Joseph Fiedler - Beer & Pencils Special Edition Part 2

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Beer & Pencils Special Edition Part 2

posted:December 5, 2007

From the doors of the Dom Kirche, Residenz Platz, Salzburg, Austria

Gott und Vaterland: Das Blud

“One Eye Laughing, One Eye Crying”.
Gordon Brook-Shepherd The Austrians, A Thousand -Year Odyssey

Louisa and Franz Fiedler ca. 1941-2.

Although I don’t play the Astrological card, I am, in fact, a Gemini, an Austrian Gemini. Well anyway, at my age, these things weigh deeply on my mind. So, as I said, I decided to do something about it. I decided to drink a beer in the village of my ancestors. Maybe it would allow me to commune with the past and understand the primordial call of the blood and soil? I had only some sketchy information about the origins of my paternal family [I don’t know the maternal side at all other than that they were Austrian as well] and so built my journey on the mere hint of reasonable accuracy. My father died last December having never seen his homeland. I did not want the same for myself.

My grandmother was Louisa Wolf. She immigrated to the USA in or around 1902. She came from a small village in western Hungary called Mogersdorf. Mogersdorf is the site of a historic battle between Austro-Hungarian forces and Ottoman Turkish invaders in 1664; The Battle of Mogersdorf. On the land where my family lived, 20,000 Austrian and 40,000 Turkish soldiers died in vicious fighting. It is said that the nearby river Raab was filled with the corpses of men, horses and camels and that the water ran red. It is also said that coffee was introduced to Europe, scavenged from the dead Turks [this is why Vienna is famous for its coffee houses].

My grandfather was Franz Fiedler. He immigrated earlier than my grandmother but I’m not exactly sure of the date. He came from a nearby village. In 1921, many years after my grandparents’ immigration, Hungary redrew its western border [extending Austria to include those villages in what is today the eastern most state, the Burgenland]. Am I Austrian or Hungarian? Maybe you can tell me. I do know that my grandparents spoke German as was mandated by law in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I’ve heard that even today there are entire valleys in Hungary where people still speak German. One village has a German name, another an Italian and still another a Croatian, and so on in the borderlands.

The nearest large city is Graz [Austria’s second largest] which is in the state of Styria [about 70 miles west] adjacent to the Burgenland, so we based our operation there. The train from Munich to Graz takes you through ethereal, breathtaking alpine panoramas. Graz is a very Eastern city with hints of Slavic [It’s just north of Zagreb] culture evident everywhere, in the food, the accents and the architecture. It is the borderland, the porous terrain where cultures [Roman, German, Austrian, Czech, Hungarian, Croatian, Slovenian…] collide and absorb and assimilate. We rented a car in Graz and drove to Mogersdorf through really rural farmlands and forests in a misty atmosphere with light so electric that you’d expect Vlad Dracul to pop up anytime soon out of the rolling fog. Yeah, that blood connection too. At the end of the line: graves and a beer. Although I’ve had really terrific times traveling, I have never had a direct connection to the lands that I visited. This was an entirely different feeling, different than anything that I’ve ever experienced before. Maybe it was because it was way more beautiful than anything I had expected? Maybe it was the fog? Maybe it was seeing your family name on gravestones in a borderland cemetery thousands of miles away from my own home? Or maybe it was drinking beer directly from the wooden barrel? You should try it if you haven’t already. Really.

Here are the annotated pix.

From the base of the Turkish Cross memorial, Mogersdorf, Austria.

Munich to Graz/Mogersdorf.

Mogersdaorf ca. 1940.

Mogersdorf today.

Town center, Mogersdorf, the Kirche

Also, town center.

Directly opposite the church is a May pole.

Around Mogersdorf. In one of these houses, my family once [or may still] lived.

Behind these windows lay a little piece of my soul.

View of town from the old cemetery [alte Friedhof].

The grave of my grandmother's brother. We only found 2 graves with the name Wolf and no Fiedlers.

Border patrol outside of the cemetery [it's that close to Hungary]. the Iron Curtain ran right by this land.

Land surrounding the cemetery. I never imagined it to be this rural still.

Gasthaus [food pub] in the village of Wallendorf run by Klaus Werner.

Klaus and friend during better weather. Klaus was kind enough to point the way to another old cemetery in a town called Maria-bild, a few miles away.

The map Klaus drew on the back of a check for us.

After passing a flock of sheep driven by a shepherd, we came upon the church and cemetery at Maria-bild.

There we found no less than 8 graves marked with the name Fiedler. That was a weird sight and feeling.

The rolling hills and beautiful, somber pallette reminded me of the Brandywine Valley.

When I got back to the hotel, I looked up the word BILD [from Maria-bild]. It means a painting. Or a picture. Did you ever breathe like that? This is most probably the origin of Maria, Maria Theresa de Austria y Borbon [1638-1683] Empress of the Holy Roman Empire here painted by Velasquez

This is a painting from the hallway at Hotel Zum Dom in Graz. He looks like my uncles. You can see the eastern influence in every aspect of it.

This is a vial of soil that I collected in Mogersdorf, the soil from which I sprang.

I am indebted to several people [beer enthusiasts all] for advice and encouragement without which my journey would have been impossible. Nano Frederick Hilton Carlson III Ping-ting M. & J. Burckhardt Joseph Carl Fiedler [deceased Dec., 2006]