Notizen zu dieser Person
BIOGRAPHIE: Wolfgang Pritzl (1844-1902) Wolfgang arrived in New York in May of 1868. He filed an intention for citizenship on 6 Nov. 1876. On the 1880 census index he was listed as being born in Oesterich (Austria). His wife Franciska Lemberger was listed as being born in "Bauern", [Bavaria]. Their first four children are also listed. Residence is listed as Brillion, Wisc. Calumet county. Wolfgang's brothers also emigrated to America, Frank in May 1872, Anton in June 1871, and Michael in 1867. Why did they emigrate?? Maybe the history of the area will give us a probable cause, but unless some definite facts are uncovered, we will never be 100% sure. The following narratives gleamed from the writings of Don Zipperer and Rev. Bernard Meyer gives us some background into the why. Bohemia was part of the Austrian Empire during the time of our ancestor emigration. Germany was the official language in Bohemia the language of government, churches, schools, etc.. It wasn't until about 1870 that the Czech language was allowed to be taught in the University of Praque. In the 1860's and 1870's Czech-speaking Bohemians only then began to gain recognition as citizens with rights equal to those enjoyed by the German-speaking Bohemian citizens. History books tell us that laws were being passed during this time to make Czech the official language of any city, town, church or school where the majority of people where Czech. The Czech-speaking Bohemians had fought a class war with their German-speaking Bohemian countrymen and slowly, over the next several decades made Bohemia completely Czech. One of the immediate results of the changes going on in Bohemia was mass emigration,- - to Germany, America, or to any place where the German-speaking people could live, bring up their children and speak their native language. In 1918, after World War I, Bohemia became part of Czechoslovakia. Then after World War II, around 1950, the Russians took Czechoslovakia behind the Iron Curtain. The residents of border towns were forced to leave their homes, simply because they were too close to the border of the Free World. Throughout Bohemia and the rest of Czechoslovakia, German- speaking citizens were actually allowed to leave Bohemia. The Czeches had been fighting a class war with their German countrymen, a struggle to rise above second-class status, for decades. Whether the refugees of the late 1940's went to Bavaria, immediately west of Bohemia, Austria or some other German-speaking land, they had to leave their homes and nearly all of their belongings and, empty-handed, begin anew as strangers in different lands with different customs. The refugees also lost touch with their Bohemian friends and neighbors. Some families, that then still had relatives living in the vicinity of Hirschau, Taus, Friedrichsthal or Ploess, could not know where the others resettled. In the 1950's, some Meyer cousins who had left Bohemia and settled in Bavaria wrote to their relatives in the U. S. and told them that the Czech-speaking people badly mistreated the German-speaking populace in Bohemia. So our ancestors were better off leaving Bohemia when they did. It should also be noted that, although these 1940's refugees from Bohemia had learned German in school, their spoken language would have been somewhat different from that of the Bavarians, Austrians and other West Germans. Their customs were different enough to make them feel strange in their adopted lands. It is understandable, therefore, that they longed to return to their homes in Hirschau, Friedrichsthal and other parts of Bohemia and prayed that circumstances would change so that they could be allowed to return again. One relative wrote that some of the 1940's refugees climbed a mountain in Bavaria near the Czechoslovakian border to get a glimpse of their former home in Hirschau, just a few miles across from the border. They saw what appeared to be "ghost towns" where their houses stood vacant, ravaged by the elements and by vandals passing through and thus allowed to fall into ruin. Rev. Bernard Meyer was ordained a priest 22 July, 1951 in Switzerland. He said his First Mass in Konigsberg, Bavaria where many of his relatives were living as refugees. Fr. Anton Kelnhofer, participated in Fr. Meyer's first mass. Fr. Kelnhofer's mother was Barbara Pritzl, sister of the four brothers who came to America. (Rev. John Pritzl, great-grandson of Barbara's brother Wolfgang, attended Fr. Meyers First Mass in the U.S.)
Manfred
Kolbeck
