Reinstatler Family: German Connections
Reinstatler
Family: German Connections
As a proud German-American, I’ve had
a strong desire to study where in Germany my ancestors came from. This desire drove me to seek out an
assignment in Germany, and I’ve been stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany in the
state of Hesse with my wife and 9 children since October, 2020. My family’s story began in Germany, and the
connections to Germany are fascinating to me; and I hope you will enjoy my
brief recounting of what I know of them.
I’ve sought out information about where I came
from in a serious way since 2016, tracing the Reinstatler lineage as far back
as I could, and what amazes me is the connections I have to Germany. My great, great, great grandfather Peter
Reinstadler emigrated from Germany in 1851.
My grandfather, Sylvester Anthony Reinstatler, was captured in Germany during
WWII 94 years later, and I am now living and serving in Germany another 75 plus
years later. I can add to that one of my
dad’s younger brothers, my uncle Dan, who served here in Germany with the Air
Force from 1989-1992 or so.
I was fortunate enough to have all 4 of my
grandparents until I was 25 years old, when my paternal grandfather died at the
age of 85 while I was deployed to Iraq.
My father, Jerome William Reinstatler was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on
February 3rd, 1951, the oldest of Sylvester Anthony Reinstatler and
Rosemary Nora Reinstatler’s (nee Hunt) 10 children. Sylvester Anthony Reinstatler was born in Cincinnati
on November 9th, 1923, and had a hard life, as did many members of
the Greatest Generation. He was the
second of 4 children, having an older sister, then a younger sister, and
younger brother, and his biological mother (Rosemary Reinstatler, nee Kunz) died
when he was only 5 years old. After the
death of his mother, his father (my great-grandfather), Sylvester William
Reinstatler moved into his parent’s (Charles and Mary Reinstatler) home, and
shortly thereafter young Sylvester Anthony was sent off to a military boarding
school for about three years. I do not know
entirely what privations the family may have undergone during the Great Depression,
but by that time, Sylvester William had remarried.
My
grandfather was drafted in the United States Army on 6 March 1943, reporting to
Ft. Thomas, KY, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, to be inducted. He was a young man of just 19 years old at
that time. Following basic training in
Texas, PaPa would have boarded a ship; although I don’t know out of which port,
and was shipped to Iceland, and the England before ultimately being assigned to
Company H, 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, 5th
Infantry Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division. My grandfather rarely spoke
about his war experiences, so I am surmising the company based on the date he
went missing in action, correlating that with available records, including the
official History of the Third Infantry Division in World War II, which
lists PFC Sylvester A. Reinstatler as missing in action as a member of the 7th
Infantry Regiment.[1] He was captured by troops of the 17th,
37th, and 38th SS Panzer-grenadiers on 15 March 1945 in
the border village of Utweiler, Germany, in the Brother Konrad Chapel.[2] I’ve visited the chapel twice thus far after
researching this information, and it stands much as it would have on that early
spring morning when my grandfather was captured. However, our connection to Germany goes back
much further than my grandfather’s capture.
Just
before moving to Germany in October, 2020, I was able to locate an obituary for
Johannes Peter Reinstadler, born 26 March 1826 in Wissen, Germany, just east of
Bonn. This obituary came from the
Vorstandsbericht uber das Verinsjahr (Annual Report about the Pioneer Year)
from the Deutscher Pionier-Verein von Cincinnati (German Pioneer Society of
Cincinnati), Volume 27 (1894-1895). It
recounts that Peter left from the port of Antwerp, Belgium, arriving in New York
on 25 August 1851, and making it to Cincinnati by October 3rd. He has been trained as a stonemason in
Germany and worked at first for Herancourt breweries and then found work as a
stonemason before opening a pub and boarding house. It was in this last business he remained
until his death on 1 December 1894. The obituary also recounts his marriage to
Elisabeth Weber, and their 9 children, giving me more to research, as the census
records only indicate the names of 6 of those children.[3]
Thanks
for reading this brief blog post. I hope
you find it interesting-I think it is so vital to understand where we come
from, and I think it is neat to think about the connections and the relatively
short span of years which separate my service in Germany in the 21st
century from my g-g-g grandfather’s emigration, perhaps fleeing the 1848
revolutions, leaving in 1851. Our
youngest son was born here this past January, and we named him Peter in honor
of his great-great-great-great grandfather, and I hope that my children find our
lineage as important as I do.
[1]
Donald G. Taggert, ed, History of the
Third Infantry Division in World War II, (Washington, DC: Infantry Journal
Press, 1947), 469.
[2]
John C. McManus, American Courage, American Carnage: 7th Infantry
Chronicles, The 7th Infantry Regiment’s Combat Experience, 1812 Through
World War II, (New York, NY: Tom Doherty Associates, 2009), 504.
[3] “Peter Reinstatler”, Vorstandsbericht uber das Verinsjahr (Deutscher
Pionier-Verein von Cincinnati), 27 (1894-1895).
In January 2025, I learned that, further back in my family tree, we came from the Tirol region of Austria. My 6th great-grandfather, Johannes Matthias Reinstadtler (5 July 1721-18 June 1781), emigrated from Landeck, Austria sometime in the 1740s, moving to Hachenburg, Germany, in the far northern border of the the Rhineland Palatinate. He likely moved due to the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748). He married Maria Elisabeth Bergen in 1753 in Hachenburg at the age of 32, and the couple had 6 children, five of whom appear to have survived into adulthood. I just wish I would have discovered that we were Austrian before moving back to the US from Germany.
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