German Burial Practices Explained

 

How wonderful it is to welcome guest bloggers, Ava and Chuck Stanford, cousins extraordinaire!

Recently, Ava sent to me their 2018 travel journal from a trip to Germany and especially to all villages Elling-related. That's one of my dream trips, so it was especially satisfying to read their account of people met and visits to Tielingen and Stellichte, among others.

While there, they visited cemeteries, looking for Ellings, but were enlightened to the burial practices in Germany. Those graves will never be found!

Ava and Chuck wrote:

"During the early days of our visit, we were confused by the lack of cemeteries at several churches and towns.  The cemeteries we did find were very neatly maintained with gorgeous flowers and neatly manicured gardens surrounding new, polished headstones - all with relatively current dates. We saw very few dated before 1975 and virtually none prior to WW II.

'Where are all the people?' we wondered.  Where are all the old gravestones and especially those of the Ellings who we came to visit?  Tietlingen has no cemetery at all, and Stellichte's new small memorial park was not much more than 1/2 acre in size.  In fact, the church cemetery at St. George Christophorus Jodocus Ev. Lutheran Church in Stellichte was actually plowed over several years ago when it became to much to maintain, according to the custodian who is married to the church secretary and lives next door in her family's 400 year-old home.  Now the church maintains no cemetery at all, except for the original Von Behr family plots for whom the church was built in 1608.

Church at Stellichte

Well, here is the rest of the story...it turns out there are several unusual things about burial laws in Germany.

• When you buy a burial plot n Germany, whether it be one plot or a family grouping of 8-12 plots, you only purchase it for 30 years - that is 30 years from the date of the first funeral.
• The plot may be repurchased again at the end of the 30 years and again at 60 years.
• The policy results in part from emigrants and family members moving away from the local area, leaving no one to care for the gravesite nor anyone who has an ongoing connection to the deceased.

There are strict regulations pertaining to maintenance during the 30 year period to assure consistent appearance of the sites - sort of like an HOA that maintains the appearance of your neighborhood.

• Burials are restricted to only wooden caskets. Metal caskets and burial vaults are strictly prohibited, and, in fact, unheard of at one church we visited.  The idea is that wooden caskets will decompose in 20-30 years and be 'totally' recycled by the time the plot s resold in 30 years.  

If any remains (such as femur bones that are the last to decompose) are found when excavating a 'reused' site, they are simply buried deeper and the new occupants are added on top of the existing site

One pastor told us there was only one metal coffin in his entire cemetery that belonged to a woman who had committed suicide using poison.  The woman had ingested such a massive dose of poison that the authorities were worried about the decaying body polluting the ground water, and they insisted a metal coffin be used to contain any contamination.

The policy is the same for cremation, where cremains are only allowed to be buried in wood urns that will deteriorate withing the 30 year time period.

Very few historically important gravestones are retained, and those are 'only for decoration,' according to one pastor." 

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Here is a great website to read about this topic, adding even more information.

The German Way of Death and Funerals • The German Way & More (german-way.com)

The Elling Ancestral Village - Tietlingen

The road leading into Tietlingen.










Entrance to the famous golf club there.

Apartments/ Flats in Tietlingen

Farm ground just like Ohio

 It's been almost four years now since I, by some insane luck, happened to meet Herr Hogrefe, an electrician from Stellichte, Germany, through a post I made on the Stellichte, Germany website. Hogrefe's grandmother was a Fuhrhop from Stellichte (just like our immigrant grandmother). He was familiar with the village of Tietlingen, as well, where the Elling family lived for well over a hundred and fifty years. 


Best of all, he generously offered to take some photos and send to me. We may or may not be related somehow way back when...more on that when you see the Stellichte photos - but the kindness of a stranger will not be forgotten.

We definitely struggled with language as his emails arrived in German and I would run them through the online translator, with sometimes humorous results. He was doing the same with my letters in English.

So, with many thanks, I post some of the photos sent by Friedel Hogrefe, Elektromeister, Stellichte.

As always, click on the photo for a better view.

Photos and the Story of Stellichte

Schwalshof farm in Stellichte, owned by the Fuhrhops since the 1850's. Shown in the photos are the barn and the street leading up to the farm, as well as the inscription over the barn door.

 















 
Sometime after his marriage to Anna Maria Engel Fuhrhop (1842) and the birth of daughter Dorothea in Tietlingen in 1847 and before their immigration to America in 1859, Johann Friedrich Elling, our immigrant ancestor, moved with his wife and family to Stellichte, about ten miles from their previous home in Tietlingen. On the microfilm of Court Records for Stellichte 1830 - 1880, I found numerous references to them and to the Fuhrhop family.

Anna Marie Engel Elling geb. Fuhrhop bought house/farm no. 30 in 1852 and sold it in 1859. Was it purchased or was it an inheritance? In his own right, Johann Friedrich Elling bought house/farm no. 14 in 1852, as well, and sold it in 1853. Was that just a temporary home until Anna came into possession of her place later that same year? It's all speculation. 



















