Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker (Author's note: This week’s column is written by Michael Fischer Fischer's ancestors from a number of his family tree branches lived and worked in and around Wethersfield and Kewanee beginning in the 1850s He is the former executive director of the Sierra Club and is a member of the Kewanee Historical Society and the Henry County Genealogical Society.) Narrow shafts of sunlight through the high-up louvers gave us barely enough light as we climbed the steep ladder inching our way past heavy rough-hewn beams “Don’t ring the bell – people will come running to see who has died.” we were climbing up the inside of the wooden belfry atop the simple stone-and-brick French Reformed Church in the small village of Gross Ziethen in the Uckermark section of Brandenburg there was the bell: bronze and large—about 4 ½ - 5 ft On the rim of the bell were cast the names of the church’s founders – including Villain and Benoit - Dean Karau’s and my 6th great-grandfathers and I had met Dean in Berlin several days before so we could travel together to the Uckermark in search of our shared relatives especially the Benoit (Binno) and Bartz families who had immigrated to Kewanee in the mid-1800s Dean spent several days before and after researching in the Central Archives of the Evangelical Church in Berlin (EZA) in Berlin Dean had done extraordinary research about the history of our French Huguenot ancestors who moved from the south of France to the north then to Belgium (then the Spanish Netherlands) Immediately after the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes which had granted freedom from persecution our forebears accepted the invitation from the Elector of Brandenburg to resettle villages in the Uckermark was faced with the disastrous results of the Thirty Years’ War coupled with a plague which had demolished and abandoned many villages only 40 years after their arrival in Gross Ziethen with just the belongings they could carry with them in their wagons they had succeeded to become prosperous enough to build the church and set down firm roots for almost two centuries those settlers remained steadfastly French speaking French and worshiping not in German Lutheran churches That lasted for more than a century—until the French they hated and considered themselves to be German - but they kept their Huguenot churches and revered the Huguenot cross We were extremely fortunate to find two wonderful guides to our history: Reverend Cornelia Mller the minister in several of the village churches We stayed for three nights in the small bed-and-breakfast owned by Rev and Sebastian can be seen tracing our relatives in the Villain anhentafel brought for our review by a Gross Ziethen high school teacher and a likely distant cousin Did we find signs of our Kewanee ancestors Even though we were less than two hours’ drive from metropolitan Berlin the dozen villages we visited were little-changed over the centuries and monuments to those who had died in the Napoleonic War The villages are not far from each other—some less than a few kilometers apart (like Klein und Gross Ziethen,) others connected by a half-hour drive over narrow tree-arbored roads through fields of bright yellow rape Most of the villages have a population of a hundred or fewer people The landscape is not dissimilar to that of Minnesota and northern Illinois—a relatively flat but rolling plain carved out by glaciers leaving many small lakes and gravelly much of the area is in one of Germany’s largest parks and forested areas: the United Nations’ Schorfeide-Chorin Biosphere Reserve You can imagine the reaction when this shiny rental car pulled into each village and Americans emerged with their umbrellas to tour the churches we befriended the village baker who took us down the street to talk with a neighbor about our Schirmer relatives but we saw the house where the last Schirmer lived when he had served as mayor we met with retired fire chief Guenther Sauer we toured the Cossäthenhofs (small plots of land in the village with a little adjoining acreage) where our Benoit/Binno relatives lived the birthplace of Theodor Fontane (pronounced Fontana,) we happened upon a Fontane festival celebrating his literary contributions to German culture a Fontane researcher and discussing his realistic sardonic and skeptical views of 19th century life in the Uckermark Pastorin Connie took Pastorin Connie took us through the church where Dean’s and my Great-great Grandparents Karl Benoit (Americanized to Binno after his arrival in Kewanee) and Louisa-Marie Baartz were married in 1848 Speaking of marriage: as we were standing in Reverend Connie’s main church the one with the wooden belfry in Gross (Big) Ziethen today’s our 35th wedding anniversary.” Smiling I asked Connie where she would stand while officiating a marriage we asked her to help us renew our wedding vows I reached over to kiss Jane after we had exchanged rings she has not pronounced you man and wife!” Connie took our four hands in hers and pronounced us to be married “in happiness as long as both you live.” There was a pause and then she blurted out: “NOW you can kiss!!” And so we did Here is Sebastian’s list of the 14 villages he set-up for us to visit: Angermünde We found traces of dozens of families with Kewanee connections Compare that list with the founders of The Church of Peace - many of those families are among those first thirty Perhaps there might be a sister-church relationship set up between Rev here is a personal measure of the success of our genealogical-research visit to eastern Germany: Connie and Jane and I maintain an email connection several times each month A priceless gift of present-day friendship springing from long-ago lives in a faraway time and place This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page I love you."Syd Atlas' husband fell terminally ill with ALS - then had an affair and moved out American writer and communication coach Syd Atlas lives in Berlin-Schmargendorf.Carsten KoallBerlin-Syd Atlas was born in Brooklyn the actress and director moved to Berlin where she fell in love Her life took an unexpected turn when her husband developed the rare incurable disease ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) In her new book Das Jahr ohne Worte (The Year without Words) living with the disease and existence after her husband's death Berliner Zeitung: What was it that brought you to Berlin from Brooklyn in the wild 1990s I had a great time there and wanted to stay in Europe An artist friend came to me and said I absolutely had to go to Berlin Then I happened to become a director at the Theater im Tacheles I simply said "yes" to everything people didn't yet know that Berlin was so great The district wasn't