April 2024 - bruckfamilyblog.com

POST 159: HERITAGE TOURISM VS. HERITAGE TOURISM

Note: I recently came upon an alternate use of the term “heritage tourism” that I briefly contrast with the application of the phrase during my working days.

Some readers know I worked as an archaeologist for the largest U.S. federal land-managing agency, the Bureau of Land Management or the “BLM,” which currently administers roughly 245 million acres. I spent the bulk of my career in the headquarters office in Washington, D.C. working in an administrative position rather than as a field archaeologist. Among my responsibilities was developing the annual budget for submission to Congress for what was dubbed the “cultural resource management program,” which has broad authority over prehistoric and historic archaeological resources; paleontological resources; museum collections; Native American tribal coordination; heritage education; and more.

Road signs usually inform travelers they have crossed onto or entered BLM lands. Unlike one of BLM’s sister agencies, the National Park Service, rarely are tourists required to go through a gated park entrance and pay an entrance fee to access BLM’s so-called public lands.

Unfettered access to most of the agency’s lands has clear advantages. An obvious one is that visitors are not usually required to pay to use the BLM lands. Another benefit is they can enjoy a dispersed recreational opportunity in a natural outdoor setting surrounded by fewer tourists. Many of the agency’s cultural and fossil resources are in wilderness areas where motorized vehicles are prohibited; these areas are largely devoid of modern human development and untrammeled by people. This enables outdoor enthusiasts to view these resources in their original setting and imagine the world in which they were created.

From BLM’s standpoint, however, there are also some serious drawbacks from unrestricted access to their lands. Many of the agency’s remote cultural and paleontological resources have been targeted by looters, vandals, and so-called “pothunters.” Archaeological and fossil sites that might have informed scientists and tourists about the recent and distant past have been irreparably damaged. Many of these places are no longer suitable for study and public interpretation. The economic, recreational, and scientific benefits the public might have derived from them is no longer attainable.

Because public lands offer dispersed recreation with few entry points to count visitors, BLM is often unable to estimate their number and quantify the economic impact of tourists. Absent this information it is sometimes difficult to convince Congressional representatives how their constituents benefit from the multiple uses and users of the public lands. Consequently, in the case of cultural resources, it is challenging to make a compelling case for additional funding that could be used to enhance the visitor experience and “harden” archaeological and historic sites so they can be interpreted and better withstand a constant stream of tourists. Supplemental funding could also be used to hire more law enforcement rangers to better protect cultural and paleontological resources from illegal appropriation. Suffice it to say, the BLM’s cultural resource management program is underfunded despite having world-class archaeological and fossil resources that require active rather than passive management.

Public land visitation focused on touring archaeological, historical, and fossil sites, including viewing museum collections derived from scientific study of these resources, is commonly referred to as “heritage tourism.” This is the context that I’m familiar with the phrase.

Recently, I came upon an alternate meaning of heritage tourism, one that coincidentally provided the impetus for this family history blog.

Earlier in my blog, I explained to readers that my father Dr. Otto Bruck (1907-1994) left me with seven photo albums of pictures covering the mid-1910s to the late 1940s. While my father was reasonably good at captioning his pictures and naming people, there were some people he failed to put a name to. In some cases, my father identified them only by their forenames or nicknames. Fortunately, in 2010, at the time I started trying to learn more about my father’s life through his photos, a few of his contemporaries were still alive who were able to fill in some holes. All have since died.

A furious letter-writing campaign in the early 2010s to presumed descendants of people my father had once known led to additional identifications.

Finally, hoping to learn more and connect to some of the places where my father and his family had lived, in 2014 my wife and I went on a thirteen-week driving vacation to Europe that took us everywhere from northeast Poland, near the existing Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, to southern Spain. On this and subsequent vacations, I obtained records, vital documents, letters, photos, maps, etc. from various city halls and archives, as well as private individuals, in Poland, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain; most have not been digitized and are therefore inaccessible to ancestral researchers. This resulted in yet more family identifications and finding cousins I might never have found absent these trips to Europe.

