From the out-of-print book Americans and Germans: A Handy Reader and Reference Book with 258 Illustrations by Wolfgang Glaser
Our surnames are among the oldest evidence of family history that we have at our disposal. Passed on from generation to generation, they often reach back to times from which no documents have survived. It should therefore come as no surprise that interpreting them to gain information about one’s origin almost always proves to be an exceedingly difficult task.
