Singing Brahms's German Requiem -- for 71 immigrant families and their issue.

 

I sing with the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, and we are in the middle of an inspiring concert week, performing the Brahms German Requiem. Last night, following a grueling week of fabulous rehearsals, we opened. We perform again this evening and tomorrow afternoon.

Today I am so very tired. I had planned to post today a well-reasoned and researched, and (hopefully) thoughtful piece about what Brahms’s Requiem says to me, as my family’s historian. Then I thought it was impossible, since I’ve been too wiped to write anything. But a photo posted by a Facebook friend (see right) told me that, tired though I may be, I had something to say…now… Inartful as it may be, here goes.

Brahms’s German Requiem has special meaning to every chorister who sings it. We have all lost a loved one, of course, so any requiem would be meaningful. But this requiem is considered a “humanist” requiem, unlike the Catholic mass requiems created by the likes of Mozart and Verdi. They are incredible works, but use the traditional Latin text. Although Brahms’s text is also from the Christian Bible – Martin Luther’s version – its focus is on comfort rather than fire and brimstone.

Why is this post showing up on my Time With My Ancestors blog page? Because religion has played a fascinating role in my family tree. From the time I first began building on my father’s family research, I have been drawn to the role religious conflict played in how my ancestors came to America, where they settled, what they did when they settled, and what they passed on to their children.

I have identified 71 immigrant families in my family tree. The first came to New England in 1624 and the last came to America in 1892. Here is link to my pretty complete immigrant list. I married an immigrant, so my daughter’s tree covers a greater span and her list has 72 immigrants.

I have Puritans in my tree, so from the beginning my immigrant ancestors didn’t “go with the flow” of the religion of their day. One of my dear friends says that I come from a long line of “protestants” (protestors) and she (and I) see in me the same attributes.

Since my immigrant ancestors came over the pond, there has been much faith. And much religion. And much religious discontent. One ancestress born of Puritans disliked going to church and was quite vocal about it. That plus other questionable activity eventually led to her 1692 conviction as a witch in Fairfield, Connecticut. She was trussed and dunked and floated like a cork. Yup, she was definitely a witch. She later got off on a technicality and returned to the community that convicted her. (That must have been fun.) Another ancestress was sexually abused as a child in New Haven. Her molester was hung. Because she had been corrupted she was publicly whipped. I guess the Puritan judges thought they could beat the devil out of her somehow. (Yes, New Haven court records from 1665 are extant and a 19^th century transcription can be viewed online. But not all of this particular trial was transcribed—parts were seen as unfit for print.)

My Swedish Baptists fled their homeland in the mid-19^th Century. At that time, the Swedish state church was Lutheranism. Because Baptists believe in adult baptism by submersion, they were easy to find. Lutheran ministers would force baptism on children whose parents didn’t want it. My Swedish ancestors were baptized as adults in rivers under bridges in the dark of night. That way they were less likely to be accused of treason or stoned by their neighbors. They eventually gave it all up and came to America, land of religious tolerance.

Some Dutch and English ancestors ended up in New Amsterdam in the mid-1600s. If you aren’t familiar with this pretty “open” society, it is fascinating. New Amsterdam was a real frontier town, filled with diverse peoples and general acceptance of the same. Some of my English ancestors ended up there after having been driven out of the more staid New England colonies. I also have a French Huguenot who ended up there.

My Norwegian immigrants came to America at the end of the 19^th century. They were Lutherans. To be accepted as a successful businessman in his new American home town, my great-grandfather joined the Masons. When he and his family were traveling, my grandmother was unexpected born prematurely. She was so small they put her in a little box they set close to a hearth to keep her warm. They thought she would die, and called for a Lutheran minister to baptize her. When he arrived and saw my great-grandfather’s Masonic ring he refused to baptize my grandmother. My great grandparents became Episcopalians on the spot, and never returned to the faith of their homeland.

One of my ancestors graduated from Harvard in 1667. He would have been there at the time of the Indian School, written about in the fascinating novel Caleb’s Crossing. I suspect the novelist is right, and that the New England school boys didn’t treat their Native American classmates well. This particular ancestor went on to marry one of the richest girls in the New Haven area, and was one of the earliest ministers of Elizabethtown, New Jersey. He died of a stroke one Sunday, as he was preaching about the heresy of other religions. He owned both Native American and African slaves.

