Emmershausen History - The Franzen´s Grave

 

Source : 

Foto CID Regional Studies 

Photo-Document from 6th September 2005 - Photo-Excursion to Weilrod-Emmershausen

THE FRANZEN´S GRAVE

The Grave decoration changes from time to time it´s design. It is said, that "Loving Woman from the Village take care for the Grave and the Memory"

Portrait Franzes Grave

The Legend of Franzen´s Grave

Source :

The Franze´s Grave Tale might be understood as the "Philosophical Brain and Head Story" of the Emmershausen Village during the 1960ies and 1970ies. 

The Grave is localized about  50º22`25“ N  8º 21´50“ O

During his school time at Emmershausen Basic School the author received the following version of the tale by his teacher, Mr. Rudolph Wagner :

• "A son from an Emmershausen family named Franz found luckily a working place at the Audenschmiede Buderus Iron Foundry during the 18th / 19th Century thanks to the intermediation of his father. But the young worker was trapped then there by his boss when he stole something at the iron foundry factory and was send return to his father. 
• His father entered in contact with the boss and intermediated for his son, that the latter never would do that again. In consecuence the Audenschmiede iron foundry company accepted the son again as worker, taking his father´s word as guarantee.
•  But then Emmershausen son again stole something at Buderus and then was thrown out finally. His father, who saw that his son had broken his father´s promise, led his son into the Wehrholz- Forest upside Emmershausen, handed a shovel to him and let him dig a hole. The father then beated to death his son and buried him inside the grave."

Source : CID Institute Natural History and Family Museum Documents

Between the geographical location of the Franzen´s Grave and a ground property of the Weil Family at Emmershausen exists a significant correlation. 

At an here unknown date the ruderal area HUTUNG UNTER DEN BUCHEN became part of the Weil Families ground areas at Emmershausen. 

During the 1960ies the so called "UMLEGUNG" - an administrative reorganization of spatial dispersed agricultural properties - should help peasants to have all their territory in one site to avoid fragmentation of ground and to make ground management more rational.

The Fallow-Land Plot during the 1960ies was rented out or sold by it´s owner, Mrs. Maria Klinge-Weil, to the Oberursel Kerstan-Thies family who constructed there a wooden "Pavillion" and planted pine trees, probably for the later production of natural pine tree needle extracts based on alcohol ("Franzbranntwein"). Mrs. Charlotte Kerstan was an recognized ophthalmologist, recipient of the Federal Cross of Merit and in 1993, together with her spouse, the passionate landscape-architect Mr. Tistou Kerstan, founders of the Tistou and Charlotte Kerstan Stiftung.  

The couple and it´s whole family developed a deep and tight friendship to the Zanger-Weil family, with frequent dinners at the Weil family house at Emmershäuser Hütte, meetings at their Weil River Meadow and long hiking walks through the Taunus Mountains, especially to sites of historic interest selected by Rosemarie Zanger, who studied the regional mineral mining history and the celtic hill grave sites. The tight friendship was continued also after 1969, when the Zanger-Weil family moved towards Weilmünster and lasted even longer when Charlotte and Egon Kerstan had already moved from Oberursel to Hauner-Murg in South German Black Forest. 

The Oberursel Kerstan family, who maintained due to their professional interrelations widespread contacts to the Rhein-Main and Vordertaunus Higher Society, became during the 1970ies an informal contact bridge about the later as "RAF"-Activities classified "paramilitary" or "other" operations of "weapon using persons with political concepts". 

The Kerstans connected the Zanger family to the german lawyer and politician Walther Leisler Kiep to resolve a broken bill of exchange transaction with the venezuelan import company "Consolidada / Tecnica Nuclear" in Caracas for Optical Equipment delivered by the Zanger & Söhne OHG Weilmünster (see : Kronberg Shooting 30.11.1974). At 30.7.1977 the Oberursel housing neighbour of the Kerstan family was allegedly assassinated by "RAF terrorists" (see : Oberursel shooting 30.7.1977). A suspected relationship might have existed between the the Ponto shooting and the Heinz Herbert Karry shooting (Seckbach shooting 11.5.1981). During the 1980ies the Kerstan family invited Rosemarie Zanger to coffee parties where she entered in contact with Mrs. Gertrud Herrhausen (Bad Homburg bomb blast 30.11.1989).

...

Recently, in other circumstrances, the theory ist studied, that the Franzen´s Grace is the burial or assassination site of the family foundation member Carl Wilhelm Weil, dissappeared and allegedly died in a "Giessen Hospital" in November 1926.

Carl Wilhelm, employee of a Schmitten watertube supplier, was told that he often walked through the local wood between Emmershausen and Steinfischbach, where his mothers family lived. In ignorance of his russian descendence and his father from St. Petersburg the village people supposed that he might be a citizen from France, the locally besides Russia most known other foreign country. People from France in the local german slang are named "Franzmann". 

That theory is fortified later through the so called comunal "Umlegung" and the fact, that other worthful plots have been taken away as family-owned ground and been replaced by the mostly worthless plot "Hutung unter den Buchen". "Umlegen", to turn over, means in the local slang also "laying someone down by killing him".