In any case, the vacations and trips my wife and I took to Europe following my family’s diaspora would be considered a different type of “heritage tourism.” A January 2024 article “The Fantasy of Heritage Tourism” in The Atlantic by Gisela Salim-Peyer drew my attention to this type of travel. The author also made me aware of a sociologist named Marcus Lee Hansen who Wikipedia describes as “an important historian of American immigration.” Further quoting what Wikipedia says:

“In a 1938 essay, ‘The Problem of the Third Generation Immigrant,’ he first presented what he called ‘the principle of third generation interest’: ‘What the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember.’ This hypothesis suggests that ethnicity is preserved among immigrants, weakens among their children, and returns with their grandchildren. Children of immigrants tend to reject the foreign ways of their parents, including their religion, and want to join the American mainstream, but the next generation wants to retain the values of their ancestors. The religion of the first-generation immigrant, which the second-generation rejects, may be reaffirmed by the third generation.”

According to Ms. Salim-Peyer, fourth, fifth and sixth generation immigrants visiting places where their ancestors came from has resulted in heritage tourism having grown into its own travel category; people traveling to “trace their roots” and reestablish ancestral connections has apparently increased by 500 percent since 2014. As someone who has engaged in this type of travel, albeit at a much lower cost than packaged tours offered by companies such as Ancestry in collaboration with travel agencies, I can attest to an experience that Ms. Salim-Peyer characterizes as ”. . .much more ‘personal’ and ‘deep’. . .”

An earlier effort, following WWII, to promote this form of heritage tourism as a major component of diplomacy to unite European countries against the Soviet Union, was an abject failure. According to Ms. Salim-Peyer, part of the problem was the exorbitant cost of plane travel at the time. Another factor is that many people in the aftermath of WWII were not then interested in connecting to their homelands. And, yet another element Ms. Salim-Peyer cites is that for a long time, genealogy was considered elitist by people in the United States: “Most European settlers, the historian Russell Bidlack wrote, ‘had escaped from a society where the traditions of inheritance and caste had denied them opportunity for a better life.’ Genealogy was for people obsessed with nobility, or for WASPs living off borrowed glory.”

According to Ms. Salim-Peyer what changed to make genealogy “cool” was the publication of Alex Haley’s 1976 “Roots” novel about a seven-generation lineage that started with a man sold into slavery in Gambia. For readers who recall this book, it topped the New York Times best-seller list for more than five months and inspired TV adaptations and current tracing-your-roots reality shows.

I have several hand-drawn and detailed ancestral trees from various branches of my extended family attesting to the hard work that was once entailed in developing ancestral charts before searchable online genealogical databases became widely available. In combination with DNA testing which became mainstream in the 2010s, tracking down one’s origins and visiting places associated with one’s ancestors has become much easier and more commonplace. This, in turn, has given rise to a different brand of heritage tourism than I was aware of during my working days.

In closing, personally speaking, I would simply say the two types of heritage tourism have played varying roles in my life. It’s not so much that I retired from being an archaeologist as I transitioned to using some of the same skills, particularly those I learned as a field archaeologist, to doing forensic genealogy to track down my own family’s origins and visit some of these places. Thus, I continue to be engaged in heritage tourism, albeit in a different form.

REFERENCES

“Marcus Lee Hansen.” Wikipedia, Wikipedia Foundation, 22 September 2023. Marcus Lee Hansen – Wikipedia

Salim-Peyer, G. (2024, January 20). The fantasy of heritage tourism. The Atlantic. Why So Many Americans Are Traveling Back to Their Roots – The Atlantic

POST 158: EMIL THOMAS, A FAMOUS THESPIAN & ILLEGITIMATE SON OF DR. JONAS BRUCK

Note: In this post, I introduce readers to the famous German actor and theater director Emil Thomas, the illegitimate son of my second great granduncle Dr. Jonas Bruck. Exceptionally well-known in Germany, he had a more than 50-year long career and was hailed in his New York Times death notice as “one of the most artistic comedians on the German stage.”