as cool as it is today There was only one café at the water tower where you could drink good coffee not like now when no one speaks German anymore (laughs) How do you like Berlin compared to New York I can name the difference exactly: people move to Berlin from their small towns to be left alone People come to New York from their small towns to make contact I overheard that a flat in Schmargendorf was available It was beautiful and I accepted immediately Being hipster in Schmargendorf means something different than being hipster in Mitte You're a hipster here if you still maintain your own hipness Your book is a very intimate account of your relationship with your husband From the moment of the diagnosis until my husband's death I had no time or space to reflect on my life How did you fall in love with your husband You had a child from a previous relationship You would have loved to spend the rest of your life with with him I can't speak anymore." After a few months "I have ALS." I didn't know exactly what that was "It's what Stephen Hawking has." And I thought he's exaggerating!" He was known for being a hypochondriac Then we went to a clinic and the doctors weren't quite sure what he actually had I organised an appointment at the ALS outpatient clinic at Charité and immediately said: "I would say ALS €20.Rowohlt VerlagWhat do you do after a situation like that after you've been handed a death sentence And then the idea came: "Let's go to KaDeWe drank to life and love and asked ourselves: "Is all this really happening?" We suddenly knew: we are in this new life now Could you fathom at that point what the diagnosis meant for your life We need three diagnoses before it's really true." At first we were still incredulous and had a bit of hope that other doctors would come to a different conclusion We heard esoteric stories about people who were mortally ill and suddenly recovered People diagnosed with ALS don't have any chance of survival People who have ALS have a lifespan of about three to five years after diagnosis he had no feeling in his tongue and then he had problems swallowing That's why he had to have a stomach tube Later he couldn't breathe either and had to have a tracheotomy Usually people have problems with their joints first difficulties walking or something like that What is stronger at a moment like that: fatalism or hope but he was medically well informed and realistic about the future I was more of a "let's try a lot of things" type I was aware that he was going to die someday I thought at the time that we would have a little more time At some point the second and then the third diagnosis came We also hardly told anyone about the diagnosis We only told my family and our children after our son's seventh birthday I now work as a coach with managers on their communication It got particularly bad when my husband slowly became unable to speak or move He had to use a mobile phone to express his thoughts He typed what he wanted to say into the keypad he chose an electronic British female voice to read out the sentences You describe how the relationship with your husband slowly changed The turning point came after the operation My husband was hooked up to a device for 15 hours a day The fact that people were constantly around us and that I felt less and less of the man I loved - it was all very sad and hard to bear I remember very well: I lay down in bed with him turned on the light and bent over me with a tube so she could suction the area around his tracheotomy "There's no turning back now." I was terrified of was going to happen to my husband "How am I going to keep us all afloat?" I listened to podcasts every night How did your love develop after your husband could no longer speak and breathe on his own It was difficult to still feel like a couple new people come into your life all the time Suddenly there is no longer an exclusive "us" For us it became more and more complicated You describe your husband's frustration anger and sadness he developed because of his condition - also towards you I often had the feeling that I was standing between two chairs Once my husband put our son to bed and saliva came out of his mouth I saw my husband sitting in the kitchen grunting The Berlin activists bringing a mobile kitchen to Europe's refugee camps Your husband could not accept that you no longer wanted to have sex with him But I think you can understand both me and him "I'm still the same." But I don't know if that's true when everything is different - are you still the same person One of the key scenes is when you want to talk to your husband about his death I did my best and didn't deliberately do anything wrong Maybe that question wasn't sensitive enough But he thought I was against him and that I wanted him to die this misunderstanding weighed on our relationship like a boulder I want to move out." And I thought to myself "What does he mean?" He said it was better for him and for the family I did something you're not supposed to do: I looked in his laptop and saw some messages I knew then that he was having an affair with two women I immediately recognised who the women were I remember falling on all fours and thinking I had to get up because my children could have come back from the playground at any moment The next day I confronted my husband with the news I wanted him to e-mail me and explain everything Can you somehow explain his anger and disappointment the part of the brain that is responsible for judgement changes I sometimes think about how when you have this disease it's like you're a passenger in a car and there's only one direction - towards the cliff You want to feel that you can somehow steer the car It doesn't matter whether you turn it to the right or to the left Maybe that's what my husband wanted: to steer So I can't say what exactly he was thinking Slavoj Žižek: "The pandemic is only a test for the real crisis" The most important thing for me was to forgive him I heard a hospice director on the radio say that there were 11 words you have to say to find peace: "Please forgive me I love you." I did that - on 29 July 2017 My husband could only move one eye at that point it is about two people trying to have a love story with each other I'm sorry I couldn't be the person he needed me to be How long did your husband live after that moment And the children and I visited him regularly I am not a better person just because I have experienced something difficult I just want to show that you can survive more than you think You're on a certain track and you're going in a certain direction And at some point you get thrown off the track and you end up on another path This interview was conducted by Tomasz Kurianowicz Follow Berliner Zeitung English Edition on Twitter and Facebook