A village of 1,700 inhabitants in the region of Eifel, in Germany, Marmagen holds a very special place in our hearts. It is the village from which, around the year 1700, Wilhelm Heinrich Johan Bonickhausen, the great-great-grandfather of Gustave Eiffel, left for France. Upon arriving in France, it was Wilhelm who decided to go by the name “Eiffel” — in memory of his native province — rather than using his official surname “Bonickhausen”, which was much harder to pronounce in French. A decision whose future impact he could never have imagined.
I had the pleasure of visiting Marmagen with my family during the spring school holidays. Discovering this charming village was a particularly moving experience for us. The central square bears the name “Eiffelplatz” in honor of our ancestor. A commemorative plaque, installed in 1889, for the centenary of the Eiffel tower, can be found there.
The townhall welcomed us very kindly and showed us Wilhem’s original birth certificate. We learned that his father, Léo Henricus Bonickhausen, was both the schoolteacher and the sacristan of Marmagen. The current school, which has been rebuilt several times, stands on the same site as the one where Léo used to teach. We would like to thank the townhall once again for their warm welcome.
Savin Yeatman-Eiffel
