Author: Richard Lang

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3. Lang/Breuss / Breuss-Waldis

Kreszentia Breuss Lang – Siblings and Descendants – An Overview

My grandmother Kreszentia Breuss Lang was born in 1871 in the Vorarlberg region of Austria. We believe she was the last of four children (Agatha, Johann, Rosa, Kreszentia) as her mother (Rosa Selfried Breuss) died in childbirth. She was basically raised by her older sister Agatha. She told us that when she was a little girl, her father, Johann Martin Breuss, took her up into the mountains to live with an uncle. When he came to check on her two weeks later, little Kreszentia held on to his pant leg and wouldn’t let go so he took her back home with him. She said that her aunt and uncle were very kind and good to her, but it was just too quiet up there.

Agatha remained in Austria where she married a Mr. Madlener. They had five children, one of whom (Anna) married Mr. Hophner. My brothers and I, growing up in Chicago, knew the Hophners and their children.

Johann Martin Breuss immigrated to the U.S. with his son Johann and daughters Rosa and Kreszentia. They initially went to Philadelphia where Rosa met Johann Waldis who had travelled there from Roanoke, VA. Rosa and Mr. Waldis married and moved to Roanoke and Mr. Breuss moved with them. Grandma’s brother, Johann, traveled to Silt, Colorado where he came to own a chicken farm. He was killed there by thieves in 1918. My grandfather Lang and Aunt Minn traveled there to settle his affairs. Evidently Grandma Lang netted $500 from the settlement which was enough to pay off the mortgage on her house on Hamilton Ave. in Chicago.

Kreszentia went to Chicago where she had cousins, the Kohlers. (NOTE: Emil Kohler was a jeweler; Leslie and I bought our wedding bands from him in 1966.) There she met and married John Nicholas Lang who was born in 1873 in a small farming village called Döbrastocken which is in the upper part of Bavaria, Germany. Grandpa Lang worked in a foundry in Chicago. Together, Grandma and Grandpa Lang had six children. Grandpa Lang died at home in 1948. Grandma died in 1964. We have a copy of note that my Aunt Helen wrote to Barbara in Roanoke in July of that year. Here’s a quote from that note: “How often Mom would call for Rosa.and for her sister Agatha and for my Dad.” Below is some basic information on her six children.

Wilhelmina (Aunt Minn), named after Grandpa Lang’s sister, was born in 1901. She married a wonderful man, Daniel R. Danielson, an engineer by trade who went by his middle name Rudy. They moved to Vallejo, CA where they had a son, Daniel. Uncle Rudy worked as a civil servant in the Mare Island shipyards where the U.S. Navy maintained naval craft including submarines. Cousin Dan worked there for a career as well. Leslie and I attended Minn and Rudy’s 50th wedding anniversary celebration in Vallejo in 1979. Uncle Rudy died in 1981. Aunt Minn died in 1996.

The next three children were girls as well, none of whom ever married. Aunt Flora was born in 1904. She worked at the Reed Candy Company in Chicago where she ran the data processing section which had IBM card punches, sorters, collators, and accounting machines. These machines were precursors to today’s computer systems. She died in 1991. Aunt Clara was born in 1906 and worked as a secretary. She died in 1978. Aunt Helen, also a secretary, was born in 1909 and died in 1993. We believe all three were physically born in the house on Hamilton Ave., and they all lived at home with their mom, Kreszentia. Clara moved to an apartment sometime in the 1960s.

The fifth child, a boy named John Harold Lang, was born in 1912 and went by his middle name. Uncle Harold married Anna Adams (Auntie Ann as we called her), and they had one child, Clifford, born in November 1943. Uncle Harold worked as a janitor most of his life and died in 1976. Auntie Ann died in 1995. Clifford married and divorced Joanne Kraus. They had three children, all boys. We have not seen or heard from Clifford since the early 1970s. Last we knew, we believe he was living in Hawaii, perhaps under an assumed name. We have lost touch with Joanne and the boys.

