When I was 14, I saw Roots on TV and knew that I wanted to do that too. Trace my family back to the Old Country and write a book about it. So when I was 15, my mother gave me a genealogical research trip to Germany as an early graduation present.
left, my mother and I at Sulzbach am Taunus on the way to the Hotel Sulzbacher Hof, right, me at train station for Sulzbach am Taunus (Ts)
We were so so wrong.
From there we took the train into Frankfurt - the 5th largest city in Germany - and applied for help from some important government official who didn't speak English and his assistant who did. My cousin Ann spoke to this important man exuberantly in her homespun Brooklyn-accented German, not the polite high German his rank required. I spoke to him in my schoolgirl German, shy but proper. Either way, we found nothing. No birth record, no burgermeister, no emigration. The assistant suggested maybe Pop Jake was born in a shiptown, which after a few tries I realized was township.
my Sulzbach cousin Ann Smith and I at the City ArchivesSo we tried asking people where the town Friedhof - cemetery - was. They were all quite modern with photos atop gravestones. Where is the alten Friedhof? There were no old cemeteries. Ann's brother Dick had been a pilot in World War II. " 'Strafe the Rhine,' they told them all the time," she said he told her. " 'Strafe the Rhine'. Well, they strafed the Rhine." Nothing was left from before the war. We looked around. Our own family had destroyed our family's home.
Not that Dick knew that any more than we did, and there was nothing he could have done about it if he did.
What we know now - Europeans do not keep graves forever the way Americans do. They have many more centuries of dead people and far less land. They recycle the graves - and gravestones - after the family stops paying for it, usually about 25 years.
So I gave up for the next 15 years, went to college, got married, had kids....and when the Internet arrived and it became possible to research an hour here and 10 minutes there, corresponding with relatives I never heard of and keeping it all on the computer, I did US research. I crafted a fair picture of immigrant life in New York. It showed how the strains of the family dissipated throughout the states and became lost to one another, leaving snippets of clues, each person with a different piece of the puzzle.
Another decade went by. Completely out of the blue, my mother got a phone call from a man in Germany, in Rockenberg. He called her because she was the only Sulzbach in a New York phone book, and he was looking for descendants of a Jacob Sulzbach who had come to America 130 years before. This man was a musician, a teacher, and a dreamer -- he had founded a chorus called Concordia 150 years ago. The man on the phone was in charge of its anniversary celebration, and he thought it would be great if he could find a descendant. Yes, my mother knew a Jacob Sulzbach, he was her grandfather-in-law.
My mother gave him my info, and we had a breath-taking conversation. I wrote it all down - the Sulzbachs had lived in Rockenberg for centuries, the Concordia performed all over Europe, Jacob the founder was revered even today. The following week my husband died, and when I regained consciousness a decade later, I had no idea where those notes might be.
Me with my long-lost cousins Mark and Angie, and long-lost Aunt Betty, at the Sulzbach Family Reunion 2014
More years passed. Long-lost Sulzbach cousins and I found each other over Ancestry and we met at a family reunion half-way across the country. We were filling in blank spaces in a painting, but our information was as contradictory as it was complementary. The home city wasn't Frankfurt but Mainz - the middle names were different - Jacob was a musician? no, a Catholic professor - he had come to America at least once before he settled - his motivation was money?, no, politics and missionary zeal - Catholics were persecuted when Germany unified - they knew his wife's name - why hadn't she come too? - there were patents and chemical dyes and business bankruptcies. The Sulzbach cousins and I put all our knowledge together to come up with a vibrant portrait of our immigration story.
Now I'm 60 and my daughter is 30. For that milestone, she wanted us to go to a genuine Oktoberfest. Once landing in Frankfurt, I felt drawn to take a spare day and see the town I couldn't find 45 years before.
Under gray skies that made the warm air look cold, we followed the highway to Rockenberg. The town was so small I missed the sign and we were through it before I realized. So we drove back along the narrow angled streets with houses rising sharply from the sidewalk, prompting a horn blast when we rested too long at a stop sign. 
There were several posters of the Concordia bringing color to the solid square houses, and we pulled over to examine one. An address!
A few simple turns brought us to the street, and the address showed a low plain building with a parking lot and no visible signs except Concordia in straight letters. I had only wanted a photo outside the building, but the door was open. There was a car in the lot and people were carrying items in and out the open door. I got out and two of my children followed.
The tears started to fizz up as I left the car and headed for this place I had sought for so long. The people ignored us as we entered, but a music-note frieze was painted along the wall as if to accompany us through the building. I ran my fingers along it, and the tears fell down my face.
On the left was a large empty room that looked like a chorus would meet there, so I entered and feasted my eyes on the 4 trophy cases and more trophies too big to fit. All the loving cups, small medium and large, gold silver and bronze, labeled 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Preiz. Faded ribbons with tassels. A cacophony of awards!
The young woman we found to speak to explained rather rudely that we were not allowed in and had to leave, but she did turn the light on as I turned to take pictures of the trophies, since I had no intention of leaving without that. Her cold manner made me weep through the picture-taking, and we left quickly. 
means inauguration or dedication
We did walk around after that, took pictures at the Rathaus, town hall. In the park across the street a stone explained the old Rathaus had stood there for 300 years. That must have been where my legendary ancestor was the burgermeister, if true.
me on the Rathaus steps
the Freie Platz, Open Square
the wall is beside the Open Square
Rotes Haus, a restaurant
Gourmet Market
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