In search for the Lost Grave Marcus P.F.N Kellermann Jerusalem August 2004

There comes a time in a person’s life when one needs to stop and re-examine where one is going and where one comes from. For me, this time coincided with becoming 50 in August of 2003 and a year or so before this.

My life had gone through rather clear-cut periods of development, through childhood, youth, young adulthood and middle age. Each period represented some passage and some achievement, often symbolized with an addition or a change of name. Thus, I had been “Peter” when growing up in Sweden, had taken the name “Felix” in psychodrama, and had become “Natan” when moving to Israel. All these were now well-integrated parts of my personality that I felt were completed. But there was still another name that I had been given as a child, that I had not yet used – Marcus, the name of my great grandfather. I felt that this was the name to be used for the final part of my life, in old age, and I was curious in finding out what this meant and what might lie ahead of me now. In this search for some perspective in life and some future direction, I thought that it might help to revisit the past and reconnect with the “old” Marcus, perhaps by visiting his grave. I would get answers to questions like, “What is life after 50 all about?” “Where do we come from and where do we go from here?”

The problem was that I knew very little about this ancient Marcus Kellermann and nothing about where he was buried. This was how my search for the lost grave of Marcus started.

Since my father and grandparents had been living in Vienna before escaping to Sweden in 1938, my search started in Vienna, in their old house on Czerninggassse. I entered the house, went up the stairs and looked at the apartment no. 14 where they had lived and where my father had been born. The studio in which my father had started his career as a tailor was still there. This house in Vienna, Austria represents a significant part of our old Kellermann history.

I grew up with their deep affection for everything Viennese, mixed with stories about how they were driven out and how they had succeeded to escape. I felt how the homey Viennese Gemutlichkeit still reverberated in my blood; the phrases Guten Morgen, Guten Abend, Auf Wiedersehen, Gruss Gott and Servus, made me immediately feel at home. In retrospect, my grandparents had remained so very Austrian also when living in Sweden. This is not strange if one considers that they had lived in Vienna for such a long time, served under Kaiser Franz Josef and been proud citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The name “Kellermann, or Kellerman,” means literally “cellar Man” in German. Kellermann could be an occupational name, assumed by an innkeeper or wine merchant. According to the Museum of Jewish Diaspora in Israel, as a Jewish name, it could also derive from the Greek for “beautiful name”, Kalonymos, a proper name that Jews may have taken as an equivalent of the Hebrew “Shem Tov” (Good Name).

1

A distinguished bearer of the Jewish name Kellermann was the Bavarian-born Rabbi of the Berlin community, Benzion Kellerman (1869-1923). Kellerman is recorded as a Jewish family name in 20th - Century Australia with M.H Kellerman O.B.E. of New South Wales. It was also a common Jewish name among families in Austria and Germany. Other well-known persons with the name Kellermann, which are probably unrelated to us, include the following: Kellermann, François Christophe: 1735-1820, marshal of France, b. Strasbourg. He served in the Seven Years War and won renown in the French Revolutionary Wars when he and General Dumouriez stopped the Prussians at Valmy (1792). In the Reign of Terror, he was accused of treason and imprisoned (1793- 94), but was not convicted. Napoleon made him senator (1799) and duke of Valmy (1808). Rallying (1814) to Louis XVIII, Kellermann was raised to the peerage. Bernhard Kellermann, (1879 – 1951) from Germany, Potsdam was a Journalist and writer best known for his novel Der Tunnel (1913). Jonathan Kellerman is one of the world's most popular authors. He has brought his expertise as a child psychologist to sixteen consecutive best-selling novels of suspense, including The Butcher's Theater, and thirteen previous Alex Delaware novels, translated into many languages. Lives with his wife Faye and children in the US. Annette Kellerman is given credit for starting what we now know as synchronized swimming, back in the early 1900s. Her claim to fame is that she is also the creator of the once infamous one-piece bathing suit. As the film depicts, Kellerman did become a champion for less-restrictive clothing, and even created more scandal with skinny-dipping scenes in her film Neptune's Daughter (1914). Actresses Barbara Kellerman (played in “The Chronicles Of Narnia”) and Sally Kellerman, (played in “Woman of the Night”) can also be mentioned.

