A handful of Vetter photos, May 1978

During late spring of 1978, my mother, my grandmother Laura Doane and my great-grandmother Clara Burgess went on a trip to Switzerland and Germany to visit family. This was during a year when my mother was doing a year of work abroad for two families in Cornwall as a farmhand, and at the end of her stay there she introduced her mother and her grandmother to the families she stayed with. After that they flew to Switzerland to go on a guided tour of the lakes and cities in Switzerland, including Lake Lucerne and Lake Lugano. However, toward the end of the tour they ditched the tour group and went to Stuttgart in Germany to visit my great-grandmother’s family there, the Vetters.

This is the same Vetter family from which this blog, Featherquake, takes its name (with a little bit of a twist on the wordplay). The name ‘Vetter’, in German, means ‘cousin’, and it appears likely that they were related to one of the landowning families in Württemberg (since the 1950s, Baden-Württemberg). Note therefore the redundancy of referring to ‘Vetter cousins’… At any rate, my great-great-grandfather, Clara Burgess’s father, was named Friedrich Jakob Heinrich Vetter – a blacksmith specialising in custom parts who immigrated to Michigan in the 1890s. He was the son of Lukas Vetter and Barbara Jung (whose maiden name was later anglicised to ‘Young’), both of whom hailed from this area of Württemberg – villages in what are now Leinfelden-Echterdingen and Böblingen, respectively, located in the Schwarzwald region, in the vicinity of Stuttgart (which the locals, in the Swabian tongue, call ‘Schduagert’). Once they were in the United States, in what may have been a bit of an affront to their more Calvinistic neighbours, Clara recounted that her Swabian Lutheran father used to illegally brew beer in the family bathtub in defiance of Prohibition. A man after my own heart!

At some point after Friedrich emigrated, though, the German Vetters moved off northwest into the Franconian-speaking region of Karlsruhe. Back in 1978 they lived in Oberderdingen. When my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother went to visit the German Vetters in May of that year, a cousin of theirs, Adolph Vetter, came to visit them at the train station in Stuttgart. He took them back to his home in Oberderdingen where they met with some more of Clara’s relatives. Adolph was married to a woman named Maria, and they kept a wine cellar in their basement. Making your own booze seems to have been a Vetter knack! Adolph was the only one of our German Vetter relations who was able to speak English comfortably, and the only one of my immediate family who could speak any German was Clara, and she only perhaps a handful of words she overheard from her father. As a result, much of the conversation was mediated by Adolph.

My mother, grandmother and great-grandmother were only able to spend a very brief time in Oberderdingen with Adolph and Maria Vetter – one day and one night – before they had to leave Europe. Even so, this excursion meant a great deal to all three of them – and, I think, my great-grandmother in particular. In any event, here are the photos in question, with a few notes from each on the reverse. I have transcribed the notes exactly, including all of my mother’s original spellings of places and people’s names.

Oberderdingen, Germany
May 12, 1978
Nana, Mom & Adolph sitting in the breakfast room, discussing family

13 May, 1978
The home of Martha & August. Martha is a 1^st cousin of Adolph, Nana, Else, Bertha & Friedrich. Elsa lives upstairs.
Women: Bertha, Else, Nana, Martha
Men: Adolph & Friedrich.
Martha’s dtr. Rose & her husband Rudi were there too - Rudi & August took us to the train in Stuttgart.

13 May, 1978
The wine cellar in Adolph & Marie Vetter’s house in Oberdingen, Germany (near Carlsruhe)
a fabulous house; most hospitable people.

Oberdingen, Germany
May 13, 1978
Adolph Vetter in his brother in law’s hut - where he keeps his tools and things needed in his small vineyard.

Germany
Visited on our Rhine holiday
May 8, 1978
One of our lunch stop restaurants. Eric Treadway & Bert Amerten (?) in background;
Mrs Kale, Marguerita and Cornelius Kale and Mom in foreground.

11 May, 1978
Miniature Swiss village on Lake Lugano, Switzerland.
Clara & Laura.