LUBECK, HAMBURG TO BREMEN

Well, we’ve finished the Abraham family towns going back to my great-grandparents. However, our roots have been traced back much farther; to the late early 1600’s in Hamburg and back to the mid-1300’s in other nearby areas.

Now let’s look at the 12th century city of Lubeck and at Hamburg where we visited not only family-related sites in the Altstadt (old town) area, but also some culturally significant sites.  We then drove on to Bremerhaven, stopping at two additional smaller town’s having family connections going back even further. We end this trip leg in Bremen near the North Sea, also a family town and the western end of the famed Grimm Brother’s Fairy Tale Towns that begin near Frankfurt.

LUBECK: HISTORIC WALLED CITY - AUGUST 31^st TO SEPTEMBER 3rd

Aside from Lubecks history and purported charm, we chose it as our home base for its convenience to visiting Hamburg, about an hour away by train. We’ll be in Lubeck for four nights, providing us a day and a half in Lubeck and two full days touring Hamburg. Our hotel is just around the corner from the train station and only a five minute walk to the beautiful Holsten Gate, Lubeck’s most famous landmark and the main entrance to the Aldstadt (old town)(Photo below)).

Lubeck's Holsten Gate...a remnant of the former city wall.

After checking into the hotel, we went immediately to the train station to buy our Hamburg tickets. Buying in advance is so much less stressful! We’re able to confirm schedules and specific train information so our ultimate departure is generally hassle free. Good planning again, as we scheduled 9:12 AM trains to Hamburg for Friday and Saturday.  We also discovered that seniors traveling after 9:00am receive considerable savings; always something new to learn!

Lubeck’s train station is akin to the shopping mall food courts back home; there were several nice clean eating places ranging from a bakery to a café shop to Chinese food. It even had a McDonalds…with a McCafe (for our requisite latte’s, of course) (Photo below).

Lubeck's beautiful train station.

The hotel is quite nice…a couple of interesting quirks. First, the bathroom is actually two “rooms”…a shower and wash basin in one, the toilet in another. A good arrangement yes, but as Jeannie observed about the toilet room, “it adds a whole new meaning to the term water closet”. It seems smaller than an airliner bathroom, so you can imagine the contortions required!! Oh yes…the other quirk, the towels. They feel ever so much like sandpaper!

The Lubeck Aldstadt is an island, once the medieval walled city-state of Lubeck. It is also another UNESCO World Heritage site. You have no doubt noticed our penchant for UNESCO sites; in planning our travels we look specifically for UNESCO sites because they tend to be genuine historic and cultural treasures. Lubeck was no exception!

 

Like so many European cities, Lubeck is quite old, dating back to 1143. In the 14th century Lübeck became the "Queen of the Hanseatic League", by far the largest and most powerful member of this medieval trade organization.

BOMBING OF LUBECK

Lubeck was heavily bombed during WW II and many of its medieval structures destroyed. Sadly, from our perspective, most of the replacement buildings were designed as post-war modern, presenting a stark contrast against its surviving medieval buildings or those restored to their medieval style. A sobering example of a well restored building is the church Sankt Marienkirch (Saint Mary’s). It is the world’s tallest brick stone church, and suffered immense bombing damage in 1942 (Photo below left).

A small brick arch that withstood the bombing remains where it stood (Photo below left). The church bell tower was destroyed in the bombing and as it collapsed, its bells crashed to the floor below (Photo below right). Partially buried in the old church floor and heavily damaged, the bells are a vivid reminder of the horrors of war.

 

Bombed arch preserved in rebuilt church.

Bells remain where they fell in WWII bombing of Lubeck.

“LITTLE DEVIL”

The “Little Devil” statue sits beside Saint Mary’s church. Legend has it that this little guy believed a wine bar was being built, not a church. So he created much mischief during its construction. The legend continues that to placate the “Little Devil” the workman constructed the wine cellar beneath the Rathaus (City Hall) opposite the church. The Rathaus dates from 1226 and is famous for its unusual walls and turrets (Photo below left). Jeannie insisted I pose with the “Little Devil”…wonder what she’s trying to tell me (Photo right)? 

Lubeck's Rathaus (City Hall).

Two "Little Devils"?

