What do we know about our family home?

One of the most basic and solid facts we know about Johann Wolfgang Dorfler, our Dafler forebear, is his original home: Bayreuth - or more specifically, the hamlet of Denzenlohe, near the village of Heinersreuth, just north of the city of Bayreuth. Evidence for this source for Johann Wolfgang is overwhelming - we have church records, passport mentions, newspaper notices, gravestones, and family oral history that all clearly connect him to Bayreuth. These towns don’t hold any overwhelming cultural or historical significance to most Americans, then or now. Having been lucky enough to visit these places in 2012, I’d like to share my impressions of modern-day Bayreuth along with some of the historical events that played a part in the German chapter of his life.

First off: would Johann Wolfgang have called himself German? That answer is pretty complicated. The idea of a unified Germany didn’t really come about until Bismarck built the German Confederation in 1876 - long after Johann Wolfgang left in 1839. In Johann Wolfgang’s 41 years before his emigration, he would have been subject to at least two different nationalities. Initially the territory of Upper Franconia was part of the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aligned with Protestantism (very much akin to American Lutheranism), which was the faith that Johann Wolfgang followed. But around the time of Johann Wolfgang’s 12th birthday, Napoleon Bonaparte led French and allied armies on a tour of Europe. As a result, Prussia was forced to cede the Bayreuth area to Catholic Bavaria. This change would have been noticeable to Johann Wolfgang as his family's faith now became a minority religion. While widespread persecution did not occur, some level of religious discrimination was enforced on this area. The complexity and confusion of Johann Wolfgang’s nationality carried over to his emigration documents in the United States. Perhaps his allegiance was to his locality, much as early Americans felt loyalty to their state rather than their national government. When he was asked what foreign leader he renounced allegiance from, he claimed not the King of Bavaria but the “Duke of Bayreuth” - a position that had not existed in his lifetime.

Bayreuth today is a college town. It hosts the former residence of the margraves of Bayreuth - a small castle with beautiful ornate styling - and the homes of two famous composers. Both Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner called Bayreuth their home. Bayreuth now is famous mostly for annual Wagner opera performances in August at an opera house specifically designed to stage Wagner’s extravagant works.

Heinersreuth is a small village, with little more than a church, post office, and several houses along the West Bank of the Red Main river. West of that village a sign marks where Denzenlohe used to be. That spot on the map was the location of two farms - one of which was the home of the Dorfler family. Now it is just farmland.

I think part of John Wolfgang’s transition to America was assisted by finding a new home that held similarity to his former home. The Bayreuth area in June felt very much like the Midwest to us in terms of weather and terrain. The June climate we experienced was very familiar (by which I mean humid!) to us. As far as the landscape, we found gentle hills and shallow valleys much like the areas of Preble and Butler counties in Ohio where the glaciers stopped and the plain broke towards the Ohio River.

All in all, we discovered in Germany that the Dafler family originated from a very modest farming village - not much different then how Ingomar is now. I found it a very comfortable place to visit. At the time I chalked it up to some sort of genetic memory of my heritage, baked into my soul, but my wife set me straight. I caught her smiling and giggling as I was sharing my feelings of kinship and connection, and I asked her what was so funny. "Don't you see it?", she laughed. "Everyone here looks just like you!"