I am starting to map out the contents for book 2
In the late-1980s, on our very first trip to South Australia, Donna and I visited St John’s Lutheran Church in Lobethal. By pure chance, a lady named Nita Hoffmann had signed the visitors’ book the previous day and left her address. The internet did not exists as we know it today, so I wrote her a letter. That single sheet of paper began a correspondence that would start quite an adventure.
Nita and Denise Hoffmann were compiling 150 Years of Descendants, Their Journeys and Endeavours – the first Hoffmann family book – centered mainly on the descendants of Carl Hoffmann. I was only just learning that Carl Rudolph Hoffmann even existed, let alone that he was a brother to our own Johann Samuel Gotthilf Hoffmann. Discovering a cousin who was not only a relative but an active genealogist writing a book was an absolute gift. Nita was every bit as excited to find us; the two sides of the family had been separated by distance for generations. For years we exchanged letters full of facts, photographs and warm greetings. Life moved on – university, our first child, starting a business – and Mum fully and happily took over as our family’s correspondent with Nita.
None of today’s research would exist without Mum and Dad. Before they began, we knew only our immediate family and a handful of cousins; nothing was written down and much was guesswork. I can still see Mum sitting with my grandfather, patiently teasing out whatever memories he had (precious few, and sometimes muddled). Undeterred, Dad packed Donna and me off to Walla Walla, New South Wales, where the wider Hoffmann family welcomed us like, well, long-lost children. We heard plenty of “Why would you want to know about that?” and mid-conversation subject changes, but we also met cousins we had never known – many of whom are sadly no longer with us. We stayed with Great Aunt Frieda; Great Uncles Norman and Percy drove us around farms, pointed out old house sites and introduced us to relatives. Wandering through cemeteries with them, I picked up my first German phrases just to read the headstones.
Later, when we shared some details about Nita’s South Australian family, the penny dropped. Uncle Percy suddenly remembered, “They visited us here when we were children!”
Dad’s quiet conviction that family is our greatest treasure has steered this entire journey. He encouraged every story, shared everything he knew, and beamed with pride at our German-Slavic heritage that fascinated him so much. Keeping the correct spelling of “Hoffmann” – with two n’s – has been a gentle daily battle for all of us, our children have now taken up with the same determination.
Along the way I corresponded with the late Detlef Papsdorf, whose passion for German-Australian gravestones was infectious. He generously shared rare documents about Lobethal’s founding families.
More recently, word reached us that our original emigrant’s relatives may have followed him to Australia. That prompted contact with Angela Teusner in Germany, who had been extracting Hoffmann entries from the old Prussian church books. Her work confirmed – and vastly expanded – the fragments South Australian historian Reg Butler had started to uncover. Picking up where Angela left off, I was able to trace another brother who emigrated and fill in many missing pieces.
The first Hoffmann book was launched at a big family reunion in Rainbow, Victoria in 1996. Several of us travelled down from New South Wales to be there. Our son James S.G. Hoffmann, then just a baby, had the distinction of being the youngest Hoffmann present.
I started writing a newsletter 20 years ago . I think I got to about edition 3 before time got in the way. The blog (thehoffmann.com) was set to replace that.
Hoffmann Book 2.0 is not simply an update or reprint. It sets the record straight on the early Australian years of our line – information that was still confused and contradictory when the first book went to print. This time we have chosen not to include printed trees (they live separately in our growing digital archive) but instead to focus on the richer human story: the journeys, the reconnections, the voices, and the pride that still binds us all together. This is our greater Hoffmann story – and it is far from finished.
The working title is: A Leap of Faith – Liegnitz to Lake Macquarie
And the chapters mapped so far:
(i) Preface (Vorwork) Thanks and those that have gone before. Corrections.
- Katyil, Victoria, Australia
- Liegnitz 1840
- Rosenau, Kreis Liegnitz
- Liebfrauenkirche Stadt Liegnitz (History of Liegnitz)
- 10 Black Eaglets
- Battle of Liegnitz 1760 (Panthen)
- Gross und Alt Beckern, Kreis Liegnitz
- Bienowitz Kreis Liegnitz
- Schwarzer Vorwerk und Topferberg
- Leaving Liegnitz
- Zum Weinberg Christi
- Valley of Praise
- Blumberg
- North of the Hills
- Ebenezer Bound.
- World at War
- To the East Coast
- Other Parts of Europe
- Other Parts of Australia.
- Liegnitz Today
Acknowledgements will definitely be to:
- My long suffering wife, who has put up with so much. Including being dragged through unkempt cemeteries in all sorts of conditions, even a few in 50degC (I kid you not) heat.
- Mum and Dad who have done so much work
- Angela Teusner, newly found family who patiently worked to teach me the nuances of historic German church books.
- Polish friends Jolanta, Jarko, Hanna (and others) who have accepted me as a virtual resident of their beautiful city.
- Everyone whom listened and gave.