The Farmer's Coat of Arms

Village of Irsch, Kreis Saarburg, Hausmarken

Does your family have a coat of arms? Royal families had magnificent coats of arms since the middle ages and took great pride in them. Books on Heraldry can be studied to find out if you have an ancestor with a coat of arms and your family genealogy indicates royal blood.  Heraldry, according to the American Heritage Dictionary is "the profession, study, or art of creating, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms." For many years I believed that my ancestors, basically of the farming and laboring classes, would not have had a coat of arms and therefore could not be genealogically traced.

 It was only after I read the best-selling book "Roots" by Alex Haley, a black man descended from slaves, that showed that no matter how unknown and poor one's ancestors might be, there were ways to trace back to earlier ancestors.  People like me with peasant ancestry finally understood that there was a great difference between searching in a book about heraldry for a coat of arms or using books and old records to find the history of a family.  Everyone has genealogical roots.  Not too many people find that their ancestors also had a coat of arms.

However, the chart of figures above could be called the farmer's coat of arms. After tracing my ancestry to peasant farmers in the Rhineland, I was surprised that some landowning farmer did have a picture code that bore a resemblance to the heraldic coat of arms.  These coats of arms were without the colorful figures used by the aristocracy--bears, stallions, tigers, crowns, jeweled swords, etc.   In Kreis Saarburg, the farmers coat of arm's had nothing to do with royal blood, but everything to do with a type of land sharing known as the Gehöfershaft.

What is the meaning of Gehöfershaft? With my limited German, I still do not fully understand all the ins and outs of this complicated term which represents a manner of sharing a very large amount of land held in common. According to my research, in a Gehöfershaft, only small areas of land were privately owned, mostly valley meadows, which ensured the farmers a crop even in dry years. The rest of the land, especially land with hedges and oak trees was owned in common.  Gehöfershaft is a rare word that cannot be found in German dictionaries of today or even going as far back as the last century's dictionaries.  My American second cousin with whom I share Bavarian ancestry and who speaks fluent German, told me he had never heard this word and had no idea what it was.  Puzzling indeed, because if you go to a Kreis Saarburg village and visit their museum of historic objects like tools or cooking utensils, you may also be shown (if it has survived the years) the village's Rosenkranz (rosary) and given an explanation of what it was. And yes, the word "Gehöfershaft" will be used over and over in that explanation.

However, the Gehöferschaft method of land sharing exists in only a few areas of Germany, including Kreis Trier and Saarburg and also much of the Saarland. If your ancestors, like mine, were landowning farmers in these regions where the Gehöferschaft land system existed, they would have a specific house mark (Hausmark) for the farm.  The mark that identified their "Haus" (house and barn were in one building) was rather like the coat of arms used by royalty.  It plainly meant, "this possession is mine and here is its unique symbol that proves its descent."

In his book on the history of Irsch in Kreis Saarburg, Ewald Meyer writes that a basis for the long existence of the Gehöferschaft land-sharing system in Kreis Saarburg (until almost the 20th century) might just be the lingering survival of the house marks. In 1853 there were still a multitude of house marks, 137 in Irsch alone as shown in the chart above.  This means that 137 landed farmers had shares in (belonged to) the Gehöferschaft.

Originally Gehöferschafts rights were assigned to a farmer and identified by the Hausmark.  Research shows that these Hausmark identifiers are ancient kinship characters and were passed from father to oldest son.  After Napoleon changed the inheritance laws when he brought Kreis Saarburg into the French Republic, all the children of a family now were allowed to inherit an equal share of the family's possessions.  This law remained in force under Prussian rule.  It also complicated the Gehöfershaft/Hausmark system.  Originally, the shares of the Gehöfer land were equal in size/value.  With the introduction of the French law, the Gehöferschaft shares had to be sized into smaller sections and it was not always possible to keep the land share sizes completely equal.  Also new Hausmark symbols had to be created.