I have lots of ancestors who settled in New England in the 17^th century. It was, at the time, primarily a theocracy. [Here’s where some scholarly writing with citations to on my research would help, but no time for that now—agree or disagree with me as you wish!] Even though they were all “Puritans,” for the most part my ancestors didn’t seem to get along with their neighbors’ religious views. The folks who settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the 1630s (including William Pantry, who built a home that later became the first Harvard College building) didn’t stay long. They grew discontented and traveled with their minister Thomas Hooker, so they could found yet another town—Hartford, Connecticut. In fact, I have been known to say that my ancestors were such religious malcontents that they never stayed in one town long. Instead, they seem to have founded every little town in the state of Connecticut!

Moving forward a century or two, one of my ancestral families came from Prussia (Germany didn’t exist at the time), and ended up settling in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin in the 1850s. They were founding members of the Wisconsin Lutheran Synod. I moved to Milwaukee in 1981. I only learned of this immigrant family in 2010 or thereabouts, and have since then found their Lutheran graves at St. John’s Church in Oak Creek. One of the sons of this immigrant family moved to Minnesota, and his son married my grandmother (the one who was born so small and the minister wouldn’t baptize her). Their marriage was a disaster, and my grandparents ended up getting a divorce. So sometime in the 1930s my mother was told that her mother was damned for eternity because she had been divorced. Needless to say, that did not sit well with my mother, who spent the rest of her life “searching for” rather than necessarily “believing” in any one faith.

My father, on the other hand, descended from the cranky New Englanders and the Swedish Baptists. The New Englanders ended up in upstate New York just in time for the Erie Canal, Women’s Rights, the Underground Railroad, Free Love communities, the founding of the Mormon Church, and Baptist and Methodist revivals. Upstate New York in the first half of the 19^th century was a hot bed of activity, religious and otherwise. [Someday I’ll write much more about that!] My New Englanders/New Yorkers became Baptists, and one of their female clan members married a Swedish Baptist who happened to be a minister. That Baptist minister was my grandfather, and at the time of his sudden death in the 1930s he was the head of the American Baptist Church of Illinois.

SO, my constantly searching mother with a damned mother married my son of the leader of the American Baptist Church of Illinois father who, to his death, believed when he died he would see his parents and other loved ones who passed before him. They had two children, myself and my sister, and the game of religious discontent continued. (My blog "photo" is my parents' wedding picture.)

My parents both believed we should be brought up in a faith community. (I believe this as well, challenging as it might be). My sister was christened a Presbyterian because my mother’s brother had become a Presbyterian minister/chaplain during World War II. I was christened a Lutheran (I think) because we were Lutherans at the time. My sister and I were both confirmed Methodists. At one time or another we attended the Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist and Unitarian churches. The rule was: if my father enjoyed the sermons, eventually my mother couldn’t handle them; if my mother enjoyed the sermons, eventually the minister got fired. Every Sunday we attended one church or another, and afterward my sister and I would sit in the backseat of the car while my father drove and my parents argued about the sermon. Then we would go to Bridgeman’s for ice cream. The fact that I still love ice cream is a testament to my parents—no matter their feelings about religion, they loved and respected each other, and I never felt the arguments were unkind or unjust. But they were very interesting!

Since I can remember I have been interested in questions of faith and religion. My mother’s searching led to my own brush with damnation. When I was in Sunday school at a Methodist church, I mentioned that my mother was not a Christian. I can still see the teacher and the table with a dozen or so of my classmates, when she (the Sunday school teacher) told me my mother was damned for eternity. Soon thereafter I quit “believing” and started “searching” instead. No doubt this particular Sunday school teacher would have damned me as well….

(Side Bar: I remember when my own daughter was five and I was driving with her on County Line C in Cedarburg, WI. She told me she had seen Jesus and believed in him. I got so angry I had to pull to the side of the road, where I lectured her about Christianity and its exclusivity clause. I finally calmed down and told her I was fine with her being a Christian, depending on what kind of Christian she was. Her response was to say “I’ll be whatever you want me to be, mommy!” Goodness, she was only five – the things we do to our children. She has since recovered and is on her own search….)

Despite my background, or maybe because of it, at one time I hoped to become a minister myself (don’t ask me what faith, I never got that far). I do believe in faith and the positive role it can play in lives. And I am generally fascinated with questions of faith. I went to a conservative Lutheran college because of its music program. I dropped out of music my freshman year because we spent a lot of time singing in what I call “an oh so Lutheran way.” When my freshman classmates found out I wasn’t a Christian, they took turns trying to convert me. At first it was fun. It is hard for one person to convince another to believe—it is of course a “leap of faith” – and I used my experience to hone my debating skills. Many a girl in my dorm ended an evening in tears when I could not be swayed. Eventually this conversion process seemed not only cruel but also became tiresome and time-consuming. From then on, I would simply say that perhaps I did believe…that seemed to give the girls comfort and me more time for studies.