The youngest of the six was my father, George Edward Lang, born in 1915. He was the only one of six children who went to high school. He married my mother, Marian Lang, in 1939 and together they had three children: George E. Lang Jr., Richard F. Lang, and Gerald E. Lang. Dad became a machinist and, together with his partner, George Carson, founded a small machining business in 1944. The business was successful and was passed on to mom and Jerry after he died in 1983.

George E. Lang Jr. (1942-2007) was a PhD in Mathematics and the head of the Math Dept. at Fairfield University in Connecticut.  He married Mary-Beth Schnare and together they had two children:

  • John Kenyon (1974) (goes by middle name, married, successful businessman, four children, living in Scarsdale, NY)
  • Susan (1977) (PhD in Marine Chemistry, not married, post doc work at Scripps in California and at ETH in Zurich, Switzerland, now doing research and teaching at South Carolina University in Columbia, SC.

Richard F. Lang (1943).  BA in Math, MA in Business Management, career military with the U.S. Air Force, retired Colonel, business career in defense contractor industry. Married Leslie Ann Dahlquist in 1966 and together they had two children:

  • Douglas Patrick Lang (1969) Bachelor’s degree in liberal arts (English) and two master’s degrees; married to Julie Travena; three children: Katherine (1998), Connor (2000), and Annalise (2002). Lives in Springfield, VA.
  • Janice Carolyn Lang (1971) BS degrees in Computer Science and German; master’s degree in Psychology; married and divorced Joel Zimba – no children. Lives in Baltimore, MD with her boyfriend Michael Marshall.

Gerald E. Lang (1955) worked at then ran our father’s machining company until it was sold; married and divorced Marianne Cuddington. They have three children:

  • Sean (1977) lives in Indianapolis with his wife Katy.
  • Drew (1981) lives in the Chicago suburbs with his wife Rachel and daughters Stella and Holly.
  • Gina (1988 – adopted from Korea) lives in the Chicago suburbs and is not married.
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Breuss-Waldis

A History of how the Breuss and Waldis Clans Merged

John Baptiste Waldis immigrated to Roanoke, Virginia in 1882 with his wife Barbara Betsler Waldis (B 1840, D 1894) and their five children; John Amadeus, Elizabeth Caroline, Maria Magaretha, Ignacious Joseph, and Amazia Barbara. They settled in the Roanoke valley, now known as Roanoke City. 

            Barbara died in 1894.  John was left with a developing young family and no wife or mother to help raise them, so he wanted to immediately return to Switzerland to find another wife.  He traveled to the Philadelphia area where he was staying with friends before embarking on the voyage to Switzerland. 

During this time, March or April 1894, another family had just immigrated to the United States from Feldkirch, Austria.  Johann Bruess arrived with two daughters, Maria Rosa and Kreszentia and one son, John.  One of his daughters, Agatha remained in Austria.  They were also staying with the friends of John Waldis.   One evening John went to visit the friends and was at the house when Rosa came down the steps and he first met her. He looked at her and immediately said he did not have to return to Switzerland, he just met the woman he would marry.  Shortly thereafter he brought her to Roanoke and they were married in St. Andrew’s Church on December 10, 1894.

Rosa’s sister Kreszentia moved to Chicago, Illinois and married John Nicholas Lang. Her brother John settled in Silt, Colorado. Rosa’s father Johann also moved to Roanoke and lived there until he died 1901. He is buried in the Waldis plot in St. Andrew’s Cemetery.

            Rosa and John then proceeded to have another family of seven children.  John Sylvester (later known as Sylvester Edward) was born on November 1, 1895, died November 4,1964; Teresa Mary born March 10, 1897, died April 2, 1995; Anthon born June 1898, died August 24, 1899; Pauline Mary Cecelia born March 1, 1903; Arthur Bernard born August 10, 1905, died December 10, 1989; Rose Catherine born December 23, 1906, died October 16, 1979; and Andrew Joseph born January 15, 1909, died March 25, 1994.

