Dear Isreal,
I've studied your homepage with great interest. I can only trace my families history back over the past four to five generations including mine. All these Prekers have been living in the Ruhrgebiet, which is the major mining area in West Germany. It is a fact that many people have come from Poland to work in the mines beginning and middle of the past century. Recently a friend of mine brought to my attention an article in the "ZEIT magazin", which is a supplement to a German weekly newspaper. According to that article the name Preker comes from the German dialect word "Anspreker" (literally translated "Ansprecher" in German). Apperantly these people where kind of heralds or messangers travelling from village to village and proclaiming whatever. I havent actually seen the article myselve nor do I know the exact publishing date, but it might be worth checking for you. They have a webpage (http://eunet.bda.de/bda/int/zeit/index.html). I made a keyword search with "Preker" with no results.
I will also ask my parents, but I doubt they know more than I do. Good luck for your studies and and all the best.
Pascal
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Pascal Preker
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
University of California, San Francisco
513 Paranassus Av.
San Francisco, California 94143-0448
Phone: +1-415-476 4705
Fax: +1-415-502 4315
Pascal@itsa.ucsf.edu
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