WILLY BRANDT HOUSE – THE BERLIN WALL

Another sobering visit was the Willy Brandt House where we relived some of the Cold War history of our 1960’s youth. Brandt grew up in the working class area of Lubeck called Saint Lorenz, and in his memory this educational exhibit was created (Photo illustration below right)

Germany's Willy Brandt

.A lifelong champion of freedom and human rights, Brandt, at great personal risk had openly opposed Hitler’s Nazi regime and escaped into exile in Scandinavia during WW II. Following the war, he returned to a ruined Germany and devoted his life to its unification and peace. Unity was the focal point of his politics, and he rose to the position of German Chancellor.

We were particularly moved by the exhibition regarding the Berlin Wall, constructed by the 184 km long German Democratic Republic (GDR) between 1961 and 1980 (Photo below left). The GDR or East Germany was the officially Communist state established after Germany’s occupation by Allied forces (including the Soviet Union) at the end of WWII. As Germany’s governance was split -up among the Allies, Berlin became a city divided between western and communist governance.

Remnant of the infamous Berlin Wall.

The quality of life differences between the two Berlins led many East Berliners to move to the western side. This led East Berlin leaders to stop the exodus using brutal force and to ultimately construct a physical barrier. The wall was ultimately brought down by hundreds of thousands of GDR citizens that rose up in revolt against their repressive communist government in November 1989.

Although we remember the newscasts of that period describing the wall and the impact on Berlin’s people, seeing and touching a section of the wall and viewing videos of families suddenly separated from one another by this murderous construct, revived those recollections with a profound force.

Willy Brandt was Governing Mayor of Berlin, and later German Chancellor, during construction of the wall. He was greatly distressed by its presence and impact on Berlin’s citizens and Germany as a whole.  With the ultimate removal of the wall by Soviet Premier Gorbachev, Brandt realized his long-time dream of a unification of the two Germany’s before his death in 1992.

SAINT PETRIKIRCHE TOWER

Here was a splendid opportunity for a panoramic view over of Lubeck’s Aldstadt (Old Town). The tower of Saint Peter’s Church rises some 50.5 meters above the city offering unparalleled 360-degree views over this picturesque town with its steep rooftops and millions of red bricks. It was decreed around the 13^th century that all future buildings be constructed of brick, due to a history of fire destroying major parts of the town (Photo below right).

Great views from Saint Petrikirche tower!

We seldom pass a tower without taking up the challenge of climbing to the top. This time lucked was with us; the tower had an elevator…rare for towers of this age. So, we “succumbed” to the convenience, largely because our legs and feet were still adjusting to our daily miles of walking and climbing. The elevator was a welcome break, despite our feelings of guilt! Sure!! From the top we had an amazing overview of Lubeck (Photos below)!

 

 

TAXATION AND ARCHITECTURE

Lubeck’s historic property taxation laws directly impacted the design of new buildings and thus the overall character of the current old city. The law taxed buildings based on their street frontage or building width. This motivated people to build narrow buildings which, in turn resulted in taller, multi-floored buildings being constructed. Lubeck’s Aldstadt is filled with fine examples of these tall and narrow buildings, many housing multiple families (Photos below).

Narrow homes.....

.....meant lower taxes.

HAMBURG – SEPTEMBER 2^nd and 3^rd

It’s now Saturday night and we’ve just completed two fun days in Hamburg. Hamburg is a big city and its main train station is huge and very busy, so the first day it took us about fifteen minutes just to get oriented with the city beyond the train station.

Hamburg is Germany’s second largest city at some 2 million persons, and is a major international port. It boasts of accepting over fifty large ships into its harbor every day, and of having the world’s largest warehouse district. The harbor and warehouse district extends some 25 km along the Elbe River, a wide and deep waterway giving this inland city deep-water access to the North Sea

My family is deeply rooted in Hamburg as well. In the mid 1600’s, my grandparents 10 generations back, Borchart Abraham and Anneke Schmedess married here in Saint Katherine Church in October, 1609. Their son Johann and Katharina Frese, my grandparents 9 generations back, were married in the same church in July, 1632. We were quite disappointed to find Saint Katherine’s Church closed due to major construction, so we were unable to visit the church interior. We were able to get some partial exterior photos, un-obliterated by construction scaffolding (Photos below).

 

Approaching Saint Katherine Church....

....Abraham's married here in the 1600's

The Abraham family connections continue; Johann and Katherina’s son, also Johann, and Margaretha Bockman, we believe married in Hamburg’s Saint Petri Church, his place of baptism, in 1661. Johann and Margaretha were my grandparents 8 generations back. Johann and Margaretha are the parents of a son Mathias who became a lawyer and practiced in Freiderichstadt, the town we had visited back on August 30^th (Photo below left).