John and Rosa Waldis 1924
John Breuss and Sylvester Waldis cira 1896
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3.2 Jerry Lang Branch / George and Marian Lang

Mack and Kelly

Jerry Lang Reminiscing on Father’s Day

My grandmother used to tell my Mom that my Dad and I were more like brothers than father and son. I’ve never been too sure of that, but I understand how she came to feel that way.

My Dad, George E. Lang Sr., was forty when I was born. I don’t recall much roughhousing with him growing up, not the way my son Sean and I used to. What my Dad lacked in youthful energy and a pain free lower back, he more than made up for in affection.

One of my earliest memories was sitting on his lap in the kitchen of our house on Oak Park Avenue in Chicago. We were Mack and Kelly, two stagecoach drivers plying our way through the Wild West. We would fend off bad guys (maybe Indians back then) along the way. For the life of me, I can’t recall who was Mack and who was Kelly, but boy oh boy, were we the team!

While my Dad’s back prevented him from playing much catch (that was my brother Dick’s job – he used to throw me high pop ups that I couldn’t even see until their descent), he taught me about baseball and my love for our Chicago Cubs. He even caught a foul ball for me! Okay, truth be told, sitting in the first row in the upper deck, the line drive by Don Kessinger off of Tom Seaver, hit the stairs, bounced against the fencing and my Dad used his foot to shuffle it away from other eager hands and into his own. No matter. I still have that ball!

He also gave me my love of hockey. I remember watching the Blackhawks with him, listening to Lloyd Pettit calling the games on the black and white television While he couldn’t get out there and play ice or street hockey with me, he made sure that he went in on season tickets so we could see those great Hawk teams together, with the likes of Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull.

He also did his best teaching me tennis and golf. Neither one took too well. I always wanted to hit the tennis ball over the fence like an Ernie Banks home run rather than inside those silly lines. And golf, oh golf, it was too much like work. Dad always said to be good on the green, you needed to putt a thousand balls. Who has that kind of time? Not me.

The thing is, Dad always did things the “right” way. No shortcuts entered into his routine. Of course by the time I was a teenager and had things to do, shortcuts sounded like a great idea. When my folks had their camper, it was always a job to hook up the trailer hitch to Dad’s yacht-sized 98 Oldsmobile. Because this took place on a slanted driveway, it involved the trailer crank, jacks, blocks of wood, and an inordinate amount of time for a seventeen year old kid that wanted to cruise with his crew. One day, with the project looming and my buddies on their way, I petitioned my Dad to get ready to secure the ball hitch. Being pretty sturdy back then, I lifted the ass end of the Olds up and we got the hitch secured. No blocks or jacks for this kid. Dad of course, just shook his head and muttered that wasn’t the way to do it. Of course he was right. My back now, tells me he was right. The other time that he gave in to my shortcutting ways was when my Aunt Clara had passed away and we were tasked with cleaning out her third floor apartment. My aunt had perhaps the largest collection of plastic plants, homemade ornaments, and other random crap of anyone on the northwest side of Chicago. After a couple trips up those stairs to the third floor, my Dad amazingly, even eagerly, agreed to my suggestion of throwing everything but electronics and furniture out the third floor window. Still being careful, and in his way, doing this the “right” way, he went outside to be sure no one would come in harm’s way.

The one activity that we could truly participate in together was fishing. Ever since my first bluegill when I was 5 or 6, we were true fishing partners. Each year, we’d make our way to Big Muskellunge Lake in Vilas County Wisconsin. We’d rent a row boat from old man Roche, complete with an anchor that was an old coffee can loaded with cement. It was time to buy minnows. We fished, the two of us, with my Mom in the boat reading, until it was time for dinner. Eventually I un-invited Mom so that Dad and I could really get serious. By the time I was 16, devouring every fishing magazine I could get my hands on, I was pretty sure I knew a lot. My Dad always insisted on buying what were called Northern Minnows because those 3 inchers were good for northern pike. I, on the other hand, always drooled at the giant muskie suckers and thought we should try our luck with them. They were expensive and not really suited for the way we fished, but at this point, having earned my own money, I told Dad that if he didn’t want to pop for them, I would. It turns out, he caught the largest fish he ever caught on one of those suckers, a 10 1/2 pound walleye that hangs here in my office. He even received an award from Field and Stream magazine.