My search continued in the old and new Jewish cemeteries in Vienna. This huge place is overwhelming, indicating the enormous size of the Jewish community before the 2nd World War. A man who had computerized the register of those buried in this cemetery helped me, but except for the parents of my grandmother, we found none of my Kellermann ancestors buried here. I was surprised and perplexed. Then I remembered that someone had scribbled the name “Skalka next to Trencin” on a small paper napkin many years ago, and told me that “the family came from there.” Neither my father, nor my grandfather had ever told me anything about this place, and I had no idea of where it was. But it was at least a trace.

I looked in maps and in the internet and found the following information about these places:

2

Trencin Skalka The town of Trencin is located at the foot of the Strazovske vrchy hills in the valley of the Váh River. The Romans founded the town at the beginning of the second millennium. An amazing fortified castle, erected in 1111, overlooks the city and its tower is one of the symbols of the city and a Catholic Parish Church of the Virgin Mary is built on the way to the castle, above the old town. In its Peace Square, there is a monument of the plague epidemics from 1713, as well as a museum, a Church and a monastery. Another monument of those who were killed by the Nazis in World War II was erected in the middle of the forest; the stone carving depicts a man with hands tied behind his back and his head being forced under water at gunpoint.

Not far from the central square is a large, round and very beautiful 19th synagogue, which is now empty of chairs and used as a Buddhist temple, open for all. There are no overt Jewish signs left on its outer walls, except a small sign in Slovak that this was once a Jewish place of worship. It is as if these were taken away during the long period of anti- Semitism in Slovakia. When visiting this amazing old synagogue, I felt that it screamed out loneliness, neglect and desertion: “Why did you leave me here all alone with these Gentiles to do with me what they want?” But there was nobody there to listen, except a handful of Jews who sometimes gather in a small adjacent hall, were there is a large memorial sign for all those who perished in the Holocaust (see below).

3 The first Jews came to Trencin already in the Middle Ages, playing an important role in commerce. But after the battle of Mohacs (1526), Jews were prohibited from settling in the town and were moving to neighboring villages. In 1760, an organized Jewish community was established and, according to the tax roster of 1787, there were 82 heads of families in the city of Trencin and 660 more in the county. The large beautiful synagogue was built on a central location in the middle of the old town of Trencin in 1913 and replaced the first synagogue and the German-language Jewish School was founded in 1857. All this helped the Jewish community of Trencin to grow rapidly and after WW-I it continued to gain importance in Czechoslovakia. There is a large, fenced in cemetery in Trencin with hundreds of graves still standing in their original locations. A Jewish man is building a register of the names of the graves and has the keys to the gate.

In 1940, there were about 2,500 Jews living in Trencin. Most of them were deported to concentration camps in 1942 and 1944, never to return. Only 300-400 survivors returned from the camps or from forests where they had been in hiding after the war. Most of these Jews did not stay in Trencin, but subsequently emigrated to Israel or other countries or moved to larger cities. After the Soviet invasion in 1968, most of the few who had remained left for the West and, in 1971 there were only a few Jewish families left in Trencin.

Skalka

The little village of Skalka nad Váhom (differently written as Skala, Szkala, Skalska Nova Ves) is located north of Trencin on the right bank of the Váh river and almost directly under the new highway. The first written account of the village is from the year 1113.

Outside this small agricultural village are the ruins of a Benedictine monastery in Stará Skalka. The monastery dates back to the 13th century. Among the monastery premises is a small church, designed as three-story church, which sits in a hollow of the rock massif in a unique way. Right next to the small church is a small cave in which at the end of the 10th and beginning of the 11th century St. Andrej Svorad and St. Benedict lived their hermit lives.

Slovakian History

The early history of the Kellermann family in Slovakia should be understood within the general history of central Europe, Slovakia, Trencin and Skalka.

When the Ottoman presence was finally driven south of the Danube in 1686, Slovakia went through the following periods of government:

4 1. 1868-1914 Hungary - Magyarization – Austria-Hungary monarchy. In 1867 the Habsburg domains in central Europe were reconstituted as the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. 2. 1914-1918 During World War I, Czechs, Slovaks, and other national groups of Austria- Hungary were joined by Czechs and Slovaks living abroad in campaigning for an independent state. 3. 1918-1939 Czechoslovakia. In October 1918, at the end of the war, Slovakia announced its independence from the empire and incorporation into the new republic of Czechoslovakia. 4. 1939-1945 World War II - German Slovakia. Between March 14, 1939, and April 29, 1945, it was a satellite of Nazi Germany. 5. 1948 – 1992 Soviet backed Czechoslovakia 6. 1993 – Present independent Slovak Republic. 7. 2004 – the Slovak Republic enters the European Union.

