The Kriegsdorf/Voynovice Saga - Emails
Email from James Burns to Camilla Burns July 1, 2000:
Finally found my genealogical notes.
The best date I have for grandma is February 25, 1876.
Her father's name is Josef Agel & her mother Magdalena Heger.
They came to the US through Ellis Island in 1885 with Josef Jr, John, & Amalia. Amalia would be 8 or 9 which was Mom's version.
Josef Jr seems to have been born August 18, 1870.
Email from James Burns to family members, July 14, 1998:
All:
This is a little long, but stick with it.
My theory on Kriegsdorf, like a lot of theories with a beguiling internal logic, just didn't fit the facts and is dead wrong. It was a about as wrong as you could get in German speaking Europe: my Kriegsdorf was in the lower Rhine not far from France; the real Kriegsdorf is in the Moravian hills of the Czech Republic not far from Poland and the Slovakian Republic.
While most of the villages of Kriegsdorf's type are extinct, Kriegsdorf for some reason is still populated with a few dozen people. It is too small to be on anything but highly specialized maps, and you can't even drive there--the best shot involves a three mile hike. All the Germans have been deported and the land has been damaged by 50 years of Communist acid rain. What has made this even more complicated is that it is no longer called Kriegsdorf, but has been renamed Vojnovice.
Josef & Magdalena Agel left Kriegsdorf for America in about 1883. They brought three children with-them, Josef, Johannes, and Amalia who was about eight years old. The salient memory of these children was water: Amalia and the bridge and Johannes spearing fish in a clear clean stream. Amalia was the mother of Gertrude Fetter Burns, and Gertrude was the mother of farmer Francis, and you can figure out the rest from there. Josef & Magdalena has another daughter Carolina over here. There were also some children who did not survive. Carolina, called Lena, married a Rieser, whose son Frank helped break the code on this whole thing.
It seems that Johannes, besides his rural adventures, worked for the railroad. In Columbus in the archives of the railroad there is a very complete description of where John was from which the railroads seem to require. Frank took this to the Mannerchor which he heads and there were those who knew generally where Kriegsdorf was. But they didn't have the resources to know exactly where is was, just somewhere in Moravia near Poland. I took it from there.
For those of you who would like to see the exact spot of their roots, get the largest map of the Czech Republic that you can find. The left two thirds is Bohemia whose capital is Prague, and the right third is Moravia. In Amalia's day, Moravia was divided into two archdiocese--Brno in the south (which is the present capital of Moravia) and Olomouc in the north (which is a thousand years old, has a 16th century Jesuit university, and was the historical capital of Moravia). Brno is Slavic; Olomouc was German. Amalia belonged to the archdiocese of Olomouc, which she knew as Olmutz. Start at Olomouc and draw a diagonal line north east up to about the level of Sternberk. You are looking for two mountains. The first is Cervena (which Amalia knew as Roter Berg--Red Mountain). The second is Krizovy (which Amalia knew as Richters Kreuz Berg--Judge's Cross Mountain). There is a stream that flows down the side of Cervena and flows into the Odra right at the foot of Krizovy. At the exact point where this stream flows into the Odra is the location of Kriegsdorf/Vojnovice. You can see why running water was so indelibly fixed in the memories of these small children--there isn't a whole lot else there.
What nationality were the Agels? No one was German until 1871 when Bismark created Germany out of a passel of German speaking little kingdoms. This was four years before Amalia was born. All were descendants of the Germanic tribes that settled there, all spoke German, and it was Bismark's dream to put all this together into Germany. This he did with a mighty army and brilliant diplomacy. But there was one German population which he could not take, namely Austria, because the Austro-Hungarian Empire was stronger than he was. And the Austrians held onto their two northern provinces of Bohemia and Moravia. In holding onto these provinces, they held onto the German speaking slice across the north of both provinces. The Austrians liked them up there because it put the crazy Slays in the southern reaches of these provinces in a German speaking sandwich. The sympathies of Olmutz was always with Vienna who were German speaking Roman Catholics, and not to Dresden out west who were German speaking Saxon protestants.