That’s One Big Fish

These were just a few snippets of the lifetime of memories I hold of my Dad. They speak nothing of the truly important things that he taught me and represented. Things like hard work, and smarter work. Things like his integrity and morals that truly made him the man that he was. Things such as his devotion and love of family that he instilled in me and my brothers.

Each day when I say my prayers, I thank God that he brought me to the best Mom and Dad and family a kid could want. I still miss ya Mack (or Kelly, as the case may be).

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3. Lang/Breuss / Breuss-Waldis

John and Rosa Breuss Waldis Photo with first 2 children circa 1898

This picture was taken circa 1898 and is of John Baptiste and Maria Rosa Bruess Waldis with their first two children. John and Rosa were married in Roanoke, Virginia on 10 December 1894. Their first child was born 1 November 1895 and was named John Sylvester Waldis and the second child was born 10 March 1897 and was named Teresa Mary Waldis.

John and Rosa Waldis with John Sylvester and Teresa Mary

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3. Lang/Breuss / 3.3 Richard Lang Branch

Finding Döbrastocken

I mentioned on the home page, that May of 1982 was a very special time – a magical time in our family’s history. Mom and dad came to visit when we were stationed in Wiesbaden Germany. Of course, they wanted to see us (Dick and Leslie), and they wanted to see their grandchildren (Douglas and Janice). But they had a few other things in mind for that visit. Mom wanted to be reunited with her second cousin, Anton Letang, and dad had several alternate agendas.

Beyond the family visit, his first order of business was to relate to me how he had structured his estate regarding the disposition of his company, Georges’ Screw Machine Products, and its related companies if he and mom passed away. Very typical of dad, it was the ultimate in fairness to all three of his sons.

Next, like many people, he really wanted to find where his father was born. I only knew this because mom told me, not because he asked me directly. So, I asked mom if we had any information about where Grandpa Lang was born. She said, “I think he was born in Oberfranken.” We didn’t know where that was so I went to my German friend Ziggy who owned a restaurant and a whore house. Ziggy said Oberfranken is a whole region of Germany in upper Bavaria. When I queried mom for more detailed information, she said that after World War II, they sent care packages to a place called Döbrastocken. Of course, nobody knew where that was either.

Now it was a quest. How to make it happen for dad, this man that gave me everything and asked nothing in return. Luckily, I was a Deputy Commander of a large Air Force reconnaissance unit. If we couldn’t find a place on map, who could? So, I called one of my airmen in a building across the compound from my office and asked if we had a World Gazetteer. After getting a yes, I asked him to look up a place called Döbrastocken, umlaut and all. He called back about an hour later and provided latitude and longitude coordinates in degrees, minutes, seconds.

Well what do you want? This is the Air Force! We’re not the Army with UTM coordinates of a mortar target just over the ridge line. We bomb things from aircraft! So, when I asked him to bring me a map, he brought a Jet Navigation chart. Next task, roll out on our picnic table the 5 ft. x 3 ft. chart covering most of Europe, and use a straight edge to plot an X on the map. There’s no detail there of course.

So, the family decided on an adventure. We set out heading east toward the Czech border in two cars: Leslie, mom, and Janice in our late model Opel, and me with dad and Douglas in an older Mercedes. After one overnight where we bought some wonderful crystal, we were off the Autobahn on country roads. A road sign appeared, pointing the way to the village of Döbra. So, if there’s a Döbra, there could be a Döbrastocken. We pulled into Döbra about mid-morning on a Saturday. Not sure what German women do now on Saturday mornings, but at least in the 1980s some came out to sweep the gutter of the street. I got out of the car and, although very far from fluent in German, I was confident of pulling off that conversation. “Excuse me, can you please tell me where I can find Döbrastocken.” She looked up and asked what my family name was. Totally baffled! My German just isn’t that bad. So, I asked again. And she asked again. When I said “Lang. Ich bin Herr Lang.” She replied, “Jah Herr Lang” and proceeded to tell me how to find Döbrastocken which was just outside the village. You probably still can’t find Döbrastocken by typing it into Google Maps, but you’ll get very close by looking up “Döbra, Schwarzenbach am Wald”. You’ll find that it’s about a 30 minute drive from the larger town of Hof, which is very close to the Czech border.