What do we know for sure? The film is poor and I had to ask my researcher in Germany for help in translating, but even I could see quite a number of Fuhrhops show up in Stellichte. In particular, the researcher noted that house/farm no. 2 changed ownership for several generations of Fuhrhops from 1800 - 1857. Otto Fuhrhop, she says, obviously had to compensate several persons in 1857 - perhaps husbands of his sisters - but that one place always remained in the family.

When my friend Hogrefe sent these photos of Stellichte, he told me his mother was a Fuhrhop from Stellichte and these photos above are of her family farm, the Schwalshof farm, owned by the Fuhrhops, he states, since the 1850's. Then I looked at the inscription on the barn and saw that the wife of this Otto Fuhrhop, a name I had seen in the census, was named Anna Maria and we all know how the Germans loved to pass on those names. I really don't know if this farm is related to our immigrant grandmother because I haven't done the necessary research to find out, but wouldn't it be great...





































I also know that Johann Friedrich's son, Heinrich Friedrich, my gg grandfather was the only one of the family's children born in Stellichte in 1852. The previous siblings were born in Tietlingen and the youngest was born in America in 1860.

So if someone is looking for a great research opportunity, please take on the Fuhrhops for me, will you?

Beginning the Search for the Elling Immigrant

It was a good genealogy conference, but I'm always glad to be home. However, I am charged up to continue this blog and to keep searching for more information on our family. It really is a life-long hobby!

One thing a good genealogist learns early on is that just because someone says it or writes it down doesn't necessarily make it truth. Searching for family history is very much a detective's work...looking for truth and documentation for everything. 

Aunt Alma was given a paper found in a Bible of the Mueller family, I believe, which she passed on to me. The paper told the story of Dorothea Elling, gg grandfather Fritz's sister...so a gg aunt...and her parents. Here is one paragraph that I used to start to find who those immigrant ancestors really were:

"Dorothea was born in Stellichte, Kirchspiel Walsrode Kries Fallingbostel, Province of Hanover, Germany.  Another place it says she was born in Tiedel, Hannover, Germany.  She came to America with her parents in 1859.  Dorothea's mother was Reka Fuhrhop.  Her father was Frederich (or Friedrick) Von Elling.  He was Herr Von Tiedel (his title), sole owner of Tiedel, a village near Stealing, Germany.  He was also a burgermaster.  He let his secretary conduct all of his business and she cheated him out of everything and then he came to America with his family.  Fred Elling was born in 1813, came to America in 1859 and is buried in the Lutheran Church, Freedom Township."

Tietlingen and Stellichte are about ten miles apart, according to MapQuest

 Very few of the items in the above paragraph proved to be true.
 The villages of Stellichte and Tietlingen were part of kirchspiel (parish) Dueshorn. 
From this parish, my German researcher found records of the Elling family.

The father of Dorothea and my ggg grandfather was actually named Johann Friedrich and his wife was Anne Marie Engel Fuhrhop...we found the marriage record as well as birth records of the children to prove this.

The German naming system of the time for this area was that the first name was the "saint's name" and the second name was what the child was actually called, so Johann Friedrich, born 1817, was called Friedrich (or Fred in America) and his wife was Marie. Reka may have been a nickname; I don't know.

I now have baptismal records back to about the late 1600's as our Elling family was in Tietlingen for about one hundred years and never does the name Von Elling appear. Preceding a name with Von was a common "legend" perpetuated by families who came to America and perhaps wanted to give some status to their surname. Our Elling family immigrated as farmers and were so in Germany, as well.

I've written to Tietlingen to a man who has a good knowledge of the history of the village which consists of about thirty homes today. He knew of the Elling family, but was not aware of a title Herr Von Tiedel as owner of the village or of an Elling as mayor/ burgermeister. Probably there would not be a woman "secretary" in the mid-1800's in Germany, as well. So I feel that all of that part of the story is fiction because none of it can be confirmed. Later this paper states that Dorothea's grandfather came from a titled family where he was secretary to the King of Hanover and lived in a castle with a moat. My researcher knows of no local castles and again the legend of acting as a servant to the king is a common one and is probably fiction, too.

Later I will post some photos of Tietlingen, an area which looks much like the surroundings of Northwest Ohio, so I'm sure our ancestors felt right at home.

Many, many Germans from Henry County came from the Visselhovede area of Germany and our family was no exception. Quite a few settled in the New Hanover settlement of Freedom Township where their native language and customs from Germany could be continued in their new lives. More on that later!

For fun, you can view the areas of Stellichte and Tietlingen from the satellite view by following this link:

http://www.maplandia.com/germany/niedersachsen/luneburg/soltau-fallingbostel/tietlingen/