My grandfather's old beer stein, rarely noticed atop a bookshelf, posed its quiet challenge. On its shiny, ceramic side is a picture of a tower, captioned "Schloss in Diepholz." Except possibly my mother in her early childhood, no one in the family had ever returned to Diepholz, the German town where Carl von Hartz, my grandfather, was born.
In the early 1870s Carl and his two brothers, August and Heinrich, left Germany and came to the United States. August became an oil company executive and returned to Europe, Heinrich died young. Carl married a German-speaking Alsatian named Ernestine Petain and went into the lace-importing business in Rutherford, N.J. They had four children, including my mother, who died in 1993.
In 1904, Carl suffered a financial disaster. His business went bankrupt, his Rutherford house and possessions were seized by his creditors. In desperation, he moved his family to Baltimore, then a heavily German city, to live with cousins. Their home was at 1534 Hollins St., a few doors from 24-year-old H.L. Mencken.
This past year, after the recent deaths of my older siblings, I realized that at age 81, I am now Carl's oldest descendant. With my wife, who also had German ancestors, we decided that, with our advancing ages, we had perhaps a last chance to visit Diepholz.
I wanted to know more about the town that produced my grandfather and also wanted to know why he and his brothers decided to leave. I sought, so to speak, to close the circle.
Thus it was that we found ourselves, after three tiring air flights, on a train trundling through Lower Saxony in northwest Germany, en route from the lovely city of Bremen to the unknown small city of Diepholz.
Curiosity and doubt
Our excitement rose as we passed through the strange but utterly inviting countryside. The land was flat as Kansas, but fresh, green and fertile, with frequent tree breaks demarcating the fields, lush with the multi-colored crops of late spring. The weather was perfect -- cool, with broken clouds drifting under a rich blue sky.
The very fact that we were at last in Germany represented a break with the past. My wife and I are annual visitors to Greece and occasional visitors to England, France and Italy. Until this year, the possibility of going to Ger-many never entered our plans.
We had to overcome our awareness of German aggression in two 20th-century wars. The resultant suffering of Europe, the evil of fascism and, most of all, the Holocaust, influenced our thinking. During World War I, or so my mother told me, my grandfather had to fly an American flag to assert his loyalty to his adopted country. He died in 1935 at age 79, agonizing over the rise of Hitler.
But we reasoned, correctly, I think, that two generations after World War II, there is a new, democratic Germany, the leader of a thriving union with the rest of western Europe.
Our curiosity about Diepholz thus was enhanced by the new climate. But when we opted for a visit, we were still full of doubts. Would it be an ugly industrial town or, like so much of this part of Germany, was it physically destroyed by Allied bombing during the last war?
These thoughts, however, were not in the forefront of our minds as we surveyed the charming countryside from the windows of the train. But then the hour of reckoning was near. With the conductor's announcement -- "Diepholz!" the train came to a halt beside a rugged brick, 19th-century railroad station.
We disembarked to instant fulfillment.
Serendipity
As viewed from the station, Diepholz was a picture-book town, immediately reminiscent of some of the loveliest country towns in England. The road leading into the city center was flanked by brick or half-timbered houses with the tiled roofs so pleasingly common in Europe. Each yard was classically neat, with carefully tended flowerbeds and sculptured hedges. Generous trees enhanced the landscape and shaded the streets.
I thought about how amazing was the good fortune that enabled us to travel with adequate preparation. When you are a stranger to a country, know no one there and don't even speak the language, where do you start?
Our help came through the kind assistance of a young woman named Barbara Jentzsch, who worked in Washington for German public radio. I knew her only by telephone, but when we asked her for help, she was invaluable. She immediately contacted the official archivist of the city of Diepholz.
This generous man, Herr Falk Liebezeit, wrote us by e-mail -- in English -- with a genealogical rundown of von Hartzes, including my grandfather, though there were apparently none of that surname living in Diepholz today. (Not surprising, since my grandfather and his brothers had emigrated to America.) Liebezeit also volunteered a list of hotels, with their locations and prices. By the time we left home, he had become a sort of e-mail pen pal.
The Diepholz station agent provided us with the walking route to our hotel, which we serendipitously misunderstood; serendipitously, because we made several wrong turns and wandered into lovely parts of the city, with their solid and graceful houses. Our hotel, the Dust-muehle ("dusty mill"), proved to be a long trek, but we were welcomed warmly by its proprietors, an English-speaking Croatian family.
The walk taught us a lot about this town of about 18,000 people. We passed along its main street (transformed into a colorful pedestrian mall) and by its municipal swimming pool and community theater. While it has its share of automobile traffic, Diepholz is essentially a city of bicycles.
Each sidewalk has a clearly marked bicycle lane. Bikes are seemingly transportation for everyone, from toddlers to grandmas. On a Sunday, we encountered a party of about 20 cyclists on some kind of happy outing, none of them, I believe, under 50. The noisy and arrogant motorcyclists who are the curse of Italy and Greece simply do not exist in Diepholz. The high school parking lot is not for cars, but for bikes -- there were probably 500 of them in the designated racks.
