At Passover I usually write at length about Jewish origins, from the Hill Country of Israel, to the Nile Delta to my own Ashkenazi roots in what is now Latvia near the shores of Lake Lubanas, where one of my ancestors took the name "Luban" when Jews in the Russian Empire took last names.

This year I have no new insights on Passover and, though I have been able to push my Luban ancestors back one more generation (finding my great-great grandfather Jankel Luban's father was named Enoch Luban), I have nothing really new to say about my Jewish roots.

Instead, during Passover, I am finding myself planning a trip to the villages in Germany my Lutheran ancestors came from.

I think I have only once written about my German ancestry. Since I was raised by my mother and her mother (whose maiden name was Luban), not my father, Peter Kunkel, it has always been the shores of lake Lubanas and the very distant connection through it to Israel it represents that has fascinated me. (For those who might be confused by last names here, Michaelson was my step-father's last name...Kunkel my original last name).

But in reality I am able to trace my father's Lutheran roots back further than I can my Jewish roots. In fact, I have grown amazed at the care with which Lutherans keep their church records, keeping track of every Johann Georg and Johann Phillip back to whenever the village became Lutheran. It has just taken longer for me to feel a connection to the Balthazars, Maries, Marys and Adams of Darmstadt-Hesse than it took for me to feel a connection to the Dwieras, Jankels, Sawels and Enochs of Latvia. Of course it helped that in 2003 I was able to visit Dvinsk and Rezekne in Latvia and see the towns where my family came from.

Now I have the chance to see the small villages in Germany where all those Johanns come from.

This June there is a conference in my field in Heidelberg. My boss has asked me to go. Loving travel I was enthusiastic. Then I realized that on either side of Frankfurt, where I will be flying through to get to Heidelberg, there are two seemingly unremarkable, beautiful-looking regions where few tourists ever go where my distant relatives still live. To the east, just in Bavaria, are the towns of Neuhutten and Rothenbuch where there are still many Kunkels living and from where my great-grandfather, Martin Kunkel (after whom my brother is named) left to find his way in America. To the west, in the Rhineland but also once in Darmstadt-Hesse, are the small villages called Dorrebach and Seibersbach (once known as Autishof) from where my great great-grandfather Adam Wasem (sometimes spelled Wassem) left to find his way in America. Both Martin Kunkel and Adam Wasem settled in Iowa and it was there that Martin met Adam's daughter, Mary Wasem. Martin and Mary were two of my great-grandparents. (It was one of Adam's granddaughters through Mary's sister Caroline, married August Hilton...but that way lies madness).

From what I can tell, if you go far enough back, the ancestors of the Kunkels and Wasems both lived in what was called Franconia in the 11th and 12th centuries, long before I can actually trace my ancestors.

And so, with a conference in Heidelberg and these four tiny villages within reach, I begin to explore Germany and German roots the way I explored my Jewish heritage.

There can be few stronger arguments for the damage that can be done by paying too much attention to history than how Germany has understood and taught its ancient past, however aesthetically pleasurable it can be in operas
--Simon Winder in Germania

Jews have a hard time defining their recent history, strangers in strange lands sometimes accepted often not, moving from nation to nation always hopefully ahead of the worst of the latest anti-Semitism. Nationalities, last names and first names change, sometimes more than once per generation. But despite, or perhaps because of, this problem with recent history, Jews have a deep sense of their origins, which are mentioned in ancient writings in Egyptian, Edomite, Assyrian and Babylonian even before being enshrined the bible and in Flavius Josephus' Judean War. Jews are overwhelmed by their ancient history. They consciously define themselves in relation to that ancient history.

Germans in some ways have the opposite problem. They are overwhelmed by an ancient history that is virtually unknown except in myth or in mythical histories written by their enemies, the Romans. Whether you rely on Wagner or Tacitus, the result is the same: myth packaged as a national identity. In many ways German history begins when Jewish history becomes subsumed into a subset of the history of their places of exile. The Romans ended the independent history of the Jews, but they began the very concept of German history, the very notion of a "German" identity...and they did so at roughly the same time.

