I am pleased to introduce a new guest blogger to My Search for the Past. Last week I mentioned how Dr. Ingemar Nåsell, a Swede, found me through my blog. I had no idea that I had cousins in Sweden as the only family I knew of there was my granduncle, Kurt Lindner, who had no children. Dr. Nåsell had a number of surprises in store for me, and you can read about what I learned in last week’s entry. This week, he will tell our family’s story from his side of the Big Pond.

Dr. Nåsell comes from a small farming village called Nås. Professionally, he is a mathematician. He earned his PhD in mathematics from NYU and has taught mathematics at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, KTH). While he no longer teaches, he is still active in research. Beyond mathematics, Dr. Nåsell has a special interest in locating the descendents of a small group of farmers who emigrated from his home village of Nås to Jerusalem in 1896 to join what became known as the American Colony. Their purpose was to be there when Jesus returned from heaven. Especially lucky for me, Ingemar Nåsell has also taken on the role of family historian for his family and his wife’s. Here is his offering for this weeks theme, “Prosper.”

The Kessler Brothers in Stockholm – By Ingemar Nåsell

This story deals with two Kessler brothers who were born in Germany and moved to Sweden where they married and raised large families, and with some of their kin. The story is written by Ingemar Nåsell, at the invitation of Cheryl Biermann Hartley. I married into the Kessler family 58 years ago.

The two brothers Kessler were born in Freiberg which lies in Sachsen (Saxony) in the southeastern part of Germany. The elder of the two brothers was Herman Paul Kessler, born in 1858, and the younger one was Heinrich Oswald Kessler, born in 1863. Their father, Friedrich Ernst Kessler, was a carpenter and timber man. Both of the brothers received education to journeymen in similar trades. Paul is reported to have been a baker and a butcher, while Oswald was a butcher. Both of them left Freiberg and went on customary journeyman wanderings, in Swedish gesällvandringar.

The younger of the two brothers, Oswald, is reported to have visited Austria, Switzerland, Russia, and even Brazil in addition to Germany on his wanderings before he arrived in Stockholm in Sweden in 1889. Here he established himself very quickly. One of his granddaughters, Kerstin Cederlund, tells me that when Oswald visited a milk shop, he found the young woman who was serving him to be proper and industrious. Her name was Marie Sörensen, referred to as Maria in Swedish. She was born in Denmark in 1860, and had emigrated to Sweden a few years earlier together with her parents and sisters. Oswald and Maria were married in 1890! Furthermore, Oswald started an enterprise producing and selling meat products and sausages during his first year in Sweden, 1889. A sign that he really liked his new country is that he became a Swedish citizen the same year.

The elder of the two brothers, Paul, went on his wandering in 1875. Between 1877 and 1892 he is reported to have lived in Hamburg. In 1892, three years after Oswald, he came to Stockholm. Here, he lived at the same street address as Oswald with family, and he worked in Oswald’s business. Within two or three years he was also married. He found a German woman, Maria Lau, who had emigrated to Sweden.

The name of Oswald’s enterprise was changed to ”Bröderna Kesslers Charkuterier” (”The Delicatessen of the Kessler Brothers”) on or before 1897. The two brothers are said to have liked each other a lot. One sign of this is each of them named his eldest son after his brother. It is not clear if the name of the enterprise really means that they both owned it. But we know that they separated later in life, and that they then lived at different addresses. In spite of this, the name of the company continued to refer to the Kessler Brothers. But Oswald ran it alone.

The Oswald Kessler Family

The title of this story is prosper.  Oswald prospered in Sweden. He and his wife had eight children in 1891-1903. The whole family is shown here in 1906. In the back row we see the eldest son Paul (15 years old), the father Oswald (43), and Ernst (14), and in the front row the mother Marie (46), Elsa (3), Albert (10), Sven (5), Carl (3), Greta (8), and Maria (13). All the children survived to grown-up age. Five of them married, but together they had only eight children.