Saint Petri Church....family connection

Johann and Margaretha’s son, Franz married Anna Sahra Meier, also in Hamburg. They are my grandparents 7 generations back. Franz Abraham held the position equivalent to Chief of Harbor Police in the early 1700’s. He also became a member of the Admiralitat, one of the most important authorities of the city at that time.

Perhaps the most spectacular of Hamburg’s old churches is St. Michael’s. While touring the church’s crypt, now devoted largely to the churches long history, we discovered it is not the same church as in the 1600’s. Its name and location has remained constant, but a history of fires and ultimately WWII bombing demanded several major reconstructions or replacement (Photos below).

Saint Michaels...a huge and stunning church.

Saint Michaels - a ride up the tower.

We are unaware of any direct connection between the Abraham families in Hamburg and Saint Michaels Church. However, we do have stories from descendants in Germany that the family owned several houses and hotels in the Saint Michaels neighborhood in the 1700’s’. Though the neighborhood has changed dramatically over three centuries, many old homes and hotels from that era still stand. We can only speculate about which, if any, of these old structures were once owned by family. (Photos below)

Abraham's lived in this neighborhood 1700's

HAMBURG’S RATHAUS – CITY HALL

The Rathaus (city hall) is one of Hamburg’s most impressive buildings, a huge Renaissance-style structure dating back to the 1800’s. The enormity and beauty of the Rathaus dominates the Rathausplatz, a huge and popular public gathering place in the heart of Hamburg (Photos below).

Hamburg's very ornate Rathaus and Rathausplatz (right)

SERENDIPITY

Our travels occasionally present us with a serendipitous experience. Here is one of those experiences. We were exiting a side gateway of the Rathaus courtyard when we saw Jane Goodall exiting a police car and being escorted into the courtyard. You may recall the name; Goodall rose to fame for her years of living with and researching the behavior of Chimpanzees in Africa.

Goodall’s life was documented in the movie “Out of Africa”. We had seen Jane Goodall banners in the Rathaus, but as they were in German, we had to depend on our scant interpretation skills. Judging by the banners, it was apparent she was there for an environmental conservation event.

THE BEATLES – THEIR BEGINNING

The Beatles singing group has been memorialized in Hamburg’s Saint Pauli neighborhood with a plaza (Beatlesplatz) and contemporary monument. The group launched their highly successful career at a small bar here in the Saint Pauli neighborhood.

It was August 1960 when the Beatles first performed, unsuccessfully, at the Indra Club on Grosse Freiheit Street (Photo below left). They played here daily for about 8 hours a day and were paid a paltry amount. Determined to make it big, they went on to spend the next two years playing at the Kaiser Keller Beat Basement and the Gross Freiheit 36 club (Photo below right) as well as other clubs along Reeprbahn Street. They persevered and slowly rose locally in popularity until landing a performance on the Ed Sullivan television show. The rest of their career is well known history.

The Beatles first gig was here...the Indra

To visit these historic spots meant about a 30-minute walk from Hamburg’s historic core to the Saint Pauli. The underground METRO was an option; it would have taken directly to the Beatlesplatz station, but we wouldn’t miss the little surprises that walking brings. While much of the walk was delightful, including a lengthy park walk along the path of the old town wall, Saint Pauli was quite the opposite.

The Saint Pauli area has been known throughout much of Hamburg;s history as the City’’s “red light” district. The Entry sign to this “seedy” neighborhood says it all (Photo below left)! Seedy is probably an understatement. The several-block-long Reederbahn Street is lined with off-color night (and day) clubs, sex shops and unappetizing eating and drinking spots, as are the side streets such as Grosse Freiheit (Photo below right).

 

The condition of the nearly new monument to this famous group reflects the run down, un-kempt condition of the Saint Pauli neighborhood (Photo below).

 

Monument to the Beatles - Beatlesplatz

BREMERHAVEN: SEPTEMBER 5^th

Bremerhaven was an intentional brief stay, intended primarily to visit the port the Abraham ancestors emigrated from to America. We spent two nights, so this did provide a bit of extra time to explore other areas around the Emigration Center and harbor.

THE EMIGRATION CENTER MUSEUM

Bremerhaven’s Emigration Center, or Deutsches Auswanderer Haus, is a not-to-miss attraction for anyone whose family members left Germany for life in another country. It is a relatively new and modern museum that commemorates the lives of emigrants (Photos below). Some 44 million European’s immigrated to the New World, primarily the United States and Canada, between 1821 and 1914, of which 5.5 million were German.  Approximately 40 - 50 million U.S. citizens today are of German extraction. Amazing!

