The Bratnobers in Europe Before 1854

In Native American traditions there’s a belief that our actions are responsible for the well being of seven generations before us and seven generations after us. Going back seven generations along the Bratnober thread, for most current Bratnober descendants, we arrive in the 1700’s in Austria at the lives of the couple who, according to Augustus, started it all--Anton Steinhofer and the lovely but mysterious Miss Semm. What can we possibly know about them? Are they unreachable from our utterly different time and way of life? Almost. Yet the new-fangled internet itself may give us one intriguing clue! Augustus opens his book this way: "My great Grandfather (on my father’s side) was born in a small town in Austria (1734)...he married a Miss Semm...his name was Anton Steinhofer when in Austria." The best website that we’ve found for searching far back into European ancestry is provided by the Church of Jesus of Latter Day Saints at http://www.familysearch.org. Their website provides searches through a vast array of old European church records. Here we find literally just one Anton Steinhofer in all of Austria in the early 1700’s as follows: "Anton Steinhofer Christening: 10 Jan 1739 Gainfam, Niederoesterreich Austria" Have we found him? Did Augustus write 1739 and his daughter who typed our book from his handwriting think that it looked like "1734"? Was Anton christened at the age of five? Workable hypotheses but, alas, we will probably never know. Miss Semm, of course, is even harder to find because we have no first name for her. Augustus relates that Anton Steinhofer was taken prisoner to Prussia while a soldier for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When the war was over he was released and he remained in Berlin, perhaps to marry Miss Semm in about 1763, a wise choice for which we all commend him. To accomplish this he had to renounce the Queen of Austria "according to the laws of that time. Thus he became a Prussian... He held some kind of position about the Royal Castle (in Berlin) for the rest of his life." (Autobiography of ACB) We’ve searched further without luck for their marriage in the Latter Day Saints database. But with or without such a record, here begins the history of the Bratnobers in Prussia--including a brief period of time when they used the name Bratnauer before the siblings were born. The introduction of the name Bratnauer occurs, according to Augustus, when Anton has to change his surname in order to renounce the Austro-Hungarian Empire. My father, Harry Bratnober Jr., used to say that Bratnauer and Bratnober mean "turning meat over" and that Anton probably cooked or prepared meat in some vast castle kitchen. However humble Anton’s work may have been "about the Royal Castle" in Berlin, this was probably not your average castle. In fact, it must have been the castle of none other than Frederick the Great. One doubts that anyone else was allowed a Royal Castle while Frederick ruled and expanded the Prussian Empire from 1740 to 1786. We can only wish that Anton had written an autobiography too! Lacking this, it may still be worth a minute to digress on the subject of Frederick the Great, if only to know something of the atmosphere in which the Bratnauers lived in feudal Europe.
Frederick the Great is often presented by historians as a role model for the "enlightened despot" - one of the great oxymorons in political science. But Frederick really did have his aspects of genuine enlightenment. For example he composed orchestral music well enough that his music is still played in concert halls today. How many despots do you know who are fine classical composers? He gave an audience to no less a man than Johann Sebastian Bach in 1748 and, according to legend, Frederick himself tossed off the brief theme on his flute, which Bach then converted into one of his most magnificent works,	Frederick the Great by Andy Warhol 1972
A Musical Offering. This offering, of course, was made by Bach to Frederick, and Bach undoubtedly did all the bowing and scraping before the enlightened despot. Frederick, however, had his very considerable dark side and many people, especially in the countries surrounding Prussia, paid with their lives for his despotic vision when his flute was on the shelf. He doubled the size of Prussia during his reign, by outright conquest, and left behind plain statements of his despotic reasoning for every student of political science to wonder at:
A well conducted government must have an underlying concept so well integrated that it could be likened to a system of philosophy. All actions taken must be well reasoned, and all financial, political and military matters must flow towards one goal, which is the strengthening of the state and the furthering of its power. However, such a system can flow but from a single brain, and this must be that of the sovereign. Laziness, hedonism and imbecility, these are the causes which restrain princes in working at the noble task of bringing happiness to their subjects . . . Just as it would have been impossible for Newton to arrive at his system of attractions if he had worked in harness with Leibnitz and Descartes, so a system of politics cannot be arrived at and continued if it has not sprung from a single brain. . . a Prince who governs personally, who has formed his [own] political system, will not be handicapped when occasions arise where he has to act swiftly, for he can guide all matters towards the end which he has set for himself . . . (from A Political Testament, by Frederick the Great of Prussia) Here we find a clear statement of the legendary Prussian "work ethic" and with it the sheer madness of a demagogue who channels this ethos solely to the purpose of "strengthening the state and