Wednesday, June 30, 1999  6pm -- Paris

When I was in Germany picking up my car, I had the opportunity to stop in the village that my great-grandfather grew up in.  His father and his father and so on all grew up there.  It's a small village called Iffezheim, between Baden-Baden and the French border.  What struck me, when I drove into town, was the fastidiousness of the little place.  Everything seemed in order, it's modern and clean, but has an historic feel to it.  This is what I saw driving into town:

This was a very cool experience.  My great-grandfather (on my father's side), August Leuchtner, left this town about 100 years ago and went to America.  I believe I'm the first one of his lineage to return to this town.  My father, R.E. Leuchtner, had been sending me some updates he's recently compiled (with the help of his cousin Hal) of the family history.  They have somehow pieced together some names and birthdates.

Upon entering the town (it was VERY quiet for a Saturday afternoon), I drove straight to the center.  That was not difficult, there are three roads in town.  But just as I neared the center, and passed through it, I detoured off a side street, and within one minute I stopped the car.  In front of me was a small store with my family name on it.  Now this is quite unusual.  As I've been involved with the Internet over the past few years, I have frequently searched for my family name.  In the US, there exactly eight of us Leuchtner's in existence.  So needless to say I was pretty excited.

It appears this is some kind of pasta or noodle store (the noodles in the windows all had Leuchtner on them.  Unfortunately the stores close early in Germany on Saturdays, so I couldn't get in.  But I stopped a lady who was on her bike riding by.  She didn't speak English.  She rode on a bit and stopped at the end of the street to talk to another lady.  I took a few minutes to rest in the small park in front of the store.

It's a very charming little village.  So I interrupted the two ladies and asked both of them.  Again, no one spoke english.  However, one of the ladies had a daughter who did.  She ran into the house and got her daughter.  Her daughter invited me into her house, after introductions, and said she knew the town historian, who would definitely know about history and families, etc.  So she called the historian, and then took me over there.  On my way out of this young woman's house, I hesitated in front to look at a painted mural on the side of her house.  It was a pretty mural, and is in fact a depiction of the town storks.  Later I realised there are a few of them in the center of town nesting on the church steeple.  These things are HUGE.

The thing that really freaked me out was the name on the painting.  It says "R. Leuchtner"!!!  I asked about it and the local woman said there were a number of these paintings around town.  Sure enough, I saw a few other paintings by the same man.  Sadly, this man died about 5 years ago, so I was unable to meet him.

So I went to see this lady, the one who keeps the logs of families for Iffezheim.  This lady does this as a hobby, but is apparently paid sometimes.  Anyway, she had a stack of photocopies of all the church records dating back to the 1600's.  I gave her the name of my great-grandfather, August Leuchtner.  She was able to locate his marriage records... fascinating.  How I knew this was my great-grandfather is that my father that day gave me all of August's wife and sibling's names and birthdates.  This was corroborated in the marriage record located by the lady.  Here is a photo of this lady, and her sister.  Another interesting thing to find out was that they have a cousin who is a Leuchtner.

Driving out of town, I came across another R. Leuchtner painting:
 

So that's the end of my Iffezheim adventure.  I spent the rest of the weekend in Baden-Baden, where I took a fine spa and relaxed at this wonderful hotel.  Here's a photo from my window.
 

My next goal is to get my father to climb on a plane and come visit me here in France, then take him to Iffezheim for a visit to town and a visit with the historian.  I think he'd have a wonderful time going home.