Whatever you might read in either early German myths or Roman histories (the two share much in common, and that is to the detriment of the history), we know almost nothing about the origins of the Germans. According to one line of thinking, the Gauls (Celts), Germans and Slavs were one shifting mass of tribal affiliations that were divided by Roman ideas of geography rather than any real differences. Gauls were barbarians on one side of the Rhine, Germans were barbarians on the other side of the Rhine and Slavs were barbarians even further east. In reality a person, family or clan might shift from one tribal identity to another with relative ease. Even languages were mixed and shifted. Groups like the Huns and Goths were in reality multi-ethnic, multi-lingual entities with relatively short histories, but which, in comparison to the Romans, had their histories projected back into myth.

Real tribal groups are very fluid. This is the case when looking at Native American tribes, African tribes before colonialism, steppe nomads like the Huns or Scythians or Mongols, or the Gauls, Germans and Slavs. Most of the Germanic tribes the Romans fought were actually tribal groupings around one warlord or, in many cases, a particular noble clan and the strength of that tribal grouping was determined by the interaction it had with Rome. Roman trade routes, Roman money, Roman military and diplomatic training, Roman weapons and Roman politics did more to shape the Goths (whether Tervingi or Greuthungi, whether Balthi or Amali led, whether Ostrogoth or Visigoth), the Franks, the Burgandians, the Belgicae, etc. than did any native German forces. Almost everything we know about early German history is really just part of Roman history. Almost all the Germanic "tribes" we know of were formed in one way or another around Roman influences, usually based on trade, war, or both. The history of colonial Africa has many parallels where the fluidity between !Xosha and Zulu, Bantu and Kikuyu, Tutsi and Hutu far outweighed any rivalry until colonial policies ossified these tribal distinctions, creating the sometimes genocidal rivalries we recognize today. The tribal distinctions among Germans and Celts was much the same in ancient times. They were vague and fluid, largely overshadowed by family and clan affiliations, until interaction with Rome ossified those tribal distinctions.

The Germans, whatever anyone might think based on reading Tacitus, have no real independent ancient history. This is not a bad thing. What it really means is that most of them stayed at home raising fat cattle and nice crops, drinking beer at night and singing bawdy songs. Trouble really only came when the Romans came around. Okay, sometimes a push from the other way came from steppe tribes on their horses, but they were really only an extension of ancient Chinese history until a man named Temujin turned the world upside down...but that is the story of ANOTHER people on the fringes of so-called "civilization."

The Germans started coming into their own, history and culture wise, when the Romans lost it. But the road even from there, was an extremely difficult one. Germany has seldom been unified during its entire history. Until very modern times it has always been a shifting jigsaw puzzle of shifting alliances (whether tribal or among barons) over which an occasional warlord, noble family or dictator has been able to impose an ill-fitting unity. Look to the Thirty Years War, which absolutely devastated the German states. Look at what Napoleon Bonaparte did to the German states. Germany was a major force from the collapse of Rome on, but it was seldom a superpower until almost the 20th century. More often it was where other nations fought eachother, similar to the later history of Poland, ironically enough. And yet Germany's influence on European thought and culture has, since the collapse of Rome, been enormous.

Jews are overwhelmed by their ancient history. Germans have often been overwhelmed by their need for an ancient history to match their modern accomplishments. Interestingly this would have been a familiar obsession to Romans who lived under Ostrogothic rule right after the Western Roman Empire whimpered itself out of existence with the abdication of poor little Romulus Augustulus. So, from Roman times on, Jews have looked back to and tried to recreate an ancient past. And from Roman times on, Germans have tried to create out of myth an ancient past that appears more glorious than simply raising fat cattle and good crops, drinking beer and singing songs at night and trying not to run afoul of Roman "civilization."

The Thirty Years War (1618–1648) cuts across German history with such trauma that it took something like WW II to dim its significance. The Thirty Years War involved almost every nation and power structure in Europe...and was mostly fought on German soil. It was a confusing mixture of religious war (Protestant and Catholic Talibans fighting over which version of the Christian faith would dominate Germany and get to oppress the other) and intricate political conflict, largely involving a rivalry between the Bourbon and Hapsburg royal families.