My English fourth cousin, Helen, Winter, née Renshaw, recently suggested I write a blog story about a man named Emil Thomas. As the name did not immediately resonate, I checked my ancestral tree and surprisingly discovered I have him there as Emil Bruck. Having obviously come across his name somewhere but with no vital information, I assumed he had died at birth, and was the stillborn fourth son of my second great granduncle and -aunt Jonas Bruck (1813-1883) (Figure 1) and Rosalie Bruck, née Marle (1817-1890). (Figure 2) I was to learn differently, particularly as Helen’s suggestion came accompanied by a picture of the once living and distinguished looking Emil Thomas. (Figure 3)

Figure 1. A painting of my second great granduncle Dr. Jonas Bruck (1813-1883) as a young man

Figure 2. My second great grandaunt Rosalie Marle (1817-1890) in 1881 dressed in an elegant silk gown

Figure 3. Photo of Emil Thomas (1836-1904) sent to me by my fourth cousin

I quickly discovered that Emil Thomas was a famous German actor and theater director. I suspect a German not knowing Emil Thomas would be tantamount to an American not knowing John Wayne. As Emil was well known, finding out about him was not difficult. Information can be found on German Wikipedia as well as in two German-language books he wrote that, unfortunately, have not been translated into English.

Given my familiarity with Jonas and Rosalie’s other three highly accomplished sons, it struck me as odd that I hadn’t previously come across Emil’s biography. In the ensuing presentation, I will briefly focus on Emil’s private rather than public persona, as my interest is primarily understanding his relationship to his father and family, not in examining his career or his bond to his legion of fans. Let me briefly explore what I’ve uncovered with the help of a German fourth cousin Thomas Koch who summarized some of what Emil himself wrote.

Emil Thomas’ father, Dr. Jonas Bruck, studied medicine and dentistry in Berlin. While there, he had an affair with an Emma Tobias (1810-1878). By all accounts, Jonas marrying Emma would have been a perfectly acceptable match since she was Jewish and of equivalent social rank. For whatever reason, this did not happen.

Rosalie Marle, the Jewish lady Jonas Bruck eventually married, was the daughter of a banker to the Prince of Pless. The Duchy of Pless was one of the Duchies of Silesia with its capital at Pless [today: Pszczyna, Poland]. During the War of the Austrian Succession from 1740 to 1748, most of Silesia including Pless was conquered by the kingdom of Prussia. The dukes, and later Princes, of Pless, however, held on to their territory.

My German fourth cousin’s great-aunt Bertha Bruck (1873-1957) (Figure 4) wrote a memoir in which she remarks that Rosalie Marle was one of the most beautiful dancers in the court of Pless. Jonas Bruck may have been following his family’s wishes when he married Rosalie, or simply his heart, though marrying her could have been a transactional decision based on the greater perceived benefits he might accrue. One may never know.

Bertha Bruck (1873-1957), whose memoir includes mention of Emil Thomas

On ancestry.com, I was able to locate the birth register listing for Emil Thomas, showing he was born on the 24^th of December 1836 and was named Ludwig Heinrich Emil Tobias. (Figures 5a-b) Only his mother’s name is given, Emma Tobias; the father is unidentified. Intriguingly, when Emil was baptized the following year on the 20^th of April 1837, a Brook zahnarzt, “the dentist Brook,” the surname oddly spelled the Americanized way like my own, was in attendance; the first name is illegible but is no doubt Jonas. This suggests there was no real effort to conceal the identity of the father. And in German Wikipedia, it is explicitly written that Emil was the son of a dentist.

Figure 5a. Screen shot of cover page of Ludwig Heinrich Emil Tobias’, aka Emil Thomas, 1836 birth and 1837 baptism record

Figure 5b. Emil Thomas’ birth and baptism record proving he was born on the 24 of November 1836 in Vienna and baptized on the 20th of April 1837 with the “Brook zahnarzt (dentist)” present

German Wikipedia goes on to say that Emil showed an early interest in the theater, going so far as to do an apprenticeship as a bookbinder thinking this profession would give him access to reading many plays. He had a very varied career, highlights of which can be found in the Jewish Encyclopedia. (Figure 6) He died on the 19^th of September 1904 in Berlin, and his death was reported in the New York Times the following day.

