Our Trip to Germany	August 1997: By Leslie Barbara-Lederer Bohm Edited by Helen Lucille Hostetter Lederer
Getting ready	My husband David works for IBM as a computer programmer. His company often sends him out of town to teach other employees how to solve problems. He is usually sent to San Jose or Dallas to teach. He also teaches occasional classes here in Tucson. When we heard he was being sent to Germany for two weeks to teach a multi- national class, I asked my two bosses at the Post Office for time off without pay (I didn't have any vacation coming). They were very generous to give me the time off. So the three of us: David, daughter Linda, and I began getting ready to go to Germany.
	How different our trip will be from that of my great-grandfather Charles Gottlieb Lederer. He left Geradstetten in February 1855. His family took a wagon and then a train to get to Paris where the boat left Europe. The boat took 49 days to cross. Our flight will take about 14 hours. We'll stay in Mainz for two weeks while David teaches his colleagues classes for IBM.
	What a wonderful coincidence that our daughter Linda, age four, is the same age my great-grandfather Charles was on his journey 142 years ago. For most families, that would span more than the five generations from Charles Gottlieb Lederer to Linda Ruth Bohm. Charles was 38 when my Grampa George was born. Grampa was 30 when my dad, Les, was born. Dad was 38 when I was born and I was 36 when Linda was born. So our branch of the tree "stretches" the generations. Other families would average seven generations.
Saturday, September 6, 1997--Back to My Roots	On a cloudy day David and Linda and I left Mainz at about 9:00 A.M. We drove some 320 miles to Geradstetten. On the way we took time for a short detour to Heidelberg, driving up and down streets in the main part of town; all the shops were closed.
	We arrived in Geradstetten about noon or 1:00 P.M. We're glad we had that photocopy of the picture Marc and Marsha LaDue had taken of the house in 1992, and that we leaned how to say "Wo es dieses haus?" (Where is this house?) We asked four people before we found it. The first two didn't recognize the house, the third did and sent us in the right direction, and the fourth sent us around the corner.
	And there it was, the house of my ancestors.
We Meet the Kallenborns	I knocked on the front door and Stephan Kallenborn opened it. We asked for Gabi, whom Marc and Marsha met in 1992. Stephan said she was out shopping and would be home in half an hour. He seemed puzzled and cautious but invited us to come in and wait. We tried to explain who we were as Princess Diana's funeral played out on television. He asked if we were the Americans who came in 1992. We said no. Soon Gabi came and we explained again who we were, second cousins to Marc and Marsha. She was glad to see us. We were delighted she could speak English so well. Linda gave her some flowers we bought at an outdoor market in Mainz. I gave her a ceramic plate with the Lederer coat-of-arms on it. I'd had it specially made for the occasion. Gabi has three children: Diana, about 16; a son Dennis, about 12 or 14; and a daughter, Varena, about 9. Gabi works part-time at a Ford dealership, in accounting.
Gabi and Stephan's Family	Gabi was interested in our lives, housing, jobs, and child; specifically and the United States in general. It's hard to generalize about the whole country. We felt like American ambassadors. Gabi thought Linda was six, not four, because of her language and social skills. Varena hasn't had any English in school yet. She seemed to feel left out and imposed upon and probably resented her mother's time away from her that Saturday afternoon. Dennis brought over a friend to see the Americans. They were excited about meeting Americans. The oldest daughter was staying overnight at a friend's house and we didn't meet her. We gave Dennis a crisp dollar bill and both Dennis and Varena some American candy we happened to have with us. They enjoyed that very much.
The House	I videotaped her as she gave us a 30-minute tour of the house. She talked about the construction of the house and some of its history. She said it's about 300 to 350 years old, not 550 years old. I was a little disappointed to learn it's not as old as we thought. She said she would send a photocopy of a paper from their historical society confirming the age of the house. The house is protected the way a Historical Monument is protected in the United States. She's not allowed to make any major changes like putting up aluminum siding.
	Many of the old houses were not left standing because they were built with ceilings only six or seven feet from the floor, too low for people today. The ceilings in the house of our ancestors are eight to ten feet high. Only the very rich could afford to build such luxurious, spacious houses. The beams running the length of the house are eighteen to twenty-four inches square.
