Stanisław Lem, "De Impossibilitate Vitae and De Impossibilitate Prognoscendi"

 Bo Sixten Nilsson writes:

I got a message: "The following profile has an autosomal DNA match with your profile:

Hedviga Rakamarić

Estimated Relationship: 3rd to 4th Cousin"

Since I am a Swede living in Lund, south Sweden and believe that my ancestors have lived nearby in southern Sweden forever (at least several hundreds of years) the message is confusing. Do you know of any ancestors of yours that ended up in Sweden long ago?

Most of us have blond hair and blue eyes. Only my father’s mother had dark hair and dark eyes, as well as her mother and her grandparents. They all had Swedish names though, but didn’t really looked Swedish.

Your names indicate that you are living in some part of former Yugoslavia. It’s an interesting coincidence that I have spent several summers there in the 70’s and 80’s. I even managed to learn a bit of the language.

Dear Bo

My brother Radovan Belić maintains and understands our family tree, I defer to him to answer your query. I think Rakamarić's are genetically related to him but not me - no blood relations of mine.

I am Danish, and have visited Sweden often, have had Swedish girlfriends, have worked at Chalmers University, Sep 1984-Aug 1986, speak Swedish (badly, in manner of Danish speakers) so some recent genes left in Sweden are conceivable. No Swedish friend ever mentioned it, but Swedish women do not necessarily bring such details up.

A few centuries ago? That is fascinating. As they surely thought you in school, Swedes were a horrible plague upon whole of Europe, and one of the legends is that Croatian soldiers did the right thing, and killed Gustav II in the battle of Lützen, on 16. November 1632.

VojnaPovijest.vecernji.hr/vojna-povijest/poginuo-svedski-kralj-gustav-ii-adolf-1632-godine

My mother - a Croatian art historian told me about this, so it's very suspect unless there are non-Croatian sources corroborating that.

So Swedish soldiers certainly raped and pillaged in the South.

But immigrating to Sweden no sane male would do in 17th century, so making Swedish babies I find mysterious. A possibility is via my German origins:  docs.google.com Golmajers , Flickr.com Golmajer archive .

Radovan has the correct version, but basically my maternal grandfather's family can be traced to German serfs brought to (today's) Slovenia in 1658 or thereabouts. Don't know where they were before they were "brought" to Slovenia.

The good news is that in his book review "De Impossibilitate Vitae and De Impossibilitate Prognoscendi" Stanisław Lem proves that he (and consequently myself) could not have been born. The recursive genealogy traces him to Pleistocene. Along the way, Lem mentions that "[...] would not have encouraged his niece to marry the Croat for, though a giaour, it was a good and comely youth. In marrying the Croat, the grandmother on Mr. Mdivani’s mother’s side thus increased the chances of Professor Kouska’s birth", so there you have the Croatian connection.

Digging further, a few steps back, Lem notes: "As a result of the mixing of the chromosomes of that lubricious Paleopithecanthropus and that quadrumanous protohuman primatrice, there arose that type of meiosis and that linkage of gene loci which, transmitted through the next thirty thousand generations, produced on the visage of the young lady nurse that very smile, faintly reminiscent of the smile of Mona Lisa, from the canvas of Leonardo, which so enchanted the young surgeon Kouska."

Now, if you peruse this thing called "Google" you will discover that I actually exist, and busy myself with the impossibility of predicting the future. And predicting the past is so much harder. So it all makes sense.

We are talking about getting lost in a major rabbit hole here. If you dig up anything, please let me know...

Greetings to my Lund cousin 17 times removed :)
Predrag Cvitanović

 Bo Sixten Nilsson writes back:

Since my DNA matched with Hedviga Rakamarić (Kolaković) with a suggestion of 3rd to 4th cousin and you are not (DNA)-related to her I guess our common ancestor could very well be some 17 generations back. Some fun or interesting facts to point out:

Hedviga is a Swedish name as far as I know. It was quite common in the 19th century.

After my graduation from LTH (similar to Chalmers) in electronic engineering I worked there for two years, 1980-1982. After that I was mostly involved in running small companies,

I lived together with a woman from former Yugoslavia for 20 years. She grew up in Rijeka but was born in Serbia in the Banat close to the Romanian border. In the late 60’s she moved with her parents to Sweden where I first met her. Up until Yugoslavia blew up I visited all the republics except Macedonia, traveling around by car.

Skåne (Scania in English) where I live used to be a part of Denmark, but in one of those repeating wars between Sweden and Denmark Scania was occupied by Sweden. After the declaration of peace between these two countries in 1658 the new border remains - we still belong to Sweden. One of the most successful occupations in Europe I’ve heard.

Bornholm, a small Danish island close to the southeast coast of Scania, was also occupied, but the Danes bought it back to Denmark two years later. My grandfather’s mother was from there.

A good friend of mine, Jean Sellem a French guy born in Paris but living in Sweden for more than 50 years, is a former art professor - like your mother.

I do hope we will find some more solid clues about the DNA connection between Sweden and Croatia

On February 23, 2023 Harry Herlin pitches in:

"Howdy, This fellow looks a bit like you. Never knew about him but still …"

Predrag to Harry

My biological father, a red bourgeois (by the fact that his sister had joined partisans, worked in a cave with Tito towards the end of the war), traveled far and wide who after the liberation, was very fond of making (and leaving) babies, but the dates do not quite match. Ronka, handsome as he was (every Belić, but one, is very handsome) was born October 1945 but Germans had already surrendered on 8 May 1945, so a Massachusetts pregnancy would require time travel, "Terminator" style. But we should not give up hope. Can you check if Bo Sixten Nilsson is our common cousin, a few times removed?