Figure 6. Screen shot from “The Jewish Encyclopedia” with Emil (spelled Emile) Thomas’ theater biography

Emil Thomas married the soprano singer Betty Damhofer (Figure 7), born Barbara Damhofer, on the 12^th of December 1878 in Hamburg, Germany. (Figures 8a-c) Emblematic of what I often rail about is that on the cover page of Emil and Barbara’s marriage certificate in ancestry.com, Barbara’s date of birth is shown as the 14^th of December 1837, erroneous information that has been disseminated. I had the good fortune to find Barbara Damhofer’s birth register listing showing she was really born on the 14^th of December 1847 in Vienna, Austria, though the birth was only recorded on the 16^th of December 1847. (Figures 9a-b) Even reliable sources like ancestry.com can incorrectly decipher or transcribe handwritten texts. Like her future husband, Barbara was born out of wedlock, though her father, Johann Nepomuk Damhofer (b. 1824), eventually wound up marrying her birth mother, Bibiana Winter (b. 1824).

Figure 7. Emil Thomas’ wife, Barbara Damhofer, whose stage name was Betty Damhofer; known to have been born in 1847, her date and place of death are unknown

Figure 8a. Screen shot of cover page of Emil Thomas and Barbara Damhofer’s 1878 marriage certificate showing incorrectly she was born on the 14th of December 1837

Figure 8b. First page of Emil Thomas and Barbara Damhofer’s 1878 marriage certificate

Figure 8c. Second page of Emil Thomas and Barbara Damhofer’s 1878 marriage certificate with the names of the spouses and witnesses

Figure 9a Cover page of birth register listing for Barbara Damhofer indicating she was born on the 14th of December 1847 in Vienna, Austria and that her parents were Johann Nepomuk Damhofer and Bibiana Winter

Figure 9b. Birth register listing for Barbara Damhofer proving she was born on the 14th of December 1847 in Vienna, Austria

At the registry office both Emil and Barbara claimed they were “Christian.” This is strange because spouses normally indicated they were either “Roman Catholic” or “Evangelical Lutheran.” Barbara came from a Catholic home and Emil was Evangelical Lutheran; Emil’s mother, as previously stated, was Jewish.

Emil Thomas’s first book, “40 jahre schauspieler. Erinnerungen aus meinem leben,” was published in 1895.

On page 240, Emil talks about his mother (translated):

“Unfortunately, a very hard blow hit me this year [EDITOR’S NOTE: 1878] on the 6^th of November. My good mother, whose idol and only son I was, who found in me all her happiness and the right to live, was to be taken from this earth. . .At 7 o’clock in the evening I closed my good mother’s eyes forever and at 8:30 my duty called me to the theater. . .”

Then, on page 266, presumably referring to the year 1879, he writes:

“The sole purpose of a guest performance in Breslau {EDITOR’S NOTE: Wrocław, Poland] was not to collect money and laurels, but mainly to introduce my relatives living there (my father, stepmother, and brothers) to my wife. It was a cheerful, sunny time that we spent very intimately in the family circle.”

The important takeaway is that Emil had a cordial relationship with his birth father and his family. And, according to family accounts, like Jonas’ three other sons, he inherited some money upon his father’s death in 1883.

Unbeknownst to most people, German marriage certificates include a second page with the names and signatures of the spouses and witnesses (i.e., most ancestral researchers fail to scroll to the second page). (see Figure 8c) Hoping that Jonas Bruck might have attended his son’s 1878 marriage to Barbara Damhofer, I discovered he had not.

Further proof that Emil Thomas was considered a member of the extended family comes from another memoir, that of Eberhard Friedrich Bruck (1877-1960) (Figure 10), Helen Winter’s grandfather. He writes that he considered his father’s half-brother Emil to be one of his uncles.

Figure 10. Eberhard Friedrich Bruck (1877-1960) whose memoir states that Emil Thomas was one of his uncles

One of the sources for Emil Thomas’ Wikipedia entry is an obituary written by a fellow actor and playwright in a 1904 volume of “Die Woche” (Figure 11), an illustrated weekly newspaper published in Berlin from 1899 to 1944. The writer of the piece co-authored a very popular German play from the 1930s entitled “White Horse Inn” (The White Horse Inn – Wikipedia). The obituary contains a disappointing lack of information saying merely that Emil Thomas was famous throughout Germany; that he was very vain; and that he was excellent company and enjoyed a good bottle of wine. I suppose worse could be said of someone upon their death.

