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B L O G S P O T
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The following blog posts regard progress in writing ‘Wandervögel: A Prussian Family’s Passage Through Leipzig.’ They were first published on Facebook with the aim being to share news with family, friends and others who 'Liked' what I was doing.
For interested readers' convenience, I now share all 100+ posts here (see those pages linked in the lower right column).
After all, as social media guru @GuyKawasaki writes "of all content, you should share your own blog posts."
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The Five Phases of Chapter Writing
(Dec. 23)
What actually goes into writing a chapter? And why go to all the bother? The joy is in creating something uniquely original, even more so when its praised for being a useful contribution to the academic and historical community.
What's in a Name?
(Dec. 13)
My grandmother's family name was 'Tyralla.' She was born in Leipzig in 1907, although her name doesn’t sound particularly German. Neither Silesian, for that matter. A discussion carried out on a website devoted to the study of names at: Onomastik suggested it may refer to one originally being from Tyrol, ‘alla’ for instance being one of the many suffixes appended in order to Germanise a root name. “Many Italians emigrated several centuries ago to Upper Silesia to work there."
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Sources of Inspiration
(Dec. 2)
Last Sunday I watched a short interview with a musician whose songwriting inspired me a great deal to be creative, namely, Gary Numan. He was talking to the British Film Institute about his sci-fi interests and spoke of the influence a movie called ‘Bladerunner’ had over him, before explaining:
"It got me thinking about my own grandparents, strangely enough, and the fact that they have all of these memories and all this experience and it’s just gone when they die."
I sat there in near disbelief! His fans already know he wrote ‘Time to Die’ based on a line the late Rutger Hauer utters towards the end of the film. But I didn’t know it was also meant to relate to his own antecedents.
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Message in my Mailbox
(Nov. 27)
Back in the summer while I and the family traipsed around Iceland hoping not to be stranded by the eruptions at Vatnajökull, a message dropped in my mailbox from Gerard Tyralla.
He found me via my project website and not surprisingly turned out to be a distant relative of my great grandfather, Paul Tyralla. Once acquainted, I asked him if he could obtain any photos of Paul's family since we have precious few. Imagine my surprise then when last week this photo arrived of Paul's sister and his then 91 year old mother in late 1932. Gerard is also translating his thesis about Paul's hometown; Radstein in Silesia.
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Kudos from D.C.
(Nov. 23)
"Stumbled upon your wonderful project this morning…It is really lively...Have you found a publisher?"
Thanks to these kind words and at the suggestion of Nora Jean Levin in Washington DC, my research project and book now has a Facebook Page!
MORE BLOGS:
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- 2021 (6 posts)
- 2020 (5 posts)
- 2019 (12 posts)
- 2018 (12 posts)
- 2017 (18 posts)
- 2016 (8 posts)
- 2015 (22 posts)
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