The quote "What you inherit from your fathers, acquire it to possess it" from Goethe's Faust I has always been the guideline of our family, long before Goethe put it on paper. Therefore, until the fire in 1966, this citation also graced the nameplate on the Scharnberg farm in Trittau.
On November 19, 1784, Hans Claus Scharenberg got married into the Meins farm opposite the church. He came from the heathfarm from the Trittauer heathland and married ANNA Catherina Elisabeth Meins. Since then, the farm has been owned by the Scharnberg family - until today, i.e. for more than 7 generations the Scharnbergs have kept their motto and maintained and enlarged their property. It also shows that for 7 generations a male heritage has always been born who continued to run the farm. And that will stay that way, because the 8th generation is already in the starting blocks.
On November 19, 1984, the 200th Anniversary of the Scharnbergs was celebrated on the farm.
There are quite a few Scharnberg families in Trittau and the surrounding area, but only one Scharnberg farm in Trittau. That was not always so. Earlier there was Scharnberg at the Bells pool (that was us), Scharnberg at the dam (today farmer Grunwald) and even the courtyard behind the church once belonged to a Scharnberg from our line. The courtyard is no longer today, in the square is now the pastorate. The Bells pool was a small pond in front of the Trittau church, which, however, has not existed for more than 100 years.
In 1966 the farm burnt down almost to the ground. The cause of the fire could never be completely clarified by the prosecutor. We suspected arson, as in the years a 'fire devil' was responsible for various fires. During the reconstruction, the old farm, where the residential and economic part were still housed under a single roof, was redesigned, so now there is a residential building at the street, the economic part is behind it.
Until the end of the 17th century our family history can be relatively safely traced, but what was before? Where does our family really come from?
For someone who cares about their ancestral ancestry, that's always an important question.
Are we possibly descendants of the knight Ludolfus de Scarpenberch (1259) and was he perhaps an ancestor of the notorious robber barons of Scarpenberghe from Linau? An interesting essay was written by Günter Scharnberg from Grönwohld in 1974, which of course I would not want to deprive the reader.
There are a number of documents in which the occurrence of the names Scharfenberg, Scharffenberg, Scharnberg, Scharrenberg, Scarpenberg or Scharpenberg is reported, some dating back to the year 1150. Unfortunately, they do not say anything about a direct lineage to the living Scharnbergs today, so that the proof of the life of our ancestors will probably remain closed forever.