Figure 11. Emil Thomas’ German obituary from “Die Woche” weekly newspaper written by a fellow actor and playwright

REFERENCES

“Emil Thomas (Schauspieler).” Wikipedia, Wikipedia Foundation, 5 April 2022. Emil Thomas (Schauspieler) – Wikipedia

Kadelburg, G. (1904, September 24). Emil Thomas. Persönliche Erinnerungen. Die Woche, p. 1714-1715.

Singer, Isidore & Edgar Mels. “Thomas, Emile (Emil Tobias).” Das Geistige Berlin, p. 540. THOMAS, EMILE (EMIL TOBIAS) – JewishEncyclopedia.com

Thomas, Emil. (1895). 40 Jahre Schauspieler: Erinnerungen aus Meinem Leben.

Thomas, Emil. (1904). Ältestes allerältestes.

POST 122, POSTSCRIPT: HERTA BRAUER, THE FAMILY CONNECTION TO THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC’S NOTORIOUS DICTATOR, RAFAEL TRUJILLO

Note: This postscript is the result of an unexpected message from a Ms. Kamali Chandler, a lady who hails from the Dominican Republic and whose family were friends with the Brauers when they lived there. In 1947, Herta and her husband were forced to flee the island nation leaving their children behind for a few years. Kamali explains the reason why.

Many of the people I’ve written about left no diaries, journals, letters, or personal accounts that I’ve found, nor were they otherwise renowned so evidence of them might be found on Wikipedia, on the Internet, or in books or articles. Other than proof of their existence or possibly a random obituary or a certificate of a vital event in their lives, which give a sense of where they were at a specific point in time, the motivation for their movements may be unclear. Even where a paper trail of a person’s life exists, often there are unanswered questions. Thus, I’m often left to think about how or why people wound up where they did.

In the case of Herta Brauer, née Stadach (1904-1983) (Figure 1), a relative by marriage and subject of Post 122, the reason why she and she her family came to the Dominican Republic is evident. More is known about Herta Brauer because she was a preeminent figure in dance and ballet in the Dominican Republic and later in Mallorca, Spain.

Figure 1. Herta Brauer (1904-1983) with her oldest son, Till Brauer, (1932-2001) in Neubabelsberg, Germany in 1933

As I previously discussed at length, the Dominican Republic was one of the few places in the world willing to accept Jews during World War II. In part, the Dominican Republic was willing to take in Jews to have the United States overlook the regime’s mass killing of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic’s northwestern frontier during the so-called “Parsley Massacre” in October 1937. Also, Rafael Trujillo (1891-1961), the island nation’s brutal dictator from 1930 until his assassination in 1961, was known to have been extremely racist so agreed to take in Jews to “whiten” the population.

Even though Herta and Ernst Hanns Brauer (1902-1971) (Figure 2) were Jewish and had gotten married in March 1932 in Berlin, they received a special dispensation from Pope Pius XI to remarry as Catholics when they were living in Rome. It’s possible that the Pope interceded on their behalf to obtain a visa for them to immigrate to the Dominican Republic, a predominantly Catholic country.

Figure 2. Ernst Hanns Brauer in Calvia, Mallorca in September, 1967

Regardless of how and why Herta Brauer arrived in the Dominican Republic, she managed to become very well established in the country by founding a ballet school there. Quoting what I wrote in Post 122:

“While Herta Brauer was not alone in teaching ballet in Ciudad Trujillo [today: Santo Domingo], through circumstances that are unknown, she was fortunate to meet and obtain the financial support of Flor de Oro Trujillo (1915-1978), Rafael Trujillo’s first-born daughter. According to Francis Pou (one of my informants), Flor de Oro Trujillo was very different than the dictator’s other children. She was not a criminal like her siblings and had a very troubled relationship with her father. She was very liberal, well-educated, and a socialite in Europe. She was married an astonishing nine times and spent the last twelve years of her life in New York, dying there in 1978, reliant on friends for financial support; she’d clearly been disinherited by her family.

Soon after Herta relocated to Ciudad Trujillo she started offering ballet classes in the living room of her house, probably beginning in early 1943. Flor de Oro covered the scholarship expenses for Herta’s pupils, while others apparently covered the cost for ballet slippers, costumes, and tights for regular practices. As in other countries, ballet in the Dominican Republic was born as a pastime of the middle and upper classes. Training sessions are known to have lasted between six and seven hours a day.

