Category Archives: General

I know I’m tapping into my German heritage on days like today — I’m cleaning. One of my earliest memories is of my grandmother with her bucket, soapy water and soft cloth washing chairs, counters, tight corners, everything within reach. As she cleaned, she often wore an apron and a cap.

I’m not only German–on my mother’s side, I’m Scottish. From the looks of my ancestors on this side of the family, they weren’t neat and tidy types, having a tendency to run barefoot with hair unkempt, allowing things to get really messy before straightening up.

Here are my paternal and maternal grandparents, side by side, prim vs. practical, proper vs. well, pleasant.

I’m driven to clean, and I’m as grumpy as my grandmother Emma when I have to do it. But it’s only temporary. Afterwards, in a clean house, you’ll find me beaming like Grandmother Mary.

The Wiener Schnitzel legacy

My grandmother Emma (center back in the photo) knew Michael Harm. He died when she was around nine years old. Grandmother used to tell me stories about him, how her grandfather suffered from gout at the end of his life, how he’d sit in the kitchen with stiff, swelling joints, her grandmother Elizabeth lining hot cloths along his legs to ease the pain.

My grandmother spent so much time with her grandparents, who still spoke German in their home, that she learned to speak German as a child.

This branch of the family tree, of my father’s maternal lineage, works out to five generations of separation. Michael and Elisabeth Harm (nee Crolly) begat Lucy Harm who begat Emma Hoppensack who begat Clyde Patterson who begat Claire Gebben. You see the first three generations pictured together here.

When growing up, I spent quite a bit of time with my grandmother. Now that I’m writing this thesis, I see those hours in a new light. I keep wondering: What uniquely German traits were passed to my grandmother via her German heritage? What habits? What ethics and ideas? What recipes? Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. The Wiener Schnitzel revelation.

In 1988, I traveled to Europe for a month, which included plans to visit Freinsheim. My work associate at the time had immigrated to the U.S. from Crailsheim in the Schwabian region. As luck would have it, Inge was planning to visit her mother in Crailsheim while I would be traveling in Germany. She invited me to stop in at her mother’s home. “She’ll make her Wiener Schnitzel for you,” my co-worker said. “It’s really great.”

I readily agreed, saying I’d never tried it before. So one evening in May of 1988, during my travels between Berlin and Freinsheim, I found myself sitting in the kitchen of my co-worker’s mother in Crailsheim, watching her put the finishing touches on her signature dish. At that moment, it dawned on me I’d been eating Wiener Schnitzel my whole life. I just knew it by different name: Pork Chops. My grandmother had instructed me, step by step, with great seriousness, on how to prepare what I now understand was an old German family recipe.

Harm family Wiener Schnitzel

4 pork chops (1/2-inch thick slices, bone in is best)

1/4-cup flour

salt and pepper to taste

1/2-1 onion, sliced in rings

1 T. butter or margarine

Toss the 1/4-cup flour with the salt and pepper on a plate and dredge each pork chop in the flour until all sides are completely coated.

Melt the tablespoon of butter or margarine on med-high heat in a fry pan (large enough to hold four pork chops at once). Add the sliced onion, brown for 2-3 minutes. When onions are getting soft, push them to the sides and put the flour-coated pork chops in the bottom of the pan. (Add more butter if the fry pan is too dry.) Brown the pork chops on med-high heat for 5 minutes per side. When the second side is good and brown, add enough water to the pan so that it barely comes to the top edge of the pork chops. Bring the water to a boil, cover the pan, and lower the heat to simmer for at least 30 minutes. When pork chops are tender, remove to a platter and serve with the onion gravy on the side. (Goes great with mashed potatoes!)

Serves 4.

We’re pondering these good folks at the moment, my greatgreatgreat grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Adam Crolly. Don’t they look lost in the photo annals of time? They had two daughters, Mary and Elisabeth.

Elisabeth is my greatgreatgrandmother.

Letter from Cleveland, Ohio, 1847, Johannes Rapparlie:

With great joy I pick up the pen to let you know about our matters like all of us are here amongst each other in Cleveland. We have already waited for two to three years for a letter from you since my brother has left from home as we have already written two letters to you and not yet received answer. Therefore, we thought you didn’t want to write us answer but when my sister came from Germany she was insulted because you hadn’t gotten any answer from us.

Email from Freinsheim, Germany, 2009, Angela Weber:

i asked my mother to please send me the letters from Freinsheim and the little package didn’t arrive for some days now… i will ask at the post office tomorrow, maybe because of our new address???
[then a month later] What has happened, the box with the letters had been lost in the German mail and only arrived last week after we had initiated search and everything. The outside paper was ripped off and the parcel could luckily be identified because of the contents. We waited for 4 weeks and called here and there, the mail recently has a bad reputation with reliability. I suspected they want to force people into using the more expensive services with insurance attached. I also suspected theft because of the value of the old stamps, and it was the horror, to think that way. Well, everything good now, but I am really hesitant to send the letters again.

Letters lost and found. Like history. Some say we should only look forward, but we aren’t the first, nor will we be the last …

So my working title is “Wrought Iron.” I’m told it might be best if I come up with another one. Maybe so, maybe so.

I’m currently reading the book What God Hath Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford History of the United States) by Daniel Walker Howe. Here’s an applicable quote (p. 530):

In Europe, people had fled to the cities for generations; the German aphorism Stadtluft macht frei (“city air makes one free”) referred to more than freedom from feudal dues. Young American and their immigrant counterparts voted with their feet against staying on their fathers’ farms. … Together, urban places and the western areas opened up to markets by waterways received adventuresome souls fleeing the backbreaking toil, the patriarchal authority, and the stultifying isolation of semi-subsistence farming.

“Markets by waterways” — one such key location was Lake Erie at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, aka Cleveland, Ohio. I’m amazed how perfectly my greatgreatgrandfather fits this description of adventuresome souls fleeing backbreaking toil. Howe’s book even has a black-and-white plate of a blacksmith of the time period wearing a rawhide apron. From farmer to blacksmith — hmm not exactly an escape from backbreaking toil — perhaps the city air didn’t quite live up to that old German aphorism?

I just heard from my cousin that he is traveling with his girlfriend to America, to visit family in Omaha and afterwards, to visit us in Seattle in April.

My cousin and I are very distantly related. I have only met his sister, who has helped me so much in translating our family letters from the 1800’s, the same letters that are the basis for my thesis project. Angela and I worked together to translate the letters from Gothic German to German, then to English. She did most of the work, I did most of the typing.

The three of us share DNA with K. Elisabeth Handrich (d. 1864) and John Philipp Harm (d. 1872) of Freinsheim, a small town in the Rhineland-Palatinate near the Haardt Nature Park. In the mid-nineteenth century, John Harm and his wife Elisabeth had three children: Philipp, Michael, and Susanne. My German cousins are descendants of Philipp, who stayed in Freinsheim. I am a descendant of Michael, who left to come to Cleveland, Ohio when he was just 16 years old.

When I meet my cousin, you can be sure I’ll be looking for a family resemblance!