Before the 2nd World War, some 70 percent of the population was Roman Catholic, and the rest were Greek Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish.

Jews in Slovakia during the 2nd World War

The deportation of Jews from Slovakia began in the spring of 1942. With the direct responsibility of Slovak political leaders and with support by traditional anti-Jewish prejudices among the Slovak people, the Jews were assembled at special concentration points and put in barracks unfit for human inhabitation, given numbers, forced to sign gift certificates transferring their property to the government, and were then put on tightly sealed freight cars and turned over to the German Sicherheitspolizei at the Polish border. Over 90,000 Slovak Jews were thus deported to Auschwitz or to working camps, or fled to neighboring countries. Then there was a slowdown in the deportations for a year or more, until the occupation of Hungary by German forces and the Slovak uprising in the summer of 1944, but in September 1944, the deportations began again, erasing the last traces of Jewish life in this country.

About 10,000 of the post-revolt deportees survived World War 2 and another 4,000-5,000 Jews remained in hiding in the mountains with the partisans, or in the towns and cities of Slovakia, until the end of the war. Most survivors felt unwelcome in the new Czechoslovakia. Anti-Jewish violence was common. After the Soviet-backed regime was established in 1948, most of the remaining Jews left Slovakia; the majority went to Israel.

The Original Family

I continued my search by writing to the archives in Bratislava. After a very long time of putting together pieces of information, we succeeded to build the following picture of the “original Kellermann family”:

Marcus and Amalia Kellermann had 9 children (6 daughters and 3 sons) who were all born in Skalka, near Trencin:

5 1. Peppie * 15.2.1866 2. Netti * 27.6.1867 3. Maria Lotty * 4.3.1869 4. Betty * 10.11. 1870 5. Adolf * 13.5.1872 6. Izrael * 8.1.1874 (my grandfather) 7. Juli * 16.3.1876 8. Pauline * 13.2.1879 9. Bernhard * 28.5.1881

We do not know much about the six daughters: 1. Peppie (Josephine) married Moritz Weiss (b. 1857) in Feb. 13, 1883 and they lived in Marton. They apparently gave birth to a son who later changed his name to Jan Kopecky (Bratislava) 2. Netti married Josef Links (b. 1854) on June 10, 1884 and they lived in Dyakovec. They had 3 daughters: Valery, Jolana and Helena. 3. Maria Lotty married Eugene Simko. 4. Betty (Berta) married a Schlesinger. Their son Arthur changed his named to Salatny/Slatinsky. 5. Juli married Roth and they gave birth to a son Arpad. 6. Pauline married a Wertheimer, who lived in a large estate in Zemianske Sady. They gave birth to two children: Ladislav and Adele. We know more about the sons Adolf and Izrael (Sigmund) but nothing about Bernhard. According to rumors, Bernhard left for the US and disappeared from the family. A passenger record from August 29 1911, says that a Kellermann Bernhard (age 31) from Hungary/Germany arrived in New York with the “Vaderland” ship sailing from Belgium, Antwerp. No other trace is found from him (but he might have changed his name). I do not know for sure what the family did for a living, but they owned agricultural land and probably lived from that. I also heard that they had a house in which they produced liqueur and brandy, but I have not had this confirmed. However, we may assume that, like many other Jews in Europe during this time, they were merchants and salespeople. The eldest son, Adolf, was the only one who stayed with the parents in Skalka and later in Trencin. He apparently took over the family estate with agricultural lands in the area. He married a Berta Kellermann from Skalska Nova Ves, who might have been a relative. They gave birth to a son Oldrich in December 17 1905 and also another son “Nandor” (born 1910 and dead March 9, 1925). After Adolf’s death in 1936, his wife and son were left alone and they were deported to the concentration camp in 1944. Their names are written on the memorial sign below in the synagogue in Trencin.

6 More recent family history

Brief chronology of my family in a straight line: MARCUS – IZRAEL (SIGMUND) – KURT – NATAN (myself).

My paternal grandfather Izrael, Sigmund was born in Skalka in 1874, lived in Vienna for over 40 years (between 1900 – 1941) and then died about 30 years later in Stockholm, Sweden in 1972 at the age of 98. Though I have not received any confirmation of this from the War archive in Vienna, he apparently served in the army of the Habsburg Monarchy during 1895-1898. But he emphasized that he was no fighter and that he tried to keep alive during dangerous times. He liked to wear the uniform, however, and was proud of the way he looked (see picture here).