It’s hard to imagine that Herta was unaware that she had escaped one totalitarian regime only to be taken in by another. Perhaps her ambition forced her to overlook this uncomfortable truth because, clearly, she could not have opened her academy without the help of Flor de Oro Trujillo. When it did eventually open it was named after her benefactor. This could have been out of gratitude or because she was compelled to identify herself with and contribute to the general atmosphere which paid constant homage to Generalissimo Trujillo.”

Given the roots and connections Herta established in the Dominican Republic including with the Trujillo family, I have long wondered why she and her husband suddenly departed for Puerto Rico in 1947. Absent a chronicle of her life, I assumed I would never learn the reason.

Like similar imponderables, the answer came via one of my readers. Towards the end of January, a lady of Dominican Republic descent, Kamali Chandler, contacted me from New York after she stumbled on Post 122. Following the discovery of my post, Kamali told her mother, Francis Brea, who was very elated. Kamali explained that her mother, also now residing in New York, often chats about and has fond memories of Till Brauer (1932-2001) and Oliver “Chichi” Brauer (b. 1942) (Figure 3), Herta and Hanns Brauer’s two sons. It turns out that Francis Brea was friends with the Brauers, and she recalls Hanns was affectionately known as “Le Monsieur.” Such firsthand accounts and memories of people I write about imbue them with a tangibility that my words alone cannot inspire.

Figure 3. Brothers Oliver and Till Brauer in a photo likely taken in Puerto Rico in the 1950s

But the story takes on a darker twist. Rafael Trujillo was interested in the Brauers, particularly Herta, for the purpose of opening a ballet school in the Dominican Republic. At some point, however, Trujillo’s interest in Herta became romantic, but his amorous intentions were not reciprocated. Trujillo had a reputation of killing women who rebuffed his advances, so feeling they were no longer safe in the Dominican Republic, Herta and Hanns Brauer fled to Puerto Rico. This must have happened quite suddenly because they left their two sons in the care of Kamali’s grandmother, Altagracio Garo, née Brea. (Figure 4) The youngest son, Oliver born in 1942, was the only Brauer born in the Dominican Republic. Francis Brea’s recollection is that the two boys lived with her family until Oliver was about seven years of age, so for roughly two years until 1949. (Figure 5) As an adult, the older son Till and his family (Figures 6-7) periodically returned to Santo Domingo to reconnect with Kamali’s family and her cousins. They spent summers at Kamali’s uncle’s home, Robinson Brea Garo.

Figure 4. Kamali’s grandmother, Altagracio Garo, née Brea (right), later in life with Herta’s daughter by her first marriage, Yutta Maria Münchow; photo was taken in Puerto Rico

Figure 5. From left to right, Oliver, Hanns, Herta, and Till Brauer, and a family friend in a photo likely taken in Puerto Rico in the 1950s following the family’s reunification

Figure 6. Till Brauer, his wife Aracelis, and their children; the oldest boy “Tillito” is in the middle between his parents

Figure 7. Till “Tillito” Brauer as he looks today

To remind readers, the Brauers arrived in the Dominican Republic with Herta’s older daughter, Yutta Maria Münchow (1926-2001) (Figure 8), offspring of an earlier marriage. At the time of her mother’s sudden departure, Yutta was in nursing school so also stayed behind (Figures 9a-b) but would eventually leave the Dominican Republic.

Figure 8. Yutta Maria Münchow’s (1926-2001) 1941 Dominican Republic arrival document

Figure 9a. Yutta Maria Münchow’s 1947 Dominican Republic “Application for Duplicate Residence Permit”

Figure 9b. 1947 photo of Yutta Maria Münchow’s from her “Application for Duplicate Residence Permit”

In closing, the answer to seemingly trivial questions sometimes come from unexpected directions. What makes the explanation so intriguing is that it involves a brutal dictator who took a love interest in one of my relatives, placing her in harm’s way and altering the course of her life.

POST 156, POSTSCRIPT: THE ARRIVAL OF TRAIN SERVICE IN RATIBOR AS SEEN ON CONTEMPORARY MAPS

ADDITION IN RED MADE ON 4/3/2024

Note: In this postscript, I discuss the timing and path of construction of the Austrian Ferdinand Northern Railway vis a vis the Wilhelmsbahn Railway, and its likely impact on the family-owned hotel establishment in Ratibor, Prussia, which at least for some time likely benefited from the routing.

