Franz Hangauer was my cousin. The story of how we met is very cool, but for another day. When I went to Holland to visit Sarah in January 2013, we went on the train to Franz’ brother Wilfried’s house in Rastatt.<\/p>\n
To get to Rastatt from Amsterdam, we took an InterCity train to Frankfurt, then transferred to a local for Baden Baden, where Wilfried was to meet us. I knew Franz was coming and that he lived in Mainz, which was on the way for the train, but I didn’t expect at all what happened.<\/p>\n
Franz knew our schedule, boarded our train in Mainz, started at the front and walked through the train until he found us. I was slumped in my seat next to Sarah, just waiting for the train ride to end, when I heard a voice say, ‘Hello, Chris!’<\/p>\n
I stared at the speaker and my first thought was ‘Johannes has come back to life.’ Johannes was Franz’ father. I hadn’t seen Franz in 30 years so naturally he looked older and not surprisingly he looked like his father.<\/p>\n
Once I came to my senses we had a happy reunion and continued on to Wilfried’s in high spirits. We spent a day and a half there filled with gemutlichkeit.<\/p>\n
It was to be the last time I saw him. Franz died of a sudden heart attack on April 7 of this year.<\/p>\n
But not the last time I spoke to him. He had been in the habit, over the years, of calling periodically. Not often, maybe once every couple of years.<\/p>\n
He was one of the very few that called me after Zach’s death, though. Our conversation was strained, as were all my conversations in those days, but I heard the emotion and sympathy in his voice and I loved him for it.<\/p>\n
I wrote a note to Wilfried & Marlies, his brother and sister, afterwards and recently got a card back with a Thornton Wilder quote on it. It took a minute or two to realize that the quote was originally written in English so I looked it up. Here it is:<\/p>\n
There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.<\/em><\/p>\n Rest in Peace, Franz Anton Hangauer 1957-2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Franz Hangauer was my cousin. The story of how we met is very cool, but for another day. When I went to Holland to visit Sarah in January 2013, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[20,21,23,7,22],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","tag-franz","tag-hangauer","tag-rastatt","tag-sarah","tag-wilfried"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53,"href":"https:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}