{"id":1495,"date":"2022-02-26T15:31:58","date_gmt":"2022-02-26T22:31:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogy.thundermoon.us\/blog\/?p=1495"},"modified":"2022-02-26T15:31:58","modified_gmt":"2022-02-26T22:31:58","slug":"the-schrotzberger-family-in-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogy.thundermoon.us\/blog\/2022\/02\/26\/the-schrotzberger-family-in-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"The Schrotzberger Family in Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>This post is dedicated to JoAnn Schrotzberger<\/a> (1927-2021) [link is to her obituary]<\/small>, an avid genealogist and\u00a0 passionate historian of all things related to the Schrotzberger family.<\/em>
\n <\/small>She was a cousin, a friend, a mentor, and a collaborator who will be sorely missed.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

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Our paternal grandfather, Herman Schutze (1891-1968) used to quip about the tangled relationships between the Schutze and Schrotzberger families.<\/p>\n

His birth mother Friederike (n\u00e9e Schrotzberger) died when he was an infant, and his father then married Friederike\u2019s widowed sister Hannah. That resulted in Herman having an aunt who was his step-mother and a cousin who was his step-sister. And years later when Herman\u2019s sister-in-law married Ted Schrotzberger, Herman’s uncle became his wife’s brother-in-law.<\/p>\n

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Hamburg churches along its harbor front in the early 1700s.
The Schrotzberger family would have attended a number of them as they moved around the city. Click on map for larger image.<\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The close relationship between the families began in Hamburg, Germany, where our great-grandfather, Hermann Sch\u00fctze<\/a> (1851-1909), a journeyman butcher, came across Johann Schrotzberger (1823-1902), a master butcher and business owner in Hamburg\u2019s slaughterhouse district. It\u2019s likely Hermann worked for the older Johann, and through that connection began an association with his family. Hermann ended up moving in with them\u00a0 and marrying Johann\u2019s eldest daughter Friederike in 1879. Their children and their progeny, therefore, owe half of their German genes to the Schrotzberger bloodline.<\/p>\n

We’ll take a look at the history of the Schrotzberger family in Germany, to see where the family roots began and where they spread.<\/p>\n

Johann Leonhard Schrotzberger (1823-1902)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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R\u00f6ckingen to Hamburg.
Click to enlarge.<\/small><\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Johann Schrotzberger, the master butcher, moved from his birth village of R\u00f6ckingen, in Bavaria, four hundred miles north to one of Europe’s largest ports \u2014the city-state of Hamburg, Germany, in 1845, at the age of 22.1<\/sup> He left a village of about 800 people to join a city of over 140,000 residents (that more than doubled by the time he emigrated to the U.S.). It’s likely he went to Hamburg to complete the requirement of becoming a\u00a0 journeyman (literally “journey man”) butcher, but the prospect of adventure and opportunity in a major port town likely contributed to his move to that particular city.<\/p>\n

Johann was the oldest of his parents’ eleven children. His father was an (at the time) unmarried farmer (Bauer). His mother was the granddaughter of a butcher and one-time mayor of the village of R\u00f6ckingen.2<\/sup> His mother’s father and brother were also butchers, likely inspiring Johann’s career choice.<\/p>\n

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Johann Leonhard’s birth entry in the R\u00f6ckingen church register of 1823.
The first line reads “Johann Leonhard, illegitimate son of Sophia Catharina Rau.” The right-hand column identifies his father as Joh[hann] Mich[ael] Schrotzberger.<\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>The earliest record of Johann in Hamburg is his marriage register<\/a>, dating to 1853 when at age 29 he married the 26-year-old Sophia Elisabeth Stallbaum. The register shows he’d come to the city eight years previously and that he became a full citizen of the city three weeks prior to his marriage. The couple already had a daughter, Friederike (our great-grandmother), born six weeks before the marriage. (Johann, too, was born illegitimate. See image above.)\u00a0 They continued building a family, ending up with ten children born between 1853 and 1871, one of whom died at an early age.<\/p>\n
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Sophia Elisabeth Stallbaum’s history is harder to trace, as the parish records of her home town of L\u00fcneburg, 35 miles southeast of Hamburg, are not yet digitized. From research that JoAnn Schrotzberger did, we know Sophia’s father was Heinrich Georg Stallbaum and her mother was Anna Catherina Ble\u00ff. Her parents were married in April of 1816<\/a> in L\u00fcneburg while her father was serving as a soldier. Sophia was born in 1827, the seventh of nine children. She came to Hamburg in 1843, nine years after her father’s passing, and two years before Johann Schrotzberger arrived at the city.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Hamburg harbor scene near St. Pauli, ca. 1890s. For more photos of historic Hamburg, click on camera icon here: 📷<\/big><\/a><\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During his years in Hamburg Johann had at least seven residences, moving his wife and growing number of children from the old town, to the new town, to the harbor, and eventually to the St. Pauli district.3<\/sup> Hamburg was a port city that catered to sailors and the seafaring community, and the St. Pauli district \u2014 in 1840 \u2014 had 250 different occupations deriving income from port activity, and housed 100 captains, 100 innkeepers, and 150 registered prostitutes in 20 brothels.4<\/sup> One can imagine that all that activity required a lot of energy \u2014 and meat \u2014 and Johann worked at providing the latter.<\/p>\n