POST 156: THE ARRIVAL OF TRAIN SERVICE IN RATIBOR AS SEEN ON CONTEMPORARY MAPS

Multiple of my earlier posts have discussed the family establishment in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, owned by three generations of my family from roughly 1850 until 1926. Based on the evidence I’ve amassed, I’m convinced that my family owned the hotel from the time it was built sometime between 1846 and 1850, and that its construction was tied to the arrival of the railroad in Ratibor which began service there on the 1^st of January 1846.

There are at least two reference points that prove the “Prinz von Preußen” was in existence by 1850. First, the hotel is listed in John Murray’s 1850 “Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent: Being A Guide Through Holland, Belgium, Prussia, and Northern Germany, and Along the Rhine from Holland to Switzerland” as a place for people to stay in Ratibor while voyaging between Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland] and Vienna, Austria. (Figures 1a-b) Second, a notice published announced a recital by the noted Austrian composer Johann Strauss II (1825-1899) at the Prinz von Preußen on the 17^th of October 1850. (Figure 2) The composer performed at the hotel while on his way to Vienna, then again a month later on the 17^th of November 1850 on his way back through. (Figure 3)

Figure 1a. Cover of John Murray’s 1850 “Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent” discussing the “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel

Figure 1b. Page of John Murray’s 1850 “Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent” discussing the “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel

Figure 2. Notice for Johann Strauss II’s recital at the “Prinz von Preußen” on the 17th of October 1850

Figure 3. Notice for Johann Strauss II’s recital at the “Prinz von Preußen” on the 17th of November 1850

Following publication of Post 156, I did further research on the Wilhelmsbahn or Upper Silesian railway. Just to remind readers, the Wilhelmsbahn was a private railway company in Prussia. It was founded in 1844 in Ratibor in Upper Silesia to connect the Upper Silesian Railway (Breslau—Oppeln—Kosel—Gleiwitz) (today: Wrocław—Opole—Kozle—Gliwice) with the Austrian Emperor Ferdinand Railway. (Figures 4a-b; 5) Construction of this railway through Ratibor for the first time connected the Austrian railway network with the Prussian one.

Figure 4a. Upper Silesian Railway Stations from 1842 to 1883

Figure 4b. Timetable of the Upper Silesian Railway from Breslau (Wrocław) to Myslowitz (Mysłowice) and back in 1848-49

During my research, I stumbled on the following mention of the opening of the railroad in Racibórz:

“In 1846, the first section of the Wilhelm Railway ((German: Wilhelmsbahn, currently railway line No. 151) connecting Racibórz with Koźle was opened. In Koźle, the line connected with the Upper Silesian Railway ((German: Oberschlesische Eisenbahn) connecting Upper Silesia with Wrocław. In 1847, Wilhelm’s Railway was extended to Bohumín. In the years 1855–1858 further sections of the Wilhelm Railway connecting Racibórz with Katowice through Rybnik (currently railway line No. 140) were opened.”

This obscure reference comes from a report entitled “Road to Rail Potential shift of transport flows” published by the so-called Central Europe TRANS TRITIA. Suffice it to say, that TRITIA is a “European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation” in which three regions of Poland, Slovakia, and Czech Republic cooperate to improve coordination and planning of freight transport.

This seemingly insignificant mention of the Wilhelmsbahn Railway caused me to reexamine the references I’d consulted earlier related to the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway and reconsider the timing and route of its construction. In the process, I discovered I’d left readers a bit hanging as to where exactly the Wilhelmsbahn Railway connected with the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway after it left Ratibor. This, in turn, made me realize the Wilhelmsbahn Railway played a more significant role in the region’s economic development than I’d previously understood and that this no doubt resulted in significantly more business for my family’s hotel in Ratibor. Let me explain.

The Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway was a railway company that existed during the time of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. The main line of this railway was intended to connect Vienna with the salt mines in Bochnia, east of Krakau [today: Kraków, Poland]. Bochnia is located on the river Raba in southern Poland, and the salt mine there is the oldest functioning one in Europe, built in the 13^th century.

