Correction. In the last note, the name of the Bürgermeister was Johann Karner and he is the mayor of Gresten-Land. (I had trouble reading the handwritten notes made at the time.) At our breakfast meeting with Herr Karner, he told us some of the history of Gresten. He is an ex-editor of a newspaper, and very interested in history.
Gresten has had a turbulent history. Early in the Reformation, Lutheran doctrines gained the upper hand, not only in the Gresten area, but throughout Austria. In about the third quarter of the 1500’s, the Holy Roman Emperor, who was from Austria, wanted to reconvert the HRE (Holy Roman Empire), and especially Austria, to Catholicism. He imported a Jesuit, Georg Scherer, a believer in harsh measures. About 1597 there was a Farmer’s War, which involved perhaps 12,000 farmers. There was an amnesty in January and February of 1597 and the farmers were to give up their weapons, but a third of them did not stop fighting. At St. Pölten, there were fights with the better trained troops of Emperor Matthias, and many farmers were killed. Afterwards, there were executions by the troops, including eleven farmers from the Gresten area. The local leader in the Gresten area was Matthias Gruber, who lived on the farm Gseng, and the vice-leader was Johann Teufl, of the farm Oberhasenberg. (On an excursion, we were on the farm Gseng where a small chapel stands today in memory of the Bauerkrieg, or Farmer’s War.)
One of the leading causes of The Thirty Years’ War was the desire of the Holy Roman Emperor to have all of his subjects follow the Catholic faith. After the war started in 1618, measures were instituted to convert Austria to Catholicism. The strongest measures came after the war, when, in 1654, more than seven hundred people were evicted from the Gresten area to farms in Mittelfranken in Germany, especially around Dietenhofen, where, as a result of the war, there were 130 farms on which only two people lived. More than fifty of these farms were taken up by evacuees from the Gresten area. Not everyone moved at the same time. As with most migrations, the early ones recruited others to come.
Dietenhofen is slightly north of Ansbach, which is mentioned in several of the church records of the Germanna immigrants. It is known that several Blankenbakers lived north of Dietenhofen on farms. In fact, several branches of the family have continued to live in Mittelfranken. Lonnerstadt is in Mittelfranken, and it was from the cemetery there that I quoted several Germanna names in the note two previous to this one.
One suggestion from this history is that the Blankenbakers may not have been alone in moving from Gresten. Also, they may not have moved voluntarily. To cite one family, the Käfers have a history in the west of having moved from the Ansbach region (a part of Mittelfranken). The name Käfer is known in Austria; in fact, there is a nurseryman in Gresten doing business under that (his) name. When John Nicholas Blankenbaker married Apollonia Käfer, he may have been marrying a family friend or even a relative.
(01 Jun 00)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.