I receive letters from Professor Tolkiehn!

Okolice Globuhnen, gdzie spotykamy najstarszych pewnych przodków
J.R.R. Tolkiena

I have this great honour to write letters with Professor Tolkiehn from Germany, with Prof. Günter Tolkiehn who was the first who tried to find out the ancestry of J.R.R. Tolkien and of the Tolkien family in Germany and England. 

I try to find the link between our Professor J.R.R. Tolkien and Professor Günter Tolkiehn. And we are close to very interesting conclusions. Prof. Tolkiehn wrote to me today (after I shared my Tolkien Family Tree with him). 

From the letter:

(...) this is very interesting, thank you. After reading our own files, I can tell you this:

My oldest filed ancestor brought the name Tolkien to Bärwalde (today named Весёловка) in 1701, when he was elected as köllmischer Schulz in Bärwalde and married the daughter of the Schulzenhof. However, neither his first name nor date of birth are passed down. The marriage is reported to have been filed in the parish register of Wargen. I do not know, whether this may be present. He reportedly came from a place in the area of Insterburg (today Черняховск), east of Königsberg, but the report did not say that he was born there. As his profession, “Administrator” was filed. Today, we would call this estate manager (in German Gutsverwalter). This means, he must have been able to read and write and he must have exercised this profession where he came from. Very probably he was a son of landowner, but not the heir, so he had to find a profession. There were lots of civic estates in the area, in German called “köllmisch” as opposed to “adlig”. The owners of such estates were called Köllmer. We do not know the name of this ancestor’s father’s estate nor the area where it was. So, my nameless ancestor might well be one of the younger sons of “Michel Tolkien, kölmischer Schulz zu Glabunen and his wife Elisabeth” from the ancestor lines of J.R.R. Tolkien, that you researched. Going back to a place closer to his home area of Kreuzburg after working near Insterburg seems reasonable. The son of my ancestor (Heinrich Tolkien), who became his successor as “Kölmischer Schulz zu Bärwalde” was reportedly born in 1714. The next three generations in this office and estate were all named Johann Heinrich Tolkien. This name selection may give Johannes Tolkien some probability. Do you know, which one of Michel Tolkien’s sons was the heir? He could then be excluded. At this stage, more evidence about this generation born in the 1660s would be helpful, which may, however, be difficult or impossible to get. So far anyway, thanks a lot!

With best regards

Günter Tolkiehn