Life in the Lennetal

[Neu-Scharmbeck]

In the 16th and 17th century, two things happened: The Reformation started, and Gallo-Germania and Thaumantica sailed around the world to colonise the other continents. Also the Rheinians. The Sigmaringers grounded Neu-Engelsheim, the Casparringers Neu-Lörrach, the Wetterauers Neu-Grefrath and the Scharmbeckers Neu-Scharmbeck. But the Reformation grabbed the Rheinbund in a very hefty way: It led to the first and only time that the Rheinians went to war with each other. The 30-years-war lasted from 1624 to 1654. During that war, the other powers in Gallo-Germania saw their chance and attacked the Rheinian colonies. Neu-Scharmbeck was the only one to survive, thanks to help from Rheinian sovereignties whose sovereign families had turned Protestant. That is also one of the reasons why Neu-Scharmbeck became a safe haven for all kinds of Protestants, but more about that later.
Neu-Scharmbeck became independent on 1 June 1820. At least that is the date of the declaration of independence. There were already irritations back and forth between the Rheinbund and its colony, and that culminated in its declaration of independence. Of course the Rheinians didn’t want to take that lightly, so it sent a fleet to Neu-Scharmbeck. But then Immanuel Felgenhauer, at that moment Provisional President of Neu-Scharmbeck, made a bold move. He let the Rheinians come at land, but then surrounded all the troops. Then he sent a messenger to the commander of the Rheinian troops with the message: “We can turn this into a blood bath and a lengthy war, but I think it will be better for both sides if we turn ourselves into two befriended nations. Also because there is a Federation up North that could become angry.” The Rheinbund took its loss and accepted Neu-Scharmbeck’s independence. The fact that Neu-Scharmbeck became independent in such a peaceful way, and the fact that Felgenhauer did not turn this into a shameful event to the Rheinians, will have contributed to the good relations that former colony and former colonisator still have.
The lands of Neu-Scharmbeck appeared to be very fertile, fit for all kinds of agriculture. Neu-Scharmbeck is an important player on the global wheat, fruit, milk and meat market. There also appeared to be a large long-stretched layer of iron ore in the South. Krupper Stahl became big because of that, and is still a big name in the steel industry. Of course this led to a spin-off of manufacturing industry, machines, and precision instruments (which emerged from the clock industry).

You can’t discuss Neu-Scharmbeck without discussing religion. Because it was set up mainly by Protestants, it became a safe haven for all kinds of Protestants. Half the country is Calvinist, but there are also many Mennonites. Both among the Calvinists and the Mennonites, there is a wide variety in beliefs.
Let me discuss the Mennonites in detail. The most strict ones are the Schwarzenhubers; they are famous for their horse-tracked carts. They reject mechanised transport, and also mechanised agricultural devices. Neither do they use electricity. They not even have water-flushed toilets or running water.
One level higher are the Eichenlaubs: They use electricity and running water, and therefore also refridgerators, but still no mechanised transport or mechanised agricultural devices.
The Karaunas are the largest group within the Mennonites. They use mechanised transport, mechanised agricultural devices, electricity, running water and all other kinds of modern devices, although they block themselves off of certain parts of the Internet, only listen to certain radio stations, and don’t have TVs.

My name is Gotthold Geller. I am a Karauna Mennonite, and live in Vorden, a small town in the Lennetal, the valley where most Mennonites live. I am the owner of the local garage, and repair all kinds of cars, trucks and agricultural devices. I am a mechanic, but also an electrician, professional smith and welder. I am 56 years old, married and have eight children. We will tell you about the life in the Lennetal.

 

[Neu-Scharmbeck]

GOTTHOLD

It is always impressive to see how the Schwarzenhubers and the Eichenlaubs manage to build a house or a barn. All the men of the town gather together, and within a day the new house or barn stands. All the needed materials have been gathered, and everybody knows what to do when. The fact that their houses and barns all have the same design may help, but still then the way they cooperate with each other and organise the task is amazing. I have witnessed this several times. But this always happens in the late Spring and the Summer.
The sowing season will start soon. This is always a busy time. Farmers active in arable farming have two periods in the year in which they are busy: The sowing season in March and April, and the harvesting season is in September and October. In-between those periods, they have it relatively calm. Of course, there is always something to do, but not as much as in the sowing and harvesting seasons.
Now is the busy time for me. All the machineries have to be checked, so I drive from farm to farm to check and repair things. Also among the Schwarzenhubers and the Eichenlaubs. Especially one Schwarzenhuber family: Lechner. This family lives at a property it obtained from a non-Mennonite family about 30 years ago. The first thing the Lechners did, was building a new house. But not at the place of the old house; a couple of hundreds of meters away from it. I had always thought that they built the new house because the old one did not fulfil the demands of a Schwarzenhuber family. This morning it appeared that I was wrong.
When I drove to the Lechner family’s house, I saw that the old house, that had never been removed, had been burned down. I am in the voluntary fire brigade, so I started to wonder. I did not remember that there had been a fire here; normally I would have been called. It looked like this fire had not been reported.
Harald and Sofie Lechner, the pater and mater familias of the Lechners, are about may age. When I told that the old house had been burnt down, they were amazed. “Yesterday it was still standing,” Harald said. We went to the old house together to check things, and then called the Gendarmerie.
While waiting for them, Harald Lechner started to talk. “This house has a history,” he said. “And that history is the reason why we built a new house.”

