Seelen

Long before baking bread became a popular pandemic activity, my darling husband would rise early on a Sunday morning and continue his quest to bake the perfect Seelen. He had varying success, until one June morning he produced spectacularly crusty Seelen. He posted the result on social media, prompting many to ask just what Seelen were. 

Seelen, literally "souls," are the bread found in the pocket of Swabia whence my darling husband originates. They are a staple of the German breakfast table, slathered in butter, bedecked with cold cuts, sometimes anointed with chocolate hazelnut spread. As one does. 

Alfred Jr.'s Seelen

As reactions to the photos of Seelen were still pouring in, darling husband was gathered with his family to share salty tears and Seelen with his family. For while he was baking, his father had begun slipping towards the other side. Alfred Hellstern Sr. passed the threshold in the wee hours of our morning, shortly after his son arrived in the Vaterland.

Seelen were originally small loaves placed on graves for All Soul's Day. But they're so good with fresh butter, it would be a waste to not share it with the living, and make it daily. 

This is where I admonish you to hold your family tight, and perhaps share a crusty loaf with those you love. Because all too soon, we must say goodbye.

The last farewell

Lives of Service

The Baltimore Sun, published March 30, 2013 | By Frederick N. Rasmussen

Dr. Lorenz E. and Anastasia U. Zimmerman

Ophthalmic pathologist and nurse had met during service in Army 

Dr. Lorenz E. Zimmerman, the founder of modern ophthalmic pathology, who spent his nearly 60-year career studying diseases of the eye, died March 16 of complications from an infection at the Blakehurst retirement community in Towson. He was 92. 

His wife of 53 years, Anastasia U. Zimmerman, a registered nurse who had served as a major with the Army Nurse Corps, died Tuesday of congestive heart failure, also at Blakehurst. She was 89.

"Without a doubt, Dr. Zimmerman was the most influential eye pathologist in the last 150 years. He was known worldwide and he trained all of the world's leading eye pathologists of the 20th century," said Dr. Morton F. Goldberg, who was director of the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1989 until 2003.

"He was a charismatic and brilliant lecturer, which is a mark of erudition and real brilliance," said Dr. Goldberg. "He was a fine person with impeccable ethics, and he also had inherent leadership traits. He had been a leader in our field for more than 50 years."

Lorenz Eugene Zimmerman, the son of a German immigrant father and an immigrant mother from Switzerland, was born and raised in Washington, graduating in 1938 from Central High School. "They owned the Regent Pastry Shop in Washington, and he said he went into medicine because he didn't want to have to work as hard as his parents," said a daughter, Dr. Mary Louise "Lou" Collins, a Homeland resident, who is director of pediatric ophthalmology and resident education at Greater Baltimore Medical Center .

Dr. Zimmerman earned his bachelor's degree in 1943 and his medical degree in 1945, both from George Washington University. 

He served in the Army from 1944 to 1954, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel.

He served an internship at the old Gallinger Municipal Hospital in Washington from 1945 to 1946 and completed a general pathology residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center from 1947 to 1950. 

"The start of the Korean War coincided with the end of his residency, and he became the pathologist in charge of a field hospital pathology laboratory where he served in Korea until 1952," said Dr. Collins.

While in Korea, Dr. Zimmerman was commanding officer of the 8217th Mobile Medical Laboratory. His decorations included the Bronze Star and Legion of Merit.

The Korean War was the backdrop for the beginning of a friendship that later blossomed into a marriage. The future Mrs. Zimmerman had enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps in 1945 and served in Japan during the occupation after the end of World War II.

"My parents first met in a mobile Army hospital in Korea," said Dr. Collins. "They did not see each other again for seven or eight years until they were both stationed at Walter Reed. They married in 1959."

In 1952, Dr. Zimmerman began his career at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He remained there for the next 52 years, and chaired the department of ophthalmic pathology from 1954 to 1983. He was chairman emeritus at his death.

"This was the turning point in his career, although he had not had specific training in pathology of the eye and ocular adnexa," said Dr. Collins.

Dr. Zimmerman's role was not treating patients but rather studying eye tissue and cells that may lead to eye disease. He made important contributions to the understanding of the causes of leukocoria, or white pupil, and ocular melanoma.

"He studied a huge volume of tissue samples that came from eye surgeons all over the world. He brought exceptional order out of chaos," said Dr. Goldberg.

Dr. Zimmerman was not only a prolific researcher but also an indefatigable writer of scientific articles. During his career, he wrote more than 370 articles in peer-reviewed journals, "many of which are landmark contributions," said Dr. Collins.