Oswald’s company also prospered. In 1915 he moved to new and large quarters in the southern part of Stockholm. The next picture shows the beautiful factory buildings in Jugend style.  (I believe it is called Art Noveau in English).

Observe the castle-like building in the background. Here Oswald lived with his family, and also had some office space. The picture was taken around 1926. You can see on the court that both horse-drawn carriages (on the left) and automobiles (on the right) were then used for transportation and delivery.

Kessler Factory in Stockholm – circa 1926

Original Plans for Kessler Factory

The beautiful facade of the building at the back is seen in the drawing to the right. I found it in the Stockholm City Archive.

Oswald experienced great dramatic changes in his life, both up and down. First, he took part in the growth of the very successful business that he started with two empty hands. But at the end of his life, he also saw a decline. The business did not survive into the next generation. Some of his sons worked in his company, but most of them lacked the personal qualities required to run a large business. Oswald himself had a strong personality, and was clearly a forceful leader, but these qualities were not inherited by his sons. I can imagine that this was experienced as very tragic by Oswald.

Paul’s family was smaller than Oswald’s. He had 6 children, but one of them died as a baby, and another one died at the age of 17. Paul had a company of his own, also working, like Oswald, in the food business.

Oswald was very hospitable, and liked to have his family around him. He lived to the age of 93, dying in 1956. I was privileged to meet him at the end of his years; I married his granddaughter Anne-Marie in 1956, just two months before Oswald died. He was talkative and entertaining. He told me about adventures during his wanderings. I knew some German from having studied it in school in Sweden for six years. So Oswald talked to me in German. But the conversation was not entirely successful; Oswald’s German Saxony dialect differed enough from school German to be hard to follow.

The brothers Paul and Oswald had a sister, Anna Marie Kessler. She was born in Freiberg in 1861.  In 1884, unmarried, she had a son, Oskar Paul Kessler. During the first years of his life he lived with his grand-parents. Three years later, in 1887, Anna Marie married Max Lindner and bore three more sons: Max, Otto, and Kurt. Cheryl Hartley blogged last year about Anna Marie in “Marie Kessler Lindner – A Terrible Way To Die – 52 Ancestors #3”.

Two of Anna Marie’s sons came to Sweden, the oldest one to visit and the youngest one first to visit and then to stay. Thus, Oskar Paul came in 1897, when he was only 12 years old. He stayed with Oswald and his family and worked as an apprentice in Oswald’s business. After two or three years in Sweden, he went back to Germany. Cheryl Hartley wrote a blog about Oskar Paul last week in “Oskar Paul Kessler – This Is Why I Blog – 52 Ancestors 2015 #16”.

Anna Marie’s youngest son, Kurt Lindner, was born in Dresden in 1893. He first visited Sweden in 1914. I have found him on a picture that was taken in the summer of that year at Oswald’s beautiful summer house Bergshyddan (“The mountain chalet”) in the Stockholm Archipelago. I know this place well, since I now live there year round. The picture was taken at a celebration that was held 25 years after Oswald started his business. After this visit to Sweden, Kurt Lindner went back to Germany. He fought on the German side in WW1. But after that he returned to Sweden to settle.

He married a Swedish woman, Wilma, but had no children. Cheryl Hartley has blogged about Kurt in “Willy Kurt Richard Lindner – Motorrad Mars – 52 Ancestors 2014 #14”. Kurt Lindner belonged to the Kessler family. The latest picture that I have with Oswald Kessler was taken in 1955, when he turned 92. Kurt Lindner and his wife were both there to take part in the birthday celebrations!

I thank the four grandchildren of Oswald Kessler that are still alive, namely Gudrun Hagman (87 years old, Greta’s daughter), Kerstin Cederlund (86 years, Elsa’s daughter), Lars Kessler (82 years, Ernst’s son), and my wife Anne-Marie Nåsell (82 years, Albert’s daughter), for checking my story about Kessler in Sweden.