Part 9 - Nesche LANDAU geb. LANDAU
I need to reconsider my basis for estimating the death date for Nesche LANDAU geb. LANDAU (b.ca.1804).
In two recent blog entries, I have explained my rationale for concluding that Nesche died in the late 1850s, probably between September 1856 and February 1859. That was based on the naming of her granddaughters Nanny in "1859, 1863, and after 1852 (perhaps ca.1858)".
The last part of that sentence is incorrect. That was my assumption back in July 2014 when I first checked the naming pattern of Nesche's grandchildren. At that time, based on review of Myslowitz Jewish community records back in 2009, I had the information that Nanny was a daughter of Israel Jonas LANDAU and Eva LICHTENFELD, but that particular entry in the Myslowitz records was largely illegible. Based on the location of Nanny's birth entry in the records, Nanny appeared to be their first child, born before Lazar Bernhard (b.5 January 1853).
Possibly because I learned that Israel Jonas and Eva were married in 1852 (in Opatow / Apt), I seem not to have assumed that Nanny was born before Lazar Bernhard, despite her birth record coming physically and chronologically before his in the Myslowitz records.
Having not assigned an estimated birth date for Nanny, when I looked at the naming pattern in 2014, I saw the marriage date of 1852 and children's births in 1853, 1854, 1855, 1856, 1857, 1860, 1861 and 1864, I noticed the gap between 1857 and 1860, and allowed myself to speculate that Nanny was born in that period (ca.1858). That could have been a reasonable guess, if not for the location of Nanny birth entry in the Myslowitz records.
In March 2015, when I found the Berlin Heiratsregister entry for Nanny and learned that her birth date was 24 February 1851, I did not notice that I had based my theory about Nesche's death date on the uncertainty of when this granddaughter Nanny was born.
But now having noticed that last piece of data, I have to reconsider the Nanny naming pattern:
* Joseph Hirsch's children are not known well enough to consider in this context; he did name a daughter Fanny in 1852
* Hendla named her 9th or 10th child Nani in 1859, having had daughters in 1848, 1850, 1852, 1854 and 1856
* Israel Jonas named his first child Nanny in 1851
* Sara died married in 1860, but whether she had children is unknown
* Amalie named her first child Nanny in 1862
A naming pattern is now harder to discern.
It would be easy to assume that Nesche died before 1851. But if she died so early, why did Hendla fail to name one of her earlier daughters Nesche or Nanny; she went to the names Faigla, Bajla, Emma, Chana, and possibly Rachel, before naming a daughter Nani in 1859.
Unless the girls named Nanny were not named in memory of Nesche, she either died before 1851 and the question about Hendla's name selections remains, or she died about 1858, and the question is why did Israel Jonas name a daughter Nanny already in 1851.
Two out of three scenarios lead to the conclusion that Nesche had died by 1859, enabling her husband Haskel LANDAU to re-marry in the 1860s. The third scenario is that the naming of granddaughters Nanny has nothing to do with Nesche and provides no clues as to when Nesche died.
I think I cannot reach a conclusion with the available information.
Monday, November 30, 2015
Sunday, November 29, 2015
More Ideas about Haskel LANDAU (Part 8 of 6)
Part 8 - Haskel LANDAU of Kempen and R. Ezechiel LANDAU (1880-1965)
Earlier, in writing about Kurt BACH, I included a long digression about the family of Lotte GLOVER geb. LANDAU of Florida.
The quick summary is that Lotte's father was a rabbi named Ezechiel LANDAU (1888, Neu-Sandec, Galicia - 1965, New York). His father was Isak (Icyk) LANDAU (1863, Przyrow - 1943, Theresienstadt). R. Ezechiel LANDAU was a friend of Sanitätsrat Dr. Josef BACH (1867, Myslowitz - 1942, Theresienstadt) and visited him in Breslau. Lotte also thought that her father had visited family in Myslowitz (where Amalie BACH geb. LANDAU lived until her death in 1925). According to Lotte's brother R. Sol LANDAU of Miami, Isak's father was Jecheskel LANDAU, and he or Lotte thought that Isak's father was a rabbi in Kempen.
