I made such a fuss
about this family
Königsberg story that now I don't know where or how to start.
I hope I manage to tell a story that lives up to the expectations. To tell this
story means, in a way to tell my own story, so I think that's how I'll start.
I was born a good Monday morning in
Guayaquil, Ecuador, to
Bolivian parents. My mother’s side has a rather important Spanish ancestry,
mostly from the
Basque Country, a distinctive region with a millennial history
in the north of Spain. As a result of our colonial past, we Latin Americans are
a mixture of three groups of races: European (mostly Hispanic), Native American
and African (for myriads of slaves where brought by the conquistadors for the
hard labor).
German surnames, though, are not that common in that part of the
world. When I was a child, Germany was a distant place somewhere in Europe
where it was cold; where cars came from; where Playmobils came from. Later, it
was also that fearsome soccer team that could defeat my dear Brazilian team.
And then, sadly enough, it was the country where Nazis came from: where all the
bad guys in war movies came from; the country with that horrible-sounding language.
It was known to us that my grandfather was half-German; that his
father had been sent to South America, had gotten married, had had children, had
established there and had never made it back to his country. My grandfather
Erich was very talented; I always thought highly of him: he was able to build river
boats, fix any electricity problems, fix roofs, set up traps for menacing
animals, prepare pizzas, and so on. His father used to speak German to him, so
he spoke it, too. We knew it, but unfortunately we never took advantage of it;
we never asked much about his father. It is a real pity that he passed away
before our interest for his father’s homeland arose. There are so many
questions we would have liked to ask him.
After graduating from the university I decided I wanted to pursue
a master’s degree in Germany. My curiosity about Germany had been growing and I
got interested in the German language and the German culture. I was often
amazed by small things, trivial aspects of Germany that reminded me of my
grandfather’s ways. It was like understanding in many ways why he was the way
he was. Naturally, I had thought of searching up relatives of my grandfather,
but being Hoffmann such a common German surname, and with little notions as to
where or how to start, I deemed the task impracticable.
Once, looking into some old documents, my parents stumbled upon a
certificate that stated that my grandfather’s father, Erich Hoffmann-Szemkus,
had been born in a town called Memel, in Prussia. Little did we know by then
about Prussia. We knew our ancestry was German, but Prussia was hitherto a
totally unknown term. Even more amazed was I after finding out that Memel was
now called Klaipeda and that it was a port city in Lithuania. This fact puzzled
me. I had not expected my great grandfather’s hometown to be so far away from “Germany”.
I could not leave the matter just like that, I had to find out more. What was
this territory? What is that German city doing up there so “lonely”? I was
determined: I had to go check that place in person.