Approximate Location of Döbra

It turns out that Döbrastocken is just three farmhouses down a road outside the village of Döbra. We stopped at the first and asked young boys if they knew of the Langs. They didn’t. Next, we drove to an old house that was all boarded up. Could that be it? I went to the third house and knocked on the door. Not polite I know, but I thought the man who came to the door was probably older than the dirt. He was very hard of hearing so I called for the other quasi-German speakers (mom and Leslie) to join me. The man confirmed that the Langs had lived in that boarded up house but no one lived there anymore (which was obvious). At mom’s suggestion, we got back in the cars and returned to Döbra, knowing that there was probably a cemetery associated with the village church. We were right, and there’s nothing like six Americans walking around your cemetery and into your church to draw the attention of the pastor. We had a nice chat with him during which we learned that the last Lang to have lived in that house was a woman who had married 16 years earlier and moved away with her husband.

It’s a good thing Mom took pictures of those Lang gravestones because they’re no longer there. Leslie and I went to Döbra in July 2019 and learned that gravestones are removed after 25 years. The timing probably also depends on whether or not someone is paying for the upkeep of the gravesite. But new Lang gravestones are there and members of a small band told us to look at a war memorial on the side of the church. Sadly, two Lang names from Döbrastocken are there, having been killed in WWII in 1943. There’s also a Lang bakery in Döbra. The woman who waited on us said that a Frau Lang lived upstairs but she didn’t seem inclined to go find her.

It was quite a successful adventure, but the magical part was the inspiration to start recording our history for future generations.

Church in Döbra
War Memorial in Döbra
Lang Bakery in Döbra

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2. Kahles/Quint / 3.3 Richard Lang Branch

The Donauschwaben

Wait! I thought we were German. So why talk about Serbia? And what does Yugoslavia have to do with my maternal grandparents Franz Kahles and Anna Quint? To answer these questions, let’s start with a little Wikipedia history lesson.

The Danube Swabians (in German – Donauschwaben – (doe’-now-schwaben)) is a collective term for the German-speaking population who lived in various countries of southeastern Europe, especially in the Danube River valley. Most were descended from 18th-century immigrants recruited as colonists to repopulate the area after the expulsion of the Ottoman Empire.

Because of different historic developments within the territories settled, the Danube Swabians cannot be seen as a unified people. They include ethnic Germans from many former and present-day countries: Germans of Hungary; Satu Mare Swabians; the Banat Swabians; and the Vojvodina Germans in Serbia’s Vojvodina, who called themselves “Schwowe”in a Germanized spelling or “Shwoveh” in an English spelling; and Croatia‘s Slavonia. In the singular first person, they identified as a “Schwob” or a “Schwobe”. Wherever I heard my mother, Marian Lang, speak German I would tell her that she spoke German like a Schwob. She would reply: “That’s because I am a Schwob.”

Origins

Beginning in the 12th century, German merchants and miners began to settle in the Kingdom of Hungary at the invitation of the Hungarian monarchy. Although there were significant colonies of Carpathian Germans in the Spiš mountains and Transylvanian Saxons in Transylvania, German settlement throughout the rest of the kingdom had not been extensive until this time.