The finding aid for the Sol Landau Papers in the archive of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York contains the statement that R. Ezechiel LANDAU was a great grandson of R. Ezekiel (Jecheskel) LANDAU (1713-1793) of Prague. I suspected that "great grandson" might have been a misconstruing of "ancestor", since three generations seems a little too few to get back to the Noda b'Jehuda.
Without having recognized in 1998 that Jecheskel and Haskel were alternate forms of the same name (Ezekiel / Ezechiel), I thought that the most reasonable way for R. Ezechiel LANDAU to be related to Sanitätsrat Dr. Josef BACH would be for Ezechiel to be a great grandson of Haskel LANDAU of Kempen, Josef BACH's grandfather and my great great great grandfather. So, I guessed that Isak's father Jecheskel was a previously unknown son of my great great great grandparents Haskel LANDAU and Nesche LANDAU geb. LANDAU of Kempen.
Since Isak was born in 1863, I speculated that his father Jecheskel was born in the 1830s. That would have put Jecheskel's birth right into the period from ca.1821 to 1842 when Haskel and Nesche were known to be having children. It was a bit puzzling why this birth did not appear in the Kempen records, but at that time I had not yet figured out why my great great grandmother Amalie's "ca.1838 birth" did not appear in those records as well. So one more undocumented child was not too much of a stretch.
There things stood from 1998 to 2013. That was when I finally realized that Haskel would not have had a son named "Jecheskel", because they are the same name, and Jecheskel would not have been named after his living father. To keep things fitting together, as a place holder I just changed Isak's father from being named Jecheskel to being an unknown son of Haskel and Nesche, making "my" Haskel (Jecheskel) LANDAU a grandfather of Isak, rather than his father. I guessed that Isak, born in 1863, could (a) be a son of an unknown son of Haskel and Nesche, or (b) could be a previously unknown son of one of their known sons, or (c) could even be a son of one of their daughters if there was one who had married a LANDAU (and so could have had a son with the last name LANDAU).
This scenario had the added benefit of making R. Ezechiel LANDAU a great grandson of a Jecheskel LANDAU, though the one in Kempen in the 19th century, not the famous one in Prague in the 18th century.
And, according to my theory, developed from reviewing the LANDAU family history in Dr. Neil ROSENSTEIN's "The Unbroken Chain" (2nd ed. 1990), and bolstered by the Jichus Brief prepared in 1930 by Wolf SCHEINWECHSLER for his nephew Samuel PLAWNER, this scenario also maintained Lotte's family story that R. Ezechiel LANDAU was a descendant of the Noda b'Jehuda, R. Ezekiel LANDAU of Prague, though his great great great great great grandson, four additional generations that make the timing fit much better.
But that is not why I wanted to write this story.
As I have been piecing together the identity of Haskel LANDAU of Kempen as being the same person as Jecheskel, son of R. Isaak LANDAU of Wlodawa, the only resistance comes from the published statements that Isaak's son Jecheskel LANDAU was married to a daughter of R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU (ca.1799-1836) of Kempen, whereas my great great great grandfather was married to my great great great grandmother Nesche LANDAU (b.ca.1804), daughter of R. Arjeh Jehuda Leib (Loebel) LANDAU (ca.1780-1838) of Kempen.
To accommodate Haskel being a son-in-law of R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU (and, in the process, assuming that the published and republished statement is correct), I have speculated that, after the death of Nesche, probably in the late 1850s, Haskel (b.ca.1800) remarried to Nesche's first cousin. And I have further speculated that this first cousin pretty much has to be Henriette (Gitel) LANDAU (b.1834, Kempen), one of only two daughters of R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU alive at his death in 1836.
Henriette LANDAU married her first cousin Josef Szyja PERETZ in Lublin in 1865 when she was about 31. They had a daughter in 1867. If Henriette was the second wife of Haskel LANDAU, she could have married him in the late 1850s or some time after 1867. Given her age when she married in 1865 (31) and his age, if he married after 1867 (approaching 70), it seems more likely that this conjectured marriage would have been a first marriage for Henriette when she was in her 20s and when Haskel was a recent widower and "only" about 60 years old.
