The geographical history of Europe often blows my mind. Areas, regions and even entire countries are seemingly juggled between various governments, with borders being drawn and redrawn at will. Both sides of my family have been impacted by the geographical history of the land which is now known as Latvia.
Unlike Ivnia, the estate owned by my maternal side of the family, which I wrote about here, Nurmhusen, the estate owned by my father’s family, has had quite the positive change in fortune. I’ve written previously about Nurmhusen here. Since my last visit in 2017, the estate has seen major
Friedrich-Georg Otto Heinrich von Fircks; fourth child and eldest son of Peter Julius Otto von Fircks. Known to his family as Frigo, he was by all accounts a sweet boy and a charming young man. My aunt, the eldest of the children, described Frigo as always happy, always cooperative and
Those of you who read my blog might have seen this post that I wrote about my grandmother, who was born on a Thursday. I compared her life to the prediction in the nursery rhyme “Monday’s child”, which suggests that those born on a Thursday have far to go. The
The Corona Virus, or COVID 19 as we are being told to call it, is everywhere. And when I say everywhere I mean reports of it are on every news channel and social media site. It is now officially a pandemic. Contagious by nature, the fear of it is contagious
„Gone, gone, the damage done“ are lyrics from a Neil Young song and, while the song is about drug addicts, the words could also describe the feeling my father, and I’m sure other Baltic Germans, felt when their properties were confiscated. I wrote about their estate, Nurmhusen, here and described