The Hausmark was not only used to show land boundaries.  It was also a property mark carved or painted on possessions or branded on animals.  The unique mark sometimes decorated a house's door lintel. They could be used on contracts and documents when the signers were illiterate.  Most of the marks consist of rune-like images. Letters are in the minority as you can see on the Gehöferschaft chart of Irsch in the illustration above.

Rosenkranz for the village of Schoden

The Gehöferschaft land shared in common were allocated by drawing lots. The lot numbers were engraved on wood-drilled beads, cubes, or tablets, which could be strung on a strap of leather and tied in a circular "Rosenkranz" in the same way as the beads on a rosary were strung and used for prayer (Rosenkranz is the word for rosary).  When it was time for a reallocation of the land shares, usually after about five years use by a farmer, the administrator of the Gehöferschaft would unstring the old Rosenkranz, drop the loose cubes or tablets into a hat or some other container, and the new division of land would again be drawn by lot.  As each land section cube was drawn from the hat, the new Hausmark was added by painting over or carving away the old symbol and painting on the new Hausmark.  Then the Rosenkranz was restrung. The Gehöferschaft community's administrator preserved the "Rosenkranz" until it was time for the next draw.

It was typical that any newly created house marks would show a strong resemblance to the original Hausmark of the family. It was usually a slight addition to the lines or characters of the first house mark in that family. Look at the each Hausmark in the chart above and see if you can find relationships among them. For instance, could there be a set of related family marks in row 5 where there is only one difference between square 2 and square 3. As you keep looking, you will see more possible linked house marks.

Unfortunately, emigrants lost their Hausmark when they sold their Gehöferschaft land before leaving for America so I don't know what the rune-like characters for the farmers Meier or Hauser or Rauls might have been.  But since I come from a family of hearty eaters, I think at least one of the Hausmarks might have resembled No. 87 above - a fork!

Sources:
Meyer, Ewald.  Irsch/Saar: Geschichte eines Dorfes.  2004
http://schoden.vg-hosting.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=79&Itemid=104

The Land Auctions in Irsch in 1861

Meadowland in Irsch

The fields around Irsch

A wine hill

Kataster Map with Meier House

The morning of February 22, 1861 was a momentous one for me and for all of the present-day descendants of Johann Meier and Magdalena Rauls Meier.  That day determined our nationality for the next 150 years.

Although there had been an application to emigrate legally executed earlier in February, and although there would be an auction of farm and household items in March (as described in my post of February, 2012), the selling of the land a farmer owned was the day that the emigration decision was cast in stone. Now there was no turning back for Johann and Magdalena because at the end of the day they no longer had fields in Irsch to support their survival during the coming year. By the time the sun set on February 22, other farmers were in possession of their land and the very barnhouse that had been their home since their marriage on February 14, 1849.

It is amazing to me that,  in that small village of Irsch sometime during the first three months of 1861, the auctions of five families took place.  They would join Johann and Magdalena on the same ship that would sail from Le Havre about the beginning of April. It is obvious that a monumental division was continuing.  The buyers of all of these auctioned fields may have considered the idea of emigration but decided against it.  The farmers buying the Meier's land, which would mean a mortgage to be paid, were clinging to their homeland.  In spite of ever-lurking hardships, they were setting their roots more deeply into the soil of the only place most of them had ever known . They would be the ones to continue their way of life of the old country.  The sellers were uprooting themselves, determined to have a better life for their families, although it meant leaving everything and everyone they had ever known; a change of allegiance and of customs that were as yet unknown to them.

The Land Holdings of Johann and Magdalena Meier:

The auction of the land owned by Johann and Magdalena Meier began at 10 a.m. on the morning of February 22, 1861 and ended at 3 p.m. In was held on the premises belonging to Mathias Peter Britten. It is more than likely that this was the Peter Britten who is listed in the Catholic church registers as a farmer, ship-puller, and innkeeper and that the inn's taproom was the setting for the sale.   There were two witnesses, Theordor Ney who was a house painter/whitewasher in Beurig; and Johann Becker who was a field guard in Irsch.  The official in charge of the auction was again notary Waringer of the almost "unintelligible handwriting".

