Mergener Family

Are you a Mergener? A "Mergener" historically referred to someone or something associated with the Abbey of St. Mary of the Martyrs in Trier. The Core Name: The monastery was dedicated to St. Mary (Sankt Maria ad Martyres or St. Marien). The Dialect Shift: Over centuries, the local Trierisch and Moselle-Franconian dialects naturally shortened and shifted the pronunciation of Marien into Mergen. The Compound Word: When the monastery built its inner-city courtyard, it was called the Marien-Hof (Mary's Court), which the locals pronounced as Mergener Hof. The "-er" suffix in German works just like it does in English (e.g., a New Yorker is from New York)—so Mergener Hof literally translates to "The Courtyard belonging to the Mary folks." Sankt Maria ad Martyres - Saint Mary of the Martyers The monastery of St. Mary of the Martyrs (often referred to in h...

The Mergener Chronicle — Book One: The Severed Root Mergener and The 1,300-Year Epic of St. Mergen A Family Chronicle Book One: The Severed Root The Mergener Family, 500 BC – 1850 AD ✦ Prologue The Gate of Tears May 1852 — The Docks of Bremen The fog flowing off the Weser River was thick enough to chew. It tasted of low tide, coal smoke, and the damp, sour wool of three thousand wet bodies packed shoulder-to-shoulder along the stone quays of Bremerhaven. It was a grey world, a transient world, a place where Europe ended and the unknown began. Mathias Mergener stood with his boots planted firmly on the slick timbers of the dock, his hand gripping the rough hemp handle of a single, ash-wood crate. He was thirty-five years old, but the vertical sandstone terraces of the Moselle Valley had carved deep, permanent lines around his ...