	The house was built in 1620 or 1630, about the time of the thirty-year war. That is evident from the bricked-in cubbyhole in the wine cellar that they used as a secret compartment to hide food from soldiers passing through town looking to take food from the inhabitants.
	The wine cellar was used for food storage as well as for wine. The room is dark with dark stone walls. The part of the cellar not used by the Kallenborns (the 40% of the basement belonging to the other part owner) is partially boarded up. On the far, unused side are at least four large, dusty wine barrels, about three feet in diameter and four to five feet long. Gabi said that the wine in the barrels was good only for schnapps.
The rooms intended for livestock.	The rooms on the ground floor were originally used for the animals, one room for the chickens, one for pigs, one for cows, and a room for preparing the cows' food. The rooms above were the living quarters--a kitchen, pantry, and bedrooms. The chicken room is now a studio apartment--a good place, Gabi said, for visitors who might stay a long time. The cow room is now a garage-workshop. The pig room has some old furniture stored in it. A one-car garage has been added to the front part of the house.
	Gabi took me to the former pig room. She has a china cabinet there. Her husband doesn't like the cabinet. He says it's too old fashioned. She took some china teacups out of the top and said that the last officially related Lederer, an elderly woman who lived there just before Gabi, gave her the cups, saucers, and matching plates (her name is on the family tree. I'll have to get an enlargement made of the slide and see what her name is). The woman died about 10-12 years ago. Gabi said she hasn't even told her sister about the cups. She asked me if I would like one. I said I couldn't take one, she should keep them all. But my eyes grew wide when I saw them. My refusals grew weaker the longer I looked at them. We found a set with some nice flowers in them. Now the set is here in Tucson in my china cabinet beside the teacups my mom gave me from the 1950s, and a couple salt and pepper shakers from Gramma Ella's collection.
The main part of the house.	The house has a very nice entryway. A wide hall leads from the stone front stairs to the small back garden. The first floor has a large living room, a large master bedroom, a small kitchen and dining room combination, a large kid's room, and two other rooms, one of which has the only toilet and sink and medicine cabinet, and the other has the bathtub and laundry. The kitchen has the original tile from the middle ages, a checkerboard pattern.
	Up the stairs are two more bedrooms. Only one was used in middle ages, probably for a maid. Now the two older kids have rooms there, Diana in the former maid's room, Dennis in the other.
	The stairs to the attic are the original stairs from the middle ages. The attic (which the Kallenborns use as an attic) was used for food storage. Gabi offered me an ox yoke they have stored there. I said that wouldn't fit in our suitcases. Then she showed me some old flour sacks from some early Lederer occupants. They are about five by two and a half feet. Some had just "KL" and a date on them. Gabi gave me one of them. I tried to refuse, but she insisted. It says, "Karl Lederer 1903 un Geradstetten." In between Karl Lederer 1903 and un Geradstetten is written something else. It means son of Johann Lederer. On the back is "KL" and the symbol of the town of Geradstetten which I'll have to photocopy too. These flour sacks were the finest quality linen and only the richest people had them. They would be given as gifts on special occasions and weddings.
	We were unable to visit the cornerstone of the town, the large, impressive Lutheran Church. The man who had the key was unavailable.
We Meet Mr. and Mrs. Heinz Lederer	Three Lederer brothers founded the town. All the Lederers in the area are descendants of those three, as is our branch of American Lederers. We walked a hundred yards or so uphill to see some other Lederers. Heinz and his wife (I didn't get her name). They appear to be in their early 70s, maybe late 60s. Both are Lederers, related, but very distantly. Heinz isn't that interested in the family tree, but his wife is. She unrolled a copy of a family tree. Only the first few names looked familiar, Simon Lederer at 1609. I'd forgot to pack the really old Lederer history about the family before they moved to America. So I looked and looked for Gottlieb Lederer and Karl Gottlieb Lederer's names. I remembered that Karl (Charles) Gottlieb Lederer was born in 1850 and left in 1855. That's all I remembered besides the fact that Simon Lederer was born in 1609. I saw many Karls, all with the wrong dates and wives.
	So I started to get worried and embarrassed that we had the wrong information or the wrong Lederers. But Heinz's wife looked for and found some papers that Bud & Dorothy had sent them in 1992. Then it became clear. "Our" Karl's grandfather is listed, but he and his father, Gottlieb, are not. I asked Gabi to send a photocopy of their family tree to me. As insurance, I took a couple pictures of it. Mrs. Lederer showed me what part of the tree she was from, and where her husband Heinz was from. They are both our relatives.