Through a variety of mediums, including life-size dioramas, the museum provides the opportunity to walk in the footsteps of a person leaving their family and homeland for a new life in distant and unknown world. The experience begins at dockside, with people waiting to board a huge ship, continues with mock-ups of the on-ship living experiences and ends with arrival at New York’s Ellis Island (Photo below).

Emigrants wait to board a ship to the New World.

We were particularly struck by several things as they might relate to my great-grandparents emigrating in 1873. First, imagine what it must have felt to leave family and homeland behind, knowing you would never return and probably never see family again. Many people apparently turned back when it actually came time to board the ship; they just could not continue.

Then there were the living conditions on board. Unless one travelled first class, very few were able and certainly my great-grandparents probably did not, ship life meant sharing rooms with as many as twelve people you probably didn’t know, sleeping on wooden bunks with straw-filled mattresses, and eating meager meals with little variety. Oh yes, not surprisingly, there were no private baths; sharing was essential 
(Photos below).

Passengers bunked twelve to a room. How to get acquainted!

Maury joins emigrants in the ship's dining hall.

Speaking of shared bathrooms, imagine this. Sea-sickness was a common problem on the small ships of those times, and the crowded conditions certainly made matters worse. We don’t even want to think about the unsanitary condition of the bathrooms considering the number of sea-sick passengers. Most unpleasant thoughts! But, the mere fact people would choose to go despite such conditions suggests they were powerfully motivated.

I’ve wondered what may have motivated my great-grandparents to immigrate to the U.S. Was it poor conditions in their homeland that drove them out, or was it the lure of opportunity in America. We may never know their real reasons, but we’ve learned here at the museum that conditions were not good around the time they left. In fact, the German Empire, formed several years after they left, boomed economically for two years after its formation, before suddenly collapsing. Perhaps my great-grandparents foresaw the coming change and its threat to their security. Or, perhaps they had a pioneering spirit and set out for the known opportunities in America, easy land ownership being foremost.

It was interesting to learn that first class passengers arriving in the U.S. were allowed entry without further processing. Not so for second and third class passengers. These had to go through sometimes lengthy processing lines and had to successfully complete a 25-item questionnaire. If they failed, they were immediately sent back to their homeland; what an emotional disappointment that must have been after such high expectations and a dreadful journey at sea

A TOUCH OF IRONY

A quite ironic thing occurred during our tour. Part of the exhibition includes drawers containing reproductions of original emigration documents. If you slide a drawer open, the document is displayed flat for reading (Photo below). Well, the first drawer Jeannie randomly opened had information about a German woman that immigrated to Richmond, CA (Jeannie’s home town). Even more ironic, the woman listed an address she would be living on the same street Jeannie grew up on and only three blocks away! The woman immigrated in 1960, the year we graduated from high school. It was a pretty surreal experience!

Emigration document of Jeannie's 'neighbor' in 1960

HARBOR WALK

After visiting the Emigration Center we walked to the adjacent harbor area. We walked out to a point of land from which we could view the North Sea and a large memorial sculpture. The skies had been somewhat overcast but were growing darker as we walked. We were drawn by our desire to reach the point yet concerned about the weather. We knew that the dark clouds meant high potential for rain and even an electrical storm (Photos below)

Emigration memorial at the point.

A storm brewing...view from the point to the mall (dome).

But we persevered, arrived at the point, viewed the North Sea, took some quick photos, then retreated for shelter. The rains hit just a few minutes before we reached a nearby indoor shopping center, so we managed to not get drenched, only a little damp. But we do dry quickly and we don’t shrink!

The shopping center turned into another serendipitous discovery; it turned out to be an upscale group of shops in a circular configuration and grouped around a central glass dome. The overall interior them of the mall was Venetian, even including a Venetian gondola and Gondolier sculpture (Photo below).

Refuge from a sudden storm...a 'Venetian" Mall. In Germany?!!

ONWARD

We enjoyed dinner at a nice Mexican restaurant on Bremerhaven’s downtown pedestrian street, then drove back to our hotel (no margarita’s!). Tomorrow morning we’ll depart, first to visit a German Concentration Camp at Bergen-Belsen, followed by what is certain to be a distinct counterpoint, our tour of Germany’s Fairy Tale towns.

Enough for now…until next time.