On the Lellmann Heritage Trail

August 27, 2021

There are so many tragic, heartbreaking stories in Europe’s not so distant past. You can’t possibly follow all the threads, but while we’re passing through the Mosel we decided to tug at one of them and explore the history of the little known Lellmann Diaspora.

The historical record is weak on this sad saga, but it begins in the tiny neighboring villages of Kobern-Gondorf and Lehman, in the lower Mosel not far upriver from Koblenz.

Our Garmins and the excellent signage keep us on track. Excitement builds as we anticipate what we’ll find here. We’ll be watching for historical records of these villages’ darkest days: commemorative plaques, homes with historical records written on the walls, that sort of thing.

Korben-Gondorf is a quiet place today, just off the main road enough to protect its character. It’s easy to imagine what it must have been like before the dark days of the great Lellmann purge. Streets lined with half-timbered homes like this housing multigenerational households, goats and geese in the yard, maybe a cow in the basement, laundry drying on the line. A western Shanghai-la.

In Kobern-Gondorf. Homes like this were probably crammed full of lucky Lellmanns.

Another utopian scene to imagine, with Lellmanns sitting on their front stoop, taking a pipe and calling out to their cousins next door.

We don’t find anything documenting The Event here, but our imaginations fill in the gaps. We move on to neighboring Lehman to take another tug at the thread.

We find much the same story in Lehman, formerly known as Lellmann. In its day I imagine the entire village was packed dense with Lellmanns, or perhaps packed with dense Lellmans. We should have dug deeper and found the village cemetery, but it would be too heartbreaking to find that all the Lellmanns had perhaps been uprooted and reinterred in unmarked graves in the woods, or worse.

In Lehman, the historical name for the village when it was settled a thousand years ago. I imagine before the great purge it was renamed as Lellmann but has since been restored to its deeper roots.

So what dispossessed the no longer lucky Lellmanns from their little Eden long ago? Local legend has it that the story begins with the good Count von Leyen and his glorious small palace Oberburg, open for the free use of the entire greater Lellmann clan to gather, make merry, imbibe perhaps too heavily of the famous Lellmann Riesling-Classic, and have sport with each other’s husbands and wives.

The good Count died in good time, as will happen; and his estate passed on to his mad nephew Donald the Orange, so named for his peculiar hair and skin tone. Little is known now about Donald’s background, but he is reputed to have looked so unlike the other members of the clan that rumors of his heritage were regularly whispered and sniggered behind hands.

One evening, sprawled out on the floor in a Riesling-Classic stupor, Donald awoke to find he was being mutilated by a red squirrel playing with his privates, perhaps thinking that he had found one of his own kind due to Donald’s curious skin tone. Enraged, Donald in his madness came to believe that he had been set up by one of those accursed sniggling relatives of his and set about to rid the villages of all Lellmanns. It didn’t help matters that Donald was a sufferer of the rare but apparently heditary condition of sciurophobia, or fear of squirrels.

Many of the Lellmanns were captured, shackled upside down to the damp, mildewed tower walls of Oberburg Palace and left to pass their few remaining days in unimaginable misery. From time to time Mad Donald would enter the park tower, splash a bit of Lellmann Riesling-Classic into their parched mouths, and walk out in uproarious laughter. Mad indeed!

Oberburg today looks so peaceful - just another of the thousands of such tourist draws you pass by in Europe, little suspecting the horrors that once occurred here.

Others found refuge in this religious structure, squirreled away in the attic and cellar hidden under straw. Eventually, once the Mad Leyman finally passed on the survivors came out to see the light of day again, bred like squirrels, and began the important work of repopulating their villages. But it was never the same.

The last refuge of the remaining Lellmanns, living in the shadows here until the Mad Donald finally passed on from alcohol poisoning.

And the remaining Lellmanns, those driven from their homes in the infamous Lellmann Diaspora? They succeeded in skulking through the woods to the nearby village of Löf where they took refuge in the hotel there. Kept from harms way they remained hidden in laundry shafts until they could be shipped downriver in the dark of night to Koblenz, where they scattered to the corners of the earth like straws in the wind.

In Löf: the humble Hotel Lellmann, renamed to honor its heroic role in history but otherwise little changed since the days when it harbored fleeing Lellmanns in its laundry chutes.

Paying homage to the beneficent hotel and the sad Lellmann saga, we took lunch at the table out front, enjoying an excellent mushroom soup and flammkuchen.

We’re delighted to see that the famous Lellmann Riesling-Classic is still on offer, and must have a taste for ourselves.

Directly across the way we watch a ship glide up the Mosel and do our best to imagine this scene from a century ago.

Good health and good luck to all Lellmanns, wherever they may be!

And who knows where those dispersed Lellmanns landed, but it is believed that at least one of them is in hiding somewhere in the Pacific Northwest under the thin disguise of a slightly altered name, doing his best to rid his garden of squirrels one pesky varmint at a time.

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Rich FrasierA heartbreaking story of tragic proportions!
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2 years ago

Keith KleinHi,
Er, what kind of mushrooms were in that soup?
Cheers,
Keith
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2 years ago

Scott AndersonTo Keith KleinWell that could explain a lot, couldn’t it?
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2 years ago

Scott AndersonTo Rich FrasierFor sure. Painful, but I was glad to be tipped off to it because it’s such a curious story. You might recognize this character btw, or his partner Andrea. They’ve lived quite near your old neighborhood for many years.
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2 years ago

Andrea BrownThat German car gives the whole story a new twist.
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2 years ago

Scott AndersonTo Andrea BrownAstute! I’d missed that connection, and miss Old Paint.
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2 years ago

Andrea BrownTo Scott AndersonHonestly. My face hurts from laughing.
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2 years ago

Bruce LellmanIf I ever want to laugh from now on all I have to do is remember the phrase, ".... make sport with each other's husbands and wives."
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2 years ago

Tricia GrahamI think the nephew’s descendants moved to Florida
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2 years ago

Bruce LellmanTo Scott AndersonOld Paint was such a good car because there must have been some Lellmanns involved in its design, manufacturing and/or assembly. Must have been.
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2 years ago

Scott AndersonTo Bruce LellmanEasily could have been. It’s a German make, after all.
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2 years ago