A Priceless Legacy: Franz Hausmann’S Letters to His Children, 1841–1856

By Cynthia Joy Hausmann

Franz Hausmann reminisces with justifiable contentment on the life hes carved out for himself in nineteenth-century Bavaria. By the time he is writing to his children, he has already served honorably in the infantrysurviving the disastrous 1812 march into Russia as part of Napoleons Grande Armeobtained a university degree in government, and earned universal respect in his current career as an increasingly important royal counselor.

A Priceless Legacy offers a collection of his poignant letters showing how Franz devoted all his spare energy to educating his eleven childrensending them to the best schools he can afford, penning words of advice to be kept as reference, and always encouraging them to become self-reliant, honorable, and devout members of society. Mostly leaving the girls to his wifes care, Franz focuses on the boys. They cause him many headaches and heartaches, but he calmlyand sternlytries to steer them in the right direction.

Franzs great-granddaughter Cynthia Joy Hausmann has translated these letters and provided useful background comments. After Franzs death in 1856, much of Europe went through a period of political and economic upheaval, causing half of Franzs children to seek their fortune in the United States, where their descendants still exemplify Franzs wise legacy.

Portrait of Franz Hausmann as a civilian official, ca. 1830. He still proudly displays the red ribbon and white cross of the French Legion of Honor, which Napoleon awarded him in 1812

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491749661

Cynthia Joy Hausmann

Cynthia Joy Hausmann translated and annotated these letters from her great-grandfather Franz Hausmann, a senior Bavarian official in the mid-nineteenth century. She has published several other books, including A Soldier for Napoleon and Priest and Patriot.

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Copyright © 2015 Cynthia Joy Hausmann.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-4967-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-4968-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-4966-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014920270

iUniverse rev. date: 12/29/2014

Contents

Introduction

The Family of Franz Joseph Hausmann (1789–1856)

The Letters

Introduction

In 1856, when the distinguished Bavarian royal counselor Franz Hausmann departed this world at the ripe old age of sixty-seven, he knew that he was not leaving his eleven children any legacy of great wealth. What he had given them was far more valuable—the best education available, along with his own oral and written guidance to help them confidently cope with everyday matters and trustingly place their futures in God’s hands. Franz could sound very angry, but he was always trying his best to ensure that his children would grow up to become responsible and well-educated members of society. These letters were written to his young progenies when they were away at school and just beginning to chart the courses for their later lives. Franz and his place in the nineteenth century come vividly to life in these letters, arousing our compassion and our admiration. As we read through this collection, we come to share Franz’s paternal cares, occasional heartaches, and general satisfaction with his own life as he reflects on his remarkable past and guides his children into the future.

He was my great-grandfather. It has been my great privilege to translate Franz’s well considered words, finely written without deletions or corrections in the Old German script, on very thin paper that has remarkably withstood the test of time.

Franz Joseph Hausmann was born on February 25, 1789, in Aachen, a Bavarian protectorate where his father was at the time assigned with the Bavarian infantry. Ten years later, little Franz would proudly bear the brevet rank of fourier (cadet) as he accompanied his parents on reassignment back to Bavaria, marching around for some ten months until finally settling into their new garrison at Neuburg on the Danube, a picturesque town just north of Munich. In 1804, having completed his schooling, Franz formally joined the infantry with the rank of fourierpraktikant (cadet trainee), and for the rest of his life he would boast of being the third generation to have served honorably in the Bavarian Army.

That was not the end of Franz’s professional life, however. As a young lieutenant he did later see unique military service, notably when the Bavarians joined Napoleon’s Grande Armée for its disastrous Russian Campaign of 1812. As the adjutant to one or another general, Franz managed to be among the four thousand out of thirty-two thousand Bavarian soldiers to survive that senseless slaughter. He was inordinately proud of the French Légion d’honneur he earned in Russia, even wearing its cross when he posed for his much later portrait as a civilian. In the fall of 1813, however, after Bavaria’s King Maximilian I came to his senses and switched his army over to join the Allies in their pursuit of Napoleon, Franz loyally fought against the French. Wide-eyed with wonder, on April 2, 1814, the young Bavarian soldier marched down the brightly lit streets of Paris. Napoleon abdicated four days later and was forthwith dispatched into exile on the island of Elba. Europe would never be the same again.