	When people from the church were copying birth and death dates of all the Lederers for the man doing this tree, they commented that they were glad that the church burned in the late 16th century, otherwise there would be no end to the family tree.
	Gabi's part of the family tree isn't listed because one of her grandfathers or great- grandfathers had an illegitimate child with a woman he never married. The child and her descendants, didn't have the Lederer name or status.
	Mrs. Lederer brought out an old ink and water color painting, about 2' x 3'. On it was a coat-of-arms which was very different from the two men with mallets. I was shocked at the difference. She said that this coat-of-arms was handed down generation to generation by her family.
Lederers as Burgermeisters and Wine Growers	Heinz's wife's coat-of-arms says that the Lederers came from the area called Speyer near Mainz and founded Geradstetten probably in 1544. The three brothers that founded Geradstetten were very wealthy. One became mayor (burgermeister) and many of their male descendants in succession were burgermeisters too.
	The Lederers brought their wealth with them. They prospered generation after generation, from their vineyards and wine making as well as their positions as burgermeisters. Today only one Lederer, that Gabi knows of, is making a living from wine. The rest live off investments and inheritances. A few, like Heinz, enjoy wine making as a hobby in their retirement.
	We talked about the Lederers being wine growers for all those generations. Heinz's wife showed us two books, both in German. One was a history of the town of Geradstetten and one was about the church. The city book listed populations of the town every ten or twenty years. The two big dips in the population of Geradstetten in 1620 and in the mid 1800s were due to the plague and a grapevine disease, respectively. After that devastating disease, many plants were replaced with American roots, and in some cases the root and the whole vine. In the time of Hitler his troops destroyed many of the American grapes, vine and root, only because they were American.
	Heinz is a retired vine grower and has a large flower garden (25' x 40') on his steep, hilly yard. A grapevine makes a nice roof for their patio. We felt very welcome, just as if we had dropped in on Ethan and Margaret Tornga in Conrad, Montana. They offered us cold drinks. Heinz showed us an aerial photo of the church which included "our" house, but not his house. I'm going to ask Gabi to get the mailing address of the company that took the photo and the number on the picture so the American Lederers can get a picture of it also.
	David asked about Lederer wine. We wanted to take home a bottle. Gabi said that the local Lederer wine had no label, that everyone just had a few bottles in the wine cellar and didn't bother to label them because they knew where they were from. If Linda and I go back, I think I'll try to get one. Gabi had none on hand and called Heinz's son Gunther to see if he had some on hand. He had none.
	The Heinz Lederers talked with us for about an hour. Gabi translated. Sometimes they would speak a paragraph or two, but that would translate into only one or two sentences. We had a pleasant and interesting visit.
More About the House	Another reason many old houses don't exist today is due in part to the way fathers handed down their houses and property to their sons. Usually he named his firstborn son Johann and gave all of his land and house to him. Occasionally a father would give 60% of the house, the part Gabi lives in, to his firstborn son and the back 40% to another son or sons. The people in the 40% of the house have altered the structure by trimming the inner beams. That made more room because the beams were so large, and 40% of a house didn't allow much room.
	Gabi is a real preservationist. She's very knowledgeable about the house and the history of the area. She extended an open invitation to all American Lederers to visit, but not all at the same time. Here's her phone number an address:     0049/ 7151/ 74176      Stephan and Gabrielle Kallenborn      Hirschgasse 16      73630 Remshalden-Geradstetten, Germany Now we can let them know ahead of time when we visit. Gabi even suggested that someone could study at a nearby university and stay there for a semester (or longer). For a long stay, the visitor would be expected to work. I'm not sure whether she meant to work around the house or outside for wages.
The Archives Back in Mainz	I went to the Mainz library, up to the archives room. They had many books named Siebmacher's Wappenbuch. Wappenbuch means "book about coats-of-arms." I asked to see the section about Lederer coat-of-arms. The man asked what town, or area I was looking in. I told him Geradstetten, near Stuttgart. He said he couldn't find any, but there was a two-lion coat-of-arms that was from Speyer, in the Rhein Valley. I found coats-of- arms from about 10 different Lederers. The books had just the black and white sketches, no colors, descriptions, or locations of origin. One of them matches what we have believed was our coat-of-arms, and one matched the coat-of-arms that Mrs. Heinz Lederer showed us. I got copies of the ten. Where did my Great Uncle Lou find the wonderful coat-of-arms we have grown to love and reproduce? My second cousin Frank Lederer remembers that his grandfather, my Great Uncle Lou, got the coat-of-arms with two men with mallets when he responded to a solicitation from a coat-of-arms dealer offering to research the family's coat- of-arms.