furthering its power." Two hundred years later, carried to its extreme, this Berlin "philosophy" would destroy Europe and nearly half the world. Yet the Bratnobers always managed to escape somehow, usually after being taken prisoner--first Anton from the Queen of Austria (who could not exactly have been Mother Theresa if he renounced her for Frederick the Great) and then the whole family from a fortified city in a still feudal Europe to America, and then Augustus Charles from the Confederates and their tobacco warehouse prison in Virginia. Anton (Steinhofer) Bratnauer and Miss Semm brought forth three sons and one daughter in Berlin. The eldest was August Martin, grandfather of the five siblings, who changed his name to Bratnober for reasons unexplained. He was a schoolteacher while the siblings were children, and the neighborhood school was simply a room right in the Bratnober’s three-room house. Augustus relates that his grandfather loved to tell them anecdotes about his early life with "great reverence for the king and the nobles." But the world was changing and the siblings were forming their own youthful views in a post-Revolutionary world. Augustus
Early Bratnober Family Chart leading down to the Five Siblings. Click image to enlarge and print.	recalls simply: "I was born (1842) with a dislike for aristocracy and the established church." Augustus is even called before the town minister with his parents, for his dislike of rote memorization from the Bible, but the minister "lays it all to the Devil" and his parents suffer no further reprisal. Here is a chart of the Bratnober Family from Anton and Miss Semm down to the five siblings, based on the information in Augustus book. The Latter Days Saints website shows births, marriages and christenings for a few more Bratnobers, notably the Jacobi children of Johanna Bratnober, who Augustus also mentions. But lacking further information about these few other European descendants, we shall confine ourselves here to outlining the information that Augustus provides, which leads directly to the five siblings: Before the years when the five siblings were born (1842-1852), the Bratnobers had moved from Berlin and settled in the town of Custrine in Prussia. Here all five of the Bratnober children were born. Their father, who was also named August Martin Bratnober, was a harness maker and his wife, Maria Eva Merten, was a
midwife. They were married in Custrine, Prussia in 1840. Amazingly (and thanks to the wonderful care and generosity of descendant Edna Medd of Canada) we still have pictures of both of them--the Bratnober parents who brought their children to America! August Martin and Maria Eva Bratnober. Custrine is an ancient European fortified city and military outpost, which once had huge brick walls all around and which lies about seventy miles east of Berlin. It was clearly an important outpost for protecting the Prussian Empire to the east in the days of Anton Steinhofer. Augustus notes that the family lived just outside the great, fortified walls in a simple, and apparently friendly agricultural neighborhood. Though times were hard, and the Bratnobers quite poor, peace prevailed while they lived there. Long after the Bratnobers were gone, Custrine became the site of a major clash between the Germans and Russians at the very end of World War II. A large Russian contingent took refuge in Custrine while the Germans held their ground in Seelow, just to the south. There is even a military strategy video game that you can find on the internet called "Kustrin vs.Seelow" about the ensuing battle. Both of these towns are described, much earlier of course, in the Augustus book.

We are fortunate to have an enormous old leather-bound atlas (Rand McNally, 1912) that once belonged to Harry Bratnober Sr. In this atlas we can see that the city was, by 1912, called "Kustrin" and that it was still well within the borders of what this atlas now calls "The German Empire." Kustrin was in the Brandenburg region of Germany in 1912 along with the various other towns that Augustus mentions: The name of the town of Kustrin is even circled by someone in our old Bratnober atlas, in the index, where the Rand McNally editor stoically labels the town as follows: "The Fortress of Kustrin which protects Berlin on east. Was captured by France 1804-1816."	Berlin and Kustrin from the 1912 Rand McNally atlas of Harry Bratnober Sr. Click image for enlarged view.
Jumping forward now to a current National Geographic atlas we see today (2002) that Kustrin has become Kostrzyn, and that it lies just inside of Poland! Geo-politically the region today looks likes this:
Modern map of Kostrzyn, Poland and northeast Germany. Click image for enlarged view.	There is actually quite a good website on the internet about the city of Kostrzyn http://www.kostrzyn.um.gov.pl that would be even better if one of us could just speak a little Polish. The site, however, indicates that an English translation is forthcoming. Not withstanding, we can still glean a fair amount about Kostrzyn from their wonderful images, new and old. And so by the magic of the computer here are just a few, which we borrow with credit to their website:
Click photos for enlarged view. Apparently it is a fairly prosperous town today with a long history going way back into the Middle Ages. Be sure to read the wonderful family details and descriptions of daily life near the fortified city in the beginning of the Augustus book, if you haven’t already done so. The Isaac Webb, 1850 - the ship the Bratnobers came over to America on in 1854 - Oil painting, by J. Hughes, 27" x 41", in the possession of India House, Hanover Square, New York. Courtesy of: http://www.geocities.com/mppraetorius/com-is.htm And this is what we know about the Bratnobers before 1854!