Since Henriette married (again?) in 1865, if Haskel had been married to Henriette, he presumably died shortly before that date, so ca.1864.
The only potential hitch in Haskel LANDAU dying about 1864 comes from the fact that Haskel and Nesche had no grandchildren named in memory of Haskel / Ezekiel / Jecheskel. Of their 10 known children, only 5 are known to have lived to adulthood and had families of their own. The first three Joseph Hirsch, Hendel and Israel Jonas had their children between 1843 and 1864. The child born in 1864 to Israel Jonas was a girl (Rosalie). It is not known whether the fourth one, Sara REHFISCH geb. LANDAU, had any children, but since she died in 1860, she would not have had any after Haskel may have died. But the fifth one, Amalie BACH geb. LANDAU, my great great grandmother, had children from 1862 to 1869, with the boys having the names Emanuel (1863), Josef Hirsch (1867) and Elias (1869). If Amalie's father Haskel died ca.1864, why wasn't Josef Hirsch named in memory of Haskel -- or was his Hebrew name Jecheskel, despite his secular names suggesting a Hebrew name of Josef and/or Zwi? (Perhaps Amalie's brother Joseph Hirsch LANDAU of Groß Wartenberg died after Haskel and before Josef Hirsch BACH was born, causing Jakob and Amalie to name this son born in 1867 after her brother, rather than her father.)
But that is still not why I wanted to write this story.
The reason I wanted to write this story has to do with Lotte's father R. Ezechiel LANDAU and his father Isak LANDAU.
If "my" Haskel LANDAU had a second marriage ca.1860 to a young woman, such as Henriette LANDAU (age ca.26), then he could have had a second family from this second marriage; maybe only one child, maybe a son; a son named Isak. Isak LANDAU was born in 1863 in Przyrow, a village about 30 km east of Czestochowa, not so far from Kempen where Haskel was last spotted in the 1840s.
In addition, if this is "that" Haskel/Jecheskel LANDAU, then naming a son "Isak" would make sense. Haskel would have been naming his late-born son after his father R. Isaac (b.ca.1779), formerly of Wlodawa, who was living in Tiberias in 1849 and was buried there. R. Isaac LANDAU of Wlodawa (and Tiberias) had outlived the childbearing years of Nesche, and she and Haskel did not give the name Isaac to any of their sons born between 1821 and 1842.
This would bring Lotte's LANDAU lineage back to the story I was told by her and others in her family; that her father R. Ezechiel LANDAU was a son of Isak LANDAU, whose father was R. Jecheskel LANDAU of Kempen. The seemingly too-large period between the birth of Isak (1863) and his father Haskel/Jecheskel (ca.1800) would be accommodated by Haskel having had a second marriage to a young woman who could be Isak's mother.
And when R. Ezechiel LANDAU visited Dr. Josef Hirsch BACH in Breslau, he would have been visiting his half-uncle.
It is speculative, but it would all fit nicely, validating the family memory retained by Lotte and her family, and explaining the connection between the LANDAUs and the BACHs.
Earlier, in writing about Kurt BACH, I included a long digression about the family of Lotte GLOVER geb. LANDAU of Florida.
The quick summary is that Lotte's father was a rabbi named Ezechiel LANDAU (1888, Neu-Sandec, Galicia - 1965, New York). His father was Isak (Icyk) LANDAU (1863, Przyrow - 1943, Theresienstadt). R. Ezechiel LANDAU was a friend of Sanitätsrat Dr. Josef BACH (1867, Myslowitz - 1942, Theresienstadt) and visited him in Breslau. Lotte also thought that her father had visited family in Myslowitz (where Amalie BACH geb. LANDAU lived until her death in 1925). According to Lotte's brother R. Sol LANDAU of Miami, Isak's father was Jecheskel LANDAU, and he or Lotte thought that Isak's father was a rabbi in Kempen.
The finding aid for the Sol Landau Papers in the archive of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York contains the statement that R. Ezechiel LANDAU was a great grandson of R. Ezekiel (Jecheskel) LANDAU (1713-1793) of Prague. I suspected that "great grandson" might have been a misconstruing of "ancestor", since three generations seems a little too few to get back to the Noda b'Jehuda.
