Travel Tuesday When we took a brief visit to Sibiu (Hermannstadt to the Germans), we marveled at the massive wall surrounding the city, its combination of thirty-nine towers and four bastions a bulwark against invading Ottoman Turks. But while Sibiu defended the [...]
Pia?a Mare, the largest square in Sibiu. Called “Der Grosse Ring”when Lisi, my grandmother, worked here for Mrs. Jickeli Travel Tuesday In two previous Travel Tuesday posts, I wrote about my brothers and my visit to the small museum at the [...]
The pocket watch lay in Box 14 for the past seventeen years—and untold decades prior—in my grandparents’ cedar chest. I had assumed it was my grandfather’s watch, but didn’t know when he had acquired it. Its wide, crisply-numbered face and [...]
Marching Band of Neppendorf – 1925″Neppendörfer Neue Musikkapelle”Michael Gärtz, bottom row, 3rd from left Travel Tuesday When we walked into the small museum at the back of my grandfather’s Lutheran Church in Neppendorf (near Sibiu) and found photos [...]
First page of Josef Gärtz’s diary on right; lower left he wrote “Kronprinz Wilhelm” see detail Even handwritten documentation from our ancestors can lead us astray as we search for the details of their pasts. In my case, [...]