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A 1910 map of Hamburg with Schrotzberger residences noted by red stars. The final home on Sternstra\u00dfe is toward the top left of the map. Click on image to enlarge.<\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By all appearances Johann Schrotzberger was an enterprising man, rising up the economic ladder through a succession of jobs and businesses. When he married in 1853 he was a sausage and smoked meats dealer, then became a hide trader, a sausage maker, an intestine dealer, a butcher, a master butcher (he obtained that status in 18605<\/sup>), and a business owner \u2014 of the J. L. Schrotzberger company.6<\/sup> Around\u00a0 1870 Johann took over the quarters of another butcher on Sternstra\u00dfe (Star Street) in the noisy and malodorous central slaughterhouse district, moving his wife and at that time eight children to their final home in Hamburg. See the map above.<\/p>\n

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The central slaughterhouse (Schlachthof) in Hamburg<\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By 1877 Johann bought most of the flats in his and the adjacent block’s building and rented them out, adding the title of landlord to his portfolio.7<\/sup>\u00a0 A photograph of his children from the mid 1870s shows a family that is well dressed and by all appearances prosperous.<\/p>\n

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The Schrotzberger children in Hamburg ca. 1875. From left: Ted, Fred, William, John, Julius, Friederike<\/strong>, Pauline, Bertha, and Johanna<\/strong>. Photo courtesy of JoAnn Schrotzberger.<\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As his daughters became marrying age, suitors began to arrive. On the same day \u2014July 4th, 1879 \u2014 two of his daughters married men who joined the Schrotzberger household at Sternstra\u00dfe 70. One of the suitors was the fore-mentioned butcher Hermann Sch\u00fctze and the other was a ship’s helmsman, Hugo Kopff. The sisters were Friederike and Hanna. (In a twist of fate, Hermann later married Hanna after their first spouses died, leading to that Schutze-Schrotzberger entanglement mentioned earlier.)<\/p>\n

The happiness of nuptials, however, was soon tempered by loss. The newlywed son-in-law Hugo Kopff died six months into his marriage, in December 1879, leaving a grieving and pregnant widow. The other son-in-law, Hermann Sch\u00fctze, emigrated to the United States in May of 1880, with his wife following three months later. And most devastatingly, Johann lost his wife Sophia, who passed away at age 53 in September of 1880.<\/p>\n

Johann, now a widower and father of multiple children, was at a crossroads. Never one to shy away from a challenge or opportunity, he decided to join his eldest daughter and son-in-law in Detroit, Michigan. He emigrated, with his remaining eight children and two grandchildren, in August 1881 at the age of 58. On the inner east side of Detroit, in Germantown, he opened a butcher shop on Gratiot Avenue with his sons, replicating his success in Hamburg.<\/p>\n

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Inside the Schrotzberger meat market on Gratiot Avenue, late 1880s. Photo courtesy of JoAnn Schrotzberger.<\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Gettin’ outa’ town … fast.
An ad in the Evening News on October 18, 1890.
<\/small><\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to his great-granddaughter JoAnn Schrotzberger, Johann had a falling out with some of his family in the early 1890s. He bought a 360-acre farm north of Detroit where two of his sons joined him. Six years later he returned to the city, for a while living with his daughter Hanna and son-in-law Hermann Sch\u00fctze \u2014 completing the circle that began in Hamburg. When Hermann and Hanna moved to Canada in 1901, Johann went to live with his sons Frederick and Julius, at whose home he succumbed to nephritis at the age of 79 in 1902. His body was buried in an area of Trinity Cemetery, on Mount Elliot in Detroit, holding a number of his family members, including his daughter, a son, and two granddaughters. (If you want to visit them at Section O, Lot # 12, be forewarned that many Schrotzbergers don’t erect headstones, including the family buried here.)<\/p>\n

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Johann and his sons, ca. 1900. Seated (left to right): Julius, Johann, William. Standing: Frederick, John, Theodore. Photo courtesy of JoAnn Schrotzberger.<\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The earlier Schrotzberger Families of R\u00f6ckingen<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Schrotzberger clan can be traced back to the mid 1700s,8<\/sup> with the marriage of Johann Leonhardt Schrotzberger (1720-1762)<\/strong>, son of Tobias Schrotzberger, to Anna Barbara Eissens in 1751 at St. Laurentius Church in R\u00f6ckingen. (Click here<\/a> to see the entry in the church register … and let me know if you have any better luck interpreting it! )<\/p>\n

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View of R\u00f6ckingen with Saint Laurentius Church in foreground and the Hesselberg mountains in the background<\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n