Trockau, and the Hunt for Bogner Relations.

As we drove to Trockau from Rothenburg, we stopped at a farmers market. We picked up some stuff for our lunch and Audrey found a little something as well!


For lunch, we stopped at one of the roadside picnic places that the have by all the roads in Germany. What a great idea! This is something we should do better in Canada. We stopped just across the road from an ancient castle fortress on a hillside.

Along the way we came through a town where the buildings were built right onto the rocks over the town. Of course we had to stop to take a picture. As it turns out, this very picture is famous all over the region, and can be found on many postcards of this area.

As we approached Trockau, we found a tower that overlooks the whole area. Naturally, we had to climb it! It was from here that we got our first look at the village of Trockau, the old world home of the Bogner's.

In no time at all, we found ourselves at the outskirts of the village....

And checked into the Gasthof Stockel, where we stayed overnight and enjoyed excellent hospitality (and shared much refreshment) with some of the local residents, including the parish priest!

Here is a street scene from Trockau, with the Schloss (summer palace) in the background. It seems to be a very tidy and well ordered village, as is typical for this part of Germany.

About 4 km from Trockau is the village of Buchenbach, where the Bogner's also came from. The church here is spectacular! The church itself is over 800 years old, and the priest tells me that some of the artifacts within the church are over 1000 years old. I have never seen a church that compares to it, for its size and congregation. It was simply stunning! Our host, Barbara Foerester was kind enough to play the pipe organ for us, which really made Audrey's day for her.

An item of particular interest to me was this confessional, which was dated 1783, and was made by my distant grandfather Johann Georg Bogner. It was an odd feeling for me to run my hands over the very wood that this man had worked so many years ago!

Our hosts in Buchenbach were the Heinrich Foerester family. Heinrich is a distant cousin of the Johann Baptist Bogner family through Barbara Bogner Foerester.

The Foeresters were able to show is the monument/alter that Johann Baptist Bogner built in Trockau in about 1885, before emigrating to the United States. It was good that they knew where it was, because the area is becoming overgrown and we would have been unlikely to have found it on our own. Unfortunately, the monument is deteriorating and will not last too much longer without renovations. There are no longer any Bogner's in Trockau or Buchenbach who know the significance of the monument and would have an interest in preserving it. Perhaps the decendents of Johann Baptist Bogner will rally and rescue it before it disappears....

We were fortunate enough to recieve permission to enter the chapel of the Schloss from the Gross family, who still live there. Inside we found this confessional, dated 1792, which was also almost certainly made by my ancestor Johann Georg Bogner. As you can see, it is very similiar in style and fabrication to the confessional in the Buchenbach church, and it seems to me to be most unlikely that there were two carpenters doing such pieces in this small area and time. But there is no providence for this piece so far as I know, as there is for the Buchenbach piece.

Our search for Bogner relations led us to follow a tip from one of the Trockau locals who was drinking with us at the local hotel, that their mother had spoken only the day before with a Mr. Bogner in the town of Gossweinstein, who had told her that his family had originally come from Trockau. To follow up on this tip, our host/translator/guide Ute Hummer (secretary to the parish priest in Trockau) and her husband drove us the 20 km to Gossweinstein. The first place that we looked was the local cathedral - which was spectacular to say the least. After some inquiries, we were able to get an address for Walter Bogner.

As we drove toward the address that we had been given, I took this picture of a local street scene, featuring the large house on the hill. By coincidence, guess who was walking down the street at the time. We stopped him to ask for directions....

And Johann Walter Bogner invited us to his home!

After some wonderful discussion of family trees and viewing a few pictures (and many comments about various family resemblances!) it was time to take our leave. Here Audrey and I pose with Walter and Guertrude Bogner, together with their son Stefan (one of 9 children) who happened to visit while we were talking. Stefan and Stephen were both born in 1960.

A very special "Thank You!" to the Hummer and Foerster families for their wonderful hospitality and efforts "above and beyond" to help us make this family connection!