The Search for Heinrich Stief. A Genealogist on the Loose (review)

The story of German immigration and settlement in Canada has met ample critical attention. Some issues ago, Seminar reviewed Rainer Hempel's remarkable New Voices on the Shores: Early Pennsylvania German Settlements in New Brunswick (2000). Meanwhile, Les Bowser's The Search for Heinrich Stief. A Genealogist on the Loose covers a similar subject, but with a radically different approach. In his monograph, the New Brunswick-born author gives a breathtaking account of the genealogical search for the origins of a certain Heinrich Stief, the eighteenth-century forefather of what is now estimated to be progeny of approximately 150,000 people. Heinrich Stief and his wife Regina Stahleker made their way to Rotterdam from Swabian Münsingen in 1749 to join thousands of other immigrants to Philadelphia. From there, seventeen years later, he joined the Petitcodiac concession, promoted by Benjamin Franklin and made official in the 1766 Articles of Agreement. Stief travelled by ship to Neuschottland with his wife and his seven sons and most likely seven other families (Lutz, Treitz, Sommer, Ricker, Wortman, Kopple, and Jones – the only Welshman in the group), who all have had a tremendous impact on the development of settlements along the muddy banks of the Petitcodiac River and on the emerging city of Moncton.

While the historical research, bibliographic support, and elaborate footnotes are impressive, The Search for Heinrich Stief is not an academic tome, nor is it a family chronicle or roman généalogique in the genre style of Marguerite Yourcenar or John Jake. Instead, Bowser's book is an innovative effort to find an appealing structure for genealogically based studies, which are usually more exciting for readers related to the family in the book or for other genealogists in search of one or another missing link. Here we have not only a family chronicle, but also a meticulous report and catalogue of origins and historical sources, a reconstruction of the genealogical web, and a report of the search for all the above. The genealogical search and reconstruction becomes, in other words, part of the subject or plot of the book, and, before we know it, we find ourselves in the middle of a genealogical thriller. The somewhat banal title understates the author's meandering chase for clues in his archival search for his forefather. The Search for Heinrich Stief is a metagenealogical chronicle. The author takes his reader along on his quest to uncover the pressing question: Who was Heinrich Stief? Where did he come from? This "meta" aspect of Bowser's study happens on many levels.

In writing his quest for Heinrich Stief, Bowser also allows preceding and con-temporaneous researchers to play a role in the quest. The book thus offers more than a genealogical record or historical testimony. It also records the recording itself, its (re)discovery and its (re)interpretation. Historical research becomes both method and subject of the book. The researcher/writer takes the researcher/reader on a journey that includes memorable and adrenaline-inducing moments of discovery. What is found may ultimately be less important than the quest itself. It is a strategy that brings about the impression of an authentic experience of the past itself and of its discovery.

The book is illustrated with scores of historical photos of the author's ancestors and historical places; the author himself appears occasionally – in pictures of cemeteries, for example, during a train transfer in Amsterdam, or travelling through the Neckar valley in search of clues. The revelatory climax, as in any good thriller, is postponed at the last moment because of an erroneous interpretation of a map. After a long and expensive taxi ride and an even longer bus detour, the author spends his final night in the Neckar Valley in Münsingen's Gasthof Herrmann in the shadow of the Martinskirche, whose hourly chimes toll the knell of Bowser's stay in the area before he must return to London via Amsterdam and...