The Ferdinand Northern Railway was financed by Salomon Mayer von Rothschild (1774-1855) and was Austria’s first steam railroad. The first stretches connected small towns outside Vienna, then extended to Vienna in 1838. From there it connected to Lundenberg [today: Břeclav, Czech Republic] (Břeclav – Wikipedia) and Brunn [today: Brno, Czech Republic] in 1839; to Prerau [today: Přerov, Czech Republic] and Olmütz [today: Olomouc, Czech Republic] (Olomouc – Wikipedia) in 1841; to Leipnik [today: Lipník nad Bečvou, Czech Republic] in 1842; and to Ostrau [today: Ostrava, Czech Republic] (Ostrava – Wikipedia) and Oderberg [today: Bohumín, Czech Republic] by 1847. (Figure 5) What I failed to mention in Post 156 is that Oderberg or Bohumín, Czech Republic, as it is known today, is where the Ferdinand Northern Railway and the Wilhelmsbahn met in 1847. (Figure 6)

Figure 5. Railroad route from 1849 with some of the German place names mentioned in the text circled

Figure 6. Oderberg (today: Bohumin, Czech Republic), south of Ratibor, where the “Wilhelmsbahn” and the “Ferdinand Northern Railway” met in 1847

The Ferdinand Northern Railway never directly reached Kraków or the salt mines in Bochnia. The first rail connection from Vienna to Krakau took place via Oderberg (Bohumín), Ratibor, Kosel, and Myslowitz, and this was provided by the Wilhelmsbahn and the Oberschlesische Eisenbahn (Upper Silesian Railway). The line from Myslowitz to Krakau was built by the Krakau-Oberschlesische Bahn (Kraków and Upper Silesian Railway). Bearing in mind that the towns that are today in the Czech Republic were once part of the Austrian Empire, an entirely Austrian route from Vienna to Krakau did not exist until 1856, nine years after the Ferdinand Northern Railway reached Oderberg (Bohumín) and a full ten years after the Wilhelmsbahn railroad reached Ratibor.

In reviewing the construction timeline of the Ferdinand Northern Railway what I previously failed to fully comprehend is that the Wilhelmsbahn Railway was completed before the Northern Railway’s segment from Oderberg (Bohumín) to Krakau. The significance is that at least for some period Ratibor was an important transit point for people traveling between Vienna and Krakau, and the Bruck’s Hotel would have provided the then-modern amenities voyagers sought. Following completion of the more direct route from Oderberg (Bohumín) to Krakau would have meant that some business was lost, although Ratibor would have continued as a logical way station for people traveling to Breslau, Berlin, and points west from there.

Coincidentally, on the same page as the Prinz von Preußen is mentioned in John Murray’s 1850 “Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent,” Oderberg and the Kaiser Ferdinand Nordbahn (i.e., Ferdinand Northern Railway) are also discussed. The train coming from Prague to the west connected to the Ferdinand Northern Railway via Olmütz [today: Olomouc, Czech Republic] in Prerau [today: Přerov, Czech Republic]. (Figure 7)

Figure 7. Page of John Murray’s 1850 “Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent” discussing Oderberg and the “Kaiser Ferdinand Nordbahn”

REFERENCES

“Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway.” Wikipedia, Wikipedia Foundation, 20 September 2023. Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway – Wikipedia

Interreg Central Europe TRANS TRITIA. Road to rail potential shift of transport flows. March 2020. 9.2.21.-Road-to-rail-potential-shift-of-transport-flows.pdf (interreg-central.eu)

Murray, John (1850). A hand-book for travellers on the continent: being a guide through Holland, Belgium, Prussia, and Northern Germany, and along the Rhine from Holland to Switzerland London. John Murray. A hand-book for travellers on the continent. [1st] [2 issues of the 16th and … : John Murray : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

“Upper Silesian Railway.” Wikipedia, Wikipedia Foundation, 5 July 2023. Upper Silesian Railway – Wikipedia

Weltzel, Augustin (1861). Geschichte der Stadt Ratibor : Weltzel, Augustin : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

“Wilhelmsbahn.” Wikipedia, Wikipedia Foundation, 7 December 2020. Wilhelmsbahn – Wikipedia