Day 34: Finding the Family

Today started out like all our days in Bad Rodach, with a nice breakfast.

Then we biked to the church Pfarramt (Office?) to see if anyone there could help us with information about Andy's grandfather, Richard Baldes.

There, we met the unbelievably helpful, Frau Stefanie.  Seriously, she is awesome.

Once we managed to communicate that we are looking for information about Andy's grandfather and we have his name and birthday (and not much else), Stefanie went off to a nearby room and came back with a big old book and started thumbing through it. She found Richard Baldes' birth records.

Here it gives the date and time of birth (5th of July, 1903) and the name of his parents, Albin Baldes and Elise Klara (nee Röder) and the ages of the parents at the time.

Then it gives the date of the recording of this information (28 July 1903), his name (Richard Anton Waldemar) and the name of his... for lack of a better translation, godparents. August Röder (probably his uncle) and Fräuline (Miss) Anna Schneider, both living in Nuremberg (perhaps Anna is August's fiancé or Elise Klara's friend or something).

Then, we told Stefanie that we think he has a brother named Fritz born in 1910 (info found my our friend Lisa just that morning) and she went looking, all the way through the 1910 births and into the 1911 births, but nothing. So then she got smart and went to the index. Yes, there's an index (all handwritten in very old style script, of course). Slowly but surely she found four more siblings born after Richard (we won't include photos of all these records here, but you get the idea). 

It was pretty amazing. These books are very old and delicate.

She then pulled out the confirmation records and searched through those and found not only Richard's confirmation record, but also that of his eldest sister (not found in the birth volume) and some of the younger siblings.

Then she found the death notices and located the information about Richard's father (Andy's great-grandfather) which provides both his date of birth and his date of death.

Stefanie also found the wedding records and looked through those.

She spent more than 1.5 hours pouring over these records for us and then arranging them so we could make photographs (other records have to be covered for privacy reasons). She was so helpful! We were overjoyed and nearly overcome with excitement. 

We also met the local minister, Father Rosenschweig (sp?) who seemed very young and was very nice to us.

After all of this, it was lunch time so we decided to pedal over to an Italian restaurant to pull our thoughts together and digest all this new information.

As far as we can tell, Richard was one of (at least) six siblings. He was the second born.  We have the names of his parents and of his five siblings. We also have the name of his eldest sister's husband and the birth information for her first son (it was also in the birth records and he was born right after Richard left for the USA).  Here's a summary.

After lunch, we biked to the local bike shop to talk to the owner, Marco, about dealing with our bikes on Saturday. However, Marco wasn't back from lunch yet, so we biked off to the little church and then found the cemetery. We didn't have a plan for looking at the cemetery, it was just a nice shady cool pace to be for a little while. 

There we happened on the burial place of Andy's cousin (great aunt Ella's oldest son) and his wife. How is that for amazing?  We only learned this person existed an hour or so before this.

We read through all the names on the more modern burials (walls of stones like this). The older ones seem all illegible, but there might be more. The cemetery is huge but it's not clear which parts are for the protestants (which part clearly was because it is beside the little church) and which are for the catholics (the catholic church is across the cemetery). So, we will probably go back and look around more later.

Then, we biked off to find Marco but he still wasn't back. Another customer was also waiting. So we biked to the big church, St. Johannes Kirche (St John the Baptist), and went in to look around. The pastor had told us it was unlocked and we could go in anytime. It was so lovely and cool in there (Did we mention there's a heatwave here and no one has air conditioning).  

It's a beautiful baroque style church (the nave is baroque) with a medieval choir and lovely early 20th century stained glass, with the (typical for this region only) double balconies. The seats up there have heaters under the wooden benches which is probably the only heat in the church. On the top balcony is an organ, of course. 

<insert church photos here>

After that we went back to the bike shop and met Marco. Our conundrum is we have two almost new bicycles that we don't need after Saturday, but we'd like to keep our pedals and such that be brought from home. So, he's going to take the pedals off for us on Saturday (then we can ship the pedals and bike shoes home and have less to tote around) and we are going to give him the bikes. 

He's really nice and excited about that. He's a one man bike shop in space no bigger than our garage, clearly trying to make a go at this entrepreneur thing. He's got an ex-Frau and a current Frau in town and three children. So we were happy to find someone who could use the bikes (probably resell them) and solve our pedal removal problem (that requires a special tool we are not carrying around with us for obvious reasons). We were also happy to find Marco in Bad Rodach. We thought the nearest bike shop would be in Coburg, a 25 minute train ride away, which would mean taking the bikes on the train to Coburg and then taking the train back, so he's saved us a huge inconvenience. YEA!

After that, we went to the Stadt Cafe (city cafe) for ice cream and cold cokes, the only sane thing to do on a day like this with our brains in overload and the temperature way too high. After a rest there, we biked to the shoe shop and bought another pair of sandals (Amelia might have an addiction going...) but the owner (whom we met the day before) wasn't there.

We then wandered about looking for the addresses where Andy's great-grandfather had lived. The later address, Coburgerstraße 20 (Coburg Street - the street that leads to Coburg) is just an ordinary run down house building.

Markt 17, however, is currently a jewelry store. We bought a tiny pair of silver owl earrings for Amelia there. She's been going without earrings in her second holes on this trip (forgot to pack something small) and these are just perfect. We took some more photos around the market square (triangle!) and then went to the fountain to meet Fran Doktor Anja Augustin for the city historical tour. 

Anja showed up with her mother in tow. She'd told her mother about Andy's search for information about Richard and her mother uncovered a photo of Richard with the gymnastics team (probably 1920). It was pretty cool!

Then, Anja took us and another woman on the walking tour. Anja spoke in both German and English which had to be very tiring for her. She said it was the first time she's done the tour in English. Her English is, of course, nearly flawless. She recently earned a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Wurzburg (sp?).

We walked through the market place and the area around the hunting palace, and the church, the city walls, the old historical quarter (with original half timbered buildings) and so forth. She delivered an incredible amount of information about the history of the town and how it fit into the history of the region. It was mind-blowing, really. And fun! It lasted three hours, which was twice as long as advertised, partly because she was delivering it bilingually for us.

<insert tour photos here later>

We were pretty tired and beat up after that, having been out and about for at least 10 hours, so we biked back to the hotel and had supper and collapsed.