Hearts Turned to Fathers--Our Family History: Barbara Kohn

Monday, August 24, 2015

Our German Ancestors

I've known for sometime where our German ancestors came from and I know where the Heidelberg, Baden area is. But did all of our ancestors come from this area?

I pinned on a map the exact location (thanks to Google maps) where our ancestors came from. (This is so much more accurate then my previous map attempts) I went through each individual line to gather this information. Some of these lines go into the 1400s. It was surprising that most of our ancestors stayed in the same area for many generations and some moved around a bit.

The cluster of stars is the Baden area. This area was also known as Württemberg. Württemberg, once a Duchy within the Holy Roman Empire, in 1806 became the Kingdom with the break-up of empire. This was during the reign of Frederick I of Württemberg. In 1918 it became a republic called the Free People's State of Württemberg.

After World War II, Württemberg was divided between the United States and French occupation zones and became part of two new states: Württemberg-Baden and Württemberg-Hohenzollern. After the Federal Republic of Germany was formed in 1949, these two states merged with Baden in 1952 to become the modern German state of Baden-Württemberg.

Württemberg, shown within the German Empire (1871–1918)

Baden-Württemberg, shown in modern Germany.

I've written about Württemberg before with the Scheef line. This is also the region where our Falkner, Eckert lines come from.

Our Kohn family was a bit more north in Prussia.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Prussia--Kohn Family

Barbara Kohn was born 2 August 1832 in Wallhousen, Kries, Kreuznach, Rhineland, Prussia. She married Gottleib Scheef and they had Anna Augusta Scheef.

This is where the Kohn family came from. According to the family tree on FamilySearch, it appears that this family was in this area for many generations.

I knew that this family was from Prussia and in my mind that meant Eastern Germany and Poland. I studied up on Prussia today and was surprised to see how big it was. This map is showing (in blue) Prussia at it's largest point around 1871.

A small part of our family was from Prussia but the part that is in modern day Western Germany.
Now to figure out that tiny big of Eastern European DNA.

History of Prussia from Wikipedia:

Prussia (German:

Preußen (help·info)) (Polish: Prusy) was a historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg, and centered on the region of Prussia. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organised and effective army. Prussia, with its capital in Königsberg and from 1701 moved to Berlin, shaped the history of Germany. In 1871, German states united in creating the German Empire under Prussian leadership. In November 1918, the monarchies were abolished and the nobility lost its political power during the German Revolution of 1918–19, the Kingdom of Prussia was thus abolished in favour of a republic—the Free State of Prussia, a state of Germany from 1918 until 1933. From 1933, Prussia lost its independence as a result of the Prussian coup, when the Nazi regime was successfully establishing its "Gleichschaltung" laws in pursuit of a unitary state. With the end of the Nazi regime, the division of Germany into allied-occupation zones and the separation of its territories east of the Oder–Neisse line, which were incorporated into Poland and the Soviet Union, the State of Prussia had ceased de facto to exist in 1945.^[2]^[3] De jure Prussia existed until its formal liquidation by the Allied Control Council Enactment No. 46 of 25 February 1947.^[4]

The name Prussia derives from the Old Prussians. In the 13th century, the Teutonic Knights—an organized Catholic medieval military order of German crusaders—conquered the lands inhabited by them. In 1308, the Teutonic Knights conquered the formerly Polish region of Pomerelia with Gdańsk (Danzig). Their monastic statewas mostly Germanised through immigration from central and western Germany and in the south, it was Polonised by settlers from Masovia. The Second Peace of Thorn (1466) split Prussia into the western Royal Prussia, a province of Poland, and the eastern part, from 1525 called the Duchy of Prussia, a fief of the Crown of Poland up to 1657. The union of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia in 1618 led to the proclamation of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701.

Prussia entered the ranks of the great powers shortly after becoming a kingdom,^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8] and exercised most influence in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 18th century it had a major say in many international affairs under the reign of Frederick the Great. During the 19th century, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck united the German principalities into a "Lesser Germany" which excluded the Austrian Empire.

At the Congress of Vienna (1814–15), which redrew the map of Europe following Napoleon's defeat, Prussia acquired a large section of north western Germany, including the coal-rich Ruhr. The country then grew rapidly in influence economically and politically, and became the core of the North German Confederation in 1867, and then of the German Empire in 1871. The Kingdom of Prussia was now so large and so dominant in the new Germany that Junkers and other Prussian élites identified more and more as Germans and less as Prussians.

The Kingdom ended in 1918. In the Weimar Republic the state of Prussia lost nearly all of its legal and political importance following the 1932 coup led by Franz von Papen. East Prussia lost all of its German population after 1945, as Poland and the Soviet Union absorbed its territory and expelled most of its inhabitants.