Illing

I recently took some interest in the origin of my surname. It turns out that a lot is known about people with the surname Illing. Here are a few of those facts.

I am a direct descendant of the Fichtelgebirge-line of the Illing. My grandfather and great-grandfather are from Wunsiedel, which is a town in the Fichtelgebirge. The starting point of the Fichtelgebirge-line is Hans Illing, who was born around 1590 in Sachsen (Saxony). The way to find ancestors back to a time when most people couldn't write, is by scouring church books and legal documents found in old castles. One reason that we know of Hans Illing is that he was jailed in the Wunsiedel castle for four weeks, because he insulted the bar-keeper Roth and his brother Heinrich Roth, who was administrator for mining under the Herzog von Braunschweig (Duke of Braunschweig).

All Illing families who live or lived in the mountain ranges Erzgebirge, Harz or Fichtelgebirge appear to have a common ancestor. This is likely, because although not all links in the family tree can be documented, all Illing-lines seem to converge. The main link, in the case were no records about marriage or birth are known, consist of them living in the same area and having very similar jobs. Many Illings worked as 'Hammerschmiede' (blacksmiths in a hammer mill - maybe there is a more specific English word, but I don't know it.).

In the 11th till the 15th century the dukes of Bohemia let people from other German regions move to their land, where the newcomers could be free, as long as their job helped the mining business. Recall, that at that time most people were not free, they belonged to cloisters or noble families. At that time there was a West-East movement of Germans and a lot of it was directed toward mountain ranges like the Erzgebirge, which up to that time had not been settled. The reason for the interest in these 'wild' mountain ranges with their dense forests was that iron and silver had been discovered there. Once mining took off it didn't take long to nearly deforest the whole region. It seems most likely that the common ancestor of the Illings moved from the town Illingen in Württemberg to Preßnitz (Erzgebirge) to work in mining and to become a free man. It was custom to name people, who because they had not been free did not have a surname, according to their place of origin. So people from Bayern (Bavaria) became Bayer and coming from Illingen made you an Illing.

There is a second albeit rather unlikely possibility. It could be that the Illing who moved to the Preßnitz region was actually a poor descendant of the village-nobles with the name Illing. They were knights and had most likely some fortified house or castle in Illingen. Since they owned the place they carried it's name. By the way, the town name Illingen (first documented in 766) is thought to have originated, because the settlement was founded by people who came from the river 'Ill'. The syllable 'ling' in general refers to a homogeneous group of things or people, as in 'Fremdling', which is German for alien or foreigner, and is made up of the word 'fremd' (foreign) and 'ling'.

The first document about an Illing in the Preßnitz region is from a court book about J.A.Illing, dating to 1437. Several lines of the Illing family already existed at that time in and around Preßnitz, so that the original Illing must have arrived earlier, probably between 1000 and 1200. J.A.Illing was most likely born in the house shown in the picture below. 'Wildes Eck' means Wild Corner.

My great-grandmother's maiden name is 'Schöpf'. The Schöpf family moved much less than the Illing side and so the Schöpf family tree can be reconstructed from church records of Wunsiedel even further back in time than the Illing line. The most notable member of that family tree is arguably the composer Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706).

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