Some old pictures and texts about family Pehlemann and the relatives
Some more old pictures, photos and texts from the family and from the family history are to be added here within 2024/25.
Wolfgang L. M. Pehlemann
A small look at the global Pehlemann and Pehleman family

The history of the Pehlemann family.
Compiled and written by C. E. Walter Pehlemann.
“Origin from the land of the Brandenburg and scattered throughout the world”
Work in two volumes with appendices as well as two volumes of Biedermeier letters by Eduard and Franziska Pehlemann
2. Edition, reproduction 1982 by Wolfgang L, M. Pehlemann (in language only)
By the way, we would like to ask our Canadian family to lend us the English version of the family history so that this old edition can also be reproduced. The English original by C. E. Walter Pehlemann passed along with his inheritance to his daughter Herta, who presumably sold the documents, meaning that part of Walter's family archive was lost.
Retyping it again from a old copy using a computer keyboard and reproducing it as a 2nd edition should take two to three months (work on the side). We are excited.
After that, the old version will be shipped together with the second edition back to Canada (and the USA) to be distributed overthere in their families.
Febr 2nd, 2024, updated June 30th, 2024
Wolfgang L. M. Pehlemann (contact)
Excerpts from Volume I. of the family history ©
Original written by C. E. Walter Pehlemann:
...Now the following happened: I had asked my sister (Gertrud Osswald, née Pehlemann) to get me some more information about nieces who live in Berlin, and I received, among other things, a piece of paper on which an Erika Pehlemann was listed, formerly at the Woltershof estate, Bärwalde district east of the Oder, who was now living with a son and a daughter as refugees in a small village west of the Rhine. At first I could not place this Erika in the family tree, but wrote to her and discovered that she was a member of a branch of the Pehlemann family that I had known about before, but whose relationship to our family could not be proven. Of these Pehlemanns, there was a General Pehlemann around the turn of the century, whom we knew, and with whom my father had tried in vain to establish a family connection. Erika Pehlemann, for her part, had worked out a family connection. Family tree that stretched back without gaps to 1730. By carefully examining all my documents and the letters that the parish offices had written to me before the First World War, I was now able to determine that the great-grandfather of Erika Pehlemann, named Peter Pehlemann, born in 1730 in Zernikow (note: Zernickow) near Seelow, was a close relative of our ancestor Gottfried Pehlemann, born April 28, 1729. As it turned out in the course of research, they were siblings, i.e. first cousins. With this I had established the family relationships of the two Pehlemann lines. Since our ancestor Gottfried Pehlemann was a Lehnschulzen landowner in Ortwig (Oderbruch) and Peter Pehlemann was a Lehnschulzen landowner in Zernikow (note: Zernickow) near Seelow, I referred to our line as the Ortwig line and the Zernickow relatives as the Zernickow line. The two mentioned seemed to be the founders of both lines.
In the meantime I had contacted the parish office in Seelow in der Mark to complete the list of ancestors backwards if possible and to expand the existing knowledge. This undertaking was somewhat difficult, as Seelow is in the eastern zone of Germany, which is occupied by the Russians, which makes written communication very difficult. However, I managed to establish that some of the church records had been preserved, although important baptismal registers for our family were missing. I also found a young man who worked through the available material in Seelow with care and enthusiasm and achieved results that far exceeded my expectations. I do not want to describe the individual phases in more detail, nor do I want to anticipate my later descriptions of the individual personalities, but only to say in this introduction that I was able to identify three further generations with exact dates of birth in the 17th century, and that our oldest*) documented ancestor is Peter Pehlemann, born in Zernikow (note (corr.: Zernickow) in 1622, died on April 17, 1701, at the age of 79. He is referred to as "old farmer", "Schultze", "court assessor" and churchwarden for 44 years". *) see also page 68 He was therefore probably one of the most respected personalities in Zernikow (note/corr.: Zernickow) and Seelow, was born at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War and was already 20 years old when the Swedes invaded the Oderbruch. I will not be wrong if I assume that the family was already settled there in the 16th century, even if this cannot be proven by documentary evidence due to the lack of written records from that time 400 years ago. From the closest descendants of this, our oldest ancestor, it emerged that the "Zernickow line" must be referred to as the "main line", while the "Ortwig line" only split off from the main line in 1700 with Gottfried Pehlemann (January 17, 1700 to January 21, 1763), who was a "citizen and brewery owner" in Seelow, and whose son Gottfried Pehlemann (1729 to 1769) became Lehnschulze in Ortwig in 1751. I called this line, to which I belong, the "Ortwig line", but must now refer to it as the "Ortwig younger line" in contrast to the "Zernickow main line".
