Preface
The following contribution is supposed to show how it came to the Aldinger book published in 1996.
The book is entitled "Die Aldinger - Beiträge zur Familiengeschichte" written by Manuel Aicher with contributions from Gerhard Aldinger and Theo Aldinger.
The book containing nearly 600 pages can be ordered at book stores, ISBN 3-00-00806-3, or directly at Manuel Aicher, Vogelaustrasse 34, CH-8953 Dietikon, Fax 0041-1-7422084.
In the USA the responsible person for sales and marketing is Ilona Haas, Lake Zurich, e-mail-address: IHaas@aol.com
A little story in the book shows that there are even "black" Aldingers. Both contributions are published in German as well as in English language.
If there are questions about the book don't hesitate to contact us.
When for the first time after the second world war about 200 Aldingers met in Fellbach in 1988 following an invitation of Gerhard Aldinger, Fellbach to organize the celebration of the 500 years anniversary, the wish for a reprint of the Aldinger book was expressed.
At the same time a lot of questions associated with this undertaking were risen: Who should dedicate himself to such a project, how could it be financed and who would buy it after its publication?
Who should prepay the considerable costs and who could bear the risk if it didn't have the expected success? What should be the content of the new book?
Should it deal with the time from the end of the last book until now only or should it rather be remade completely to replace our former book?
Countless meetings with controversial discussions took place, followed by a very productive stage in a little circle of people - the editorial staff - who is pleased to present the new book now.
There is no doubt that the most motivated person was Gerhard Aldinger.
Without his persistence and patience this project surely couldn't have been finished and we have to thank him for his efforts.
Many thanks also to Manuel Aicher, the genealogist from Switzerland, too.
He researched the clanlines mostly again from the origins of the church books and revised our family history accordingly.
We also want to thank all the other writers of reports, all those who translated and have given us their help in ideas as well as in financial aids.
Especially we were glad about the positive response from USA. Therefore we have translated a part of the reports.
It is only for financial reasons that we could not translate more as our financial limit did not allow a book with more pages. We hope, our Americans can excuse this.
Unfortunately, various wishes for a reprint of the old Aldinger-Book of 1939 could not be answered.
The reason is that the genealogical part of this book included several mistakes which would have been in contrast to the new book.
With the new book we wanted to create a base allowing later generations to continue our family history easily according to our results.
However, in order to maintain the very colorful reports of former editors we reprinted parts in the appendix of this book, just a bit shorter and in today's language.
Thus the volume published now represents the only unique Aldinger book.
The appeal to all future generations is to keep the tradition of our family and to continue its history, that is to learn from history for the future.
For sure it would be interesting to learn more about the family coats of arms or to examine if the owner of one coat of arms, Konrad Aldinger (documented by Kaiser Karl I, 1524) can be traced back to our family.
The key to all these questions lies in the old citizen books of Esslingen/Neckar which are older than the Church books which were written in Esslingen only from 1565.
People being interested thus have the possibility not only to continue our family history but even to trace back longer ago and to do even more detailed researches than already done.
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