Verderber world-wide (in Gothic type letters).

Verderber world-wide

A virtual Family Meeting in the Net

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Welcome at the Verderber Family Pages!

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Overview

The Verderbers are an old family which lived at the village Verderb, Community Mösel (whose correct German transcription without vowel-mutation is Moesel, not Mosel; today Mozelj), lying southward of the town Gottschee (which is sometimes written as Gotschee and spoken a little bit like “Gotchay”, but there is no correct English transcription – the transcription to French works better –, today Kočevje in Slovenia which former belonged to Yugoslavia), and at other villages of the Gottschee region. It is unknown, if the Verderbers gave their name to the village of if it was reverse. By the way: Verderber is spoken like “Fardarber” with an “a” like in “hat” and an “e” like in “offer” – but again the French transcription works better.

The flattering version is, that Verderb got its name from the Verderbers. Therefore it may be concluded that the Verderbers were so-called knight-citizens, hereditary citizens, patricians or citizens as witnesses and sealers. They officiated as local judges and wore a necklace as a sign of their office.

There also is a family legend which only is handed down in a special branch of the family. According to this, the Verderbers descend from a brother of the knight Erasmus Lueger who lived in the cave castle, Lueg castle near Adelsberg, today named Predjamski Grad near Postojna, in Slovenia. Lueger got quarrel with the Austrian emperor, and after a long siege he was shot by a catapult when he was in an toilet-oriel (More details).

Beginning at the 14th century, the Gottschee country was settled by Germans who founded Gottschee and the villages around. Since 1941 the German inhabitants were resettled some 50 kilometres to the north east (after an Italo-German arrangement) – for what Slovenes were driven away – and then driven away at the end of the Second World War.

Michael Verderber (1766–21/12/1843) got known as artist. He founded a workshop for paining behind glass at Außergefild (Kvilda) in Bohemia, which his son Johann Verderber (27/4/1793–1871) extended in great style (More details).

Another well-known son of the Verderbers is Thomas Verderber (19/12/1793–13/5/1886). He went to Retz (Austria) and got rich by trading wine and cloth. There he founded the trading company "Verderber Brothers" in 1821 and bought the so-called Verderber House. He also gave money to his native place and got honorary citizen of the town Gottschee. But in Retz the name Verderber died (More details).

A worthy representative of the family is the Austrian colonel Richard Verderber (born on 23/1/1884 in Gottschee, died on 8/9/1955 in Vienna). Richard Verderber gained at the Olympic Games in Stockholm the bronze medal of men’s foil fencing and the silver medal of team sabre fencing for Austria. He also got Europe’s master of sabre fencing. He married Pauline Weil at 16/6/1919 who was a Jew converted to Catholicism. Richard could shelter her from persecution during the Third Reich. In 1946 he helped to rebuild the Austrian Fencer Community (More details).

There is a Jewish family branch, but it is unknown, how long it exists and if it already existed in the Gottschee. A series of Verderbers (some of them from Colonia, Germany) was deported during the Third Reich and disappeared. Some are known to be killed, but the further fate of the others is unknown. Today, members of the Jewish family branch especially live in Strasbourg (France), Israel and the United States of America. It is totally unclear, if and how the Jewish and the non-Jewish family branch are connected (More details).

Branches of the Verderber family are located in Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Israel, Argentina, Canada and the United States of America. There is no information about other countries yet.

There are some variations of the name Verderber, namely Ferderber, Verderbar, Ferderbar and Werderber. All this names exist in Europe or existed there at least in former times.

Ferderber is relatively often and exists in Croatia and – like Verderbar and Werderber – in the United States of America. Some Ferderbers were deported to concentration camps during the Third Reich and died there. The spelling Ferderbar can still be found in Croatia and Slovenia today.

Ferderber, Verderbar, and Ferderbar seem only to be other spellings of the name Verderber which apparently did not last in the Gottschee region. But it is unclear if Werderber and other similar written names developed from the name Verderber and also there is a relation or if they are totally independent (More details).

How to use these pages

First, these pages are thought to show history, interesting family legends and genealogy.

Moreover, hyperlinks can be placed here, leading to non-commercial sites which belong to members of the Verderber family, and also E-mail addresses can be given. It would be ideal if every Verderber could present himself and his family branch in a few lines. But this depends from the remaining memory capacity.

Downwards on this page there is a electronic contact address. The incoming information will influence these pages. When a certain size is reached, the information could be ordered and put together on special pages. Perhaps it is possible to reconstruct the essentials of the family genealogy and history.

Imprint and advices

Editor of the Verderber pages is Michael Verderber, Max-Brod-Weg 14, D-70437 Stuttgart, in Germany.

After getting a more and more trash mail, all e-mail addresses on our internet pages are encoded. Replace the word “under” with “@” and the word “in” with a point and remove the space characters to get the correct e-mail address. (Trash senders may please use the following address: muelleimer@verderber.org; their messages will be disposed there immediately in an ecologic manner).

You can send a message to Briefkasten under Verderber in org. If you speak German, please use German language. We prefer messages written in German. We also recommend to use the international Unicode character set in UTF-8 encoding. This character set is used for these pages, too, and fits especially with eastern European languages.

We are not responsible for foreign internet pages which can be reached directly or indirectly by using hyperlinks on our pages. The hyperlinks are only a service for you. The owners of the foreign pages are responsible for them.

Changes and errors are reserved. We do not guarantee for correctness of our statements!

Reckon with translation errors! If a source is mentioned, its text is authoritative in cases of doubt and otherwise the German version of our pages. You can switch between the versions using the hyperlinks at the top of each page. Note that the menu panel on the left side is unchanged for the present, but the hyperlinks of the text page refer to menus and text pages of the other language.

Especially date statements are confusing and error-prone. We use the European date format day-month-year, and that in all translations. But a lot of sources use the odd American date format month-day-year without giving an advice.

Please send us a message when you discover an error.

Further, we do not necessarily agree with articles which we cite where the author or the source is named. The corresponding authors are responsible.

Contents

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