There were two classes of land to be sold--the land which the Meiers owned outright, and the land which was part of the Irsch Gehöferschaft. The Gehöferschaft holdings were either meadows or Lohhecken/oakbark hedgerows. Lohhecken, to the best of my understanding, came from (scrub?) oak trees growing in the wild, the bark of which could be stripped and then sold to the tanneries along the Saar river in Saarburg or Beurig.

The other pieces of land which Johann and Magdalena Meier offered for sale consisted of farmland where crops were sowed, cultivated and harvested; garden land which could be used by the family to grow the produce which would see them through the year; wildland; a wine hill for growing grapes; Wande (steep hillside) land; forest land; and a woodlot.

As I have explained in the post, "Village Roads and Fields", a farmer's fields might be miles from his barnhouse.  The possession of adjacent fields was uncommon in the Rhineland in the 19th century. Areas called "Flur" had descriptive names that identified the approximate location of each strip of land owned by a farmer in a particular section of the village. Ewald Meyer, in his history of the village of Irsch, says the names of the "Fluren" were usually related to landforms, names of local farms, woodlots, etc. That is, a farmer might have his clover planted in a land section called "By the Stone Cross" and his potatoes in a strip of land known as "Above the Trier Way." The auction bidders as well as the official conducting the auction would officially be accepting the land boundaries described in the Kataster, which was the land map and tax register document used by the Prussian Government to identify the owner and boundaries of each parcel of land and assign tax responsibility to each landowning resident.

The conditions read out for the sale of the land and building being auctioned were, in many ways, similar to those for the "moveable objects" as explained in my February post.  In addition, there were warnings that the buyer was getting the land as described in the Kataster register, regardless of any unknown errors in it. The land buyer would be responsible for one third of the purchase price of property, with interest, on November 11 of 1861, 1862, and 1863. The interest rate was five per cent yearly. However the taxes for the land would not become the responsibility of the new owner until January 1, 1862. There was also a penalty for late payment and provisions for default of payment. The new owner also had to pay the cost of recording the new ownership on the Government's land Kataster.  A few of the other conditions listed defeated both my ability to read German and the power of "Google Translate."  All of the conditions were read aloud before the actual auction started.

The Land Auction Begins:

When the auctioneer was ready to begin the actual selling, the field description was read out.  The bidding was then open and when the gavel fell awarding the lot, the same description was read again to the buyer to make sure that he understood both what he was buying and the cost. If the buyer was satisfied that all was correct, he signed his name. These handwritten signatures varied from very clear to downright impossible to read. (Picture the hurried scrawls of many doctors, business people and public officials).   It was rare to find an "X" or some other mark in place of a signature. Most of the adults in Irsch must have had at least elementary schooling by 1861.

The auction document gives no indication of how the bidding on each field was brought to a close, but a fellow genealogist, who also has an auction document for her family from the Rhineland area near Koblenz, shared an interesting detail. At the point at which an auctioneer heard a significant silence, a candle would be lit. This candle would burn for only one minute before it went out. The auctioneer would then light another one-minute candle. The same procedure was repeated with the third candle. Hearing no other offer before the third candle flickered out, the land was officially declared sold to the last bidder.  The auction officials in the Koblenz area were definitely sticklers when it came to assuring that everyone had the same amount of time to think over a further bid!

When the auction record for the land of Johann and Magdalena Meier was placed on file for me to see 151 years later,  it contained the following kinds of information for each piece of land.

*the number of the land lot in the Flur - Lot 1647

*the name of the Flur - hinterm Keltergarten (behind the Kelter garden)

*the size of the piece of land - 16 Ruthen, 60 feet

*the owners of the fields that bordered the field being sold - Nikolaus Fuhs-Klein and Johann Schuh

*the buyer and his residence - Anton Schuh, Irsch village

*the amount paid for the piece of land - 20 Thaler

*the signature of the buyer - signed in his own handwriting

When the auction ended, the total land sale had earned 1,269.15 Thaler for Johann and Magdalena.

