Other Albecks on the Web and in History

Places:

• Seebad Ahlbeck (or Ostseeheilbad Ahlbeck) is a beach town on the island of Usedom, on the Baltic coast of Germany, within ten kilometers of the (current) Polish border at Swinoujscie/Swinemuende.
  


• There's also an inland Ahlbeck (Ahlbeck Uecker-Randow or Sandbad Ahlbeck) on the other side of the Stettiner Haff to the south of Usedom.

I'm told my family sometimes spelled the name with an "H", and came from near the Baltic, so either of the above towns seems a candidate for the origin of my name.
update April 2004: As pointed out to me in an email from Tomas Ahlbeck, the town of Seebad Ahlbeck is probably too young to be the source of my name. He's traced the Swedish branch of Ahlbecks (sometimes spelled Albeck) back to Pomerania during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), but the town of Seebad Ahlbeck got its first inhabitant in 1700. Ahlbeck Uecker-Randow, however, dates to 1491 (still younger than some historical Albecks, but it's unclear whether I'm related to them).


• There's a Gemeinde (Municipality) of Albeck in the Gurktales mountain region ["Gurktal" means "Gurk Valley", and there's a river named Gurk, reportedly for its gurgling noise] of Carinthia in southern Austria. Actually, there seem to be two distinct villages, Albeck obere Schattseite, and Albeck untere Schattseite. ["Albeck above Shadowside", and "Albeck below Shadowside".] There's also a street named "neualbeck" ["New Albeck"] near the former, in proximity to the town of Sirnitz, north of Feldkirchen in Kaernten. There's also a "Castle Albeck" (now a cafe and museum) which gives its address as Sirnitz but appears to be in or at least close to Albeck obere Schattseite.


• There's a town of Albeck in Langenau, Baden-Wuerttemburg (southwestern Germany), near Ulm ( highway map). For those who can't read the town's website (it's in German), the name derives from "Alb-ecke", meaning "corner of the mountain." The town's claim to fame: it was the birthplace, in 1861, of Robert Bosch. Yeah, as in spark plugs.

  The coat of arms pictured is the 1933 civic arms, but the town dates back at least to 1269 (when it was part of the estate of Hartmann I of Sargans), and became a Free City in 1383.

  In the nearby city of Ulm, there's a street, an alley, and a fort all named Albeck [link goes to map of Ulm - click on "albecker steige" in the menu to the left of the map].



• There's another castle Albeck in the town of Sulz am Neckar, southwest of Stuttgart. My German is rusty, but it appears to have been the stronghold of the von Geroldseck family until reduced to the ruins by the French in 1688.


• Rather mysteriously, a small neighborhood of Grande-Synthe, in the Pas de Calais (northern France, near Dunkerque) is called "the Albeck" [link goes to map in PDF format]. Even more oddly, the adjacent neighborhoods are called "Europe" and "Old Gardeners."


• The city of Ba'albeck, in Lebanon, was named for the Canaanite god Ba'al (no relation). It's also known by its Greek name, Heliopolis.

People:

• Anne Albeck is a high school librarian in Denver, Colorado.


• David S. Albeck is a neurologist at U. Colorado-Denver.


• Derek Albeck is a visual artist who could probably teach me a thing or two about building name recognition on the Internet.


• Helle Albeck has contributed a film review (in Danish) to cinemazone.dk.


• Henning Albeck is a SCUBA diving instructor in Helgoland, Denmark. Course details(in Danish).


• Hermann Albeck has written several books (in German) about government financial policy and its effects on economic stability and unemployment.


• J___ Albeck is the cousin twice removed of the singer/bassist Freddy Albeck (see below), and has published poetry under the pen name Raina Morreau. She tells me she also has an ancestor who was an Oberkriegsminister in Bavaria, prior to the family moving to Denmark.


• John Albeck completed his PhD in Computational & Systems Biology at MIT and is now working in the Brugge Lab at Harvard Medical School.


• Michael Albeck is a Professor of Cancer Research at Bar-Ilan University, in Israel.


• Morten Albek is a prize-winning bonsai grower in Denmark. (Link goes to page in Danish.)


• Pat Albeck lives in England and loves cats and fabrics. This may be the same Pat Albeck who was born in Hull, Yorkshire, and is "famous for designing National Trust tea towels" .


• Stan Albeck is a famous NBA basketball coach
  


• Tomas Ahlbeck is a computer programmer (currently working on an online game), amateur genealogist, and novelist (in Swedish). Any relation would be pretty distant.


• Tuulikki Albeck is a freelance interpreter (Finnish-Danish-Norwegian-Swedish-English) who lives in Copenhagen.

Dead People:

• Andreas ("Andy") Albeck worked at United Artists for about thirty years, and is credited with helping produce films including Raging Bull and two of the James Bond series, but is best remembered for taking early retirement after just three years as President, having backed the $44 million flop Heaven's Gate.


• Johan Frederik ("Freddy") Albeck was a Danish-born Jazz bassist and singer. He was a popular jazz player in Denmark and Sweden in the early 1940s, appeared in a film in 1945, spent some time in Hollywood, and returned to Europe in the 1960s. He returned to the screen in the 1973 film "Me in the Mafia."


• According to this list, The Bishop of Gurk from 1179 until 1194 was Dietrich von Albeck. It seems reasonable to suppose that he came from the village of Albeck in the Gurk valley (described above as "Gemeinde Albeck").


• According to this family tree, Adelheid ALBECK was born before 1319; her parents were Heinrich Werdenberg and Agnes Wuerttemberg. She married an Ulrich MATSCH, and had a son, grandson, and great-grandson all named Ulrich MATSCH. The son, born sometime before 1336, was known as Ulrich IV, which means he might possibly, if he lived an extremely long time, be the same person as Bishop Ulrich IV von Albeck of Graz-Seckau described below.


• Ulrich von Albeck was Bishop of Verden (Brunswick, Germany) briefly in 1407. (Arms shown are those of Verden.)


• Ulrich IV von Albeck was Bishop of Graz-Seckau (Austria) from 1417 to 1431. (Conceivably the same person as the short-tenured Bishop of Verden - the IV just means there were three previous Bishops of Graz-Seckau named Ulrich.) (Arms shown are those of Graz.)