The Richert Archives

I have been working on what I call the “Richert Archives.” The majority of the collections consists of family letters. The bulk of that consists of letters between my great-grandfather and his contemporaries and his children. The children take over the bulk of the letters after his death in 1938. We are not talking just a few, not dozens, but complete sent and received correspondence between some individuals.

The letters were stored at my grandfather’s house. What appeared to have happen, is when a sibling passed away, grandpa had the garage to store the personal effects and thus the letters stockpiled at his house. When we had to clean out his house, I took possession of the Archives (whoops, forgot to mention the four banker boxes of other printed memorabilia and photos.)  My great-uncle Robert recently passed away and his correspondence passed to me.

After having possession of the Archives for a dozen years and only piecemeal poking at the contents, I am making the concentrated effort to organize them. I won’t bore you with the technical details, but I’m down to two banker boxes to sort and actually realize that I might be in a tunnel. I don’t see any light, but at least I don’t feel I’m in the middle of an endless void.

I’ve finally trained myself to stop reading letters as I sort. It is sooooo tempting to stall and read some correspondence that confirms a family story or brings a new facet of it to life, like a letter drawn by my dad that I recently posted. But then five minutes are lost reading. Except for the German letters.

I did take several years of German in high school and like most Americans, didn’t continue to practice it. Today, the internet and computers make it easier to retain and improve foreign language competency, but it’s ridiculous for me to suggest that not being able to Skype with a native speaker is the reason the only German I can speak is to ask for another beer, (Noch einmal Bier, Bitte?)

But even if I had been an exchange student, moved to Germany, married a German women and had raised dozens of bilingual children, for all the fluency I would have obtained, some of these letters might as well have been written on an Enigma machine. Especially, the 19^th century ones from my great-grandfather’s family. Here, take a look.

I think it will take someone who learned German as their first language, who learned cursive writing, who is ALSO familiar with the older German script to translate these letters. Probably won’t find that on Fiverr. I do hold hope for translating the typewritten German. Perhaps some crowdsourcing project. All those serious science projects have to get boring, a bunch of Germans writing about wheat prices is certainly more exciting.

But, in case YOU find such mundane tidbits exciting, or have already looked at the Reddit front page and need a new way to kill 5 minutes, here is a link to a blog that postsa letter from the Richert Archives. I try to pick something written on that date, but will stretch it to the postmark and sometimes just the same week/month. In that effort, as in this, I am trying to post something daily. And you will see, in that, as well as this, I’m not always successful. But it beats having to actually write a letter.