Without having recognized in 1998 that Jecheskel and Haskel were alternate forms of the same name (Ezekiel / Ezechiel), I thought that the most reasonable way for R. Ezechiel LANDAU to be related to Sanitätsrat Dr. Josef BACH would be for Ezechiel to be a great grandson of Haskel LANDAU of Kempen, Josef BACH's grandfather and my great great great grandfather. So, I guessed that Isak's father Jecheskel was a previously unknown son of my great great great grandparents Haskel LANDAU and Nesche LANDAU geb. LANDAU of Kempen.
Since Isak was born in 1863, I speculated that his father Jecheskel was born in the 1830s. That would have put Jecheskel's birth right into the period from ca.1821 to 1842 when Haskel and Nesche were known to be having children. It was a bit puzzling why this birth did not appear in the Kempen records, but at that time I had not yet figured out why my great great grandmother Amalie's "ca.1838 birth" did not appear in those records as well. So one more undocumented child was not too much of a stretch.
There things stood from 1998 to 2013. That was when I finally realized that Haskel would not have had a son named "Jecheskel", because they are the same name, and Jecheskel would not have been named after his living father. To keep things fitting together, as a place holder I just changed Isak's father from being named Jecheskel to being an unknown son of Haskel and Nesche, making "my" Haskel (Jecheskel) LANDAU a grandfather of Isak, rather than his father. I guessed that Isak, born in 1863, could (a) be a son of an unknown son of Haskel and Nesche, or (b) could be a previously unknown son of one of their known sons, or (c) could even be a son of one of their daughters if there was one who had married a LANDAU (and so could have had a son with the last name LANDAU).
This scenario had the added benefit of making R. Ezechiel LANDAU a great grandson of a Jecheskel LANDAU, though the one in Kempen in the 19th century, not the famous one in Prague in the 18th century.
And, according to my theory, developed from reviewing the LANDAU family history in Dr. Neil ROSENSTEIN's "The Unbroken Chain" (2nd ed. 1990), and bolstered by the Jichus Brief prepared in 1930 by Wolf SCHEINWECHSLER for his nephew Samuel PLAWNER, this scenario also maintained Lotte's family story that R. Ezechiel LANDAU was a descendant of the Noda b'Jehuda, R. Ezekiel LANDAU of Prague, though his great great great great great grandson, four additional generations that make the timing fit much better.
But that is not why I wanted to write this story.
As I have been piecing together the identity of Haskel LANDAU of Kempen as being the same person as Jecheskel, son of R. Isaak LANDAU of Wlodawa, the only resistance comes from the published statements that Isaak's son Jecheskel LANDAU was married to a daughter of R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU (ca.1799-1836) of Kempen, whereas my great great great grandfather was married to my great great great grandmother Nesche LANDAU (b.ca.1804), daughter of R. Arjeh Jehuda Leib (Loebel) LANDAU (ca.1780-1838) of Kempen.
To accommodate Haskel being a son-in-law of R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU (and, in the process, assuming that the published and republished statement is correct), I have speculated that, after the death of Nesche, probably in the late 1850s, Haskel (b.ca.1800) remarried to Nesche's first cousin. And I have further speculated that this first cousin pretty much has to be Henriette (Gitel) LANDAU (b.1834, Kempen), one of only two daughters of R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU alive at his death in 1836.
Henriette LANDAU married her first cousin Josef Szyja PERETZ in Lublin in 1865 when she was about 31. They had a daughter in 1867. If Henriette was the second wife of Haskel LANDAU, she could have married him in the late 1850s or some time after 1867. Given her age when she married in 1865 (31) and his age, if he married after 1867 (approaching 70), it seems more likely that this conjectured marriage would have been a first marriage for Henriette when she was in her 20s and when Haskel was a recent widower and "only" about 60 years old.
Since Henriette married (again?) in 1865, if Haskel had been married to Henriette, he presumably died shortly before that date, so ca.1864.
