Longing for a home - part 2: my response to Andrew Peterson’s mailing
I myself was born in England to Irish parents, but 2 of my great-grandparents on my mother’s side were German and came to settle in Ireland in around 1860. Two years ago I did a sponsored cycle from Lourdes (S. France) to Fulda (central Germany - the shrine of St. Boniface), passing through Triberg in the Black Forest region of Germany, the home town of my great-grandfather, Stefan (Stephen) Faller. Though I didn’t meet any relatives, I spoke to local people who knew the clan of the Fallers. The surname actually originated from the town of Triberg itself (it’s to do with a mountain waterfall…). The whole experience felt so much like coming home that arriving in my final destination of Fulda felt like an anti-climax in comparison. An added element in the whole story is that he and his family were all Jewish, converting en masse to Catholicism when they arrived in Ireland, something my mother only told us siblings about 5 years ago, a couple of years before her death. Stephen Faller’s je...