We're Changing History!
by Lucy Lindner | July 9, 2018
New discoveries have shown that the Lindner family descends from a long line of sock-makers
If you have seen {Our Story} on our website, you'll be aware that Andrew Lindner is a 4th generation sock-maker. His great-grandfather founded the H. Max Lindner Strumpffabrik (sock factory) in the village of Thalheim, Germany, in 1925.
Until recently, that was as far as our knowledge of our sock knitting heritage extended. I always had suspicions, however, that there may have been sock knitters before Max.
Back in October 2017 we booked a family trip to Germany to visit Andrew's maternal side of the family in August. Planning the trip prompted me to cast a net to try and confirm my suspicions. A search of Facebook for Lindner men living in Thalheim and a message describing who we are and our connections to Max Lindner led to an exciting reply from Mathias Lindner; great-great-grandson of Max's brother, Otto.
Mathias told me in his reply, that his father, Uwe, is a keen researcher of family history and a member of the Thalheim Historical Society. He gave me Uwe's email address and said that he was expecting to hear from me.
Since then, Uwe and I have been regularly corresponding and I have been learning so much about the Lindners and other important sock-making families in and around Thalheim.
Uwe has a flair for creating great suspense as he reveals, piece by piece, a journey through our ancestors into the past.
We have learned that Max's original factory and his third factory building are both still standing, as is the house he was born in.
He has confirmed that indeed Max's father, Hermann, was also a sock-maker, as was Hermann's father, Christian, before him. That makes Andrew a 6th generation Lindner sock-maker.
In a surprising discovery, it was also revealed that Max's father-in-law and both his grandfathers were sock-makers. One line from Max's father-in-law includes sock-knitters in every generation going back to around 1730, the very beginning of the hosiery trade in that region of the world, making Andrew the 10th generation.
As this was within the lifetime of Johann Sebastian Bach, I like to think that perhaps he was kicking around writing music and giving performances in hosiery made by Andrew's great- great- great- great- great- great- great-grandfather.
Several of Andrew's ancestors were founding members of Thalheim's Sock-Knitters Guild in 1839.
We are excited to visit Uwe and his family in Thalheim and to visit many of the sites where Andrew's ancestors would have lived and worked.
We'll try to post some of the highlights on our Instagram page, and perhaps do a wrap-up of the trip when we return, so stay tuned!
Andrew is busy knitting in the lead up to our departure to make sure there is plenty of stock on hand while we're away. We'll be back in early September, so hopefully if any customers find we're out of the socks they love, we'll make it a priority to knit them up and send them out as soon as we return.
Lindner History (3)
Our Farmers (1)