The Auction of the Land and the Dwelling On It:

Property 4091 consisted of a "Wohnhaus" a place for the family to live, for the animal stalls, and for storage of crops.  It was located in the middle of the village with a land area size of 10 Ruthen and 10 feet.  Bordering it were the dwellings of Anna Hauser, "unreadable" Feilen, and the main street. (I've noticed that a number of people had the first or last name of "unreadable," due to the poor handwriting of notary Warigner.)

The highest bid for the house, barn, and stables (all under one roof) was 320 Thaler, a combined bid from two Irsch farmers, Nikolaus Fuhs and Mathias Konter.  This was somewhat unusual.  It begs the question of why.  Was the current barnhouse then divided into two dwellings or was it shared in some other way by the two winning bidders?

Auction of the cows

After all of the land had been purchased, the auction was declared over at 3 p.m. and the auction of the animals began.  It was in the same location, the inn of Mathias Peter Britten, and the same official and witnesses were present.  There were three cows in the stalls of Johann Meier; however,  one cow was held back and would not be sold until the moveable property auction of March 22. This exception made sure that the Meier children would continue to have milk to drink until all the family's possessions were sold.

One cow was sold for 40 Thaler to Mathias Lehnert-Schreiner, A farmer in Irsch.  The second cow brought 48 Thaler, more than many of the land pieces.  The new owner was Nikolas Reiter,  a farmer from neighboring Beurig.  The auction ended at 4 p.m.

After the Auctions Ended:

On the same day that the auction was held, the rights to land and property were transferred to the Jewish merchant Simon Wolff.  The money from the buyers of that land was not due in full until November of 1863, and the Meier's left Irsch to go to America in March, 1861.  Ewald Meyer who did the translating of the auction documents says that this Jewish moneylender from Wawern loaned back the money minus interest to the Meiers based on the anticipated land payments that would be made.

There is no written explanation that tells me whether Johann, Magdalena, and their children were able to stay on in their barnhouse. Technically, they no longer owned it. But I think staying in it is very possible since their movable possessions would not be sold until the following month at the "movables" auction. Also, the winning bidders had not yet paid any money for the property and would not owe for taxes until 1862. Johann Meier had made the expenditure for the taxes on land and buildings in 1861 from his own pocket.

In the following four weeks, it must have been a peculiar feeling for Johann and Magdalena to hear their neighbors and friends talking of their planting plans for the coming year in the farm fields, some that had once belonged to Johann, his father and his grandfather.


NOTES: An unmarried uncle, Michael, must have lived with Johann and Magdalena and their family because he was going to America with them and sold his land too. His auction was held the next day, February 23.

The notary seems to have used square units: Fuß (feet), Ruthen, and Morgen. In Prussia, one square Ruthe was 14.18 square meters and one square Fuß (foot) was .092 Square meters.  One Morgen was 2553.22 square meters.

Sources:
Aussenstelle of the Landeshauptarchiv in Neuwied - Rommersdorf, Rheinland.
Meyer, Ewald, Irsch/Saar: Geschichte eines Dorfes
Translation of Auction Documents of Joseph Thielmann and Katharina born Henn by Walter Petto and Ulriich Thielmann, 
Translation of Auction Documents of Johann Meier and Magdalena born Rauls by Ewald Meyer.
Pictures from www.Irsch/Saar.de; Kathy, the Single-minded Offshoot, and Annette Schwickerath of Trier

A Visit to the Zerf Heimat Museum - Conclusion

The following section ends my information about the Zerf Heimatmuseum. It contains a description of miscellaneous artifacts not covered in the other posts. Just like the other entries I have posted, these artifacts may help paint a better picture of daily life in the village of Zerf and/or of the many other small villages near the Saar and Mosel rivers.

