Nienburg an der Saale

Jwaller, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

The family's second place of origin: around 1600 Martin Gerlach II moved from Melsungen to Nienburg on the Saale and entered the service of the princes of Anhalt. From here, over three further generations, the family's path led to Pomerania. The house still stands: Marktplatz 9, a baroque manor house on the south side of the market square, today the seat of the Nienburg welfare foundation and widely known as the building with the carillon.

Chronicle

1. 1525 bis 1599

   Before Nienburg comes Zerbst, and there the forebears governed the town. Elisabeth Werbeck, the wife of Martin Gerlach, was a Zerbst woman, and through her mother Maria Seese the line runs back to two families of the council. Melchior Fuhrmann was a councillor in 1489, chamberlain from 1492 to 1495 and mayor in 1525. His son Lorenz headed the town seven times between 1532 and 1550 and in 1545 held its first church visitation together with the new superintendent. Christoph Seese led the town in 1545, 1548 and 1551. The two died in the same year 1553 and both lie in St Nicholas', the one under a Latin epitaph in verse, the other under an armorial tablet set up by his sons Johannes and Christoph. In May 1554 the children of the two houses married. Johann Seese was himself mayor seven times from 1573 on; when he was buried on 16 March 1599 Wolfgang Amling preached, and had a eulogy of the town of Zerbst printed with the sermon.

2. um 1600

   Martin Gerlach II becomes mayor and judge in Nienburg.

3. 1618–1648

   Martin Gerlach III, a princely registrar, records events of the Thirty Years' War.

4. nach 1650

   Martin Gerlach IV, master of the kitchen at Köthen and chamber administrator at Bernburg – "the Gerlach house in Nienburg".

5. 13. Mai 1698

   On that day Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau received the hereditary homage in his residence. Beckmann describes the proceedings step by step: the estates ranged by rank, the procession to the sermon, the platform on the square, the oath. The nobility were called by the chamber clerk, and his name was Gerlach. The oath of homage was taken by the privy councillor von Raumer. Eighty-eight years later Agnes von Raumer, daughter of the Anhalt-Dessau director of government, married Carl Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach. On that day in May the two names stood together for the first time, in two offices of the same chancery. Which Gerlach it was Beckmann does not say; Lebrecht was then twenty-nine and left Anhalt for Pomerania not long afterwards.

6. um 1700

   Lebrecht Gerlach leaves Nienburg for Pomerania (Court of Justice at Köslin).

7. nach 1700

   The property passes to the Könnemann family; the information posts of the town's historical trail describe it as "the former property of the von Gerlachs, built in the baroque style, later the Könnemann manor farm".

8. 1928

   Adolf Meyer, consul general of Guatemala and a native of Nienburg, gives his home town a carillon – mounted on the roof turret of this house.

9. 1942/2006

   In the Second World War the bells are melted down for some 450 kg of bronze. After ten years of fundraising the carillon has sounded again since 2 July 2006 – today with 24 bells cast at Maria Laach Abbey; it is the only one of its kind in central Germany.