He also lectured widely. "Every talk he gave he was just spectacular," said Dr. C. Pat Wilkinson, chairman of the department of ophthalmology at GBMC. "I knew him from my residency days and he was one of those figures you rarely come across in life."

He was a professor of pathology and ophthalmology at Georgetown University from 1983 to 1986 and was a consultant in pathology from 1976 to 1999 at Washington Hospital Center.

Dr. Zimmerman was also a professor of ophthalmology and pathology at the Johns Hopkins Medical School.

He retired in 2002.

"He was a man of no pretensions. He was known as 'Zim,'" said Dr. Goldberg. "He loved teaching and doing original research and was exceptional at both."

"Zim does leave a lasting legacy," said Dr. Wilkinson. "He had a wonderful personality. He was an elegant, charming and enthusiastic guy that everyone just adored. We will all miss him."

The couple had lived in Kensington for many years before moving to Blakehurst 11 years ago. Dr. Zimmerman liked spending time at a second home at Sherwood Forest.

Anastasia and Lorenz

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[Editor's note: The Zimmermann and Hellstern families both came from the town of Betra, and intermarried frequently: the most direct pairing is Magdalena Zimmermann, who married Alfred Hellstern senior. Her brother was Lorenz's father, the immigrant who came from serving in the kitchens of a castle to owning a bakery in Washington, DC.]

A cut branch

Anyone who has carried their genealogy back more than a century, or who has spent time walking the rows in a cemetery will note the number of children born to a family is much higher than we consider "normal." Likewise, the number of children--and mothers--who die, usually shortly after the birth seems very high from our modern perspective. A few entries from a name study underway illustrates how our understanding of conception, birth control, and general health has expanded over the years, and how that plays out in real terms for real people:

• Barbara, born in 1698, married Anton in Betra, then part of Prussia, when she was 19. She bore 13 children, 8 of whom died as infants. She died at the age of 45, shortly after giving birth to a boy named Anton; the baby also died within days of his birth.
• In the same village, Magdalena married Johann when she was 25 (8 months after their first child was born). She bore 10 children, only half of whom lived to adulthood. In 1777, she and five of her children died in a 6-month period, likely from illness, possibly smallpox.
• Felicitas married Johann in Betra, Prussia, when she was 21 years old in 1778. She bore 12 children, of whom 6 died before the age of one. She died one year after the birth of her last child, at age 44. 
• Afra was born in Betra in 1822, and married Johann Baptist when she was 22--the day after the birth of her first child. She bore four more children, of whom three made it to adulthood. She died 9 months after her last child was born. She was 29.
• Christina married yet another Johann when she was 28 years old. She had one child seven years later, followed by a son when she was 55. That baby lived three months; she died a month after he did in the winter of 1869. 
• Olga was born in Betra in 1888. She never married, and was a midwife. According to baptismal records, she had three children. It is unclear if she gave birth to them herself, or "found them in the swamp" as her family explained it--possibly unwanted children of her clientele. One child died at 6 months of age, and one was killed in WWII by friendly fire.
• Margaret, a first generation immigrant from Betra, married Harry in Pennsylvania in 1911, when she was 22 years old. She had one child three years later, who died within hours of his birth. She never had any other children. 

Mother and child

Coming together

If my travels have taught me one thing, it's that asking for directions is a sport. If I help a stranger in need of directions in an American city, I will give them the way with a number of blocks, and right and/or left turns. The first time I asked for directions to the post office in the French town I had landed in, I was told to "Go up the main street a few meters--it's on the left." Never mind that I was a bit unsure of exactly how far "a few" meters was, I wasn't clear which way was "up." Was it north, like a map? We got back in the car and drove one way--and then the other. It wasn't until later, when I was on foot when I realized which way was up--turns out there was a slight incline uphill to the post office.

In Ireland, we were flummoxed by maps that seemed at times to be purely fictional, and directions garnered from publicans and their customers: there were too many twists and turns, which led us to believe that those Celtic scroll designs were early maps. Signage was no help: one kind soul suggested that the wind had been blowing hard and moving the signs; another woman simply told us to ignore them, as, "the lads had been up there last Saturday evening."

But in Germany, maps and signs were accurate, so we rarely needed to ask the way. Except in the little town of Betra. The marriages in and between places are a clear indication that a few kilometers between villages was nothing to these folks used to walking. What is hard for the "foreigner" to grasp, however, are the directions. Someone was kind enough to draw a map, with the correct prepositions between the villages.

I'd love to provide a glossary, but most of them are Swabian dialectical variations on "up" "down" "to" and "over."

Where are you taking us?

We've driven past it a hundred times on our way to pick up our daily bread. In the shadow of the baroque Basilica in Weissenau, it pokes out onto the sidewalk next to tree-lined grounds of the Heilanstalt--literally "healing place"--or sanatorium. 

