Max Cramer

Max Ernst Friedrich Heinrich Cramer (born February 21, 1859 in Stockach ; † January 14, 1933 in Heilbronn ) was a German teacher and genealogist in Heilbronn.

Life

Max Cramer's father was the pharmacist of the same name, Max Cramer. He had been an apprentice in the Einhorn pharmacy in Heilbronn and had married Marie Klett (granddaughter of Heilbronn city doctor Christian Johann Klett ) there in 1852 . From 1857 he ran a pharmacy in Kippenheim and from 1859 a pharmacy in Stockach, where his son Max was born. In 1868 the family moved back to Heilbronn, where their son Max attended the Karlsgymnasium . He then visited the Tübingen Abbey and studied ancient languages ​​with a view to choosing a career in a higher subject. In 1884 he was the preceptor in Calw , from 1885 in the same position in Esslingen am Neckar . In 1892 he married the daughter of a high school councilor, Antonie Zeller, in Markgröningen. In 1898 Cramer came to the Heilbronn grammar school, which he had once attended, as a professor. There he worked for 26 years in the school service before he retired in 1924 due to illness.

In addition to his professional activity, Cramer dealt in particular with genealogy , especially with Swabian family history. During his time in Calw, he began to copy the church registers there and analyze them separately according to family name. Later he expanded his research beyond his respective place of residence and evaluated a total of the church registers of 268 Wuerttemberg and 47 extra-Wuerttemberg parish offices. He went to the parishes by bicycle, and until 1908 he made his notes in standard abbreviation according to Gabelsberger , later with a typewriter. Cramer cataloged around 250,000 person entries in the course of his research. He kept his results in his private archive in around 100 volumes of 600 to 1000 pages each, about half of which he completed. The archive was used by other genealogists for decades and after Cramer's death. In addition to the unpublished holdings of his private archive, Cramer also wrote several books, including the cell book (1927), the Faberbuch (1929) and the Klett family tree book , as well as the reference work Württemberg's teaching institutions and teachers , which appeared in six editions.

The marriage to Antonie Zeller had six children. A son of the Cramer couple was the mayor of Dachau, area commissioner and SA leader Hans Cramer . Another son, Wolfgang Cramer (1901–1959), pastor in Schmalfelden , took over Cramer's archive after the death of Max Cramer and continued his work.

literature

• Wilhelm Steinhilber: Max Cramer or: the man who never went to bed . In: Swabia and Franconia. Local history supplement of the Heilbronn voice . 10th year, no. 1 . Heilbronner Voice publishing house, January 11, 1964, ZDB -ID 128017-X .
• Max Adolf Cramer: The Württemberg genealogist Max Cramer (1859-1933) . In: News of the Martinszeller Association . No. 21 , 1992, p. 14-18 ( martinszeller-verband.de ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Max Cramer in the catalog of the German National Library