When we (Eleanor and I) visited the Fellinghausen Hauberg in May, the tree harvest was well underway. Most of the trees had their bark stripped in the section being harvested for its wood and bark. In some cases, the bark was loose but still attached to the standing tree about twelve feet up. In this position it is able to dry out. Even if it rained, the effect of the water would be trivial. Some of the trees had been cut down and the average diameter at the base of the trunk was four to six inches.
Of course, prior to cutting the tree, the bark was removed that was hanging on the tree and then bundled. If it would be a while until the bark were to be picked up, they would usually stand the bundles of bark against an uncut tree. After a tree was felled, the upper branches and trunk would be trimmed. On the larger pieces, the bark would be removed. The small twigs would go into the wood pile and they would be bundled up also for portability.
We did not actually see any of the labor performed; we saw only the end result. This, plus my reading, is my education on the subject. According to photographs in the hotel taken in the twentieth century, when the Hauberg culture still seemed to be active, most of the labor seemed to be performed by women and children. In the photos, men were a minority. Some of the photos showed charcoal being made in very small piles which were probably very inefficient.
Today, of course, there is no need for Haubergs. Man-made chemicals replace the tannic acid that had been obtained from the bark for tanning. Coke, made from coal, had replaced the charcoal. The net result is that there are more trees in Germany than there had been in several centuries. It is hard to imagine that at one time woods and trees were scarce. The land today is used for either farming (without working around the stumps) or for trees which are allowed to grow up to a decent size.
When the First Germanna Colony came to Virginia, they were surely impressed by the vast forests which seemed to go on and on. And clearing land by just burning up the trees was a near sacrilege to them. In England, during the eighteenth century, the forests were nearly wiped out by the use of the wood to make charcoal for the metallurgical industry.
In Germany, most of our ancestors had no right to cut wood. They were limited to what they could pick up on the forest floor. The village of Oberholzklau (Upper Holtzclaw in English), announces itself with an image of a man who has been picking up wood in the forest. The word "Holz" means "wood" and the word "klau" can be understood as "claw". Hence Holzklau was a man who gathered up wood in his hands (claws or talons).
In the tax list for 1566 for Trupbach, of the seventeen households, thirteen of them were taxed on an interest in a Hauberg.
(28 Nov 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.