Abandoning music, I took up student government instead. I dropped that toward the end of my undergraduate career, when a committee I was on—to choose the next student newspaper editor—refused to select the person I felt most capable, SOLELY because he was an atheist. My personal view was that if there was a role for an atheist at the school, it was in the Third Estate.

Still, religion intrigued me. In college I tried for a Rockefeller grant, to go to divinity school. I made it to the finals and then got shot down. But later I received a call from a conservative Baptist seminary in Illinois, who wanted to give me a full ride. “Why,” I said, knowing I was far from a conservative Baptist! “We think you would shake things up here a bit, and we’d like to see that.” Oh my. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I had already accepted another job at the time, so I didn’t go to Illinois to join my Baptist ancestor in his faith.

But by now you surely see a pattern…. I clearly take after my cantankerous puritan ancestors, and am a true “protestant”!

I eventually married, into a Zoroastrian family. My husband is pure Persian. His people were conquered by Alexander the Great (Alexander the Terrible my uncle-in-law calls him). Then, during the time of Mohammad, they were told to convert to Islam or die. [This is NOT a diatribe against Islam—from where I sit lots of religions have done nasty things, and we could cite many instances of religion gone amuck – the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, Hitler’s Aryans, etc. etc.] Instead of converting (or dying), my husband’s Zoroastrian ancestors moved to India, where they were allowed to settle as long as they didn’t intermarry or convert others.

Why am I not a Zoroastrian? Why are there no Zoroastrian temples in Milwaukee? It is a dying faith. Unfortunate. To my knowledge, the Zoroastrians never persecuted others, which makes them perhaps one of the “better” religions. But they do educate their young, and to this day they do not allow conversion. Educated young travel and marry outside of their faith… a recipe sure to kill off a religion, no matter how  noble.

My husband was born in India. Before the Second World War, India and Pakistan were one country. The primary faiths were Hindu and Muslim. The country was partitioned after the War, in the name of religion. Hindus were forced to leave what is now Pakistan, and Muslims were forced to leave what is now India. It was not a pleasant partition. 14 million people were displaced. Yes, 14,000,000—it is the largest mass migration in human history. Many died. For example, Muslims would fill a train leaving India for Pakistan, the train would be ambushed, the passengers would all be killed, and words to the effect of “here are your Muslims” would be written on the train in blood before sending the train filled with dead bodies on to Pakistan. Hindus traveling to India fared no better. My mother-in-law worked in the resettlement camps and saw the devastation of “The Partition” first hand. Few Americans know of this act of horror in the name of religion. But many in the region remember.

So here I am today. I do not go to church regularly. But often when I travel in search of my dead relatives, I attend a church in the area, one of their particular faith. I have heard wonderful sermons and met wonderful people.

What does this have to do with Brahms? Depending on whom you ask, Johannes Brahms was either an atheist or an agnostic. He did not write his requiem for a particular church, so was not constrained to the “standard requiem format.” He clearly saw the value of faith, yet had “issues” with religion. I am not an atheist. I am a person of faith, but I’m not always keen on religion. And through my family research I have come to discover that I am not the first in my long family tree to have “issues” with religion. That’s why, I think, I like the Brahms Requiem more than the others. It is the text that draws me.

Whatever may draw you to this piece of music, I suggest you give it a listen. I also suspect that in your family tree there may be people of faiths different than your own. That is especially true here in America, land of immigrants. That’s why our revolutionary forefathers determined that church and state had to be kept separate. So we could all get along…..

End note: I apologize for not including citations in this text. If it were a Wiki page it would be full of “citations needed”! I also apologize for any shortcomings in writing. It is indeed a first draft. Finally, I mean not to offend any person of faith or religion. I simply write of my own experiences, and of those in my family who went before me. I plan to someday return to this blog and clean it up, adding citations and links and improving the text. For now, this is what I have. Instead of napping I have written. Hopefully my words will give me an extra boost of inspiration tonight, when I sing the text of Brahms’s Requiem in honor of all 71 immigrant families on my list, and the people that followed, all of whom helped make me who I am today.