TWO HALF-BROTHERS, TWO ROADS FROM SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN

BY FELIX W. KNEUBÜHLER, SWITZERLAND

Bredstedt, Schleswig-Holstein, in the early 19th century: a small market town near the North Sea, shaped by trade, farming, and traditional crafts. Though under Danish rule at the time, everyday life and the church records were in German, reflecting the language spoken by the local population in Schleswig. At the town’s center stood the church of St. Nicholas (local spelling: St. Nikolai), and many local boys were named after the patron saint of sailors. One of them was the cooper Nickels Hansen (1792–1836), whose family story would later stretch to Berlin, Lucerne (Switzerland) – and Walnut, Iowa.

Life in early 19th-century Bredstedt was marked by both resilience and loss, and the story of Nickels Hansen reflects this. In 1820 he married Christina Dorothea Hansen, and they had three children, but their life together was cut short when she died of Schwindsucht — the dreaded “consumption” of the time. In 1828, he married her sister, Lucia Margaretha, with whom he had another two children, including Otto Peter Hansen (1832). Lucia too died of Schwindsucht.

Left with a household to maintain, Nickels relied on his housekeeper, Christina Jensen, who became his third wife in 1835. Their son, Nicolai Hansen, was born later that year. Nickels himself lived only a year longer, dying in 1836 and leaving behind his widow and six young children.

Figure 1: Descendant chart for Nickels Hansen. Note: Nickels Hansen married Christina Jensen on 21.6.1835.

The Danish census records from 1840 to 1860 allow us to trace the children’s lives after his death. We find Otto Peter, an orphan, placed at the Ziegelhof with Peter and Ingeborg Petersen (née Johannsen). Ingeborg was a cousin of the first two wives of Nickels Hansen, so extended family took care of Otto Peter. Apparently they had no surviving children of their own, which likely led to Otto Peter taking over the estate later. [Ed Note: Felix explained that Ziegelhof and Tegelhoff are the same thing, the first is standard (high) German, the latter is “plattdeutsch” (also known as “niederdeutsch”, literally Low-German). Both mean brick or tile yard. It was no longer producing tiles though.]

Nicolai remained in the household of his mother and stepfather until she died in 1853. The Census record of 1840 shows their address at “Hohle Gasse”, house number 62. The street still exists today. According to a town plan originally drawn in 1879 and updated with house numbers in 1996, the modern address is Hohle Gasse 28 (reference 6, page 368).

Following the Second Schleswig War of 1864, Schleswig-Holstein passed from Danish to Prussian rule, and the lives of the two half-brothers took very different paths. In 1889, Otto Peter and his wife emigrated with several of their children to Walnut, Iowa, where they joined the Danish-German immigrant community.

Nicolai spent most of his life in the Bredstedt region. While some of his children remained there, others spread out: his eldest daughter Christine moved to Berlin, the booming capital of Prussia, and his son Christian emigrated to the United States. Another son, Nikolay, settled in Lucerne, Switzerland, where he married and had two daughters and a son. Together, his three children had twelve children of their own, many of whom carried on the Hansen name in Switzerland. Nicolai himself died in Berlin in 1904, having spent his last months with Christine, a year and a half after the death of his wife in Bredstedt.

The author is a great-grandchild of Nikolay Hansen through his paternal grandmother.

Sources in Brief

1. Parish records (Kirchenbücher, Archion.de): Baptisms, marriages, and burials in Bredstedt. The burial register records the death of Nickels Hansen, aged 44, on 6 June 1836, and lists his wives and children.
2. Danish census records (FamilySearch.org, DanishFamilySearch.com): 1835–1860, showing for example Otto Peter Hansen as a foster child at the Tegelhoff and Nicolai living with his mother and stepfather.
3. Hamburg passenger lists (Ancestry.com): 1880s–1889, documenting the Hansen family’s emigration to Iowa.
4. Berlin civil registers (Landesarchiv Berlin): Death of Nicolai Hansen in 1904.
5. Otto Peter Hansen (1832-1912) – Find a Grave Memorial
6. Secondary source: Bredstedt – Stadt in der Mitte Nordfriedlands (Nordfriisk Instituut, ISBN 3-88007-285-X), providing local historical background.