Freistadt,\nWisconsin was settled in 1839 by immigrants from Prussia, a chunk of land in\nwhat is now Germany and Poland, next to the Baltic Sea. A history compiled for\nthe village church’s 150th anniversary says their hard journey to a new home\nwas a search for religious freedom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
They apparently kept looking for it after they\narrived. A few steps down the hill from the only crossroad in the village, on\nthe north side of the road, lies the Buffalo Synod cemetery. It has a wrought\niron fence, freshly painted glossy black, sheltering the remains of a few dozen\nsouls who opted for their own spot, rather than the original Missouri Synod church\ncemetery right across the road. Their particular search led to a different\nconclusion, part of an internal Lutheran immigrant doctrinal dispute that began\nshortly after their arrival and continued until after the close of the United\nStates Civil War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Herman looks\nafter the little manicured plot, right next to his own front yard. He tends it\nout of tradition, he says. Not his tradition, actually, as he goes to the\nchurch across the road and expects to end up in its overflow cemetery hundreds\nof yards south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the\nBuffalo Synod\u2019s grass is in his neighborhood, which he takes to include the box\nelders and shaded turf overlying his alienated underground neighbors. There is\nalways the highly unlikely possibility that an ancestor of his might be buried\nthere, which makes it easier, though no one comes by to decorate the graves and\nHerman considers short grass plenty of recognition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Neighborliness,\nthat\u2019s what it is. I hope if I end up in a neighborhood going on that long,\nsomeone cares about me the way Herman does. I\u2019d be planted in a little plot\nwith blackened gray stones reaching toward the sky, left by fellow ancestors\nadherent to beliefs lost on those living in the mere present. And Herman would\ndrop by to cut the grass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019d enjoy\nhearing the weed whacker whizzing overhead. Herman might even care about me more\nthan the guy on the riding mower in the original church cemetery across the\nroad trying to make his way between the stones, the ones with names everybody\nrecognizes as surnames on local mailboxes. I\u2019d love the chance to give Herman\nthe separateness he constructs for himself every so often, escaping from his\nworld into our present, a quiet place, fenced and green, a little space of\nsolitude shared by fellow searchers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Freistadt, Wisconsin was settled in 1839 by immigrants from Prussia, a chunk of land in what is now Germany and Poland, next to the Baltic Sea. A history compiled for the village church’s 150th anniversary says their hard journey to a new home was a search for religious freedom. They apparently kept looking for it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-essays"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pahwNU-8M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":644,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions\/644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}