Redlins since 1278AD

Most of my relatives do not know that the linage is out of Estonia. I met with a genealogy buff in Berlin who had done the work. 

That's where it all began, in the ancient city of Tallin.  First records are from 1278.  The German crusaders invaded and forced people to keep records, births, deaths and taxes. The later wars drove the Redlins out and they moved to Pommerania in the 1500s.  Then in the early 1800s moved to Northern Germany.. and many now living in the USA. 

When you have these records of nations rising and falling, the long view allows one to see how the USA's teetering on the edge is not impossible. One's world view must be kingdom... not national. Yet, I grieve for our once great nations as Italians must grieve for Rome..

Here is a little history lesson on Estonia and why this matters: 
 
It was the early influence of Germanic order that caused the keeping of records we have today. Things really changed in Estonia during the 13th century. Estonia's struggles for independence during the twentieth century were in large part a reaction to nearly 700 years of foreign rule. Before 1200 the Estonians lived largely as free peasants loosely organized into parishes (kihelkonnad ), which in turn were grouped into counties (maakonnad ). 

In the early 1200s, the Estonians and the Latvians came under assault from German crusaders seeking to impose Christianity on them. Although the Estonians' resistance to the Teutonic Knights lasted some twenty years, the lack of a centralized political organization as well as inferior weaponry eventually brought down the Estonians in 1227. The Germans, moving from the south, were abetted by Danish forces that invaded from the north and captured Tallinn. 

Together with present-day Latvia, the region became known as Livonia; the Germans and Danes settled down as nobility, and the Estonians were progressively subordinated as serfs. During 1343-45 an Estonian peasant uprising against the German and Danish nobility prompted the Danes to relinquish their control of northern Estonia to the Germans. After this resistance was crushed, the area remained generally peaceful for two centuries.