Discovering Grandma Anna

In today‘s Alumni Profile, Noelle Stadler (AYF 2017-18) looks back at a very personal adventure she had during her time in Freiburg – tracking down and finding her long-lost extended German family and “Grandma Anna” 

By Noelle Stadler (AYF 2017-18)

Learning German has opened up any number of opportunities for me, but the most exciting started during Christmas break of 2016. It led me on a search for my long-lost German family.

Until then, all I knew about my German ancestors was that they immigrated to the US before the world wars and that they immediately dropped their language and culture in order to assimilate. But that Christmas, we took a detour from our usual holiday route to meet my grandmother’s cousin in Ohio, and we discovered something special. Towards the end of a lovely dinner, the cousin’s wife mentioned that her engagement ring had been brought over from Germany by my grandmother’s grandmother, Grandma Anna. I had learned German in high school and college, so I asked to see the ring box. From the box, I learned that the ring had come from a jeweler in the small town of Kronach in the Oberfrankenwald area of Bavaria.

This is a picture my German relatives shared with me. We are pretty sure Anna is the tall girl in the back and the rest are her mom, brother, and the 2 sisters who survived childhood.

Upon hearing this new information, my own grandmother became very excited and remembered that Anna had gone back to visit Germany a few times in the 1960s and 70s before she died. On one such trip, Anna brought back a plaque with a note scratched on the back: “Zum Andenken von Deinen Oberrodachern 1.9.1965” (As a momento from your Obberrodachers). After doing some research, we found a community near Kronach called Oberrodach. We also found Grandma Anna’s date of birth in her old passport, but no one could remember her maiden name, and no one knew for sure if Oberrodach was her birthplace.

The next year I moved to Freiburg with AYF. Over the Pfingsten break in May, I signed up to volunteer at a small farm near Oberrodach through an organic farming program called WWOOF. When the farmers heard my story, they contacted a local journalist to help me look for more information. We went to the town hall and asked to see the Oberrodach birth records from the 1890s, but we were unable to find a baby born on Anna’s birthday. Just for the heck of it, we asked to see the records for the neighboring village of Unterrodach. There, under entry 95, was my great-great-grandmother’s name written in beautiful, old German cursive!

A week or two later, I was back in Freiburg and received a message from the journalist. She had published an article about me in the local newspaper, and within a day, she received several calls from people who were related to Grandma Anna and wanted to meet me. Some of her nieces and nephews were still alive and remembered Anna’s last visit to Germany in the 1970s. One of them even had a picture of me as a child that Anna’s daughter (my great-grandmother) had sent them before she died. The journalist invited me to stay with her for a weekend, and I was able to meet all our surviving family members.

Based on the village records and some old stories, Anna was the first of 5 children born to a local logger and his wife. One of her sisters died in infancy, and her father died in 1906 when Anna was only 12. Sometime afterwards, she was sent to live with friends in Pittsburgh, probably with the hopes that she would be able to earn money and send it back to her family in Germany. But then the First World War started, and she couldn’t go back. At the end of the 1950s, she managed to visit her family for the first time in over 30 years. Anna visited them a few more times, but she got sick while returning from her last trip and died a few days after arriving back in Pittsburgh.

Her nieces and nephews remembered her as a very kind and generous person, who was sad that none of her children or grandchildren had learned German. I am so happy that I was able to remember her by learning German, moving to Freiburg, and reconnecting with our long-lost family.

A picture of the second article written after I actually met my German family members. The older man in the top picture is Anna’s brother’s son. The woman in the bottom right is the daughter of one of Anna’s nieces, and the model house and carving depict what life was like back then for loggers like my great-great-great-grandfather.

Contributions to our communal story telling are invited through the AYF Alumni Profiles Project page!