Lutheranism and Catholicism was fighting it out in Germany even before 1618. The absolutely insane level of disunity in Germany (with over 200 individual states) made conflict inevitable. Religious leaders, local barons, regional powers (including the regional state of Hesse, where my humble origins are rooted), foreign nations and trans-national royal families like the Hapsburgs and Bourbons, constantly fought over control over the various German states. Even the Ottomans got involved from time to time. It was, in many ways, the first world war because it was fought by European powers as far afield as Brazil, Africa and Asia.

The political consequences of the Thirty Years War were far reaching. The independence of the Dutch was assured and the decline of Spain accelerated. This allowed the rise of France and England as the next superpowers. Protestantism was unquestionably here to stay after the war, particularly in Germany. But somehow, Germany wound up even MORE divided after the war even than it was before the war.

The Kunkels were already living in Neuhutten before the Thirty Years War. It seems Neuhutten and that part of Germany was already in the Lutheran camp. The Kunkels all seemed to be born, married and died in "The Glasshouse" in Neuhutten. I assume they were ones not to throw many stones, living where they did, but the earliest Kunkel I know of, Hans Kunkel, born around 1530, had the nickname "Schwarzkoph" according to local records. He was my great x10 -grandfather. Neuhutten was known for its glassmaking and, while the forces of Europe were getting together to fight it out in Germany, Hans Kunkel was almost certainly a glass maker in a family of glassmakers from a region famous for its glass making. Hans Kunkel and Anna Catharina Wolfgang (also born in the Glasshouse) were married and they begat (in the Glasshouse) Johannes Jurg Kunkel. Then came the begetting of a whole series of Johanns who are my ancestors--Johann Michael (possibly the last Kunkel who was born in the Glasshouse?), Johannes, Johann Balthasar, Johann Christian, Johannes and Johann Kunkel, all born in Neuhutten. Not even the Thirty Years War makes a visible ripple in the records of the Kunkels.

Okay, look, my Kunkel ancestors were a quiet lot! They stayed at home and made glass and whatever else in what really was a long German tradition of quietly living their lives in small villages far from the more disruptive and noisy thing called civilization. I kind of get the feeling that my Kunkel ancestors may have lived there quietly for many generations before Hans Kunkel, possibly being there when the Romans passed on the skills of glass making. "Kunkel" is actually a word related to wool making. So perhaps we quietly raised sheep and made wool in the area of Neuhutten before the Romans introduced glass and we decided glass making was the thing to do.

That last Johann Kunkel, born around 1800 in Neuhutten, seems to have done the most adventurous thing a Kunkel had done since Hans Kunkel was born around 1530: he moved about 5km over the hill and through the woods to Rothenbach. I wonder what the story behind this is. But whatever sparked this move, Johann and his wife, Magdalena Stauter, even broke the long tradition of naming all their sons "Johann." Their son, my great-great grandfather, was named Bernard Kunkel and is the fist Kunkel I know of in my lineage to be born outside of Neuhutten.

Bernard Kunkel has a story as well. The only Kunkel in my direct lineage to be born and die in Rothenbach (note: today there are still Kunkels in both Neuhutten and Rothenbach), married a woman who had either been divorced or widowed, suggesting some scandal might be under the surface. Elizabeth Englert married a Schulzler before marrying into the Kunkel family. Bernard and Elizabeth's first son, Killian, was born before they were married...Hmmmm. From what I have heard this is a touchy subject among some Kunkels even today. I think Bernard and/or Elizabeth were somewhat wild folks for the area and clearly were breaking out of the stay-at-home Kunkel mold.

Bernard and Elizabeth's second son was my great-grandfather, Martin Kunkel. He went further than his grandfather, Johann. Johann moved about 5 km over a hill. Martin moved to America, settling in Davenport, Iowa. It was there that he met Mary Wasem.

My mother remembers some of Mary's relatives. There were two eccentric and very modern sisters, Ella and Lena Wasem (Mary's sisters, I believe), and their brother, who was a bit more stodgy. In one generation, Mary Wasem's generation, dozens of Wasems up and moved from Ober-Ingelheim in Darmstadt-Hesse to Iowa, where they got married and had children, struck it rich selling their farm to the American Gypsum company after they found gypsum there, and retired to Long Beach California. Quite a life it seems!