 

[Neu-Scharmbeck]

HARALD LECHNER

This is the story of the house. In 1625, Burghardt Uhlemann and Elisabeth Biber fell in love with each other. But there was a problem. Burghardt was Calvinist, and Elisabeth was Catholic. Their families did not approve their relationship, and forbade the marriage. The reformation was in full swing, as well as the reaction by the Catholic Church. Also: The thirty-years war, which was a religious war, had just begun. Tensions were high between the Catholics and the Protestants. Falling in love with someone from an other religion was considered treason.
But blood is thicker than water. Burghardt and Elisabeth couldn’t give up on each other. Elisabeth converted to Calvinism, and with that caused a hefty family feud between the Uhlemanns and the Bibers. Fearing for their lives, Burghardt and Elisabeth fled to Scharmbeck. There they married and boarded a ship to travel westward. Destination: Neu-Scharmbeck.
Arrived in the new world, Burghardt and Elisabeth soon found jobs at a farm near Neu-Scharmbeck-Stadt. But they had a dream. Being descendants of farmer families, they wanted to have their own farm. So they were economic and saved a lot of money. Ten years later, they moved to the Lennetal to start a farm there. This farm. In the meantime, they already had got six children, and the seventh was on its way.
Burghardt and Elisabeth had chosen a very good piece of land to grow flax on. A crop Burghardt was not used to when he arrived in Neu-Scharmbeck (his family grew rye) but had learnt to understand while being in Neu-Scharmbeck. The farm flourished from the start. Burghardt and Elisabeth got more children. In the end, four children reached adulthood, in an era knowing high death rates among children. As was common in those days, the farm went to the oldest surviving son, and the other children received a lump sum or a periodic allowance. The farm continued to flourish throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th century.
In 1920, Gerdfried Uhlemann, the last male descendant of Burghardt and Elisabeth, died. He had no sons, only two daughters, both living on the farm. The elder daughter was married, and lived on the farm with her husband and two sons. Also the younger daughter lived on the farm, but without a husband. She was unmarriable, not because of her bad looks, but because she was a fallen woman. Once she seduced a seasonal worker, and got pregnant. An unmarried woman getting pregnant, that was a scandal. No place to go to, she stayed on the farm, under the harassments of her parents. But her sister and her brother-in-law were nice to her.
After Gerdfried’s funeral, his wife went to bed and didn’t come out any more. She had lost the will to live. She died a few weeks later. Now the older daughter was in charge of the farm. Her husband was the one who did the work, but she was in charge. She was a woman with a very nice character, but also a woman who lost her beauty in a very rapid pace. Unlike her younger sister, who started to seduce her husband. When the older daughter found that out, she gave the younger daughter a three months period to leave the farm, with a lump sum of money worth half the farm. That was against the plans of the younger daughter, who started to concoct a plot to kill her older sister. On a day in Summer 1921, the sons of the older daughter went out camping with friends, while the older daughter’s husband was in Lennestadt. That evening, the two daughters were the only ones at the farm. Ideal for the younger daughter’s plan. While the older daughter was cleaning something in the kitchen, the younger daughter approached her from the back, a knife in her hand. But the older daughter looked up. She saw her younger sister with a knife in her hand, a fight erupted, and the older daughter was stabbed in the neck. A large beam of blood sprayed a red cross on the ceiling. Then the older daughter was dead.
The younger daughter had a week time to clean everything up, before her older sister’s sons and husband would show up again. She cleaned up the blood, buried her sister and painted the ceiling. There was no evidence any more that someone had been stabbed. When the sons and the husband came back, the younger daughter told that she and the older daughter had discussed matters out, that she was allowed to stay, and that the younger daughter had to travel to Neu-Scharmbeck-Stadt urgently for some businesses.
The younger daughter and the husband resumed their affair. But when a few weeks later the older daughter was still away, the husband became worried. They went to the police to report the older daughter missing. The strange thing was, that nobody had seen her going to the train station. She had left the farm, and had vanished. In the meantime, the younger daughter appeared to be pregnant again. The police closed the case.
A year later, on the day that the older daughter had been killed, meanwhile the younger daughter had given birth to a son, leading to a lot of gossip in the village, the red cross appeared on the ceiling again. The younger daughter tried to bleach it out, but that didn’t help. She painted it over again, but the cross reappeared a year later. Again the cross was painted over, only to reappear one year later. The younger daughter ordered the ceiling to be replaced, but the cross appeared again. The ceiling was painted in the same colour as the cross, but one year later the cross appeared again, this time in white. What was happening here?
This continued for ten years. Meanwhile, the older daughter had been declared dead. The husband and the younger daughter had married. And the cross appeared again. The younger daughter ordered the ceiling to be completely removed. A year later, the cross appeared on the inside of the roof. At the same time, a dog started to dig at a place where he’d better not start to dig. He dug up a human skeleton. But forensics of the 1930s couldn’t go further than determining that it was the skeleton of a woman. Comparison with medical history indicated that the skeleton was from the older daughter. The younger daughter behaved strangely, but it was impossible to prove that she was the culprit. She ordered to break down the house and build a new one. At the same time, the husband took his third son and went away. Meanwhile, his two other sons had become adults and had decided to move away as well.
The new house was built on an other place than the old one. The younger daughter lived there alone. Without the knowledge to lead a farm, and without the people willing to work for her, the land of the farm became fallow. And the cross reappeared. The painting story repeated itself. Each and every time, the cross reappeared. Each and every time on the day the older daughter had been killed. In the beginning of the 1960s, the younger daughter was found dead on the floor. She had fallen from the ladder and had broken her neck while painting the ceiling again. Half the cross had been painted away, but the cross was complete again one year later.
The family didn’t want to move back to the property, but a buyer was not found, either. Until 30 years later my father bought it. The old house was still there, but given this story, my father decided to build a new house far away from the old one.

