Gottfried Heinrich Schöttle

The church documents say he was born in Hirsau, Germany another little town only miles from Wildberg. The documents say Gottfried's father was also born there in 1799. Hirsau has a Luthern Church that was estabished about that time. The town is even older then Wildberg. The history says it was first established by a Catholic monastery. Gottfried married a Maria of Hirsau in 1863. She died in 1864. Gottfried, known as Stein, moved to Wildberg and remarried to Christina Kumar on May 9, 1865.

The rumor in the family is that Gottfried had been kicked by a bull in his back and had to give up farming and took up pottery. Klara said he was a potter and she remembered it from when she was a child. He made everyday pottery and he did very well at the business. I found an old thrown bowl in an antique store in Wildberg that looked used. It also looked like it was used for cooking since it had fire burns on the bottom. I am thinking it could have been made by him. Klara says there was much of his pottery around the old house. The church records say his nickname was Stein. Stein probably ran his business from his home. I figure this home was kept in the family for three maybe four generations. It ressembles many of the ancient houses of Germany. It appears to have 4 stories. Now 2 families reside there. Tante Klara shared that the farm animals lived on the first story. She remembers chickens and goats down there. It is now a garage. The house is built on the side of a mountain and the top two stories can be accessed from the street from the edge of the mountain. The bottom two stories of the house have one side into the mountain. The frame of the house is built with timbers of wood a foot thick and very hard. They are cris-crossed and mud inserted into the slats. With time this particular house has been upgraded and refurnished. Although the orginal stucture is still there. After WW II Frankfurt lost so many of it's beautiful antique homes to the destructions of bombs, that modern Germany tried to replicate them. Unfortunely, the skill and materials are no longer the same and the new replicates barely last 20 years without being need of much repair. The paint used in times of old could last 100 years and still look beautiful.

Visiting Wildberg, we were able to visit with some of the residence. They shared that they recently read an article that Wildberg had a very strict sect of the Church of Luther in which Gottfried was mentioned to be a key member.