During the 17th-18th centuries, warfare between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire devastated and depopulated much of the lands of the Danube valley, referred to geographically as the Pannonian plain. The Habsburgs ruling Austria and Hungary at the time resettled the land with people of various ethnicities recruited from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including Magyars (Hungarians), Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Romanians, Ukrainians, and Germanic settlers from Swabia, Hesse, Palatinate, Baden, Franconia, Bavaria, Austria, and Alsace-Lorraine. Despite differing origins, the new immigrants were all referred to as Swabians by their neighbor Serbs, Hungarians, and Romanians. The Bačka settlers called themselves Schwoweh the plural of Schwobe in the polyglot language that evolved there. The majority of them boarded boats in Ulm, Swabia, and traveled to their new destinations down the Danube River in boats called Ulmer Schachteln. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had given them funds to build their boats for transport.

Settlement

The first wave of resettlement came after the Ottoman Turks were gradually being forced back after their defeat at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. The settlement was encouraged by nobility, whose lands had been devastated through warfare, and by military officers including Prince Eugene of Savoy and Claudius Mercy. Many Germans settled in the Bakony (Bakonywald) and Vértes (Schildgebirge) mountains north and west of Lake Balaton (Plattensee), as well as around the town Buda (Ofen), now part of Budapest. The area of heaviest German colonization during this period was in the Swabian Turkey (Schwäbische Türkei), a triangular region between the Danube River, Lake Balaton, and the Drava (Drau) River.

After the Habsburgs annexed the Banat area of Central Europe from the Ottomans in the Treaty of Passarowitz (1718), the government made plans to resettle the region to restore farming. It became known as the Banat of Temesvár (Temeschwar/Temeschburg), as well as the Bačka (Batschka) region between the Danube and Tisza (Theiss) rivers. Fledgling settlements were destroyed during another Austrian-Turkish war (1737–1739), but extensive colonization continued after the suspension of hostilities.

The late 18th-century resettlement was accomplished through private and state initiatives. After Maria Theresa of Austria assumed the throne as Queen of Hungary in 1740, she encouraged vigorous colonization on crown lands, especially between Timișoara and the Tisza. The Crown agreed to permit the Germans to retain their language and religion (generally Roman Catholic). The German farmers steadily redeveloped the land: drained marshes near the Danube and the Tisza, rebuilt farms, and constructed roads and canals. Many Danube Swabians served on Austria’s Military Frontier against the Ottomans. Between 1740 and 1790, more than 100,000 Germans immigrated to the Kingdom of Hungary.

The Napoleonic Wars ended the large-scale movement of Germans to the Hungarian lands, although the colonial population increased steadily and was self-sustaining through reproduction. Small daughter-colonies developed in Slavonia and Bosnia. After the creation of Austria-Hungary in 1867, Hungary established a policy of Magyarization whereby minorities, including the Danube Swabians, were induced by political and economic means to adopt the Magyar (Hungarian) language and culture.

With the treaties ending World War I, the Banat was divided between Romania, Yugoslavia, and Hungary; Bačka was divided between Yugoslavia and Hungary; and Satu Mare went to Romania. In Yugoslavia, the death of Tito (1980) gravely weakened communist rule, and the waves of liberation washing over other parts of the communist world in the late 80’s and early 90’s led to the dissolution of the country. Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro, and Macedonia, all became separate states.

I will update this post with maps that provide a time-phased view of the changing boundaries and kingdom/country names over the centuries and show the country or empire our family of Danube Swabians belonged to during these different times.

Culture

The Danube Swabian culture is a melting pot of southern German regional customs, with a large degree of Balkan and mostly Hungarian influence. This is especially true of the food, where paprika is heavily employed, which led to the German nickname for Danube Swabians as “Paprikadeutsche”. The architecture is neither Southern German nor Balkan but is unique to itself.

Danube Swabian Clothing

Language

The Danube Swabian language is only nominally Swabian (Schwowisch in the Bačka). In reality, it contains elements or many dialects of the original German settlers, mainly Swabian, Franconian, Bavarian, Rhinelandic/Pfälzisch, Alsatian, and Alemannic, as well as Austro-Hungarian administrative and military jargon. Loanwords from Hungarian, Serbian, or Romanianare are especially common regionally regarding cuisine and agriculture, but also regarding dress, politics, place names, and sports.