	No one was as fond of the Lederer coat-of-arms as I was. I had seen the two men with mallets when I was about ten years old, and couldn't forget them. When I was in high school, I traced it several times, and colored it in with color pencils, and markers, and a combination of both.
	In preparation for the trip to Germany, and the upcoming reunion, July 1998, I decided to make a bunch of things with the coat-of-arms on it: T-shirts, hats, even porcelain plates. When I found out that the coat-of-arms we were using for the last 60 years was not the coat-of-arms used by our direct relatives living in the town of my great-grandfather, Karl Gottlieb Lederer, and our common ancestors for the last 200 years, I was suffering from profound disbelief. I thought there was some mistake. I didn't want to believe it.
	After the trip to Heinz's house, and the Mainz library archives, I'm now convinced that the two lion coat-of-arms belongs to us.
Friday, September 12 - A Second Visit	Linda and I drove back to Geradstetten by ourselves. I called Tuesday, September 9, to let them know we were coming and I asked Gabi to see if she could find us any Lederer wine to take back to America.
	To get to Geradstetten, we headed east from Stuttgart on Highway 14. When that road turned north we took Highway 29 east again, a short 20 kilometers of less from Stuttgart. We came to a valley with hills to the north and south of the east-west road. There lay the small town of Geradstetten of about 3000 people (1960). Five towns, including Garadstetten, belong to a larger community called Remshalden.
	Last week we turned off first to the newer section of Geradstetten south of the highway where it looked like many modern suburbs. From there we were directed to the north side of the highway, the older part of town. The streets there were narrow and hilly, many cobblestoned, as steep as many in San Francisco, but not as high. The hills to the north of Geradstetten are even steeper with vineyards almost to the crest of the tree-topped hills. If one were to take time to drive around the area, I bet they could get a great view of the church, and maybe the Lederer house from a mile or so away. I decided that for me the time would be better spent visiting than driving around for a spectacular view.
	We arrived an hour earlier than they expected, so we walked around the neighborhood. I took some pictures of the back and side of the house. Linda had a popsicle at a local bread store. We had lunch at the local pizza and ice cream store, owned by Italians who didn't speak English, but pizza is pizza in Italian, German, and English. Yumm.
	Gabi again welcomed us warmly. She said she couldn't get any of the four Lederers to give her a bottle of house wine to send to America. The Lederers were such an important, influential, integral financial part of Geradstetten, I think they must have been inundated by local distant relatives hoping to capitalize on the wealth and prestige of being Lederers. I think the current Lederers felt that we were peculiar or moochers asking for wine.
The Lutheran Church	The oldest houses clustered around the Lutheran Church. The church served as an anchor, a main part of the old town. There were many other houses in that neighborhood the same size and style as "our" house. Gabi showed me a few houses older than hers. She didn't say how much older, but I'm guessing maybe 50 or 100 years at least. She showed me two buildings across the alley from each other that were Lederer wineries just a few hundred yards from the house. The first one became too small, so they built a new one. Later they built another a few miles away
	Last Saturday the Lutheran Church was locked, and the man with the key was unavailable to unlock it for us. But on this second visit Gabi took us there, about a hundred yards from the house. The cleaning lady let us in. We couldn't see any of the records. But I was glad to see inside the church. I took some pictures inside and outside the church. It was very similar to a Catholic Church. The original cemetery lay to the south of the church. In the 1950s they tossed all the gravestones away for some construction project. The lawn there is very lush and green.
	Gabi talked about some of the Lederers who stayed in Geradstetten. There are some who have no need to expand their viewpoint or do anything else besides what their father, grandfather, and great-grandfather did. There's a term for them that she described as cement heads. Many of them cannot understand why a distant relative would come to visit the town, OR want to meet them. Since some of the Lederers left for America, that was the end of their involvement, and any emotional attachment. That must be why our branch of the family tree has been sawed off.