Hugo Fischer, part the Third

I awoke this morning with my solar plexus irritating me in a fashion that always suggests that I have overlooked something upon which it had bents it's mechanics, and that I had better attend to it, or nausea will result. So, I had my breakfast, did some shopping, and having acknowledged my intuition's complaint I went and did some shopping and to spend a birthday gift voucher I received last year from Heidi and Co. (Thanks Heidi!)

When I arrived back home after my spree (though that is too energetic a word) I settled down to lunch of pumpkin soup, toasted atlantic special rye croutons (giant) and sour cream. Delicious.

After midday I trundled down to the studio and mounted myself in front of the Hurdy-Gurdy (this is what the Irish lady at the rear property of our house call's the computer-cum-internet) and found my mind drifting toward Hugo Fischer, again. I started to enter data for a family free on Reunion (genealogical software) and my mind became stuck on Otto, so I looked him up on the NLA until I found a curious reference of his early days of notoriety in which he is named as Otto-Fischer-Sobell, claiming he was of Dutch-Flemish extraction, and whose grandparents were immigrants from Urk, an Island that changed hands twixt Holland and Belgium. This appears to be untrue. This was in 1915 and he was distancing himself from the German's. He never mentioned his germanic roots. His brother in law Robert Homburg was already getting flack for being an M.P. and German. Then it came to me.

He was doing what many prima-donna's and indeed male stage creatures had done, taking on his mother's maiden name which in this case eventually supplanted Fischer which was definitely German (although I doubt he ever knew going back two hundred years the Fischer's were originally Swiss). Otto's son James Otto St-Clair Sobell jettisoned the Fischer part of his name by deed poll in 1945 (a cousin and two uncles had been killed by both World Wars). Now, I don't know if Otto's mother Emma was a Sobell but I'd bet you a corrugated cup-cake that she was. And, a family winery started by Carl August Sobell in the mid 1800's is still in the family (he had seven daughters and four sons) and has been so now for 5 generations, so I hurriedly composed and email and shot it across to South Australia where the family still makes wine and hopefully have some extant material that might add to the research of Hugo Fischer. Maybe even a photo.

So there it is; Hugo had not only his own family pressure but his in-laws sprawling grapeness to compete with. The more I dig, the more I feel Hugo deserves to be properly represented if not in my book then at least in a booklet of some kind which I will knock off quickly. Being remembered or dislocated from family lore from his last rash act isn't fair.

My intuition was assuaged and I have done a good day's ferreting. Lord I hope for some joy on old Hugo.