Warm welcomes
After a comfortable night in our hotel, we set out to find Herr Liebezeit. At the city hall, or rathaus , whose plaza was entertaining some kind of festival, a receptionist told us that the town archives building was some distance away. She gave us a map and instructions, which we, of course, misunderstood. That may have once again been our good fortune.
Standing on a corner, trying to figure out where we were, a man passing by spoke to us. "May I help you?"
Happy to hear some English, we explained we were looking for the archives. The man said he would be pleased to show us the way. He was, it turned out, Reinald Schroeder, co-publisher of the local newspaper and a book publisher as well. He led us to the archivist's office, and that is how we met the ever-helpful Liebezeit, an imposing middle-aged man, perhaps 6-foot-4, with a generous mustache.
Liebezeit welcomed us warmly and, with Schroeder, assumed the task of host, guide and ad-viser. The latter presented us with one of his products, a beautifully designed book about Diepholz, its attractions and its history.
We learned that Diepholz suffered only minor damage from the allied bombing during World War II. I took comfort, therefore, that the town we were seeing was not unlike the one my grandfather had known a century and a half earlier.
I told Liebezeit about the beer-stein picture, which prompted his suggestion that we visit the actual castle, or schloss, near the center of town, surrounded by deep woods. As we walked, we came to a stream -- except that it was not a stream but the moat that surrounds the castle, still hidden by the trees.
Liebezeit stopped suddenly. "Listen," he said. And we heard the clear call of a cuckoo, the first time I had ever heard one outside of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony.
We crossed a bridge on a road through the aromatic woods until the schloss was before us, just as the stein depicted it. The tower, a cylindrical stone behemoth, was built as a fortress more than 1,000 years ago. Its original superstructure was destroyed in the multination Thirty Years' War in the 17th century. It now rises to an elongated dome built, at various times, centuries ago. This was exactly as my grandfather knew it.
"Would you like to climb to the top?" Liebezeit asked, as if he needed an answer. He is one of the few city officials who has a key to the ancient iron door at the base. He turned the massive key and swung the heavy door open. It was bitter cold inside -- the stone walls are a natural refrigerator.
A good view from above
We started up a wooden stairway into a room filled with historical artifacts. The stairs gave way to a series of treacherous ladders until we reached the top, some 140 feet above ground. Under the dome, at four points of the compass, there were windows providing a panorama. Trees obscured most of the houses, but the aged church towers thrust above the foliage.
The castle had been the seat of the ruling nobility, a holdover from the feudal structure of Europe in the Middle Ages, when power was vested in fiefdoms held by those with the military strength to defend them. The last graf, or count, of Diepholz was deposed in 1685.
Several houses near the castle were centuries old, the homes of the nobility. We had lunch in a magnificent half-timbered house with sections dating to the 12th century.
The next day Liebezeit, accompanied by Schroeder, took us on a motor tour of the vicinity. We drove past the military airfield that had been a bombing target during the war. It still exists, but now shares its runways with private planes. Nearby are several large factories. Diepholz's small-town charm is not marred by its heavy industry, which is confined to its outskirts.
Our hosts drove us west of the city to a vast moor, where the land is virtually floating. It gives way at one point to a large, shallow lake called the Duemmer, stabilized by a large dike. Scores of small sloops were taking advantage of a brisk breeze. We noted that the mainsails of the boats were emblazoned with the logo of a brewery.
"The breweries donate the sails," Schroeder explained.
How German, I thought.
The essential joy of our trip was not in sightseeing, but the actual experience of being in the very surroundings that my grandfather had known -- and to find those surroundings so captivating.
Then why did he and his brothers leave? We could only guess, in historical terms.
I rarely heard my grandfather express a political opinion, but once I remember him saying, "The trouble with Germany is the Prussians." Such a view certainly stemmed from his youth. Many Americans do not understand that modern Germany was a 19th-century merging of disparate states, led by Otto von Bismarck, the "Iron Chancellor" of Prussia.
In 1866 the Prussians annexed what was then the kingdom of Hannover, which included Diep-holz. The Prussians, gearing up for the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, demanded military service of all young men, in effect forcing them to serve their conquerors. This, I believe, sent Carl von Hartz and his brothers to America.
Such are the whims of destiny. Now my wife and I have reached back into time to discover where it all started. To that extent, the circle has been closed.
When you go
Getting there: Many airlines fly to points in Germany, but we called upon Lufthansa, the German national airline (800-645-3880; Lufthansa.com), which provided us with tickets and an itinerary from Baltimore to New York to Frankfurt to Bremen. Using information provided by the German Rail office in New York (800-782-2424; DER.com), we took a train from Bremen to Diepholz -- about 35 miles.
Lodging: Diepholz has six small hotels in various price ranges, all relatively inexpensive. Hotel information is available from German Rail. We stayed at the Dustmuehle (011 49-5441-3030). The hotel serves a hearty breakfast, and its fine restaurant can provide excellent German beer and good wines.
Getting around: Diepholz is a small, relatively compact city, and we found no need for any transportation other than walking, though taxis were standing by at the railroad station. Further transportation and touring information is available from the receptionist at the City Hall in the center of the city.
For more information, contact the German National Tourist Board at www.germany-tourism.de.