storing highlights into the 'extended memory'
the story about the family crest
I was just looking through my pictures for cleanup and ran across this beautiful color picture of the family crest, which is of course somehow out of Juergen’s fundus of crest pictures. I think I should make some nice prints of this and distribute throughout our house 🙂
Einer der Ur, Ur….vorfahren der Pausbauern hatte den gemeinsamen Holzabfuhrtermin verpaßt und machte sich allein – zwei (vier) spännig – auf den Weg, um das Holz aus dem Wald zu holen und es zur Fürstäbtissin in Essen zu fahren. Dazu waren die Bauern verplichtet. Im hohen Schnee tauchte plötzlich ein hungriger Wolf auf, der die Pferde attackierte. Der Pausbauer bekam ihn am Hals zu fassen, erwürgte ihn und warf das tote Tier in den Wagen, lud das Holz auf, lieferte es bei der Fürstäbtissin ab und fuhr nach Hause.
Der Fürstäbtissin kam diese Geschichte zu Ohren. Sie lud den Pausbauer zu sich ein, lobte ihn für Mut, Tatkraft und Bescheidenheit und verlieh das sog. “Wolfswappen”, das alle männlichen Pausnachkommen berechtigt sind zu führen. Es ist im internationalen Wappenbuch in Bonn dokumentiert. Jürgen hat es einmal eingesehen.
As I have indicated in my last post the Paus family (gt Dickmann) has a family crest. This has been explained to us for the first time by my uncle I seem to recall. My father never mentioned it as much as I can remember. A crest is obviously something super cool, in particular when you are a little kid and I was always quite impressed with it. At the time I wondered, a crest is usually the sign of a noble family, but Paus certainly does not seem to be a noble family name and it is even not a very well known name in Germany. Searching Paus on the internet, the best you can come up with is that it means ‘Papst’ in dutch and there is a well known noble family in Norway called Paus. I do not know but I would assume they have nothing to do with us. Anyway, I am straying because I wanted to talk about my childhood recollections. When I asked my uncle, he never really explained much at a time, maybe he did not really know either but the picture that emerged from the little information is as follows.
The old peasant Paus was ordered by the local noble man to bring beer to the large feast in the castle. There have always been wolfs but with the cold winter and large snowfall they were more aggressive and straying through the region. There had been reports of a particular large lonely wolf. Peasant Paus had a large horse pulling his sled which he used to transport the beer in the bitter cold night, when a huge wolf appeared and started to leap at the horse. He got off the sled and fought the wolf with his bare hands and killed him, strangling the poor beast to death. The noble man was grateful for the delivery of the beverages and the killing of the big bad wolf. The crest was a sign of gratitude.
I cannot possibly believe that story but there must be something to it. Stay tuned, I will with time update the story with better researched facts.
Dieses Wappen habe ich irgendwo bei meinem Bruder von einer Webseite und ich glaube er hat es von unserem Onkel und jetzt habe ich es eben. Dachte mir hier ist eine schoene Stelle das Prachtstueck zu praesentieren und mit der Zeit die Geschichte dieses Wappen zu dokumentieren. Ich war bisher nicht in der Lage irgendetwas ueber dieses Wappen im Internet zu finden…. ziemlich erstaunlich aus diesem Grunde werde ich hier einmal die Geschichten dokumentieren, die mir von meiner Familie ueberliefert wurden. Dazu aber in folgenden Posts.
Wie ich spaeter von Pup erfahren habe, hat Onkel Juergen dieses Bild des Geschlechtswappen aus den Registern der damaligen Bundeshauptstadt Bonn besorgt. Also, dieses Wappen ist in der Tat hoechst offiziell eingetragen.