Did The Tailor Of Bexley Come From Koningsberg?
My paternal great-great-great grandfather; Robert, was a tailor from Bexley, who I wrote about in The Tailor Of Bexley. I said this in that post.
My father once told me, that his grandfather, who must have been William, once told him, of a first hand account of Robert the tailor of Bexley, who was his grandfather.
He said that he was German and that he didn’t speak any English. Because of my coeliac disease, which is quite common in East European Jews and his profession, we can probably assume that Robert; the tailor of Bexley was Jewish. My father also told me that the family name was Müller, which had been Anglicised.
I know little more of him and his place of birth is not known to me. All I know is that he had a son; Edward in 1816, so that would put his birth in the late eighteenth century.
My trip to North-East Poland got me thinking, as I saw the branches of the Prussian Eastern Railway and discussed the history of the area with Piotr; our excellent Polish guide from Gdansk.
I also searched the Internet for Koningsberg and learned more details of its history in the late eighteenth century, with the Napoleonic Wars and the various partitions of Poland. I also read how Koningsberg was a large and cultured city. Wikipedia says this.
A university city, home of the Albertina University (founded in 1544), Königsberg developed into an important German intellectual and cultural centre, being the residence of Simon Dach, Immanuel Kant, Käthe Kollwitz, E. T. A. Hoffmann, David Hilbert, Agnes Miegel, Hannah Arendt, Michael Wieck and others.
But with the Second World War, the elimination of Jews from the city by the Nazis and the eventual takeover of the area by the Russians, the recent history has been less than a happy one.
Knowing myself, it sounds like the sort of city that I like, as my three favourite cities are Hong Kong, Liverpool and of course London.
Hence the question that is the title of this post!
My family is very ambitious and opportunistic and as Koningsberg was a major port, exporting goods from the area all over Northern Europe, I can imagine Robert deciding in his twenties to get out of the city to avoid yet another war or partition and taking a ship to London to find fame and fortune. He might even just have finished his apprenticeship as a tailor.
From arriving in the London Docks, he didn’t need to go far to end up in Bexley. A few years later he moved to Shoreditch, just a mile or so from where I live now!
I think Robert could have given me two characteristics, other than the ambition and the coeliac disease.
- His Jewish religion, but not its philosophy and values, seems to have been abandoned. I am very much a confirmed atheist with what I think, are fairly sound moral values, shared with most mainstream religions.
- He also endowed me with genes that enable me to endure the cold.
It may not be a correct tale, but even so, isn’t it a reflection down the centuries of today’s streams of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and other places.
Nothing changes!
Except the religion!
A Barbecue In The Snow
I’m not generally a lover of barbecues, as I’m not a lover of burned underdone meat. But in my time, I’ve had a few good ones, where a whole animal has been properly spit-roasted.
- At University in Liverpool, during Panto Week, a team roasted an ox on the steps of St. George’s Hall. It had one of those tastes that you’ll remember for ever.
- A farmer, once roasted a pig for members of Ipswich Flying Club.
- Once, we were driving back from Crete to London through Yugoslavia and when we stopped for petrol, found that a sheep was being roasted in a service station. It gave a whole new meaning to motorway food.
When it was suggested there would be a barbecue in the snow, it was something I could take or leave, but my heart rose, when I saw that a wild boar was going to be spit roasted.
I’ve had wild boar in the past and on most occasions, it would have been better, if it had gone through a food processor first, but this method of cooking brought the meat to the same sort of tenderness and quality of previous experiences of spit roasting.
So don’t ask me to a barbecue unless you’re spit roasting a whole animal.
A Sleigh Ride
We went for a ride on a sleigh pulled by two horses.
The more I look at the horses, the more I think that they have a lot of Suffolk Horse in them.
I also took a video.
I’d like the opinion on the horses, of someone, who knows their Suffolks.
The railway bridge is one of many in the area and was probably built by the Germans as part of the Prussian Eastern Railway, that used to connect Koningsberg and East Prussia to Poland and Greater Germany.
High Seats In The Forest
There are high seats in the forest from where you can observe the wild life.
Unfortunately, in my two hours in the seat, we only managed to see one rather skittish roe deer, despite it being a clear, moonlit night.
Others were more lucky and saw several wild boar and a raccoon dog.
In The Steps Of Kaiser Bill
The area of forest in which we were walking had at one time been the private hunting forest of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
The stone commemorates the shooting of his two thousandth stag. I find that rather excessive!
At Poland’s Border With Russia
After the Second World War, all the borders in the area we were staying changed dramatically.
Koningsberg, which had been German before the war and was largely destroyed during the war was the capital of East Prussia, and all the land around it became Russian, as did the previously independent Baltic States. What remained of the city, whichhad once been one of the largest and most cultured in Germany became Kaliningrad.
We were actually staying in the old East Prussia to the east of the town of Goldap, not far from the border with the Russian enclave that is surrounded by EU territory.
These pictures were taken at the border.
It doesn’t appear to be a very heavily-defended frontier.
Although none of us did anything that would threaten the Russians.
Turpentine Grows In Trees
Do you know where turpentine comes from?
Despite both my father and father-in-law being good decorators and users of turpentine, I didn’t!
Until I saw this and took these pictures.
The Russians used to grow forests especially for its product. I think it is true to say, we had found ways of making an alternative synthetic product.
European Bison
These European bison were in a reserve.
There were about fifty in the herd.
The birders in the party were excited about the number of yellowhammers. I know them well, as the birds seem to like the post-and-railed fields of studs in the Newmarket area. The birds are also regularly seen in Cambridge.
I Had To Look Twice!
When I picked up Monday’s copy of The Times, I had to ook twice at the picture on the front.
I Had To Look Twice!
I was asking myself, why they put an old picture on the front.
But then, I realised it was the daughter-in-law.
So do men, marry women, who look like their mother?
I didn’t as my mother was dark with brown eyes and C was a blue-eyed blond. But once when I visited her in hospital before we were married, everybody thought I was her brother!
Challenger Brands
This article from PR Week is untitled Challenge, stand up and stand out in 2016.
It’s aread that makes you think!
I picked the article up because it mentioned OVO Energy, s company I use and like!
The Anonymous Widower 