German Language Class - Learning more than words!

Guten Tag!

So, last month, I signed up for a German language class with the intention of learning some German to help with reading genealogical records and for another potential future visit to Germany.  After I met our instructor, a German-born retired teacher in his 70s (who couldn't quite give up his teaching, as evidenced by this class!), and explained why I was taking the class, he was interested in hearing about my German ancestors.  Excellent!

First, I asked about the term "Pfründnerin" that was listed as the occupation of my 3x great grandmother Maria Margaretha Bauer at her death.  He did a little research and found that these were people who lived in a Pfründenhaus, a church-run home for the elderly and invalids.  They also took in widows and orphans, often as workers, and at the time, Maria was a widow.

After that first success, I told him about the Harburg bible and brought printouts of some of the bible pages as well as the loose papers from the bible to class:

Loose Papers from the Harburg Bible

I also sent him the link to the German bible page on my web site so he could see some more of the bible itself.  My teacher said this of the bible:  

It is an original full Luther-Bible, which came out for the first time in 1534, printed by Hans Lufft of Wittenberg. He reprinted it several times afterwards until 1584, selling something like 100,000 copies within these 50 years, a truly astronomical figure for those times. 

 That agrees with much of what the folks at the Smithsonian had to say as well.  :)

 

The Harburg Bible

Yesterday was an awesome day out visiting the National Archives, both as researcher and as tourist, and meeting with experts at the Smithsonian to learn about conservation/preservation of the family bible I recently acquired.  This bible was sent to my great grandmother Marie Bierdümpfel Jurgens from Germany after she had migrated to America.

German Bible from 1575

More images of the bible can be found at http://www.jordanclan.org/family_tree/Research/bible.html

The short answer - find a local book conservator (http://www.conservation-us.org/) and commission them to build a box specifically to store the book. For this particular book, given that it appears to still be in its original binding and in good shape for its age, I was advised not to try to get it restored, but to protect it as is. Although several pages at the front and back have had attempts at repair in the past, at this point those attempts are also historical. History within history! :)