The Wasem records I have don't go back before the Thirty Years War. While the Kunkels seemed stable and Lutheran throughout, the Wasems may well have had a harder time during that traumatic era. Johann Heinrich Wassem, my great x5-grandfather, was born 1682 in Autishof, Hessen Darmstadt, Germany. Having roots that only go back to after the Thirty Years War strongly implies that Johann Heinrich's parents had had a tough life. Where they settled, though, is now some of the best wine making area in Germany. The Wasem family today has moved away from the small villages and moved to the nearby town of Ingelheim where they make what I have heard is great wine...and I intend to try it and see when I get there. The Wasems don't seem to have been from the Autishof area originally, though I can't know that for sure. Johann Heinrich was born there, but he moved to nearby Dorrenbach where he married Maria Margaretha. Their son was also named Johann Heinrich Wassem. He moved back to Autishof. His son, Johann Georg Wassem, then broke the tradition of naming all their sons Johann and named one of his sons, my great-great grandfather, Adam Wasem. It was he, after marrying his second wife, Anne Maria Hirschman, who moved his whole family, including Mary Wassem, to Iowa. He died in Iowa, but most of his kids died in California. All in all, the Wasems seem less sedentary and tied to the region than the Kunkels, though by all evidence they were farmers. Perhaps it was merely that their land straddled the small Autishof/Dorrenbach divide (such as it was). Or perhaps they had no land of their own but were migrant farm workers of sorts. Who knows.

Why did the Kunkels and Wassems move all about the same time?

In 1848, in Frankfurt, within 50 miles of both Rothenbach and Dorrenbach, the March Revolution began. In Frankfurt, a new constitution was written. The revolution pushed for a united Germany and a more democratic system, essentially rejecting the disunited, outdated system Germany was ruled under. This revolution was unsuccessful and was of course ruthlessly crushed by the autocratic rulers. This led to many Germans fleeing to America. Clearly the Kunkels, who had by then broken out of their Neuhutten shell, and the Wasems, who may never really have found their footing after the Thirty Years War, were caught up in this. Although I have no idea if they had been willing participants in the revolution, or merely caught up in the aftermath, the result was they moved to America. Martin Kunkel briefly joined the Union Army in the Civil War before marrying Mary Wasem. Mary's siblings and cousins struck it rich. Martin and Mary's son, Edward Kunkel, founded a sporting goods store in Davenport that survived until near the end of the Bush years, when the Bush recession drove it under. Edward's son, Peter Kunkel, was as far as I know the first Kunkel or Wasem to become an intellectual: he got his Ph.D. in Anthropology and met my mother on a dig in Mexico...which led to my brother and me. It was in Mexico when my Latvian Jewish and Lutheran German lines came together.

Back in Germany, the Wasems have successful wineries and hotels in Ingelheim. The Kunkels remain quietly in Neuhutten and Rothenbach and surrounding areas. And in June, I will visit both the Wasems and Kunkels in Germany.

A couple of final little quirks. My Jewish side may also have German roots. My maternal grandfather was German Jewish, but I have been unable to trace that lineage at all...try tracing Jacobsons in New York! So from somewhere in the same disunited mess that was Germany between the Thirty Years War and the March Revolution, I had some Jewish ancestors. Even my Latvian Jewish roots may originally come from Germany. One family that married into the Luban family were the Latvian Galbraichs. One generation before they were Halbraichs, a German name. A generation or two later they were Goldbergs in America. German Jews were moving to Latvia at that time. The Lubans seem to have been fairly settled in Latvia, but my great-grandmother's family, the Misrochs and/or Diamondsteins, seemed more cosmopolitan, educated and may well have had the same German origin as the Galbraichs. Though Misroch is a name that looks to the East, and I have imagined it was a link to the Caucasus kingdom of the Khazars, in reality it could just as easily be a family that came from Germany. I will probably never know.

Finally, my wife's mother's maiden name was Rothenberg. This was not their original last name but was taken by and earlier ancestor from the family who helped them escape from the Russian pogroms. It is possible, though unlikely, that that Rothenberg family came from Rothenbach, where the Kunkels still live. Probably not a real link, merely one of the many coincidences that history is full of. But sometimes those little coincidences turn out to be meaningful.