Sigmund left for Vienna and married Frieda Dukes [Frieda was born on Jan 9, 1880 to Josef Dukes and Fanny Klein] on April 14, 1907. In Vienna, he worked in a variety of professions; as a merchant and a clerk (a “prokurist”) among others, but their financial situation was always difficult. Sigmund and Frieda lived first in Wien 2nd district, Praterstrasse 17 and later, until about 1938, in Czerningg. 23. While living in Vienna, Austria, Sigmund and Frieda gave birth to 3 sons: Kurt, Erwin and Ernst. These were now the only male survivors bearing the “original” Kellermann name. Almost precisely 9 months after the marriage of Sigmund and Frieda, Kurt was born on January 27, 1908. At the end of the same year, on December 26 1908, Erwin was born. The third son, Ernst, was born 10 years later, on December 23, 1918. Thus, all of them had their birthdays in the winter months of December and January.

While Erwin studied for a Ph.D. in architecture, Kurt went into apprenticeship to become an “English Tailor” and later supported the family who lived under difficult economic circumstances. He opened his own studio at the bottom floor of Czerninggasse 23 in Wien and tried also, without success, to teach his younger brother Ernst to become a tailor.

At the rise of Nazism in Europe, but before the Anschluss in 1938, the brothers escaped to Sweden. Ernst had learned Esperanto (a “universal language”) and was helped by friends to get a visa to enter Sweden. The elderly parents were also able to escape at the last moment, apparently leaving Vienna on May 15, 1941, and came to Sweden in 1939 were they were taken care of by their sons and the Jewish community.

7 This means, that in March 1938, when Austria was absorbed into the Reich, Sigmund and Frieda were still living in Vienna. They probably witnessed in person the brutality against the Jews of the city; how communal institutions were closed, homes raided, Jews driven out of their professions, businesses, houses and belongings confiscated, and Jews were forced to publicly degrade themselves. This systematic persecution forced them to emigrate from the country that they had felt such a belonging to and they were worked hard in searching entry visas into other countries. I had not previously thought of my paternal grandparents as Holocaust survivors. But, despite the fact that they were able to escape, they had lived under Nazi occupation with threat of their lives for many years.

In 1944, they bought a large house with 12 flats in Stockholm (Hammarbyhojden) on Lidkopingsvagen were the entire family worked and lived together for many years. Here, Kurt could open and develop his tailor business again, first on a small and later, in a new location, on a larger scale. This business supported the family.

On February 18, 1951, Kurt married Livia Frischmann, born in Satu Mare, Rumania on December 18, 1928. She was 20 years younger than him and had been brought to Sweden after surviving the Holocaust. Livia had been imprisoned in concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau from May 1944, until her release in Bergen-Belsen in April 1945. She was then brought to Sweden with typhus and TBC for hospital treatment (in isolation) and convalescence until 1950. In 1952, at the age of 24, she was still positive for TBC and had then lost ten years of her youth.

Since we lived in the same house for the first seven years of my life, I knew my paternal grandparents very well. In retrospect, it seemed that they lived rather isolated from the general Swedish community and they never learned the Swedish language. So I spoke German with them and had a lot of contact with them during my childhood. They were Oma and Opa for me. I guess they had a lot to do with my love for Vienna because their home remained Viennese in a strange manner. My Oma cooked Viennese food and used to dictate poems from Schiller with great enthusiasm.

Around the age of 90, Opa was still a tall man. At least from the point of view of a child, he looked large and he was almost bald, having lost the fine mustache that he had had as a young man (according to pictures). He spoke German with a distinct Austrian accent and fine clothing remained important for him. There was a saying in the Kellermann family, significant for an English tailor, that “die kleider macht der Mench” (“The dressing makes the man”).

I remember him sitting next to the window with his pipe in his mouth. He was sitting on a wooden rocking chair that had its rocking legs cut of – a chair that they had been able to bring with them from Austria and that I have kept in my belonging. He was a tall and muscular man who insisted on keeping his back straight. “Keep your back straight,” he used to say, “Be proud of being a Kellermann.”

8 Having grand children meant a lot to him and, despite his old age, he used to tell incomprehensible jokes, and laugh with us. I remember with warmth his large hands and the gentle smile in his eyes when he watched us kids.

My “Oma” was a strong willed person who would not give in for anything or anybody. She was rather heavy and did not move much. As an old woman, she had some severe ailments and went through difficult surgery. But despite this, and possibly because of her determination to keep control around her, she survived them all and died only a few days before the age of 100.

