Report on our trip to Groß Krössin/Krosino in February 2017
While researching the history of my wife’s family line, “Schubring,” we also came across photos that had apparently been taken on the Schubring farm in Groß Krössin in 1927 and 1937. My wife knows some of the stories about life there from family recollections, but details about individual family members are little known. Those who might still have provided information are, unfortunately, no longer alive. Using the remaining documents and other records together with additional family photos, we were able to gain a first overview.
The next step was to determine exactly where Groß Krössin is located. We entered the place name on the internet and, to our great surprise, found the excellently designed website “Groß Krössin Pommern,” which contained many other pieces of information important for our research. Thanks to the help of Frau Herzog, a number of gaps in our knowledge about the Schubring family were already closed.
On our trip to Swinemünde in early February 2017 we made a day trip to Krosino. It was very cold and misty, and it became ever colder the closer we got to Krosino, with some roads partially iced over. Today’s Hinterpommern apparently isn’t doing very well economically — many houses looked in need of renovation, some were abandoned and left to decay. In some places time seemed to have stood still since before the Wende. That impression continued all the way to Krosino.
The landscape changed the nearer we came to the village: it became hillier and more wooded. We very much liked the area around Krosino.
We approached Groß Krössin coming from Balfanz and first stopped to photograph the Krosino village sign. Then we drove slowly through the village to take in our first impressions. My wife tried to feel something familiar, something of home, but of course that didn’t happen since she has no personal connection to Groß Krössin.
The site where the family’s former farm (later Glaser’s) may have been was quickly found because we had already checked the location on Google Earth. It is, as was customary for Groß-Kossäten, on the outskirts of the village toward Zuch. We parked on what was likely the old driveway and entered the field, which was partly cultivated and partly meadow. There my wife did feel a sense of connection after all, because her grandfather had grown up here and her father had often spent his holidays on his grandparents’ farm — to his dismay having to help a lot with her grandmother’s agricultural work.
We believe we also found the foundations of the former farm buildings and collected small mementos which we will keep in our garden.
We then drove through the village again in the direction of Villnow to the town boundary. There we were astonished by a large, modern-looking sawmill. We drove back to the church, and in her thoughts my wife was with her family, imagining how everyday life might once have been for her great-grandmother and great-grandfather and the other relatives — the special celebrations such as Harvest Festival, weddings, births and funerals. What sort of social contacts might they have had? That will be very difficult to clarify.
On the church grounds we picked up a few acorns to plant later. We did not look for the old cemetery, as it is said no longer to exist.
Finally, we bought various groceries and souvenirs in the small, pleasant, well-stocked village shop and treated ourselves to a delicious piece of freshly baked cake, which we immediately enjoyed in the warm car.
After a detour to Barwice/Baerwalde — also for family reasons — we returned to Swinemünde.
What remains with us are the very beautiful landscape around Krosino and the pleasant feeling of having found traces of our family. Our search continues.
Dörte Steinmüller, geborene Schubring,
und Hans-Jürgen Steinmüller