There are still a few younger male members living in the Zernickow main line, while I myself - as far as I knew at the time - was the last male member of the Ortwig younger line.
It should also be noted here that in earlier centuries the name Pehlemann was also written "Pelemann" or "Peelemann", once "Pölemann" and just "Pehle".
It was of course very important to me to find out the fate of the Canadian Pehlemann family, because if there were still a Pehlemann there, the Ortwig younger line would not be dying out but would continue the family in a direct line in Amerika continued. I knew that soon after the turn of the century all contact with relatives in Canada had ended. So I contacted the German Consulate General in Ottawa and asked them to do some research. From Eva Pehlemann in Stuttgart I also knew the name "Bury" as the first place where Carl Pehlemann settled in the province of Quebec. And now the following message came from Ottawa: There was no place called Bury, nor were there any registrations of personalities like in Europe, so that finding people you were looking for was a matter of chance, but in the Montreal telephone directory there was a "C.R. Pehleman" who was certainly a member of the family I was looking for. In response to my direct letter to the address given, I received a friendly reply from C.R. Pehleman that he was a great-grandson of the emigrant Carl Pehlemann and that the connection I was looking for between the family in Germany and the more promising part in Canada and the USA had been established and - I hope - should not be broken. In this situation, as it appears to me today, after finding the Canadian relatives (my father Carl Pehlemann and the emigrant also named Carl Pehlemann were first cousins and therefore siblings) and after establishing the relationship with the main Zernickow line, which split off in 1700, I am now happy to have the whole family together. And that means a renewed motivation for me to draw up the family tree of the whole family. But it should be a family tree in which only Pehlemanns are listed and all other relatives, i.e. families by marriage, are not listed. In order to be able to carry out this work in full, I still need to receive all the family data that was promised to me from the Canadians, as well as a few pieces of information that I am missing from the main Zernickow line. But what do dead numbers and dead names in a family tree mean if no further details are known about the connections, the area in which the people lived, their fates and important experiences? The German relatives who are still alive probably know all of this to some extent, but I have to assume that this knowledge will be very fragmentary among the Canadians. Of course, I don't know whether the relatives in the new world are even interested in knowing these connections, but I could imagine that one or the other member of the family across the ocean would be happy to know where the family actually came from and how their fate has developed over the course of several hundred years. The answer from C.R. Pehlemann in Montreal was so friendly and interested that it gave me courage. Therefore, as far as I am able, I will undertake, in addition to completing the family tree, to write down what I know from my documents and to add what older relatives have told me previously. However, I will restrict myself to those who bore the name Pehlemann. I will only mention close relatives with other surnames in more detail if I tell something that may arouse general interest due to the personalities or events. With regard to the Canadian relatives, I must of course proceed without any preconceptions, because I do not know to what extent they are still familiar with German conditions. They probably no longer speak German, but have probably become completely absorbed in the conditions and views of the new world. In my work, it is to my advantage that my only daughter Herta Otto, née Pehlemann, speaks English quite well and will undertake to translate my comments into English so that I can send an English text to America.
