FAMILY HISTORY…  The search for roots

Throughout my teen years I had spent countless hours recording and writing down the stories of my grandparents and older relatives whose life horizons were predictably shorter than my own.  Aside from enjoying their company, these elders were a constant source of interesting information and richness that had affected the lives of my parents, myself and of my community. The records and photos they shared with me now form a treasure house of material that would have otherwise been lost forever. 

As a very young child, I had an unexplainably intense curiosity about why my great grand parents had immigrated to America from their native lands, mostly Germany.  But my desire for information was frequently frustrated by the lack of information available about them.  As a young father, the presentation of ROOTS on television in the early 70s inspired my own imagination. Not so much because of its rich history of the black experience in Africa and America, although this was fascinating to me too.  I became aware that Alex Haley's story was no more interesting than my own family story - or any family's story - especially to the present generation whose legacy was being described.  I attempted to write my family history, only to realize that at that time I simply didn't have enough to make an interesting story.  So I began a determined quest to explore the lives that had made mine possible.  And having spent so much life energy on understanding the present in relationship to ones past, I have gained tremendous insights into my own psyche and how my family had evolved in relation to the social environment.  While I recognize that many others do not share my own enthusiasm for personal history to find meaning, and therefore do not include it as an integral part of my life purpose coaching, I encourage those who wish to do so for their own personal development.  But in the course of finding my own roots, I began to appreciate other elements of my own psychic life that were to emerge in mid life.

The search to find our family's roots in Germany coincided with other unexpected events.  After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, communication with East Germany became possible for the first time since World War II.  Suddenly "synchronicities" (a term coined by Carl Jung to indicate a meaningful coincidence) began to aid my quest.  After having searched for over thirty years to locate the village where my great grandfather had originated, I suddenly (with the assistance of a new friend) discovered it in some local church records in my hometown, to my great joy and astonishment.  This breakthrough led me immediately to the map of the former East Germany to find the small village of Rossla, south of the Harz Mountains.  I began to write letters to the mayor and village parson and to inquire about any records that might be available about my ancestors.  Over the course of several months, and numerous exchanges of letters, I was able to finally trace the various branches of my family back three centuries. For the amateur genealogist this is the reward of a long, often thankless journey.

In 1995 the mayor of the tiny village invited me and my family to visit there on the occasion of the 1,000 -Year Jubilee, to be celebrated the following year.  In attempting to arrange a large group to go over with me, I discovered that my enthusiasm was not widely shared or even of interest to most of my family.  But I eventually went to Germany with my father, daughter, and two cousins for what would become a trip we would all remember our entire lives - a marker event.   In the months leading up to our trip, I continued to study and to feed my growing interest in psychology.  I was reading as many as twenty books simultaneously.  I had become a serious student of German history, religion, literature, philosophy, and of course, psychology, especially those that focused upon my own life search.  I was now becoming very comfortable and familiar with Jung's writing that had earlier eluded me.  Beth often scolded me for having the equivalent of two or three graduate degrees, but "nothing to show for it" (i.e. no degrees).  But that had not been important for me.  I was determined to learn and master the vast array of information that was important for my own growth, and not to merely for the fulfillment of course work toward degree requirements.  I had become a true life-long learner; to obtain a Ph.D. in subjects of interest to Greg.  And I approached it with the passion and discipline I only wish I had in my university days.

One day, in my preparation for the trip to Germany, I was reading Jung's Collected Works 10 and discovered a little-known essay he had written in 1936, entitled "Wotan."  I recognized this word as the ancient Teutonic war god, having read about it in other sources concerning Germany mythology and religion..  In that little-known essay, Jung shared his growing concern about the effects of Nazism in bordering Germany and about the underlying causes of the growing and alarming Hitler phenomenon.  In this compelling article, Jung suggested that the root causes of the were attributable to an "archetypal infection" of the German nation, by a messianic leader who himself had become psychotically seized by the old German god of war and fury.  While this was interesting on its own accord, one sentence in Jung's essay hit me like a lightening bolt.  For in it he mentioned the name of the mountain that lay less than a mile across a river and valley from the village of my ancestors I had only recently discovered.  They lived for generations in the literal shadow of this mountain and myth.

The Kyffhauser Mountain, little known even to most Germans, is nonetheless the subject of many writers in German literature as personifying something unique about the German character.  The poet Heinrich Heine, called it the "most German of all mountains".  Its hollow caverns, according to the legend, hold the ancient myths that were the subject of veneration and of the psychology of the peasants who trod the soil of nearby meadows.  Jung briefly mentioned the medieval German Kaiser, Barbarossa, who according to the legend, sleeps in the mountain, awaiting the day when the ravens cease to fly, at which time he will call his sleeping legions to arms to save the nation.  At that time, I had no idea how much the legend Jung mentioned only in passing was a central and controlling mythical backdrop of the village from which my family had sprung 120 years earlier, when they left to come to the new world.  And I also realized that while they had left the old country, the land of their birth had not left them.  Nor would it leave succeeding generation. 

I had discovered my own family roots extending deep into the soil of central Germany.  In June of 1996, I visited both the Kyffhauser as well as the village of my ancestors, to witness and participate in the parade and celebration which would not likely be repeated again for centuries.  I had connected, in a powerful and undeniable way, with my own history - and the fulfillment of my own destiny, at least the aspect of being the family historian.  I gained an understanding not only of the historical and geographic roots of my family, but the psychological roots as well.  I was beginning to discover the collective shadow that lived inside me.  It was the collective shadow cast by the old mountain on all the inhabitants of the land, and their descendants, for generations to come. 

Confronting one's shadow is an essential task along the road to wholeness, for those who seek to travel it. It certainly has been for me on my own journey.

"We have but two lasting legacies to bequeath our children….one is roots, the other is wings."

Myth of Barbarossa, who is said to still live with his legions within the Kyffhauser.

Statue of  sleeping Barbarossa at the base of the Kyffhauser.

Teutonic warrior image on the Kyffhauser Monument

The beginning of the long parade through Rossla on its 1,000 year
Jubilee.  Many residents of the village of 3200 participated.

Teutonic War God on
Kyffhauser Monument