparents and who? Uncle "Missi"? I say, they get around!

OK. I think I may say this is a first episode ...

Read this, who will ...

I'll continue wandering through the diaries, picking out the proper nouns and the addresses and names ...oh heck! who is 'Onkel' Rudolf in 1889? And what went on at 10 Laudongasse, where Eduard apparently worked .. yes! Document to be deciphered!