-they
came from Tyrol-
It is
said that the Gremler clan originally immigrated to Germany from Tyrol
(state of Austria, with Innsbruck being its capitol city), where they worked
as carpenters. This could not had happened as part of the extensive
emigration movement to Germany as a consequence of the Thirty-years war
(1618-1648), but significantly before that time.
As early
as 1525, a Gremler, named Schulze Hartmann Gremmelherr [Herr means master or a
kind of patriarch] appeared in Rustenfelde.
He belonged to the military troops that were recruited to protect the castle Gleichenstein
against the rebellious farmers. Some years later in 1543, he witnessed in
the legal proceedings of the elector of Mainz
against the village of Mulhouse
that it was Mulhouse that caused the controversy. There is evidence that
Gremmelherr was the wealthiest person of the city of Rustenfelde, with a fortune
of 286 Floriden.
Furthermore,
in 1680 at least four families named Gremler lived in a
village called Marth,
including Heinrich Gremler who was some kind of the city’s major.
Approximately
at that time, another Gremler, Johannes, was major in Rohrberg.
This Johannes guy originated the Gremler tradition in the Rohrberg region.
This gives evidence to the fact that the Gremlers were wealthy and influential
in all three villages (i.e., Rustenfelde, Rohrberg, Marth).
These
three villages can be referred to as the “Gremler villages,” as no Gremlers
lived in other parts of the country at that time. It seems probable that
the three Gremler tribes of that time were related but there is no proof or
evidence due to missing historical sources.
The
father of the Gremlers in Marth, Johannes Gremler, was born in 1673, was married
two times and had several children. However,
there are no Gremlers today in Marth. Those parts of the Gremler clan who went to Burgwalde,
Schachtebich,
and Hohengandern
as well as the Gremlers in Breitenbach became extinct.
The latter were founded by Lorenz Gremler who married a woman from Breitenbach
in 1784. The Rustenfelde tribe
of the Gremlers, which is the oldest of all the Gremlers, was the first to die
out. Those Gremlers who lived in
Rustenfelde at a later point in time, stemmed from the Marth or Rohrberg
Gremlers.
The
Rohrberg tribe of the Gremlers has developed most extensively.
Based on the family of Johannes Gremler born in Rohrberg in 1670, the
name Gremler was among the most often listed names in the town of Rohrberg 100
years ago. Despite that fact, the
name Gremler is almost non-existent in Rohrberg today.
But the peripheral paths of the Gremler history are well conserved.
This includes the town of Heiligenstadt,
established by Andreas Gremler, a gardener of the Rustenberg born in Rohrberg
1776, who married in Uder and then moved to Heiligenstadt 1805; the town of Silberhausen
established by Christoph Gremler, born 1786 in Rohrberg and married in 1828
in Silberhausen. Descendants of the
latter family moved to Nordhausen,
Oldenburg,
and Erfurt.
Most
famous is the Breitenworbis
tribe who became extremely wealthy and well respected, at least temporarily.
Those Gremlers became doctors, attorneys and government officers. Their
founder was Johannes Heinrich, son of the major of Rohrberg. Johannes
married Anna Magaretha Knauf in Breitenworbis in 1728. Their
oldest son, Johann Heinrich, became that rich that each of his seven sons owned
a private house. Johannes also bought land for his son named Ignaz and in
1792 the well-known Junkerhof [a farm] in Worbis
for his second son, Alois.
Alois
became a physician and received his doctorate. He successfully offered cures. He
also owned a mobile post-office and (he inherited this one from his father) a
distillery. Out of his ten children, Anton became the principal of the court in Lippstadt;
Ernst became a doctor in Niederorschel;
Lambert a doctor of law in Worbis, and his daughters [no names are given in the
text…] married influential government officials. After Alois death in 1851,
the Junkerhof was given to Franz [probably another son, although not mentioned
explicitly in the text], a regional politician.
From
Breitenworbis, the Gremlers moved to several places, including Kirchworbis,
Gernrode,
Hausen, Breitenholz,
Deuna,
and Bilzhausen. Similarly, the whole Gremler clan who is today almost
non-existent in the region where it originally came from, has spread around the
world. Today, Gremlers can be found in Hannover,
Hadmersleben, Wolfenbüttel, Brandenburg, Bremen,
and Berlin,
in the Western region of Germany, in the Saar region, and even in North America
[Perrysburg!] and in Brazil.
(Forwarded to me by Detlef Gremler; translated by
Thorsten and Claudia Hennig-Thurau.)