But the grey bus didn't mean anything to us until we read the plaque nearby:

"The so-called “Euthanasia-Action” (Aktion T 4) of the National Socialists claimed about 200,000 mentally ill victims during World War II. They were considered 'not worthy of living.' At least 90,000 patients died of hunger or inadequate nourishment, or were murdered with drugs in state-run sanatoriums. More than 70,000 men, women, and children were murdered in gas chambers during the secret operation 'T4' in 1940/41. The mass murder was centrally organized at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin - thus the abbreviation 'T4.' Grafeneck, Brandenburg, Bernburg, Hartheim (near Linz), Sonnenstein, and Hadamar were the towns where the murders took place. Some of the staff of these killing institutions later worked in extermination camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec. There is hardly a region in Germany that was not affected by this organized mass murder. Mentally and physically handicapped people were the first victims of a systematic, well-organized annihilation plan directed against the ill and those regarded as “racially inferior” by the Nazi regime. The 'Monument of the Grey Busses' serves as a reminder of the transports of the patients to their deaths. Artists Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz designed the monument for the Weißenau Psychiatric Centre near Ravensburg in 2006. A bus based on the same model as the one that drove from the hospitals to the death centres in the years 1940 and 1941, in its original size and concrete form, commemorates the mass murder. 'Where are you taking us?' – The question of one of the patients -- is inscribed on the monument." 

Years before, after taking in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., we had entered the family surname in the database. One name popped: Lorenz Hellstern--in Weißenau. 

Lorenz was born August 26, 1878, in the village of Betra, the tenth and last child of Ambrose and Maria (née Maier) Hellstern. He was baptized at 3 days of age in the Catholic church there. Both his parents died before they turned 50; he had seven living siblings, so presumably the family cared for him. The next record found for him is in 1939, in the German Minority Census: he is a patient in the Heilanstalt Weissenau. The last mention of Lorenz is found is March 2, 1940 in a list of NS euthanasia victims in Grafenek. He was 62.

Cold leads

I am as cold as I have ever been before, but even our sons agree, this was an afternoon well spent. 

We set out early to head to the town in Southern Germany where my research indicates all Hellsterns originate. There was a dusting of snow, so we all layered up with longies and everything we had that might protect us from the cold. 

We arranged to meet up with a motley crew of history and genealogy buffs, and the oldest Hellstern in the village, who lives with her son on the edge of the village. 

It is snowing hard on the Autobahn, to the point that we can’t always drive on bare pavement. But Germans are efficient, and plows and salting trucks are out in force, even on a Sunday. There's even a little plow on the sidewalk.

Today's car game is to look for businesses with their surname, and we don’t have to wait long: it’s on the side of a snowplow that makes it possible for us to get into the village. We park in the town square, and meet up with our history buff, and together we walk the kids up to the old, now empty home where their Opa and Tante lived. We know it will soon be sold by the last son (who has no children), so we take lots of pictures and talk about when they got to drive the tractor and climb the cherry tree and stuff their faces with their Tante's warm Hefezopf. 

Cousin Ursula arrives with her husband in tow, and produces a 1970s orange vintage thermos casserole with lovely ham and cheese pastries still warm from her oven. Reinvigorated by the warm snack, we head to the latest cousin we have connected with, who lives with his elderly mother. We hope she can help identify some old pictures.

We arrive, and after explaining that we cannot come in (we are vaccinated, boosted and tested, but we are also traveling), they invite us to the back yard terrace, which overlooks the (currently snowy) rolling fields. Soon, someone brings out a table so we can look at notes and sketch a tree to figure out how we are related. The elder takes a while to figure it out (too many people with the same name!) but we eventually realize we are all related, except for our resident historian, though we decide he is probably a distant cousin—we just need to do more research.

Cousin Ursula ducks back to her car, and emerges with the orange casserole, and a huge cake (Käsecreme with meringue). At which point our new cousin's wife organizes chairs, and scurries around and produces plates, cups, and thermoses of steaming coffee and tea.

Yet another cousin joins us, and helps reduce the amount of cake, the new cousin’s son sticks his head out, and the conversation restarts as we tell him how he is related to everyone. Many jokes about the American "uncle" and tons of pictures.

We were thinking we might visit a nearby castle, but it is clear that is for another (warmer) day. The ham and cheese pockets are gone, there is one fat slice of cake left, and most of us cannot feel our toes. It is time to take one last group photo and say our goodbyes. 

It will take a few hours to warm up completely, and even more hours to research my copious notes, but we have laid a foundation for further collaboration—emails are already flying and scans of sepia images are filling our inboxes.