Family History of the Village of Wallern (Volary)
By webmaster on Jul 7, 2007 in Travel-and-Leisure
Author by : Charles Nigl
I am writing this article for the benefit of any families in the USA, who may have their roots in the village of Wallern,Bohemia. While spending time in Germany I came across the curious book, Tirol in Bohemerwald, authored by Bruno Sitter. The book is no longer in print, and only a few copies are known to exist. Mr. Sitter describes how in the 1300′s an
entire village of Tirolean Germans were transplanted in the wilds of the Bohemian forest. For over 600 hundred years these
Alpine peoples lived in this corner of Bohemia. However with the end of WWII, they were forced to leave by the Communist
Government,because they were still too ethnically German.
The village was known and recognized as highly unusual by
travelers thru this region, because the Alpine Germans had
constructed their homes in the manner they had been taught,back in the Alps. The entire village seemed to be out of place because of this fact. The village is today known by its Czech name of Volary. Originally the idea of transplanting these Germans to the Bohemian Forest was to bring their skill of artifically inseminating cattle to the area. The Alpine peoples had learned centuries before, that on land that sloped at + or
– 15 degrees, it was nearly impossible for large cattle to
reproduce under their own powers. Therefore the Alpine Germans had developed a method of collecting the seed of the male cow
(Bull) and introducing it into the female cow’s reproductive
organs. This may be why the village was called Wallern, which means in English, “Whale learning”. Since the village was hundreds of miles from any ocean, even the name seems quite
unusual.
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Charles Nigl is a History Major,graduated from the University |
[tags]Wallern,Oshkosh,Tirol, Connection[/tags]
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