So these were the paternal grandparents that I had grown up with as a young child. But this was a long time ago and they had been gone for many years. Now, 50 years later, I had an intense urge to reconnect with them and beyond them and was thus searching for my roots in Slovakia. Two visits to that country brought me closer to my goal.

Visit No. 1

Much of this was unknown to me when I first visited Trencin and Skalka together with my youngest son in the summer of 2003. I was curious to see the place were the old Kellermann family used to live and possibly to find the grave of Marcus.

I was very excited and full with curiosity when driving from Trencin to Skalka, but I had no idea of were to start looking. When arriving in the small village, I stopped the car at the bus stop and looked around. A young woman also stopped her car and an elderly woman stepped out. I asked them in German, “do you know if there was any family with the name of Kellermann who used to live here”. To my surprise, the young woman started to talk to the old woman in Slovakian, and then responded in broken German: “Yes, of course! The Kellermann family used to live over there, in that house, and they had lands over there, and also there…” And she went on telling me that the Kellermann family had had properties in Skalka and that they were a well-known family in the town.

I could not believe it. How can it be that the first woman I ask on the street knows so much about the Kellermann family? She was also very helpful in showing me the two small and neglected Jewish burial grounds, both in isolated locations without signs next to public roads. One could be reached by turning directly of a public road with access open to all via a fence and a locking gate. 3 19th century sandstone flat shaped tombstones with Hebrew inscriptions are in original locations. A private individual owns property used for a garden. The second is also next to a public road; access is open to all via a fence and locking gate. We saw only 2, but the Internet wrote that 1-20 9th-20th century sandstone flat shaped tombstones with Hebrew inscriptions are in original locations. Adjacent properties are agricultural and other graveyards. Within the cemetery is a burial house.

9 The grave of Marcus could not be found in any of these two cemeteries. There were only a few old sand stone graves there. We had to leave without our goal reached.

Back home again, I continued my search, wrote to various archives, investigated libraries and contacted a genealogist to search further in the Slovakian records. Thus, I was able to put together the following further information about the early ancestors.

The Ancestry

The earliest record found of the Kellermann family dates from 1872. It is the death record of Abraham Kellermann from March 4, 1872, in Szkala. The record states his age at death as 80, which means that he was born about 1792. The place of burial was Sk.Neudorf, which probably is one of the small cemeteries in the town of Szkala that I had visited. But the tombstones that we found there could not be read because they were too old. We also found the record of death of the wife of Abraham: Betty Kellermann. According to this record, she was born in Ksinna (about 1796) and died in Szkala on April 12, 1870, at the age of 74, two years before Abraham. We do not know, for sure, how many children Abraham and Betty had and their names. However, we believe that one of their sons was Marcus Kellermann, because in his marriage record from July 13, 1865, his father is written as Abraham and his mother as Bella/Betty. Marcus was then 28 years old, which means that he was born about 1836-1837, probably in Szkala. His wife was Amalia Herzog, the daughter of Jacob Herzog and Fanni Lowenbein of Vrbove. They were married in Trencin.

It was confirmed that the house that I had seen in Skalka had indeed belonged to the old Kellermann family. After the war and during the communist regime, it was confiscated by the municipality and used as a cultural center. But though I had found his parents death records and put a lot of the various pieces of the family tree together, I had not yet found any traces of the grave of Marcus, the original reason for my search. I did not know what to do next. There were no relatives alive to ask and I had been following every possible trace that I had. My grandfather Sigmund had left Skalka around the turn of the century, which is now about 100 years ago and I am not even sure if he knew were his fathers grave was.

Visit No. 2

In the summer of 2004, I returned to the town of my ancestors. This time, I had no more hopes of actually finding the graves of Marcus and Amalia, but had prepared to clean up the larger cemetery and to perhaps put up a memorial stone there. I said to myself: “I can do nothing more, I can’t answer this puzzle; I no longer expect to find the lost grave of Marcus.”

Upon my visit, I returned in the late afternoon with my family to show them the little village, the house and the Jewish cemetery that I had found during my earlier trip. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was just setting. I had asked the municipality to help clean up the cemetery garden before my visit, because it was fully overgrown and almost impossible to enter. Entering the fence from behind, I saw that they had cleaned half the garden, but the upper half was still completely overgrown. It was like a dense forest, full of weeds, small trees and bushes and it was almost impossible to get through.

