I was stationed at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany for three and a half years in the 1970's. Anywhere I traveled in Germany, I looked in phone books trying to find another Gerhardstein, but never found one. I went to various government offices trying to find any family history I could, but I was always told the same thing: what probably happened was that the ancestor who arrived in America probably was named Gerhard Stein, and my last name was a corruption thereof. Although I did find a fifth cousin of my Dad's in Oberbexbach -- a man named Otto Ruffing -- I had no success in finding a Gerhardstein.
We would go to a rifle range near the town of Gerolstein, about 25 kilometers from Spangdahlem. You may have seen Gerolsteiner Sprudel Wasser (mineral water) in the store, and it comes from Gerolstein. Because I got there by military bus, and our time there was limited to the range, I was not able to explore the town, and in fact I had no compelling reason to do so.
Imagine my reaction when a distant cousin, while traveling in Germany in 1985, found the Gerhardstein Castle in the town of Gerolstein. For 42 months, I had been a half-hour drive from our ancestoral home and didn't even know it existed.
Then, while recovering from back surgery in 1999, I did an internet search of German telephone directories and found a Peter Gerhardstein listed in Wiesbaden. I immediately wrote a letter, and about a week later, I received a phone call from Sandra Gerhardstein-Bishoff, Peter's daughter. (Peter had died several years earlier.) She thought she was the only Gerhardstein in the world. Sandra's English is not great, nor is my German, but we managed to communicate, and over the next several years we swapped many stories and family pictures.
In late 2002, I took a trip to Paris to visit my daughter, who was studying at the Sorbonne. We rented a car and drove to Wiesbaden to visit Sandra, her husband Manni, and her mother Luise. On our second day there, we hopped in the car and drove to Gerolstein to see the castle.
The castle was built on a hill overlooking Gerolstein around 1115, and is little more than a ruin today. No matter. Seeing the ruins and the carved stone lions guarding the castle at the foot of the hill was worth the trip. This is a partial view of the ruins.
1 comment:
As was I.
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