What happenend in Stargard? The cattle dealers of Jobstrasse

The fascination with the origins of my ancestors preoccupies me with some intensity. Some friends consider my interest borders on obsession. It might be true. Perhaps the reality of being an itinerant man, a man who has moved from city to city, from continent to continent, the reality of rootlessness, calls for a desire to find an anchor, an impulse to hang on to facts of the past. Be that as it may, being aware of the past and the search for roots has given me a sort of sense of clarity, a feeling of certainty that the life one lives, the present one experiences, and the future one seeks, has a purpose beyond the banal.

I have gone as far back as I could researching the origins of my maternal ancestors. They were poor and lived in areas - as far as I could tell without having made the actual effort of searching for birth certificates and the like - areas of Eastern Europe, where poor peasants and country folk lived their lives quietly, as long as pogroms were not the cause of their flight or worse, the end of their lives.

Searching for my paternal roots has taken a rather more urgent purpose, a path with many questions, that have left me only partially satisfied.

My family name, Pless, has been that source of that fascination, that interest bordering on obsession to which I alluded above. The reason is quite simple. My father, of blessed memory, repeated a certain story, namely, that the first Pless ancestor he knew of was a semi nobleman, a Jew who, by virtue of having served faithfully in the vineyard of a nobleman's court, was bestowed a certain degree of nobility. The degree to which this is correct will be difficult to verify. Perhaps records remain in the Pless castle located in Silesia. At least he did receive a certain degree of favor by having worked faithfully in the court of Pless, the principality in Silesia. The history of the Duchy of Pless, later the Principality of Pless, and present-day Pszczyna, Poland, is fascinating in and of itself. It reflects the rapidly changing geopolitical reality of the region, the fast changing landscape of the Prussian hinterlands, the border zones of Central Europe which underwent significant turmoil in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Pless Castle (Polish: Pszczynie, German: Schloss Pless), is a classical-style palace in the city of Pszczyna (former German name: Pless), now in southwestern Poland. Photo: Hons084 / Wikimedia Commons

It turns out, so the narrative goes, that Moses Pless, my great-great grandfather, worked taking care of Prince Heinrich Pless' vineyard. As was the tradition at the time, Jews did not possess surnames. Surnames were forbidden in the region, especially for Jews and other minorities, who enjoyed second-class citizen status in Europe, and were excluded from living within the walls of cities. They peddled in and out of towns using the typical Jewish denominations, such as "Moses-son-of-David", but surnames with legal status were out of the question for Jews. It turns out the Duchy of Pless conferred Moses the last name of the region, Pless, and consequently certain legal status not otherwise afforded to Jews of the region with similar socio-economic position. And thus began the lineage of the Pless family.

Sitting on a horse-drawn carriage at the castle of the Pless Prince Hans Heinrich, the Emperor of Prussia Wilhelm I, probably around 1890

Forward at least 150 years...

A few years ago, perusing a website which dealt with Jews in the diaspora, I found a listing of Plesses in the world. To my surprise I was listed but also were a few other Pless families with Jewish ancestries. Not surprisingly, most of the Plesses in the world are Protestant Christians living in various areas of the western world, especially in the south of the United States, and logically, the descendents of the Pless nobility living in Germany and Austria. Speaking of the heterogeneity of the Pless family tree, as a medical student I had once met a black lady by the name of Hilde Pless. I was shocked to meet her, especially since one of my grandfather's sisters' name was Hilde Pless. I later learned that many Pless families emigrated from Silesia to the southern states of the USA in the 17th and 18th century and probably had slaves who adopted the name of the ladlords, in a way not dissimilar to the fate of my great-great grandfather adopting the name of the house! Back to the listing online... Naturally, that there were Jewish Plesses living in Europe caught my attention readily. I promptly contacted a man of my age, Norman Pless, a well-known architect in Santorini. It didn't take long until we concluded our ancestries encompassed striking parallels.

His ancestors had originated from Stargard. So did mine. His ancestors lived on the Job Strasse. So did mine! Our sleuthing went on and we finally realized our great-great grandparents lived at the same address in this formerly Prussian town, Stargard in Pommern. We realized our ancestors were most likely siblings, a Pless family, cattle dealers, a common profession for Jews who were not integrated or were not involved in peddling.

What followed were a number of meetings between Norman Pless and me, meetings which were full of joy and curiosity. His and my families had lived extraordinary parallels and even though we were not close relatives, we felt we were connected spiritually, and indeed became good friends. He introduced me to his close Pless relatives and eventually we made several trips together within Europe, one in particular to explore our ancestry.

Stargard is now in Poland and it turns out to be a somewhat dreary medium-size town with rows of fast-food restaurants, not particularly well cared for. One can tell that this area of Poland has suffered the consequences of two great wars, shifting political landscapes and years of communist rule, in which towns in the fringes were not particulary tended to. Norman and I, along with other Pless cousins, embarked on a sort of fact-finding adventure, first travelling to northern Germany to see were my father was born, and later to Stargard, Poland, to visit the places were our ancestors had resided, worked, held hands, toiled, loved.

The resulting trip was an unforgettable experience with a band of Pless friends and relatives from Greece, Switzerland, and the USA, interested in roots and origins.

The album of images above was taken at the time of the trip in 2015, a trip to explore the streets and addresses that all of us had found fascinating and the story of our ancestors beguiling. They include photos of post cards which show Stargard in the late 19th, early 20th century. Though the exact street address where our great-great grandparents had lived on the Jobstrasse of Stargard now contain drab constructions, we knew that somehow our destinies had begun precisely there, sometime in the mid 19th century. In one way or another our Pless ancestors had emigrated from the region of the Principality of Pless in Silesia, north to Pomern to the area around Stargard.

Fascinating document showing the addresses of the Pless ancestors in Stargard

The quest to find roots has raised more questions than answers, a perfectly predictable outcome. A curious mind will not be easily satisfied. One thing is for sure: rootlessness is merely a considerably unsettling mental and emotional state, which can at least be partially appeased by watering the tree, the tree of life, hoping the roots will follow suit. In doing so I have learned valuable lessons, met distant relatives I have cherished, and walked on surfaces, touched trees, seen buildings which might have been the reality of old ancestors who carried the genes that comprise my reality today. And in doing so, perhaps in a very modest way, I got a bit closer to comprehending an infinitesimal fraction of the great mystery of life.

Special thanks to Norman Pless for helping with editorial comments, for his friendship, for his being a part of my life, for being my "distant cousin", for just being Norman.