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CHAPTER 8. “Would You Have Left All This for Waldo?”: Notes on a Partial Pilgrimage
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CHAPTER 8 “Would You Have Left All This for Waldo?” Notes on a Partial Pilgrimage We came driving up to Wahlerhof around five o’clock, at least an hour late. It was the tail end of a long, absorbing afternoon we’d spent driving the winding roads of southwestern Germany, stopping to rubberneck and take pictures and talk in our awkward German with those willing to give a few minutes to nostalgic Americans in search of their ancestral grounds. It is hard to move quickly when you are trying to intrude in the lives of strangers with a semblance of politeness, to converse in languages you speak badly, to glimpse and absorb something of the terrain where longgone bearers of your genetic materials lived and loved and struggled . We wished both that we could go faster and that we could stay longer. But we saw Monbijou and Kirschbacherhof and Kirschbachermühle, about all of which more is to come, and then found the sign that says “Wahlerhof” on the little blacktop road that leads out of the tiny village of Mornbach. Such Hofs are scattered all over southern Germany and eastern France. Big country estates with massive clusters of buildings —an old great house that’s often a combination house-barn, perhaps one or two smaller houses, an assortment of other barns, sheds, and miscellaneous outbuildings—they have no real 167 American equivalent. Many are centuries old, rooted in the feudal system. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries their wealthy owners often leased them out, perhaps paying occasional visits to hunt. My Stalter and Hauter ancestors and other pious but ambitious Amish and Mennonites who had been driven by religious persecution from Switzerland into the lower lands along the Rhine, including Alsace, Lorraine, and the Palatinate, eagerly sought the lease of these estates, promising the most earnest endeavors and innovative farming methods in return. On this afternoon we had visited five Hofs within a radius of fifteen or twenty kilometers of Zweibrücken in the part of southwestern Germany close to the French border called the Palatinate, or Pfalz in German. But at five o’clock we were on our way to Wahlerhof—not the grandest of the estates, but owned by Stalters of my kin since early in the nineteenth century.1 The gravel lane winds up into a narrow valley for a kilometer or so. At its end, we found two men sitting on a bench near the big house. A narrow yard, perhaps twenty or thirty yards wide, separates the great house and an even bigger barn/shed on the south side, with a sizeable pile of used straw beween. The house is old stone and stucco with vines climbing all over, sturdy and solid. It seemed the sort of place where the list of things to do is always longer than the time to do them. My wife Marlyce and I were in one car, in the other my friend Gordon and his father Verle. Gordie had been here before, and made the introductions. The white-haired, bald, stocky man with the big mustache simply said, “Stalter” when we exchanged names, and his son, a spare man around thirty with tiny oval glasses, just grinned. Old Stalter’s smile was warm and his handshake firm. He spoke only a little English, but he spoke clearly and simply, as we tried to loosen up our rusty German. Gordie got out his family charts, and we began to make connections. If I understand the charts right, this venerable Stalter—whose first name is Remy, or Remegious—is my fourth cousin twice removed. Our common ancestor is Christian Stalter (1750–1831), my five-times-great-grandfather. My four-times-great-grandfather Josef Stalter (1786–1853), who lived at Monbijou a few miles away, was Remy’s great-great-uncle. Josef’s brother, also named Christian Stalter (1781–1868), was the first Stalter to live at Wahlerhof, and that Christian was Remy’s great-great-grandfather. 168 Scattering Point [44.200.23.133] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 01:46 GMT) Got all this straight? I’m not sure I do either. But we stood there in the farmyard sunshine for the better part of an hour, trying out our phrases and our smiles and groping toward some kind of understanding. Remy seemed genuinely glad to meet us, eager to muddle around in old family stories. Before long his son Hubert— a clear-eyed, quick man in his early thirties...