The only potential hitch in Haskel LANDAU dying about 1864 comes from the fact that Haskel and Nesche had no grandchildren named in memory of Haskel / Ezekiel / Jecheskel. Of their 10 known children, only 5 are known to have lived to adulthood and had families of their own. The first three Joseph Hirsch, Hendel and Israel Jonas had their children between 1843 and 1864. The child born in 1864 to Israel Jonas was a girl (Rosalie). It is not known whether the fourth one, Sara REHFISCH geb. LANDAU, had any children, but since she died in 1860, she would not have had any after Haskel may have died. But the fifth one, Amalie BACH geb. LANDAU, my great great grandmother, had children from 1862 to 1869, with the boys having the names Emanuel (1863), Josef Hirsch (1867) and Elias (1869). If Amalie's father Haskel died ca.1864, why wasn't Josef Hirsch named in memory of Haskel -- or was his Hebrew name Jecheskel, despite his secular names suggesting a Hebrew name of Josef and/or Zwi? (Perhaps Amalie's brother Joseph Hirsch LANDAU of Groß Wartenberg died after Haskel and before Josef Hirsch BACH was born, causing Jakob and Amalie to name this son born in 1867 after her brother, rather than her father.)
But that is still not why I wanted to write this story.
The reason I wanted to write this story has to do with Lotte's father R. Ezechiel LANDAU and his father Isak LANDAU.
If "my" Haskel LANDAU had a second marriage ca.1860 to a young woman, such as Henriette LANDAU (age ca.26), then he could have had a second family from this second marriage; maybe only one child, maybe a son; a son named Isak. Isak LANDAU was born in 1863 in Przyrow, a village about 30 km east of Czestochowa, not so far from Kempen where Haskel was last spotted in the 1840s.
In addition, if this is "that" Haskel/Jecheskel LANDAU, then naming a son "Isak" would make sense. Haskel would have been naming his late-born son after his father R. Isaac (b.ca.1779), formerly of Wlodawa, who was living in Tiberias in 1849 and was buried there. R. Isaac LANDAU of Wlodawa (and Tiberias) had outlived the childbearing years of Nesche, and she and Haskel did not give the name Isaac to any of their sons born between 1821 and 1842.
This would bring Lotte's LANDAU lineage back to the story I was told by her and others in her family; that her father R. Ezechiel LANDAU was a son of Isak LANDAU, whose father was R. Jecheskel LANDAU of Kempen. The seemingly too-large period between the birth of Isak (1863) and his father Haskel/Jecheskel (ca.1800) would be accommodated by Haskel having had a second marriage to a young woman who could be Isak's mother.
And when R. Ezechiel LANDAU visited Dr. Josef Hirsch BACH in Breslau, he would have been visiting his half-uncle.
It is speculative, but it would all fit nicely, validating the family memory retained by Lotte and her family, and explaining the connection between the LANDAUs and the BACHs.
Friday, November 20, 2015
A LANDAU Update (or Part 7 of 6)
Part 7 - Jecheskel ben Isaak LANDAU in Kempen
This morning, looking online for information about my great great great uncle Samuel LANDAU of Kempen (b.1842, Kempen), I bumped into a reference to Jecheskel (ben Isaak) LANDAU instead.
In part 2 of R. Louis LEWIN’s article “Deutsche Einwanderungen in polnische Ghetti” in the Jahrbuch der jüdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt 1907), in a paragraph about Landau, he wrote “Jecheskel, Sohn des Rabbiners Isaak Landau, zeichnete 1824 in Kempen, …”. The part of a footnote supporting that statement about Jecheskel LANDAU reads “Vertrag mit Rabb. Landau-Kempen vom 17.Nissan 1824”.
With all my speculation about my great great great grandfather Haskel LANDAU of Kempen since 2008, this is the first time that Haskel (Jecheskel) LANDAU living in Kempen was directly identified as being a son of a R. Isaac (Jitzhak) LANDAU.
In 1999, in connection with FALK family research and Lissa research, I learned that the papers of rabbi and historian R. Louis LEWIN (1868-1941) are in the archive of Yeshiva University in New York. I have sent a note to the archivist to inquire whether Yeshiva University has a copy of the 1824 contract which R. LEWIN. Time will tell.
