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Barack Obama's German ancestors

by Andrew Malcolm and Johanna Neuman

As President Barack Obama did Dresden with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday, a genealogical study in Utah reported that the first black president in U.S. history is actually German.

Well, partly.

Provo, Utah-based Ancestry.com has found that Obama's lineageon his mother's sidecan be traced to Germany. Using online sources and microfilm from the Family History Library owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, genealogists found a document that went back to Obama's eighth great-grandfather, Conrad Wolflin, who served as mayor of Orsingen, Germany, for 30 years.

"One of the things that I love about this find is it really illustrates what you can find out about your family history," Anastasia Tyler, lead genealogist on the project, told The Salt Lake Tribune. "World history is our history."

Obama's great-grandfather, Johann Conrad Wolflin, was born on Jan. 29, 1729, in Besigheim, Wuerttemberg, Germany, and in 1750 resettled in Pennsylvania, changing his name to Wolfley.

See the rest of the report on Herr President Obama from our colleagues at the Los Angeles Times' Top of the Ticket:

Told of the Obama connection, current officials in Besigheimtourist dollars dancing in their headsjumped for joy.

Besigheim Deputy Mayor Klaus Schremps told The Associated Press Television Network that he tracked down a copy of the parish record and located Wolflin's name. "If this turns out really to be the case," he said, "we will extend an invitation to Mr. Obama, and if he would come and visit at some stage, it would be a great joy for the city and for the people."

This of course is through Obama's mother side, she of Irish and Kansas roots. His father was Kenyan.

If that were not enough to make the president feel welcome, relatives of survivors of Buchenwald concentration camp are also calling Obama family.

It seems the president's great-uncle (also on his mother's side), Charlie Payne, 84, helped liberate a sub-camp there when he was an infantryman fighting in World War II.

"The survivors see President Obama almost like a grandson of theirs," Volker Knigge, director of the Buchenwald memorial, told CNN. "The president is related to one of the brave men who came here and saw the Nazi horror firsthand."

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