I have finally gotten around to relaunching this website, which will contains what we know about the history of the Kloppenburg family, or at least the parts of the family that we know about. We hope this website can also be the vehicle to get in touch with other Kloppenburgs, around the world, if they are so inclined.

We’ll start with the first part of the family history, as it was painstakingly prepared by my late father, Frederick Herman Jan Kloppenburg, 1922- This part provides a deep background of origins of the name Kloppenburg, back in Germany, and also provides a wide ranging background and history of the area from whence the Kloppenburgs emerged.

My personal favourite part of this history concerns the meaning of the name Kloppenburg. As my father explains, the Kloppen part means “‘fighting’, beating, defeating, thrashing or raising hell.” The burg part means simply a fortification.

So, as I like to tell my friends and acquaintances, Kloppenburg can be translated in the vernacular to mean “Fort Whoop-Ass”.

Soon I will publish the next part of the family history, which is an account of actual ancestors, going back over 400 years to when Wilcke Kloppenburg was born in Nordemoor, in what is now modern day Germany. Later this history traces the movement of the family to the Netherlands.