Polish celebrities Mela Koteluk and Marcin Meller have common roots

In July and August 2025, our team of genealogists conducted research aimed at verifying the relationship between singer Mela Koteluk and journalist Marcin Meller. Both families indicated that their ancestors had the same surname and lived in Biłka Królewska near Lviv before World War II.

Biłka Królewska

Biłka Królewska (Ukrainian: Нижня Білка, Nyżnia Biłka) is currently a village in Ukraine, located in the Lviv Oblast, in the Lviv Raion (until 2020 in the Pustomyty Raion), on the Białka River. Between 1918 and 1939, the village was located within the borders of the Second Polish Republic, in the Lviv Province, Lviv County, and was the seat of the municipality. Before 1918, the village was located in the Austrian partition of Galicia, in the Lviv County. From a genealogical perspective, the most important information about Biłka Królewska is that it belonged to the Roman Catholic parish of St. Adalbert in Biłka Szlachecka and to the Greek Catholic parish of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Zuchorzyce. According to the census, in 1890 the village was inhabited by 702 people.

Archival search

The archival search covered, among others: the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw, the Archives of Archbishop Eugeniusz Baziak in Krakow, the Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv, as well as the State Archives in Opole and the Archives of Recent Records, the Institute of National Remembrance, Arolsen Archives – International Center for Information and Remembrance of Nazi Persecution. We also used genealogical databases and websites, including those created by these institutions, such as szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl, geneteka.genealodzy.pl, tsdial.archives.gov.ua, agad.gov.pl, and arolsen-archives.org.

Our team’s first task was to work on the family trees of both families independently of each other. We assumed that only by comparing information from one family tree with another would we be able to verify their common origin. We analyzed the parish registers of the Roman Catholic parish in Biłka Szlachecka and the Greek Catholic registers from Zuchorzyce.

The history of the Koteluk family

These sources also confirm the local specificity of Biłka Królewska and Biłka Szlachecka, where mixed marriages between Roman Catholics and Greek Catholics were common. According to the old custom, boys were usually baptized in their father’s rite, and girls in their mother’s faith. Examples of such relationships can be found in both of the lines studied. Michał Koteluk, Marcin’s great-grandfather, was Greek Catholic, and his wife Anna Hreczuch was Roman Catholic. Their children were baptized in two different rites, which clearly shows the practice at the time and how strongly the meeting of two traditions – Polish and Ruthenian – was present in the family history, creating the multicultural mosaic of Galicia.

The most important discovery concerns the marriage certificate dated February 9, 1817, between Aleksy (Alexander) Koteluk, son of Bazyle and Ewa, and Agnieszka Gospodarzyszyna, daughter of Andrzej and Zofia. It was this couple who turned out to be the common ancestors of both Mela and Marcin.

• The Meli Koteluk line leads through Jan Koteluk, son of Aleksy and Agnieszka, born around 1819.
  
• Marcin Meller’s line, on the other hand, leads back to Joachim Koteluk, born around 1817.
  

The status animarum – parish registers of souls – proved to be a particularly valuable source, as they not only documented dates of birth, marriage, and death, but also recorded, for example, the attendance of household members at Easter confession. Thanks to them, we were able to precisely trace the lives of the Koteluk families, see the entire group of siblings, and capture the changes in subsequent generations.

Dramas of the 20th century

The research also confirmed dramatic episodes from the 20th century. Documents found in the Arolsen Archives confirm that Maria (Mela’s great-grandmother) was forced to work in Germany, where she gave birth to her daughter Eleonora in 1944, and that Marcin’s grandmother, also named Maria, gave birth to her daughter Beata in Germany in 1945.

When researching the wartime fate of both families, we notice how incomplete and fragmentary the documentation on concentration camp prisoners and forced laborers is. In the case of Marcin’s grandparents, no documents confirming her work in Germany and the birth of her daughter were found in either the Arolsen Archives database or the IPN archives. However, the Arolsen Archives database contains post-war correspondence between Marcin Meller’s grandmother and mother and the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen regarding the search for information about her husband and father –Rościsław, a prisoner of war at Stalag IA, who was evacuated in January 1945 to the Third Reich.

We were definitely more fortunate in the case of Meli Koteluk’s family. A search of the Arolsen Archives database revealed documents showing that her great-grandparents Maria and Wiktor had been forcibly employed since November 29, 1941, in Grusselbach, Fulda County, by Leo Baumbach, where their daughter was born in the fall of 1944. In October 1946, they returned to Poland.

In addition, Kinga found and checked the documentation of the Polish-German Reconciliation Foundation (a foundation established in 1991 as a result of an agreement between the Polish and German governments) in the New Records Archive. The team’s archives contain documents belonging to Maria, Wiktor, and their daughter, including handwritten applications, requests, and statements, scans of identity cards, copies of civil status records, and, most importantly, photographs of these individuals.

The drama of World War II did not end for both families with the end of hostilities. The agreements reached in Yalta and Potsdam resulted in Biłka Królewska becoming part of the Soviet Union, and the Koteluk families were forced to leave for Poland, to the so-called “Recovered Territories.” We found documents confirming their repatriation in the State Archives in Opole, as both families ended up in the Strzelce Opolskie area, and in the State Archives of the Lviv Oblast, where descriptions and registers of the property that the families left behind in Biłka Królewska were found.

Library search

Our work did not focus solely on archival sources. We also conducted a library search, which led us to Władysław Łukaszyński’s monograph “Biłka Królewska (pow. Lwów). Zarys dziejów wsi.” Interestingly, there was only one copy of the book in Poland – at the Public Library in Rzeszów. Tatiana Midura from our team traveled to the capital of the Podkarpackie Province with the mission of borrowing the monograph. This publication proved to be incredibly valuable for our research. The author, Władysław Łukaszyński, like the Koteluk family, came from Biłka Królewska and wanted to preserve as much information as possible in his publication, not only from sources, but also from the accounts of the inhabitants of this village who were repatriated to Poland. Thanks to this, we were able to capture the local and social context of pre-war Biłka Królewska in our research. Based on this publication, we were able to determine where the homes of representatives of both Koteluk families were located. What is more, accounts have been preserved that Marian Koteluk, Mela’s relative, was a musician and leader of a local band, which coincides with family stories from the singer’s home.

Field research

The book and the information we gathered from it motivated us to travel to Biłka Królewska. Helena Ushenko-Krawczenko took on this task. Using an old map, she identified the houses where Mela and Marcin’s ancestors had lived.

• Houses No. 208, 209, 219, and 220 belonged to the siblings of Mela’s great-grandfather (Piotr Koteluk).
  
• House No. 4 was associated with the family of Zofia Nudna from Koteluki, Marcin’s great-grandmother.

The Koteluk family home from Marcin’s line was located in the center of the village, right next to the mill and granary. Today, it no longer exists, but the local community still remembers its former inhabitants.

Accounts from residents of Biłka indicate that the Koteluks were distinguished by their musicality – Marian Koteluk (Mela’s great-grandfather’s brother) was a violinist and leader of a village band, in which his brothers also played.

All of the collected material shows that genealogy is not only about reconstructing dry facts, but also about discovering identities, traditions, and vivid emotions that have survived in family memory. The history of the Koteluks—at the crossroads of cultures and religions in Galicia—shows how complicated and rich the lives of ordinary people were. The shared roots of Mela Koteluk and Marcin Meller are proof that history from two centuries ago can find its place in the present, and that genealogy can reveal stories that connect people despite the passage of generations.