OOC: After an old story from the Eastern part of the Veluwe.

 

[Neu-Scharmbeck]

RUPPERT

When you look at the cars riding around in the Rheinbund, you will see that about 30% are Darners (which are produced in Neu-Scharmbeck-Stadt), 30% are Hartnetts, 30% are Arrows from The Federation and 10% are from remaining car brands. But it depends on where you look in the country what kind of models are precisely bought. Along the coast, you mainly see the compact hatchbacks like the Darner Mistral, Arrow Citycar and Hartnett Oryx, and sometimes saloons like the Darner Ostro, Arrow Town Cruiser and Hartnett Grizzly. You also see electric cars there. But here in the west, especially in the rural areas, you sometimes need a four-wheel drive. The paved roads are well-maintained, but sometimes in remote areas, not all roads are paved. And there are quite some remote areas in the western 3/4 of the country. Additional to that, the roads can be dirty from time to time, due to the fact that there is a lot of agriculture here. So in the countryside, we mainly see four-wheel-drive SUVs and pick-up trucks. And here in the Lennetal, also quite some second-hand Arrow A-Series imported from The Federation. My father and my oldest brother Christhelm have quite a business with that.

My name is Ruppert Geller. I am the sixth child and second son of Gotthold Geller. Although I have quite a lot of affinity with technique, I did not enter the family’s enterprise. Instead, I went to the Gendarmerieschule in Lennestadt to become a gendarme. After having absolved my education, I returned to Vorden to join the local gendarmerie department. I am still working there, with the rank of Patrouillenleiter.
Up to now, my work has not been that exciting here. Calming down fights, arresting burglars, solving road traffic accidents, that kind of things. One month ago, we had the fire at the Lechner property. The old house had burnt down. I had to go there to secure the area, and then a CSI-team from Lennestadt arrived to do the forensic investigation. It appeared that there were two corpses in the house. They appeared to be from two men who were on the run. They broke into the house to get a place to sleep, built a fire in the fire place and then took a dose of a sedating drug of which I forgot the name. Intended or not, they took so much that they didn’t detect the piece of burning wood that fell out of the fireplace, which eventually set the house on fire.
What I’m still wondering about though, is that the Lechners did not detect that that house was on fire. Totally not. Their property is not that big, and normally you would see the light when something’s burning at night. You could argue though that the case of the death of Brunhild Pichler-Uhlemann is definitely closed now, with all the buildings near the spot of her death gone.
Today I passed the Lechner property again. I saw a big car standing near the burnt down house, and four people looking for something there. I did not pay too much attention to it, but I consider it strange. I will look myself later as well.