I am Markus Gegenheimer of Ittersbach, a town about 10 miles
southeast of Karlsruhe, Baden, Germany. I am compiling all of
the old family records of the inhabitants of Ittersbach beginning
with the first entry of 1569. I try to read all entries, "translate"
them into modern script, and evaluate the data. I'm happy about
every time the priests have written down profession, nickname,
or the origin of the people. Very rarely, they noted some anecdotes
- really a "fateful hour" for a researcher, when they
did so. I write them down too, and sometimes I'm telling such
little "short stories" from the "good old times,"
when I'm asked. They have been published twice on the "home
club" (Heimatverein) page of our local news.
Some words about my family and me: I'm 28 years old and still
living with my parents, Gerhard and Gisela, and brother Jochen,
24. In a picture of them you can probably recognize the confirmation
of the theory of the Hungarian gypsies with dark skin, hair, and
beards mentioned by Ruediger Gegenheimer. Even though Ruediger
is also from Ittersbach, I've never heard about this legend before
- but I believe it. Not all of Ittersbach's Gegenheimers are dark-skinned,
but my direct ancestors that I can remember, grandfather Heinrich
and his father Karl, looked like that. And when we were children,
we were called "the black ones."
My hobbies are all kind of sports (soccer, table tennis and
many others), and puzzling. Four years ago I read an advertisement
in a cross word puzzle magazine: "Do you want to become Puzzle
World Champion?" I applied for the documents, got them, filled
them out, sent them back, and was invited (with 19 others) to
the German Championship which I won and qualified (with 3 other
Germans) for the World Championship in Cologne, Germany, where
I got the fifth place. The following years it was the same: I
qualified for Romania, the Netherlands, and this year [1997] Croatia.
But it's a real outsider event and you can't become famous. If
you want to see my photo, please look on the internet at: http://www.raetsel.de
and click to the competitors of the German Championship.
On December 31, 1995 a member of our local table tennis club
celebrated his 60th birthday. I was invited and one of the talking
themes was this puzzling competition. A member of the home club
(Heimatverein) asked me if I would be able to decipher old scripts,
because there are not many people these days to do so. I answered,
"I'll try." And this was the beginning of my genealogical
research in Ittersbach.
Through my correspondence with an American, Fred Gahimer (whose
immigrant ancestors shortened their surname from Gegenheimer to
Gahimer), I have learned of the Gegenheimer Family Tree web site
on the internet provided by Tom Gegenheimer. Consequently, I am
providing data on the Gegenheimers I find in my research to the
web site via Fred Gahimer, who has access to the internet. I will
continue to provide data as I find it and will send it to Fred
in Microsoft Excel 5.0. He will then input the data into his genealogy
program and send the resulting outline descendant tree to the
Gegenheimer web site.
Markus Gegenheimer
Untere Grabenacker 14
76307 Karlsbad Ittersbach
Germany
