Deb's Notes:  When I first found http://www.netzekreis.de/ortschaften/wiesental/wiesental.html, I tried to figure out what it really was saying using both AltaVista (http://world.altavista.com/) and a German national, who made a great effort, all to no avail.  However, since I had so many questions, I decided to get a "hired gun" and go with a professional.  And, thanks to the internet, did I find a great PROFESSIONAL.  Ann not only translated the page, but also corresponded with the author and owner, Mr. Karl-Heinz Mattheus to get some clarifications.  So if you need a translation of German done by a genealogist, be sure to contact Ann C. Sherwin, German Translation Service, 1918 Medfield Road, Raleigh, NC 27607 tel 919-851-9281 fax 919-233-4810 http://www.asherwin.com! Thanks are also due Mr. Mattheus, who kindly provided the pictures.  

The village has gone by various names over the years. It was originally known as Piotrowo in Polish, Petersdorf in German. For a long time it was also called Prossekel, a name that allegedly had something to do with dust or sand. The name Wiesental did not arise until recent times. No founding decree exists, but according to a notation in the Posen Grodbuch (court record), the village originated soon after the 1593 founding of Gross Drensen. Since it is mentioned as already existing in the mortgage proceedings of 1595, we must assume 1594 as the year of origin. One might surmise that the first mayor was named Peter, but it is much more likely that the name refers to Petrus Czarnkowski, manor lord of Filehne from 1592 to 1594. Around 1600, the mayor was Martin Kropp.

In 1632 the village already had 37 houses, and the inhabitants included a pastor, a mayor, an innkeeper, and 16 farmers. In the inventory of 1653 it is noted that the mayor had two hides of land, and that the pastor, another mayor, the innkeeper, and 14 farmers each had one hide. There was also a tar pit there.

Lake at Wiesental 

In 1773 there is no longer any mention of the mayors’ farms in the classification records, but it is noted that a mayor’s farm had gone bankrupt about 50 years earlier and that it had been made into a small manorial farm adjacent to the main estate. So the tenant of this farm was village mayor at the same time and managed three hides of land. On this roughly 640 hectares lived 227 people. The size of the area is easily explained by the fact that the soil was very light and sandy and therefore supported fewer people than good farming and grazing land would.

In the course of time, several enterprises in the surrounding area were incorporated into Wiesenthal. Neu Hochzeit is cited as early as 1653, and in conjunction with it a tavern and a butcher are mentioned. In more recent times there were five farms and several houses there. East of the village, near two small lakes, lay the Petznik subdivision with 10 farms. Other farms belonging to Wiesenthal were Waldfrieden, Springwerder, and Drageschneidemuehl, all three more or less south of town. Niekammer lists a total of 24 business with 19 to 69 hectares of land and mentions a farm with 101 hectares. Of the farmers mentioned in 1653, the only families that still had descendants in the town in 1930 were the Schievelbeins and the Schmidts. The official statistics in 1930 were 2641.5 hectares and a population of 611.

Fritz Zander’s inn and general store (top), school (bottom left), church (bottom right)]

More pictures from the area.  The car in front of the Zander Inn

Wiesental is said to have had a chapel soon after its founding, and in 1632 there was also a pastor living there. The village of Zuetzer, which belonged to the Schloppe district, had long been part of the Wiesental parish.

In 1773 a pastor is no longer mentioned, so presumably the village was served by the Eichberg parish at that time. In the last few decades, the town has been served by the Hochzeit parish in Neumark.

The refugee wagon trains that set out too late, in January 1945, were overtaken and sent back by the Russians. In the village, the church, the school, and 17 residential buildings, as well as other structures, were destroyed.  A total of 47 people were reported to have died in the village or in flight, but this figure may have included several refugees from other places. Only six displaced persons were listed, none of whom returned. 

Some comments from Ann:  

1. The Netzekreis is a district in a former German-speaking territory, and it appears the site is maintained by a group interested in the history of the area. Karl-Heinz Mattheus is the vice-chair of the board of directors and owner of the WebSite. The site http://www.netzekreis.de has a page on the history of each city in the district. In the menu at the left, if you click on Fam.-Forschung (family research) and then in the screen that appears, click on Zur Suche, you will get a search engine for their ancestor database. The fields are in this order Last name / maiden name / first name / birthplace / last place of residence. When you've entered what you can, click on "Suchen" (search).

2. I eliminated the umlauts in the German place names, so you wouldn’t have to contend with the special characters in HTML. Many people assume it’s OK to ignore umlauts, but it’s considered a misspelling. Instead, they have to be replaced with the letter e. For example Zützer becomes Zuetzer.

3. I located the site on the Web where you must have found name Przesieki associated with Prossekel: http://www.polishroots.org/genpoland/wie_r.htm I also noticed that Wielen, mentioned on this site in parentheses after Przesieki, was another spelling of Filehne, which is also mentioned on the Wiesental page I translated. One of my gazetteers also lists this, but as a separate town from Petersdorf/Piotrowo (Wiesental and Prossekel are not listed).

4. Also, on the Netzekreis site, if you click on “Landkarten” (maps), you get two maps. The bottom one lists cities on the right, including “WIESENTAL-PRZESIEKI.” So if they’re not all the same place, they’re at least very close together. 

5. The website is in modern German, but original terms for the old documents were used, such as Grodbuch (court record), Gründungsprivileg (founding decree), and Verpfändungsprotokoll (mortgage proceedings). These are loose translations, because there are no exact English counterparts. But leaving them in German would communicate nothing to English-speaking readers.

6. What is a "Hide"?  Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines hide as “an old English unit of land measure varying from 60 to 120 acres (24 to 49 hectares).”  Webster’s Third International tells a little more background.  A hectare  = 100 ares, a unit of area in the metric system today.

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