Josh Groban parents are both only children, so he doesn’t know too much about his family tree. Tonight at 10p on TLC’s Who Do You Think You Are?, he learns a lot about his ancestors going back to the late 1600’s. The singer’s search focuses on his 8X great grandfather, Johann Jacob Zimmerman, who lived in Germany, and the two family members have a lot in common.
Even though Zimmerman’s father was a craftsman, Johann did not follow in his father’s footsteps. Instead, he want to University and became a music teacher. Besides teaching music and singing, he was a Deacon at his Lutheran Church. If that is not enough, he also studied astronomy and mathematics, and wrote 12 books on the topic.
In 1680, Johann saw something great in the sky from his Church that changed his whole life and his family’s lives. Something so astronomical that Isaac Newton wrote about him in his book, Book 3 of Isaac Newton’s Principia.
What is it? How did it change everything for Groban’s lineage? You just have to watch this extremely compelling episode of Who Do You Think You Are? to find out.
Groban will discover the answers to these questions when he travels to Germany. When arrives there, he visits the archives. From there he goes to the University that his 8X great grandfather was a student. His next stop is to the church that Johann worked a Deacon and made the discovery that changed everything. A discovery that revolutionized his way of thinking so much so that he had to beg the local Duke to keep his job at the Church. This revelation leads Groban to his final stop, the archives of the Lutheran Church. There he learns about all the sacrifices Zimmerman made for his new beliefs. With the book almost closed on Groban’s research, there is one more astonishing fact that he finds out about Zimmerman that will blow him and you away.
When Groban’s search is concluded, he gets to reflect on his 8X Great Grandfather and how much they have in common. In some ways. It is almost like they are connected even though they lived almost three and a half centuries apart.
Maybe it is because I was a Religious Studies major, but I was completely enthralled with this episode of Who Do You Think You Are? Although I really think that I was so captivated by the show because his history is so unbelievable and interesting that you just want to know more and more. In fact, after the episode I concluded, I had to research Johann Jacob Zimmerman and I learned some more incredible facts about the impact he had on his time and ours.