10 In order to see how large the fenced area was, I nevertheless forced myself in between the thorns and branches and in the process I scratched myself badly on one leg.

Then I saw that there were some more old tomb stones there which were impossible to see from below and this gave me new inspiration to go deeper into the forest, and into the dense vegetation. Without caring much about the blood that was now dripping from my leg, I tried to read one tombstone after another. However, since the sand stones were so old and after having been long covered with moss, the Hebrew letters had disappeared, and the inscriptions were largely illegible. I could read a Hebrew word here and there, but nothing with the names of my family. What could I expect from gravestones that were at least 100 years old? I continued up the hill, inspecting one stone after another, but there was nothing. Then, I saw at the top of the slope on the right hand corner of the cemetery, two large granite stones that had fallen to the ground, with the text faced down. But their bases were both standing and I could clearly read in German: “rest in peace” on both. They were too large and heavy for me to move, so I was unable to read what was on them and I did not think much more of it, because it had become dark and we had to leave.

The next morning I came back to the cemetery to inspect and pay for the clean up. There were several young men there who were removing the high grass and the old trees and clearing the lower part of the garden. In addition, there was an old man sitting inside the small burial house adjacent to the cemetery. He told us that he (and his father) had been taking care of the cemetery for years, but that he was now too old to continue. I asked him with trepidation if he knew if there were any Kellermanns buried here and, to my surprise, he immediately confirmed this. “Yes,” he said while pointing up the slope, “there on the top they are buried”. I could still not believe it. It's an old man's words. But we immediately went up the hill again, through the dense forest to the granite stones, which I had found the day before. The young men brought a few long branches, to use as levers to turn one of the stones. They worked hard for a long time, and then, suddenly the large stone turned over.

They cleaned the letters on the stone from the earth and here it was written clearly in Yiddish with Hebrew letters: Kellermann Natan ben Avraham – Natan the son - קעלרמאן of Avraham. This was really Marcus’ lost grave that I had searched for! To my large surprise and satisfaction, I had finally found it! Against all odds, my efforts had proven worthwhile.

Now, we will have to restore the tombstones to their original places and read the exact text inscribed. When I next visit Skalka, I hope to be able to read the full text on the tombstones and to continue my quest.

It has been a fascinating journey into the past in which I have learned a lot about my ancestry, but there is surely much more to know.

11 Epilogue

During this entire journey, I have often asked myself why the search of this grave has been so important for me. Except for the above psychological reasons of becoming 50, I also feel a sense of universal injustice. The Kellermann families lived in Skalka for hundreds of years; they married, gave birth to many children, worked the lands, built houses, died and were buried. And then gradually or suddenly, everything stopped. Now exactly 60 years after 1944, there is not a trace of them ever having lived in Skalka. They might have founded the original settlement and probably constituted the majority of this small town for a very long time, and today, its new citizens do not even know that they ever lived there. I know that this is a repeating theme among the wandering Jew throughout the centuries and nothing special for the Kellermann family. However, this is part of my own personal history and it therefore became significant for me.

In addition to the above, in my search for the lost grave I had hoped to reconnect a generational chain that had been broken. One generation means a single stage in family descent with an average period of about 30 years in which children grow up, marry and have children of their own. In most families, personal knowledge is passed on only within three generations that include children, parents and grandparents and these generations can be either connected or unconnected to one another. Thus, by finding and reconnecting the broken link between my grandfather and his father, I hoped to bring some continuity to the more than 100 descendants of the Kellermann family who are dispersed around the world not knowing anything about their origin. Finally, since I believe that we carry traces of our history within us, it seems important to know as much as we can about where we come from in order to know who we are and where we want to go from here.

However, while turning the tombstone of Marcus over to see what was written on “the other side,” I had another thought that suggests a more profound explanation to the intensity of my search. Perhaps I was simply curious about understanding more about “the other side?” That side of eternity where the dead “rest in peace.” Becoming 50 and looking at myself in the mirror made me realize that life is not infinite. The end is certainly approaching. My search was thus a search into the unknown, the unfathomable and the elusive that awaits us “on the other side.” I was searching for the lost grave to get a glimpse, as it were, of what lies ahead in the after-life were Marcus and his ancestors’ still rule the world. Looking back, I realize that I have actually revisited some of the grounds of these ancestors and sort of been in contact with them during this search for the lost grave of Marcus.

August 30, 2004

M.N.F.P. Kellermann

12