With Napoleon out of the picture, Franz reluctantly realized that Bavaria would no longer need such a large military presence, meaning that military promotions would slow down to a snail’s pace. Although he would always be proud of his military service and appreciative of the training and experience it had afforded him, he decided he ought to prepare for another career.

It took a lot of courage for Franz to break with his family tradition and venture out alone into the unknown civilian world. Years later, when his own children came along, he would encourage them to become the same kind of responsible, self-sufficient young adults as he had been, thus inadvertently preparing many of them for the great leap across the Atlantic to start new lives in the United States after his death.

After attending the university in Würzburg for the next four years, where he studied cameralistics (economics and government), in 1918 Franz went to work for King Maximilian I in his royal service. At this time Bavaria had just become a constitutional monarchy and had reacquired the large region called the Palatinate, which had by then gotten its own parliament and civilian government, and many royal appointments were also opening up there. (Incidentally, King Max had been born in Zweibrücken, when the Palatinate had earlier belonged to Bavaria. That was where Franz would first be assigned in his new career of civilian government service and where he would meet and marry his first wife.) Franz would spend the rest of his life in increasingly important positions in service to his king, moving around among several cities in the Palatinate. By the time of his death in 1856, he was assigned to Speyer, the capital of the Palatinate, as the king’s top representative in that region, outranked only by the president of the local parliament.

Over the course of his lifetime, Franz created a brood of eleven children to live beyond infancy. His greatest concern was to give all of them a good education and to have them grow up to become godfearing, and self-sufficient individuals, as well as honorable members of society. Franz firmly believed in sending the boys off at a very young age to the best military schools in Munich, the capital of Bavaria. He pointed out to them that both Napoleon, the greatest man of our times, and Friedrich Schiller, our greatest poet, had attended military academies. He also believed in giving the girls a good education, and not just in cooking and sewing. Top-notch schools cost money, however, and Franz was never independently wealthy, even though he was consistently promoted to positions of ever-greater responsibility. In spite of the drain on his family’s resources, he never complained to the children about their academic expenses, although he did constantly urge them to be frugal and not waste money needlessly. He regularly exhorted them to write very small and to make use of all available space in their letters so as to justify the expensive postage.

These poignant letters, his written legacy, open with a letter to Maria, his oldest daughter, whom he sent to an exclusive boarding school in Munich. We have no letters to the younger girls, who also were sent off to good schools, but evidently the girls gave their parents fewer headaches, so it was their mother who corresponded with them and did not ask them to keep her letters. Maria was a quiet and obedient child, although it took a while for her to learn the value of money. Franz’s sons, on the other hand, were rambunctious young boys, and it is heartbreaking to read how they sometimes tried their father’s patience. He would steal moments from his busy schedule in order to write them long lectures, which he instructed them to keep at hand and read over and over again since he could not be there in person to talk sense to them. The results varied.

When Otto, the oldest child, declared that he wanted to join the artillery, Franz did not argue, although we can sense his disappointment that his son did not want to follow in the family tradition of infantry service. We also learn how very expensive it was in those days to outfit a young officer. When Otto does not take his father’s advice and gets badly stung in the purchase of a horse, Franz swallows hard and does his best to extricate his son from a bad deal. On the other hand, when two of his other sons repeatedly get into trouble, failing their courses and refusing to take life seriously, Franz is in a complete quandary about how to handle them, alternating between threats and silence, but always more in sorrow than in anger. Franz definitely believes in tough love, but on occasion we can feel how hurt he is underneath when his children ignore his advice. (To give them their due, however, the sons may have sometimes rebelled after hearing for the umpteenth time what a model son their father had been at their age.)

In reading through these letters, we nevertheless have to appreciate Franz for the values he exemplified in his own life and for the extraordinary effort he expended on trying to raise his children to become responsible individuals and useful citizens. Whether or not his descendants recognize his influence on their lives, his example has served our family as a wonderful inheritance. Little Julius, the youngest child and my grandfather, may have been only six years old when his father died, but I can see reflections of Franz in him and in my father. Franz’s numerous descendants here in the United States may be amused to hold up the same mirror to themselves.