There were no Germans before 1871. The mercenaries of the revolutionary war did not see themselves as Germans, but as Hessians who spoke German. George III, who spoke very little English, did not seem himself as German, but as a Hanoverian who spoke German. The Agels really had two choices: to call themselves most accurately German speaking Moravians after the province they had lived in for as long as the Hessians lived in Hesse, or call themselves, less accurately, Austrians, because Moravia was now a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its history includes being Polish, Russian, Bohemian, and Hungarian among others. They chose Austrian because they chose to make their lives in St Mary's Parish which was German speaking. The word Moravian was already used by the folks around Brno who spoke Slavic, and lived in St Ladislaus' Parish. The Agels knew no Slavic because it wasn't used in their part of Moravia. The stretch of Germans across northern Bohemia and Moravia was later to be called Sudentenland, but that was in Hitler's time. Austrian in the sense of the people that run around in leather pants they were not.
The Hapsburgs had every reason to fear the Slavs, because a Bosnian assassinated a Hapsburg, and that started the first World War which ended in the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The provinces of Bohemia and Moravia were added to Slovakia and Czechoslovakia was formed. Kriegsdorf was now a Czechoslovakia village. The Czechs and the Slovaks have since split up, so now it is a village of the Czech Republic.
Hitler had the dream of completing what Bismark was unable to do. In 1937 he annexed Austria. In the infamous 1938 Munich Pact, Chamberlain and Daladier ceded the Sudetenland to Hitler, and this is the first time Kriegsdorf was German. Hitler liked the Sudetenland so much, that in 1939 he took the rest of Czechoslovakia, and the Second World War was on.
Here is when it gets ugly and explains Kriegsdorf of today. After the war, the Allies, to insure that the Germans would never again have an excuse to go into Sudetenland again, deported 3 million German speaking Sudetenlanders back into Germany. So you won't find any Agels in Kriegsdorf now. All the farmers that made a living in the little valleys of what is very much like West Virginia were thrown out. The Czechs were given the land, and all the German names were changed to Czech. Thus Kriegsdorf became Vojnovice.
Then something very communist happened. There is plentiful high sulfur coal in the area and the city of Ostrava became the worst polluter in Europe. Hundreds of soviet style concrete apartments were built around a huge steel complex with no regard for the environment at all. The concrete buildings are etched by 50 years of acid rain. And this rain carried across the foothills where Kriegsdorf nestles. And the irony is that nothing has changed since the wall came down, and Ostrava is still as Ostrava was.
Now be good Communist and decide what to do with the land after the folks who have centuries of understanding it have been deported, and which has no attraction for the Czech because it is being pelted with acid rain. You declare it a People's Recreation Area. And how do you make a People's Recreation Area? Close off all the roads so you have to hike in. This area has fierce winters so it would take very little time before all the roads inside are gone.
Kriegsdorf is a Dorf--a typical European farming village. They farm differently from those around Francy. They clump all the farmhouses together and are surrounded by all the fields. The cattle are brought home at night and kept downstairs. Dorfs are surrounded by the fields the farmers can reasonably get to by walking. The whole thing is a checkerboard of different little plots here and there which are the property of a given farmer. Oslip, where Anna came from, is a typical dorf. As the distances get greater, another dorf will form, and there are a zillion of them.
Heavy transportation in the nineteenth century was horses and wagons, and they don't go over hills and dales very well. So the roads tend to follow valleys and streams. Here is what I think the geographical ambit of the Agels was.
Olmutz is the big city. It had a railroad and the Agels could get a train to Hamburg and a ship to Ellis Island. Olmutz is at the base of the foot hills of the Jeseniky Mountains which are the divide between Moravia and Poland. The Germans called them the Altvatergebirge which literally means old father mountains but is closer to Old Man Mountains in the sense that the Mississippi is Old Man River. They aren't the Swiss Alps, but more like the Appalachians. Going home from Olmuts would be going east to the town of Lipnik. Then turning north and going up into the foothills to the area the Germans called Odergebirge, the Oder Mountains (rt 437 now closed). It is the source of the mighty Oder River which forms the divide between Poland and Germany before it empties into the Baltic Sea. When the Oder goes through Slavic lands, it is called the Odra.
