Our Own Gesangverein ~ the Story of Katharina & Jakob Sulzbach, Part the First

Eva Katharina Krämer and Jakob Sulzbach, the same age, grew up together in Rockenberg, Hesse.  Katharina was a gregarious sort who liked to surround herself with frolicsome companions.  The Krämers were a wealthy family, as families go in the small area of Rockenberg and its sister town, Oppershofen, prominent citizens and active in politics.  Their wealth had not insulated them from tragedy:  Katharina and her brothers lost their mother when Katharina was twelve and their father when she was seventeen. (see Sulzbach Pedigree Chart)

As the only girl, Katharina occupied a special place in her family.  The Familiengefühl, the sense of family feeling and togetherness, was up to her. Their father saw to it that Katharina's requests were granted and her wishes, as far as family affairs went, were followed.  After he died, it was harder to keep everyone together, her brothers drifting off in various directions. Katharina felt the strain of keeping up appearances. She cast about for something, someone different, and her eye fell on Jakob.

He didn't seem to know.  Jakob was a serious boy from a philosopher family.  He had incredible musical talent in a family gifted in cultural pursuits - ideas, music, religion, education.  Jakob and his twin, Heinrich, immersed themselves in church culture.  They had been singing in the choir since they were small boys.  As teenagers, Jakob began arranging his own music for the large group to sing in parts, while Heinrich leaned into education.  

It wasn't just music that the Sulzbachs were interested in.  They were philosophers, lovers of ideas, culture, music and were never so happy as when they could share their knowledge with others or engage in rousing philosophical discussions.  Jakob and Heinrich's father, Johann Adam, had left Rockenberg for Bavaria to teach.  There, in the town of Klein Zimmern, he met and married Helena Kiefer and brought her home, and there they raised their nine children.   

The ideas of music, education, and religion all converged in the Roman Catholic Church, the beating heart of the community.  Priest's Alley is a strip of land in Hesse, north of Frankfurt, that was an enticing target for the anti-Roman Catholic forces that wreaked death and destruction, again and again and again in the Thirty Years' War.  The Sulzbach family has lived there, in Rockenberg, since before the war, but all the records were destroyed in the raids, so records in Rockenberg only date from the war's end in 1648.  Their Hausmark is indicative of an altar with a cross on top.  

Jakob decided to go to America at age 19 with a missionary group.  German emigration was huge in the 1840s, and the wilderness needed to hear the Gospel.  New churches needed to be planted to serve the expatriates. He returned full of excitement and ambition.  Rockenberg, he thought, needed a singing group, a Gesangverein of its own, not attached to the church, and he began working to create one.

The excitement of being an American traveler made Jakob even more attractive to the women.  Never one to pay attention to his surroundings beyond his interests, he finally did notice that a young woman was paying particular attention to him.  He asked her go walking and she listened to his thoughts.  He thought, perhaps, he would play for her the music he wanted his fledgling Gesangverein to try.  When she agreed and listened, rapt, he was hooked.

In fact, Katharina seemed to hang on his every word.  What she didn't tell him was that she didn't care a bit for his music or education ideas; it was his excitement that swept her up.  She loved to watch him pace back and forth and watch his face as he tried out ideas; she loved to listen to the cadence of his voice and see his expressions change with exuberance.  

Her family was less impressed.  Eyeing his low prospective income as a teacher, they forbade the match. But Katharina was twenty years old. Hadn't she been the one keeping the family together? Were they so ungrateful, so dismissive of her feelings, as to stop her now?  Katharina felt pulled to recreate a family for herself in the image of the one her own mother had tended.  And so a baby, Eva Katharina Margareta, was born in October 1854.  As soon as she was able to appear in public after childbirth, Katharina and Jakob were married. 

They spent their first year building their life.  Jakob taught his Gesangverein Concordia, his small group of musicians, to produce first-class music while keeping abreast of the new ideas, the Kulturkampf, sweeping Europe.  There were many rousing discussions at the church over whether and how to modernize, giving Katharina many chances to watch her husband explain his passion.  She was building life inside:  Wilhelmine Katharina Barbara was born for Christmas.   Jakob was offered a good position in Heidesheim, on the other side of Frankfurt.  

Another year passed, and a fever swept through the town and took Margareta.

After the condolers had all left, it seemed nothing was left.  Katharina curled up in bed, wrapping her arms around her belly as if to keep body and soul together.  Tears had already soaked the pillow and kept rolling down the side of her face.  She squished her eyes against the baby screaming next to the bed.  Jakob came in and picked up the screaming baby.  She could hear the sounds of him opening and closing drawers, cooing a melody he had written into the baby's ear.   Baby started to talk back.

 She heard him in the kitchen, the spoon ringing the dish.  Idly she wondered what clothes he found to put on her, and if he was feeding her out of a bowl or a pot.  He didn't know where anything was, never used anything.  He just walked the floor and explained God to the babies until dinner was ready.  The murmurs tickled the edges of her mind while her arms clutched her body to keep her heart from falling out.

She heard his footsteps come in and stop, while the baby kept talking.  "Ba boo gaa." 

"Are you there?  Are you there, Katharina?"

Jakob lay on the bed beside her and curled around her, head to head, leg to leg.  He put the baby in the circle their bodies made, and encompassed them both with his long arms.  She couldn't find enough moisture in her throat to speak.  

"What?  What are you saying?"

So she whispered.  "If we were at home, this never would have happened.  We need to be at home."

Jakob rolled her onto her back and gently kissed her salty eyelids.  "We will go home," he said softly. "We will go home."

"Barbara will die too.  We won't have any babies," she whispered.

"Nein, Liebchen.  We will have many, many babies.  We will have so many, we will have our own Gesangverein."

She had thought she loved him before, but that was just a paper cut-out compared to this feeling.  In this moment, she fell absolutely, completely, in love with him.  

**Names, places, and dates are factual.  Everything else is a figment of my imagination.**