Whatever their background, readers of these letters will come to appreciate how our forefathers have in their way contributed to the greatness of this nation of immigrants, the United States of America. Franz Hausmann’s values are a priceless and timeless legacy for us all.

The Family of Franz Joseph Hausmann (1789–1856)

Franz was born on February 25, 1789, in Aachen, which at that time belonged to the Electorate of Bavaria, part of a constantly evolving German nation. In 1806, Bavaria became a kingdom under Napoleon’s sponsorship. Finally, in 1871, it would become a state in the strong new German Empire created by Prussia.

In 1825, Franz married Catharina Chandon (1793–1834). They had three children who lived beyond infancy:

Otto (1830–1917), married, no children, died in Germany as a retired colonel

Maria (1832–1906), unmarried, died in Germany

Franz (1834–1877), unmarried, died in Germany

In 1834, Franz’s first wife died as a result of childbirth.

In 1837, Franz married Antonia Adolay (1817–1892). They had eight children:

Friedrich, known as Fritz (1838–1862), unmarried, died at Antietam in US

Antonia (1839–1928), unmarried, died in Germany

Katharina (1841–1912), married and lived in US, died in Germany

Eduard (1843–1877), fought at Antietam, married and died in US

Clementina (1845–1907), married and died in US

Mathilda (1846–1939), unmarried, died in Germany

Karl (1848–1880), married and died in US

Julius (1849–1951), married and died in US

Franz died on July 30, 1856, while assigned to Speyer in the Bavarian Palatinate. His widow moved to nearby Neustadt/Haardt and continued to raise the younger children until they were old enough to make their own way in the world.

Julius emigrated to the United States in 1869, became a citizen in 1874, and founded his own china- and glassware-importing business in New York City. In 1889, he returned to Neustadt to marry Elisabeth Osthelder (1870–1960) and brought her to the United States. They eventually settled in Weehawken, New Jersey, and raised a family of seven children who lived beyond infancy. Their oldest son was Adolay (1893–1971), the author’s father.

After Tante Mathilda’s death in 1939, there were no longer any of Franz’s descendants living in Germany.

The Letters

In November 1841, when these letters begin, Franz Hausmann was at the age of fifty-two and already a highly respected official in the Bavarian king’s service, with the rank of royal counselor (Königlicher Rat). Don’t think of the English word for rodent here. Think Ratskeller, the restaurant in the basement of a German Rathaus, or city hall, where the members of the city council, or Rat, ate dinner. The word Rat is related to the Anglo-Saxon verb rede, meaning to counsel or advise.

Franz already had five children, and over the next eight years he would have six more. Understandably, his wife must have had her hands full just managing this large household, and the job of guiding the children, especially the boys, along the educational and moral straight-and-narrow path fell to Franz. Although Franz was a very busy man, he took the time to write thoughtful letters to his children who were not living at home—letters that they were supposed to keep in a safe place and refer back to when they needed his advice.

The first letter we have from Franz to his children is addressed to his oldest daughter, Maria, aged nine, who has recently begun attending an exclusive boarding school in Munich, the capital of Bavaria. The school’s name is the Royal Bavarian Educational Institute for Daughters of the Higher Classes, located on the broad and classically grand Ludwigsstrasse across from the university. It is an indication of Franz’s high rank and the favor he enjoys with King Ludwig I—King Max’s son—that Maria has been accepted there. This letter has been written on November 5, 1841, from Neustadt in the Palatinate, an area recently acquired by Bavaria, where Franz, as royal counselor, is one of the king’s top representatives. At this time Franz’s oldest son, Otto, aged eleven, is also in Munich, attending a military school. In those horse-and-buggy days, Munich lay far away from Neustadt, a trip of several days.

This letter, as most of Franz’s letters, has been sent without an envelope. Using one sheet of paper, Franz writes on one side and on half of the back and then folds the sheet so that the blank half forms a small envelope, which is then sealed closed with a small sticker. Franz’s handwriting is exceedingly small, thus enabling him to write a great deal of news and advice on his allotted page and a half.