As I explained in my first post on the Zerf museum, the descriptions below without parentheses are my translations from the German language museum guide I received as a souvenir at the time of my visit. Anything in parentheses is additional information gleaned from other sources which I hope makes the original description a bit clearer.

Now back to the museum


In the blacksmith's shop one can see the forge with the bellows, anvil, hammers, pliers, a bending machine for bending the eisenreifen (iron wheels) for the farm wagons. (According to the book, Serrig: Landschaft, Geschichte & Geschichtenby Klaus Hammächer, a dog could be trained to run inside the wheel shown in this picture. As he ran, he powered the bellows and the flame of the forge. The picture was taken at the Roscheider Hof open air museum near Konz)

Trumpets were used by Schweinehirt (swineherds). At the sound of the trumpet, the farmer opened the pig stalls and the Schweinehirt drove the pigs into the oak forests and guarded them there. In the evening the Schweinehirt brought them back with the trumpet signal. On the Feast of St. Martin (November 11) the Schweinehirt received a measuring beaker/cup full of grain for each pig under his care. (St. Martin's day was also the traditional time to prepare for winter by slaughtering pigs, geese, and other animals since they would soon be unable to forage for food and would have to be fed by the farmer)

The half Vierzel was a measuring instrument for grain. In former times the grain was not weighed; it was measured with this container. Four half Vierzel 'filled not too much and not too little' ( leveled?) equaled one hundredweight of corn, barley or wheat. Six half Vierzel made up a hundredweight of oats, because oats is finer. In earlier times, the teachers in the village were often also the swineherds, because there was no school in the summer (when the pigs could roam). School was held from St. Martin's Day to Easter.

One could distinguish cow, sheep and goat bells by the different tone qualities.

The small Nicholas bells were used by the adults to make the children aware of the feast day some weeks before it arrived. They rewarded the children's obedience by putting small gifts at the door on St. Nicholas Eve

In the bedroom we see the straw filled mattress, the pillow filled with grain chaff, and the feather bed. (The villagers made use of almost any part of the crops that they grew, even in the bedroom. For instance, small pouches were filled with grape seeds and could be heated to ease pain, much as we can relax tight muscles by using the same sort of pouch and heating its "magic crystals" in a microwave. These grape seed pouches are still sold at the "Golden Autumn" festival and market in Saarburg)

The broad low-lying wooden box sled was, in former times, a popular plaything for the children during the long, snow-rich winters.

Kleppern (wooden clappers) and Raspeln (a rattle-like wooden device which rotated and made a rasping sound when shaken by its long handle) replaced the bells during Holy Week when bells could not be rung on Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

This is the Rosenkranz on which the house sign and hedge land identifiers for the Gehöfershaft were placed. These blocks were drawn in a lottery for distributing the Lohhecken among the farmers in the Gehöfershaft. (Above is a photo from Der Hochwaldort Zerf am Fuße des Hunsrücks, by Edgar Christoffel, c. 1981, Verlag W. Rassier, D5510 Saarburg. It shows wooden blocks with symbols which are rune-like rather than alphabetic characters. This Rosenkranz, the German word for rosary, served as a sort of plat map for the hedge lands which belonged to the entire community of land-owning farmers. In the Saar and Mosel region these landed farmers were usually referred to as a Gehöfershaft. A symbol identifying each section of the hedge lands, sections which were especially valuable for the oak tree bark stripped for tanning, was painted on one side of each small wooden block. Then a lottery was held. Each farmer in turn drew out a wooden block containing a hedge land symbol. His distinctive house mark could now be painted on the other side of the wooden block and the section was his to work until the next lottery was held. When the lottery was completed, the blocks were strung into the Rosenkranz and probably kept by the mayor of Zerf. In Zerf, this lottery took place every five years. The neighboring village of Irsch had a similar Rosenkranz, according to the book Irsch/Saar: Geschichte eines Dorfes, by Ewald Meyer).

The kitchen utensils and the farm equipment are described in Part 2 and Part 3, the other parts of this amazing visit to the past.