Between the Vines

I arrived on a late October afternoon, a little over a century after my great-grandfather, Otto, had emigrated from the German town of Osthofen, not far from the Rhine. Like many small towns in the southern Rheinhessen, Osthofen had been steeped in viticulture for hundreds of years. Through family stories, I had learned that Otto's family made their living in the vineyards, though the nature of their work remained unclear. That question, along with a desire to reconnect, had brought me to my ancestral home.

The opportunity came while I was living in Denmark and my German relatives invited me to visit. Although they did not live in Osthofen, their village was nearby, and my eldest cousin, Rainer, had already identified the cemetery where our ancestors rested. He, too, was eager to make the connection. Despite the pouring rain and the fact that we were meeting for the first time, we set out immediately after my train arrived.

Walking through the town center was a homecoming long overdue. Occasionally, we glanced up the smaller winding streets, hoping to hear our ancestors' footsteps and voices as the sounds of our own were muffled by the rain. We knew this was where they had walked countless times. Otto would likely have traveled this very route on his way to the New World, at just nine years old, following the double funeral processions of his parents, Barbara and Maximilian, who had both died far too young. It was their graves Rainer and I hoped to find: the resting places of the ancestors who linked us as family.

An open gate between two aged stone walls beckoned us into a maze of overgrown hedges and misshapen trees, their branches wrapping around some of the more weathered monuments. A few memorials were iron crosses from the Great War, rusted and sharp, protruding through the grey afternoon. Knowing what we were looking for, Rainer and I split up. My hands soon grew numb from rubbing the grave markers to read their inscriptions. Before long, the rain had soaked completely through my old brown field jacket.

At times, my attention wandered beyond the cemetery to the surrounding vineyard. The bare vines, stripped of their harvest, slumbered in orderly, austere rows high on a terraced hillside. I wondered how Barbara and Maximilian had met, whether they had strolled between the vines on that very hillside. I thought about their passing and the tragic circumstances that set the course for Otto and his two brothers to emigrate.

I lost count somewhere after one hundred. Hours had passed when Rainer joined me again, both of us making peace with the fact that the graves would not reveal themselves that day. It was enough simply to be nearby. The sun was setting, and we were saturated and hungry. I suspected the bartender at the café across the road had seen our efforts, because when we arrived, he said nothing. He simply opened a bottle of local wine and handed us full glasses before we had even sat down.

Looking at one another, we said prosit and were satisfied with our effort. The red wine, made from grapes cultivated in the same village where Barbara and Maximilian had lived—and now rested—was light, fruity, and a welcome respite. Although the vines were different from those that had grown during their lifetimes, the simple table wine offered something more immediate than the two stone markers we had hoped to find: a living connection to the land they had known.

The stories we shared that evening could fill their own book, and I hope someday they will. We had not solved the mystery of how our ancestors were connected to the vines that night. That would take many more seasons. In the meantime, the land would wait patiently, as it always had.

- 🍇 -

Credits:

“Weinberghäuschen mit dunklem Rosenrahmen in Osthofen / Rheinhessen” (Photo) © [SiRo] / Adobe Stock