Along with this letter, Franz sends a hairclip that belonged to his first wife and Maria’s birth mother, Catharina, née Chandon, who died when Maria was not quite three. The Chandons were a prominent family in Zweibrücken, where Franz was first assigned after graduating from the university. (Franz’s father-in-law is described in family records simply as a prosperous and well-respected merchant. It is fun to guess that he may have had some ties to Moët & Chandon champagne, but that is pure speculation.) Catharina’s mother, to whom Franz refers when he writes here about your grandmother, will throughout her lifetime continue to take a special interest in the three of Franz’s surviving children born to her daughter (Otto, Maria, and Franz), as well as including the later children in her kindness. The enclosed hairclip recalls the pious custom of preserving locks of hair from deceased family members, as it contains locks from Maria’s birth mother and from a sister, Clementina, who died in 1830 at the age of four and whose name Maria also bears. Another custom of those days is reflected in Maria’s full name: Maria (a common first name for girls in the family, including Franz’s mother and grandmother) Wilhelmina (for Franz’s father) Catharina (for her birth mother and grandmother) Theresia (for Franz’s mother and another child who died as a baby) Clementina (for the above-mentioned child who died very young).

Dear Maria,

I trust you have now completely recovered from your illness. In the kind and loving care with which Madam Director as well as the doctor and your warden, Miss Kastner, helped you to get well quickly, you will find reason enough to repay with love and childlike obedience the great effort these people generously exerted in order to restore your lost health to you. Dear Maria, you can do nothing that would please your mother and me more than to let the administrators of your institute, who cared for you and treated you like their own child when you were sick, know through your diligence, attention and obedience what deep gratitude you have to them, which in turn will certainly earn you their love and affection.

By now, dear child, you are surely mature enough to understand that I could not stay with you any longer. As soon as I knew you were out of danger and on the road to recovery, I had to set out on my return trip to Neustadt, for my affairs here did not permit me to remain in Munich any longer, much as I would have liked to stay on there.

On the 27th of last month, Otto sent me the agreeable news that you were improving by the day, and that on the following Sunday he hoped to be able to visit you again. It would, however, be far more agreeable to me, if you would in the near future make use of the writing materials I left you, so as to give me proof yourself of your improvement. Your mother and grandmother would be especially pleased to be able to read a letter from you. As I already told you when I was there, just give any letter you write us only to Mr. Schön, the housemaster, who will see that Mrs. Königsberger gets it, and she will then put it in an envelope and send it to me.

If you write a letter in the same form as this present one, just remember to write as small as possible, so that you will have enough room to tell us about your general health and the course of your illness, as well as your daily routine, and later about the subject and schedule of your instruction—just as Otto has faithfully done in regard to the latter.

I have already asked your grandmother to be kind enough to grant your wishes in regard to sending you the books, etc. At the next opportunity you will also receive the toys you asked for from here. Only I do not dare to send you the little milk glass tea set, because it might well get broken. I can send it to you only if I happen to learn of someone going there, as then there would be no reason to worry about breakage.

We—your mother and I—will try to visit you and Otto as soon as possible. Your grandmother may perhaps also take a trip to Munich next spring. Just always behave very nicely, so that you earn a lot of good marks and can then be allowed to come out and see us. In general, I ask you always to keep God before your eyes, thank him regularly and conscientiously in the morning and in the evening for the many favors he has granted you and all of us, and fervently beg him to bless your steps as well as your educational progress, and to lead you in the path of righteousness, so that you may grow up to become a well behaved, godfearing young lady. If you do that, then his grace will never fail you, and you will always be happy, cheerful, healthy and content.

Give my regards to Madam Director, as well as to Madam Bianchi and the doctor. Also, always look after your health, so that you do not get sick again, and especially, stop jumping around so wildly, for that has always been detrimental to your health. Your mother, as well as Franz, Fritz and Antonia are well and send you their love.

In one of the letters from Madam Director I note that you do not laugh very much. I cannot recognize you in that. Do you really believe that you are not allowed to be cheerful? That would be very wrong. You may laugh without giving it a second thought and even be a little mischievous, if in so doing you do not overstep the bounds of propriety—which is of course not difficult for you. But that will surely sort itself out,