Proceed up this road until you just cross the Odra. Here is Ohlstadtl. This is a little larger than a dorf. This is at the access to the valley Kriegsdorf is in and would have some merchants. But above all it had the Catholic church which was the social center of life in the Odra valley. Ohlstadtl is no longer extant, but the church is still there. I expect it is of stone, and Josef Agel could have been one of the masons who put it together. Amalia was likely baptized here.
Following the Odra north you run into the first dorf--Geppertsau. It is extinct. Then the next dorf on the road is Siegertsau. It is extinct. Then at last you run into Kriegsdorf, which is strangely still inhabited. We are going north up the west side of the Odra. There had to be a bridge at Kreigsdorf to get to the east side for two reasons. Dorfs are put in the center of the lands for easy access. Kriegsdorf is right up against the water on the west side, and there is arable land on the east side. The second reason is that Kriegsdorf is not the énd of the line. There is one more dorf up further on the east side--Rudelzau. It is extinct.
When the Oder is in Moravia or Poland, it is called the Odra. When it comes out of Poland the Germans call it the Oder as in Frankfurt am Oder. But in Kriegsdorf it was called the Oderl. The '1' being a warm diminutive--little Oder. It is only about fifteen miles from its source, and it would tend to be in the Alum Creek class. So now we have a name to the water experience of these children--Oderl. It had a bridge over it in their front yard, and trips to Church would be up and down the Oderl.
They loved this land they held for centuries--the basic reason for immigration is that they had larger families than could be supported on the farms. If you divide a farm among ten kids, ten families would starve. The same problem the Amish are having up in Pennsylvania.
The whole Czech Republic is about two thirds the size of Ohio with the same population. - Distances are not far. Prague is a superb city in the class of Vienna and Budapest. These are the three stars of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In Amadeus it shows Mozart playing off Vienna against Salzburg. Not so. He played off Vienna against Prague. The actual movie was shot in Prague, and Mozart premiered Don Giovanni in Prague, not in Vienna. There is a repertory opera company in Prague that presents Don Giovanni regularly in the original theater which was the one in the movie. He wrote a Prague symphony but no Vienna symphony. Olomouc is considered a hidden treasure in Moravia --especially inexpensive and old. You can drive fr m Prate u t Olomouc in a few hours. If you took at car up beyond Sternberk and cut over to Mesta Libava, you would be within a few miles of Kreigsdorf. You wouldn't have to worry about crowds--no one goes there. Just walk up the road to where the stream crosses Altwasser/Stara Voda and follow the stream down to the Oderl. Keep the Judge's Cross in front of you and Red Mountain behind you.
I have a theory that Kriegsdorf can't die until a descendant visits it. Then again, it might be an office for the park police.
Stuff:
There is a town in Texas that is almost all descended from a town of northern Moravia. They rent the whole town every year and fly over for a Texas size blast. The culture shock must be catastrophic.
Another thought. I think Aunt Helen got here lovely cheek bones the same place Uncle Ed got his--Slavic faces have character. Germans & Slays can't live side by side for centuries without a little crossing of the border.
Would someone make sure Aunt Bernardine gets a copy of this--it is the article she bought to the cabin that started the unrolling of the mystery of Kriegsdorf.
Jim
Email from James Burns to George, July 16, 1998:
George:
I just noticed that in keeping all the Moravian research in the air at one time I got sloppy with our side and called you Frank a couple of times. My apologies.
I think the basic reason that Kriegsdorf exists along with the far southern Waltersdorf is that the Oderl was collectivized by the communists. The dorfs were bulldozed because they stunk of private ownership. But you had to put the workers of the collective somewhere. Waltersdorf is tractor distance from the fields in the south, and Kriegsdorf is tractor distance from the fields in the north. So these were retained. I think farming failed because they didn't have the farmers who understood it along with the dreadful acid rain.
