Hello my dears,
I am back to hum and holler prose poems about the the sacred water and the things that wash up while we were otherwise engaged. Let us have a few words on the topic of immigration.
People might be happy if they feel rooted and recognized. Home isn’t necessarily a happy or comfortable place, but it is yours. You will always carry a little bit of it around with you, splash it on your offspring, and feel it rise when passion and splendor hit you in the chest.
Historically speaking, most people never travel far from the place of their birth. Even with relatively safe ocean-going ships and later, air travel, few folks have cared to go farther than the next village. In the meantime, we stand around in the doorway, suspecting, rejecting, confirming what we won’t believe, and call it faith. We ignore the truth; when a country absorbs people from other lands, it profits from their diversity, their courage, and their thirst.
My home waters are in Wisconsin. The Bad River carries the blood of tamarack swamps. Out of those waters was I spawned like an eelpout. Some day I will go to Freyung, to Mauth, to Hinterschmiding, and Zwölfhäuser. (Twelve houses and two umlauts. Try to fit that into a poem.) I’m told they are nice little towns. The town where my Grandmama was born is not so far from the Danube. Danu, the river goddess was, at times, a white cow. Mein Oma loved her cow, who was far better company than most people and furthermore, she turned grass into milk twice a day. Oma’s cow was not white, but she was loved just the same.
As mentioned above, my paternal ancestors came from a couple of tiny villages in Lower Bavaria, Germany. There have been German immigrants in North America since the 15th century. My forbears, however, didn’t wash up until1890.
My grandfather, Johann Wallisch, said, “ If you don’t own land, you are nobody.” On the road to becoming somebody, he faced serious legal and cultural obstacles in Germany. Hence, he split for points west. He came to America to sink his toes into a place he could call his own. His family arranged for a woman to come from the old country and be his wife. Therese loved him as much as she could, given the circumstances. In the ceded territory of the Ojibwa, they scratched and clawed a living from eighty acres of sand, stumps and rocks. They had a wagon full of kids , a sow, some chickens and the aforementioned cow. At the dawn of the 20th century there were great fortunes to be made in America. Unfortunately none of these riches were to be gained growing potatoes in Ashland County, Wisconsin. Most of what was their farm is now under a large beaver pond. Gravity and water always win. Johann held on to the land, somehow, but never could make a go of it as a farmer. He parleyed his skill with horses into a job delivering beer in Chicago. Therese somehow found time for letters to her sister in Germany.
All of Johann’s sisters and brothers, as well as his parents, settled in the mid-west, mainly Illinois. Likewise, five of Therese’s sisters settled permanently in and around Chicago. They were part of a wave of German settlers who shaped the language and culture of Wisconsin and northern Illinois. We eat a lot of sausage and say “Ja”, “a hundert”, and “How goes it?”
I’ve been corresponding with Dr. Friedemann Fegert. I first met him on line when he contacted me about a diary I posted on Dkos in 2013. He has written two books about the wave of immigration from Bavaria to the United states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. My paternal grandparents were part of this wave. Dr. Fegert’s second book includes my diary as source material. Since then his work has been featured in an exhibit in Mauth, Germany, dealing with the concept of “chain immigration”, again featuring some of my ancestors. He has used several old family pictures of mine as well as others from several of my stateside relatives.
Dr. Fegert had already extended an invitation to meet in person, should I ever find myself in Deutschland. When I heard about the exhibit, I knew I had to go to Germany and see it. I took the good professor up on his offer. Mrs. ruleoflaw and I will soon visit Herr Dr. Fegert and his wife, then do a bit of sightseeing and visit the village from whence the the proto-ruleoflaws first emerged from the water.
Back then, there was bread and beer, and rosaries kept the devil away. Before the big ships sailed, we sat on rocks and scratched ourselves. We hoped that the crops wouldn’t fail. We prayed that our children might be spared from plague and war.
Now we have email and hook up with 4th cousins half a world away.
My earliest documented ancestor, Matthäus Schmälzl was born in Lower Bavaria in 1589. He was my 9x great-grandfather and worked as a miller. Aside from a few blacksmiths and a toll collector, the rest of my German ancestors were farmers, most of them cottagers and tenant farmers. In the fairy tales, my people were the ones who got eaten by dragons. They grew the pumpkins that never turned into coaches.
By Johann’s definition, he came from nobodies. He was tired of being shit on in Germany. He was sick of bosses in Indiana who cheated him out of fairly earned wages. He and Therese would be somebodies. As hard as their lives could be, it could have been worse.
The relatives they left behind had a much harder row to hoe. They lived through a world-war, famine, followed up with economic disaster, fascism, another world war and then spent the next forty years with an iron curtain in their back yard. They are still there.
Johann had a right to be angry, but he was mistaken. They are all somebodies. Today, the Bürgermeister of Mauth is my cousin. His name is Ernst. He is the spitting image of my Great Grandfather.
In June, Ernst and I will sit down together for a little Gemütlichkeit. Two wars and an ocean tried to split us. Hardship couldn’t fool us, we are somebodies. Immigration can bring out the solid center of a person. Their feet begin to itch and they walk, sail, and sometimes even swim towards a better life. Others stay behind, picking at the fastenings on a ball and chain, rubbing, filing, working loose the shackle. It’s a quieter sort of spirit, but no less than Somebody.
Somebodies: