The Perverse Lutheran: June 2024

I've been chasing down loose ends lately -- loose ends of family history -- hours of Googling inspired by an upcoming trip to Germany and the opportunity to see the church and parsonage my great-great-great grandfather left behind in Ziegelheim, Saxony, when he emigrated to America in 1852.

Why he left is a long story. There is a family chronicle, put down on paper by one of the next generation. I'm not sure when I first encountered this story -- it was shared with me by my dad. But it began to come alive for me when I was a college freshman in an honors history seminar called "Reform and Revolution," where I learned about the revolutionary movements that swept through Germany in 1848-50.

The class was basically what was known as "Western Civilization," a traditional part of a liberal arts education, though by the early 1970s it was on its way out of the requirements for a degree. Yes, it was entirely Euro-centric, and yes, a well-educated person should also know about Asia, Africa, and pre-Columbian American civilizations. But still, my thorough grounding in European and English history served me well in the years of undergrad and graduate education that followed. I had historical context for the trends and artists and masterworks I encountered in music history classes and especially, in theatre history. I could see that many students around me did not have the same sense of all this stuff that I did.

And now? It's been a long time since I've had to answer essay questions on finals. But all that I learned then (and since, because I keep reading) gives me context, a place where my imagination can roam as I think about what was it like at other times in history. What was it like for Georg Moritz Gotsch to watch the emigration of German Lutherans from Saxony to America, even as he stayed put and continued to serve his rural parish? What was it like to send his 25-year-old son, Georg Theodore, to America, to prepare for ministry at a seminary in Indiana? What was it like when conflicts across Europe came home to his parish? And to yield to inevitability and prepare for his own trip across the ocean? And then adapt to a new life in rural Indiana and eventually in Civil War-era Memphis? And -- dear God! -- what was it like for the women?

Knowing a little leads to more questions. Right in this moment, all those questions sent me off to the Internet to look up who exactly came with Georg Moritz to America. I know I've seen a copy of the ship's manifest with that includes the names of his second wife and children of assorted ages. Couldn't find it right away, but I will see it again someday. Other questions: the day before yesterday I was looking up websites for churches served by Georg Moritz and Georg Theodore (who is my great-great grandfather).

But what does this all mean? Why does it matter to me? It's incredibly cool to know this stuff, and I am lucky that I do. I can't claim credit for having done the work; my reference for much of what I know is an inch-thick book titled "The Gotsch Family History" which was put together by a distant cousin 20 years ago. The Internet makes it possible to chase down more details without ever leaving my favorite chair.

But do my roots really tell me who I am? The threads of an embattled 19th century German Lutheran, habits of theological thinking, right doctrine explain values I grew up with -- spoken and unspoken, in my family and my family's church communities. It's left to my imagination to fill in details -- daily life of these new residents of America, what their ministry to other German-American folks meant to them, the work, the burdens, the joys. What did they miss from their old life, how did they bury that grief in the new place, how did they find exhilaration and meaning in a new life? There are letters from G. M. Gotsch that I've read somewhere online (Concordia Historical Institute? I need to do a better job of saving stuff!) about his church in Memphis. No letters from the women of the family.

The greater part of my upcoming trip is focused on Leipzig, the music of J. S. Bach, and a "We Are Family" themed Bachfest. I've been known to create some stories around what I know of Bach and his family (see, for example, BWV 197: The Movie), and I hope to store up more inspiration for more writing like that. I'll be thinking of my dad on this trip, who died before ever getting to visit Germany and play organs across Europe, something he was hoping to do once he was no longer putting daughters through college.

When I first saw this photo (below) of Georg Theodore Gotsch, the guy who left Germany as a young man, I thought he looked a lot like my dad. Not very tall, and the same serious gaze that appears on my father's face in posed pictures. I have a photo of my father as a young man at his sister's wedding. I scanned it into my computer, and one day, the face ID in my Mac's Photos application asked if that face was my son Kris. Wow. Kris did sometimes remind me of my dad. Not very tall, but jaunty, energetic, showing up.

I have my place in all these generations. Perverse, over-animated, smart. And about to both experience and imagine more about where I and my family belong in history.