Many German words used by speakers of Danube Swabian dialects may sound archaic. To the ear of a Standard German speaker, the Danube Swabian dialect sounds like what it is: a mix of southwestern German dialects from the 18th century.

Popular names for women include: Anna, Barbara, Christina, Katharina, Magdalena, Maria, Sophia, Theresia, and many two-name combinations thereof. Popular names for men include: Adam, Anton, Christian, Friedrich, Georg, Gottfried, Heinrich, Jakob, Johann, Konrad, Ludwig, Mathias, Nikolaus, Peter, Philipp (or Filipp), and Stefan (or Stephan). With so few names in villages, other modifiers or nicknames were almost always used to distinguish people.

We’ll rejoin this region later in the family story when we learn about mom’s second cousin, Anton Letang, and what happened leading up to and during World War II.

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2. Kahles/Quint

Kahles and Quint Home Towns

“Where did we come from?” is probably the most asked question about family history. So, here’s a map showing where Franz Kahles and Anna Quint were born.

Franz Kahles came from a village in the northeast corner of present day Serbia called Nakovo. When he lived there, many people still called it Seles or Sellesch as it been known for centuries during the Middle Ages. While the village name changed once, the countries and kingdoms to which it belonged changed more often as did the ethnicities of its inhabitants. Ethnic Serbs lived there when it belonged to the Ottoman Empire during the 16th and 17th centuries but by the first half of the 18th century, the village no longer existed and the area was uninhabited.

Becoming part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Sellesch was resettled by Greek traders, the Nako brothers (hence the current name) in the late 1700s. The brothers built houses for their ethnic Hungarian labor force. German families then settled in the village in 1790 as the Hungarians departed due the harsh conditions.

After World War I, the village became part of the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, the future Yugoslavia. During World War II it became a German occupied region. Most of the German population fled the village late in the war and those who didn’t were sent to prison camps. After the war, Serb families from Bosnia came to populate the village. Yugoslavia then broke up into its six republics due to political upheavals and conflicts during the early 1990s. Thus, the village of Nakovo is now part of Serbia.

Anna Quint was born in the village of Bocar (In German: Botschar, Butch’-are) about 12.5 miles from Kikinda. There doesn’t seem to be a lot written about its history.

The maps below will help you pinpoint these villages.

Serbia is in the central Balkans
Serbia with Area Insert
Anna Quint: born in Bocar. Franz Kahles born in Nakovo

Here are photos of Nakovo and Bocar. I will update this post with an explanation of how ethnic Germans came to populate this area of the world, and why we’re called “Donauschwaben” (Doe’-now shwab’-en) in German or Danube Swabians (Sway’-biens) in English.

Street in Bocar
John Kahles in Nakovo

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1. General / 2. Kahles/Quint / 3.1 George E. Lang Jr. Branch / 3.3 Richard Lang Branch

Mom and Sailors

Mom and Sailors 1945

Some background. My dad, George E. Lang Sr., was prime draft age as the United States entered World War II. When he received his draft notice, his employer went to the authorities and told them (truthfully) that his company had contracts to make critical components for the U.S. Navy and without George Lang he wouldn’t be able to fulfill them. As a result, the Draft Board gave dad a deferment.

That deferment lasted through my brother George’s birth in June of 1942, my birth in October of 1943, all of 1944, and on through late spring of 1945. At that point, he received notice to report for induction into the military. Since he would be going overseas in the Army, my mom wanted a photo of herself and the two boys for him take along. Her father, my grandfather Frank Kahles, took her to a studio and had this photo made.

This time, both his company and fate intervened. Just after dad notified his employer of his draft notice, he received a call from a company officer who was in Washington, DC on business. That officer told him emphatically to ignore the notice and not to report. My parents were in a pickle. The company said don’t report, but he could get arrested. What to do??? Two days later, the war was over. Guess that guy knew something but couldn’t say it out loud.