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Die Schnitzelbank |
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My dad was born and raised on a small farm in eastern Pennsylvania in an area called Harrity just a few miles east of the Borough of Lehighton in Carbon County, about 70 miles north of Philadelphia. Stanley Edward Eckhart, seventh of nine children born to my grandparents, Steward and Alice Eckhart, was born on August 7, 1912. He had three older sisters (Helen, Pauline, and Kathryn), three older brothers (Clifford, Chester, and Ralph), and two younger brothers (Kenneth and Harold). Two of his brothers/sisters had none of their own children, four had two children, and three had one child, so my grandparents had eleven grandchildren, and I had ten cousins. So, counting their children, spouses, grandchildren, and themselves, my grandparents had a family of thirty-one people…all in all, a pretty-good-sized family. |
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While my grandparents were alive, almost every Sunday after church the whole Eckhart family would gather at my grandparents’ farm for Sunday dinner. Everyone would bring some food to contribute to the Sunday meal. There were so many of us that we could not all eat in the same room and certainly not all at the same table. So we kids would eat together at the large table in the kitchen while the aunts and uncles ate together on the enclosed porch. Afterwards, we would all help with cleanup, washing dishes, and other chores. I remember those times as wonderful times of fellowship with family members, playing with my cousins and building long-term relationships with family members.
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Eckhart family gatherings at Christmas were special. We would all gather on Christmas day, but the location would rotate among the families, each year being at a different family’s home. That created some interesting situations since the size of each family’s home was different, some fairly large, others pretty small. I was an only child, so there was just my parents and me living in a small, second-floor, two-bedroom apartment in Weissport, PA. Getting more than 30 people into our apartment all at the same time was quite a feat, and having everyone at the table for dinner at the same time an impossibility, so we ate in shifts. My Uncle Bill and Aunt Pauline Reinbold, by contrast, even though they had no children, had a much larger two-story home in Summit Hill, PA with a large and spaceous basement, so that setting up accommodations for all of us to eat at the same time was not a big issue. For gatherings at his house, Uncle Bill would frequently get out the Schnitzelbank song cloth (pictured on the left with the English translations or approximate equivalents of the German just below it) and lead the singing of the song, pointing to the items on the cloth in the proper order with a yardstick or other pointing device to make sure we all got it right. It was always a lot of fun and something we looked forward to on those special occasions. You can view a video of a scene similar to ours by clicking here, compliments of YouTube.com. To hear a traditional singing version of "Schnitzelbank", click here, also compliments of YouTube.com. Looking closely at the Schnitzelbank cloth, you will see that it was printed by Broadway Publishing Company, 287 Broadway, Buffalo, N. Y. and copyrighted in 1907 by Henry Schwabl, 287 Broadway, Buffalo, N. Y. It was distributed compliments of Weiss & Rauscher, Lehighton, Penna. Weiss & Rauscher was a glass company that made drinking glasses (circa 1909).
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Click here to view the sheet music for the song "Schnitzelbank".
Click here to read more about "Schnitzelbank" on Wikipedia.
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