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Acknowledgements / Thanks / References
My special thanks go to:
Martin Grawert, lives in Eberswalde and is a priest. His letter to my father has given me the idea to delve around. He has in particular helped me to find two generations further back in my family tree and has given me a lot of advice and good suggestions.
In the end we found, that we are actually related via Johann Joachim Grawert, born approx. 1715.
He has collected a lot more information about his side of the family, than I have and has a >200 people in his decendency list of Johann Joachim
I estimate, that of the approx. 150 households ca. 20 are known to me as my close relatives and Martin probably has a list of 30-50.
Thus up to 50% of all Grawert’s in Germany today can relate back to Johann Joachim.
A further source of information is the documentation written by Werner Gragert, Perleberg (on the Elbe, west of Berlin) in 1938. His paper has been updated by Wilhelm Gragert (Quickborn, near Hamburg) in an excellent way.
www.gragert4u.com/html/service.htm
This document has helped me to trace back the name from it’s beginning in the Netherlands via the main steps of Utrecht, Lübeck, Perleberg/Stendal (Altmark), Berlin, East Prussia and then back to Lübeck.
According to this (Gragert, as well as Hans-Curt von Grawert, Spandau/Berlin) Grawert’s moved East from Lübeck, but according to “family legend” originally were “patricians” from Utrecht where there family name was mostly Grauwert.
Coincidentally I lived between Utrecht and Amsterdam in the 1970th and still speak some Dutch. Searching in google.nl I found a lot more information.
And I had the luck to get into contact with Sigrid Krijger de Grave, which works at the Utrecht archive, where she is responsible for their excellent website.
She herself has written a paper “De Utrechtse familie Grauwert” and she has made me aware of a beautiful document from the middle ages “Monumenta van Buchel” in which you can find many documents about Grauwert’s including their coat of arms.
As a next step we find Grawert’s in Lübeck as from the 13th century, where they are documented as merchants of the HANSE trade. They were one of the leading families in Lübeck over several centuries.
See: SonjaDuennebeil : “Zur Bedeutung der Zirkelgesellschaft in the 15th century”
Ernst Deeke: “Historische Nachrichten von dem Lübeckischen Patriziat” published 1845
Torsten Derrick: “Das Bruderbuch der Revaler Tafelrunde”
Rafael Ehrhardt: “Familie und Memoria”
In the 14th century a group of Grawert’s left Lübeck and settled in an area called Prignitz or Altmark, west of Berlin. From there they must have moved on to Berlin and Potsdam, the Neumark (East Brandenburg) and East Prussia.
For many historical reasons (which I will go into later) this makes sense.