Notizen zu dieser Person
Gemeinsmann. Genannt zu Georgenhausen, 1654 zu Nieder-Kainsbach, angelobt am 27.11.1655 zu Brensbach, dann 1660 zu Höllerbach. ---------------- C. W. Lundberg, Sommerhausen, Germany, February 9, 1999 writes the following about him: Michael Wolf according to the church records at Brensbach was bom about 1610 in Schatzlar, now Zecler located in Lower Schlesien, which had been controlled by House of Hapsburg since 1562. During Michael's time, Schatzlar was a small settlement lying directly on the mountam border between Upper and Lower Schlesien, a border control post for the pass through what is known as the "Riesen Gebirge" (large mountains). This chain of mountains has also been the border separating the Czech Republic from Poland since the end of W.W. II Michael moved to Höllerbach, 3/4 of a mile east of Brensbach, Hessen Darmstadt, Germany in the Odenwald forest, shortly after the end of the "Thirty Years War". To the average American, this war means little but for the European ofthe 17th century, it was a catastrophe. The war began 1618 in Bohemia (Czech Republic). The Bohemian aristocracy had accepted the religious reform teachings of Martin Luther, die father of modem Protestantism. Michael Wolff was a Lutheran. Bohemia was brutally brought back under Catholic control and no one with Protestant views was tolerated. Eventually this war of religion spilled over into middle Europe and the Odenwald. The Odenwald was devastated during the war by roving bands of Protestant and Catholic German, Slovenian, French, Croatian and Swedish troops and after the war by a number of marauding bands of discharged soldiers. By 1848, when the war officially ended many families and villages had been annihilated, the livestock decimated, and those still living were starving. These survivors had lived from foraging in the sunounding forests or from what they had successfuUy and family members. They were Uving skeletons didn't come to the region until after 1652 as evidenced estimated that for the Odenwald area around Brensbach the plague or staved to death. The Count of Erbach., in whose domain Brensbach in Switzerland, Austria, Southem Germany, Upper and lower Silesia to come and repopulate the area and farm the abandoned lands. He needed the tax money to rebuild his domain. The area became known as little Switzerland who came to the Brensbach area at the request of the Count of Erbach There is no knowledge of what brought Michael Wolff to Höllerbach. he was of the Lutheran faith, and he may have had been a soldier during the war and have just happened to be in the Odenwald when the Count of Erbach made his offer. He came directly from the Catholic Lower Schlesien. He married Apollonia on 12 March 1652 in Georgenhausen, about 7 miles north of Höllerbach. We know that she was the stepdaughter of Anna and Peter Meixner and the widow of Martin Hä nssgen, all from Brensbach. Michael became a "Gemeinsman" or "Commoner on 27 November 1655.
Erika Elisabeth
Metzieder