I want to have a map made and attach it to this text, showing the Oderbruch, the roots of the family, because there are no such special maps in Canada, and it is absolutely necessary to know where the cradle of the family actually stood. When reading it, you also need to have the family tree to hand in order to be able to determine which person is being discussed. I also want to attach photocopies of the two family coats of arms (namely the Lehnschulzenämter Zernickow and Ortwig) and the document about our oldest ancestor, and perhaps also prints of portraits of my grandfather Eduard Pehlemann (1802-1872) and his wife Franziska Pehlemann, née Felgentreff (1811-1848), because I consider Eduard to be the most important person the family has produced. Finally, I would like to mention that I am not the first Pehlemann to bring something about family history to Parier. Before me lies a paper written by Justus Pehlemann (1791 to 1874), the father of the Canadian emigrant Carl Pehlemann wrote a few years before his death about his life and especially about his youth during the Napoleonic Wars. He wrote this for his brother Eduard, my grandfather, who was 11 years younger than him. Justus was an officer in the Lützower Jäger during the Wars of Liberation, who have become famous in history.
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So much for the excerpted text.
I am ending the excerpt from the first volume of the family history here, as this should, on the one hand, arouse the interest of all visitors to this website on the Internet, but on the other hand, the entire family history should and must be reserved for relatives.
I would like to point out that the family history written by C. E. Walter Pehlemann was typed in the 1950s with (note: 4 or 5) carbon copies using carbon paper and stapled into thin DIN A4 volumes. One of these editions of the family history in two volumes, together with the edition of the Biedermeier letters from Eduard and Franziska Pehlemann, was given to my father at the time, and I still have these editions of C. E. Walter Pehlemann in their original form today. As these volumes cannot be copied using the carbon paper process on the thinnest carbon paper, I typed the first volume in March 1971 in order to make the family history copyable.
My mother Eva Dorothea Pehlemann, born Cygan, typed the second volume of the family history and the work of the Biedermeier letters from Eduard and Franziska Pehlemann on her typewriter - at my request - which was a remarkable achievement, because the carbon copies are extremely difficult to read! These transcripts were made at the beginning of 1982 so that I could spend the family history, which would then comprise five volumes, to participants at my planned first family celebration of the Pehlemann family based in Europe, who had not had access to these documents or reading material until then.
For this purpose, I had also created a family tree over five meters wide from Walter Pehlemann's documents, on which, with a few newer additions at the time, all worldwide members of the Pehlemann and Pehleman families were brought together on one piece of paper. If I can get back this family tree , which I had once given to Fritz-Wilhelm Pehlemann, then I would have the carefully drawn tracing paper digitized in its entirety.
Pedigree No. 6 of the Pehlemann family, Ortwig younger line: Canadian branch (in the future via website also with small branch in the USA).
I have deliberately made the lower generation close to life illegible.
As mentioned the family tree from the large family tree into smaller parts for the family history appendices, 2nd edition, transferred by Rainer Pehlemann.
Archive photo Wolfgang L. M. Pehlemann
As stated, I would also like to thank Rainer Pehlemann, who has written (from my large family tree all Pehleman/n [1950/1972/1982] on one paper!) into smaller parts so that they could be folded and added to my appendix to the family history - the idea behind my appendix to the family history was that when reading the family history, one could take a look at the family trees near by in order to better understand C. E. Walter Pehlemann's family history.
I also expressed my gratitude to Fritz-Wilhelm Pehlemann's family, who painstakingly made reproductions of some photos that also became in 1982 part of my appendix to the family history.
May this encourage and spur younger members of the Pehlemann and Pehleman families to continue the family history - I will content myself with creating the multilingual, digital Pehleman/n world for the historical part up to the 20th century, and if I have time, I will tackle the digitized works in book form and eBook.
Feb 02nd, 2024 / updated Jun 17th, 2024
Wolfgang L. M. Pehlemann
And a virtual look at family history attachments
pehlemann-family-1905-bury-quebec-canada