The map I am enclosing is a very important step of the Germans in coming to terms with their past. It was recently made for geneological research by the German descendents of the dispossessed Sudetanlanders. It is the first ever. As far as the Czechs are concerned they never existed. It is a work of monumental scholarship. Finding non-places in a hostile environment takes a lot of patience. The Czechs have reason to supress German data: the Germans have them in World Court and are seeking reparation.
Pat (my wife) is beginning to think in terms of exploring a square in that part of the country next year: Saltzburg to Prague to Kriegsdorf to Vienna. The distances are a pleasant day's drive or less.
Thanks for clearing this up for us. It is something that has bugged me since I was a little boy. Everybody knew where we are from, but nobody could put their finger on a map and say: there it is. Answers always degenerated into a bridge with running water. There is a lot of that going around. I can see why the Wienerstatsbibliotek failed--an Austrian map with all the little collections of farm houses would be like an American map with all the trailer camps on it.
Would you xerox the copy of the data in the railroad log and send it to me. You can't be too sure in this difficult business.
Just who the Agels were only became a problem over here. Over there they were maehrisch, which said it all.
I also got a map for Aunt Bernardine--I guess she is your cousin.
Thanks again.
Jim Burns
6632 Burlington P1 Springfield VA 22152
Email from James Burns to family, undated:
All:
Aunt Bernardine informs me that is was Josef Jr who was the railroad person, and not John. Josef was born in 1880 which made him one year older than Germany. John was a hod carrier of the plaster type. Hate bad data floating around.
Aunt Bernardine also said that Amalia told her that from her kitchen window she could see what we now know to be the Oderl. So if the nineteenth century farmhouses are still extant, check available kitchens for the view. They readily could be extant since the medium of choice was stone. A world without fire departments which put real candles on Christmas trees would lean that way. Josef Sr was a stone mason.
Time moves slowly for children. They never knew plains so the hills would be like the sky just there. But the fascination of running water. Movement, play, change, danger, fish, colored stones, flooding and freezing. Running water became the substance of the early Agel metaphor of memory. This fascinates me.
Bernardine also informs us that when Amalia was young in this country, with very little money, she bought a picture which she could not afford. It was a picture of a ship which she saw as exactly the same as the one which brought her from Hamburg to Ellis Island. Alice got it from Amalia, and Bemardine liberated it from Alice. It is in her apartment now. The ship has sails. Steam trains had been around for decades. So they really got caught in a technology gap-steam trains to a sailing ship.
The name of the actual ship could probably be obtained from the Ellis Island computers.
Jim
Email from James Burns to John Burns, January 15, 2006:
We are talking about the birthplace of Amalia Agel, the mother of Gertrude Fetter Burns. Grandma told us she was Austiran and her home town was Kriegsdorf which she invariably translated as Battle Village. I had been looking for that town off and on for forty years and finally found it. Grandma Agel Fetter was actually an ethnic German of the Moravian Province of the Austro Hungarian Empire. She was born within hiking distance of Poland and Slovakia. Kriegsdorf was in the Sudetanland which Hitler took first from the Czechs After the war the Americans ran all the ethinic Germans back into Germany--so we have no ancestors there now.
It was a tiny farming village. In Europe farmhouses tended to cluster in a village and they went out to their fields.
Grandma often spoke of the stream outside her kitchen window. It was the Oderl (diminutive Oder) which is the source of the Oder river which is the traditional border between Germany and Poland--and the east and the west. Check one of those satellite softwares and see whether you can find it. Trace the Oder River south toward its source over into the Czech Republic where you might be able to find Voynovice which the Czechs renamed Kreigsdorf after the Americans ran the ethnic Germans out. It would be very much like Alum Creek at this juncture,
Camilla visited the church where Grandma was baptized at Kriegsdorf with a great amount of string-pulling because it is a now in a closed military zone. The slavic Czechs destroyed the church because they hated anything German. Camilla brought me back a stone from the ruins. The orginal church had an onion top--they were that far east.