My father’s sponsor at his confirmation was a locksmith called Nieser, the so-called citizens’ locksmith. Where the road from the Jakobsberg to the Sutte goes steeply downhill there is a reservoir surrounded on three sides by a wall and fed by a spring. On the side of this towards the road, the locksmith had his property, the smallest in Bamberg. Below was a tiny workshop, the work was done mainly in the open. 
Behind and uphill was a small
house just one floor higher. It consisted of but one room. The sleeping accommodation was in the attic of the workshop and could be reached from the house via a footstool, forming a bridge. Still higher uphill was a minute shed. The branches of a large nut tree shaded the whole edifice. The locksmith was perfectly happy in his doll’s house but had to suffer a great many jokes about himself and his great palace. A favourite joke was to put advertisements in the paper,
saying that at his address there were to let three or four bedroom flats, large furnished bedsitters, store rooms suitable for receptions. The old man always met any enquirers with great good humour and showed them all over his establishment.
On the 14th October 1844, my father was apprenticed to a master miller called Euchar Montag at the Bishofsmuehle Bamberg and had his name put into the Guild of Millers register. This was done on the insistence of his father, who was dead keen on this particular trade. On the 4th August 1846, he passed the required tests and was now ‘free from his apprenticeship and a qualified journeyman’. He remained with his master for a further year.
Euchar Montag was a decent, friendly man who treated his apprentices well. For the rest of his days, my father remained good friends with his employer’s sons, who became mechanics and clockmakers. The daughter Babette too was very friendly. I remember her well as a good-looking elderly spinster lady, always very well dressed.