The earliest child of Haskel and Nesche LANDAU whose birth appears in the Kempen Jewish community records is Taube LANDAU who was born 28 October 1825. Now it can be shown that Haskel (Jecheskel) LANDAU, son of R. Isaac LANDAU, was living in Kempen in 1824. Although there could be two contemporaries named Jecheskel ben Jitzhak LANDAU, this new information from 1824 via 1907 seems to further reinforce the conclusion that my great great great grandfather Haskel was Jecheskel ben R. Jitzhak LANDAU.
A successful research day, but with no new information about Samuel, son of Haskel LANDAU and Nesche LANDAU geb. LANDAU.
This morning, looking online for information about my great great great uncle Samuel LANDAU of Kempen (b.1842, Kempen), I bumped into a reference to Jecheskel (ben Isaak) LANDAU instead.
In part 2 of R. Louis LEWIN’s article “Deutsche Einwanderungen in polnische Ghetti” in the Jahrbuch der jüdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt 1907), in a paragraph about Landau, he wrote “Jecheskel, Sohn des Rabbiners Isaak Landau, zeichnete 1824 in Kempen, …”. The part of a footnote supporting that statement about Jecheskel LANDAU reads “Vertrag mit Rabb. Landau-Kempen vom 17.Nissan 1824”.
With all my speculation about my great great great grandfather Haskel LANDAU of Kempen since 2008, this is the first time that Haskel (Jecheskel) LANDAU living in Kempen was directly identified as being a son of a R. Isaac (Jitzhak) LANDAU.
In 1999, in connection with FALK family research and Lissa research, I learned that the papers of rabbi and historian R. Louis LEWIN (1868-1941) are in the archive of Yeshiva University in New York. I have sent a note to the archivist to inquire whether Yeshiva University has a copy of the 1824 contract which R. LEWIN. Time will tell.
The earliest child of Haskel and Nesche LANDAU whose birth appears in the Kempen Jewish community records is Taube LANDAU who was born 28 October 1825. Now it can be shown that Haskel (Jecheskel) LANDAU, son of R. Isaac LANDAU, was living in Kempen in 1824. Although there could be two contemporaries named Jecheskel ben Jitzhak LANDAU, this new information from 1824 via 1907 seems to further reinforce the conclusion that my great great great grandfather Haskel was Jecheskel ben R. Jitzhak LANDAU.
A successful research day, but with no new information about Samuel, son of Haskel LANDAU and Nesche LANDAU geb. LANDAU.
Sunday, November 15, 2015
The LANDAU Monologues in Six Parts (6 of 6)
Part 6 of 6 — Haskel LANDAU Revisited
Coming back to the story of Haskel LANDAU, two new supportive pieces of information came to my attention in mid 2014.
First, in June 2014, Joachim in Basel shared with me a collection of Kempen Jewish cemetery gravestone inscriptions copied by R. Bernhard BRILLING from work done earlier by R. Louis LEWIN. He recalled that I had asked him about those inscriptions back in 2008. Fortunately, I immediately turned around and shared the material with Shimshi in (or formerly in) Zurich.
Shimshi’s reading of the 1860 gravestone inscription of Sara REHFISCH geb. LANDAU showed that her father was Jecheskel and that she claimed descent from the Noda b’Jehuda. Based on her age (and name), Sara was the same person as Zorel LANDAU. the daughter of Haskel and Nesche born in Kempen on 23 September 1834.
(Sara’s gravestone inscription also noted her descent from the Sha”ch, R. Shabbatai haKohen (1621-1662) — a whole new rabbinical ancestor. The Sha”ch was buried in the old Jewish cemetery in Holleschau (Holesov) which Don and I happened to visit on 9 November 2012 on our drive from Kojetin to Bautsch (on the way to Breslau with a short stop in Zülz). We saw and photographed his well visited and much honored gravestone. (As an aside to an aside, the Sha”ch studied in Lublin under R. Naftali ben Jitzhak Kohen Zadik (KATZ), our 8x great grandfather who was the great great grandfather of the wife of R. Joseph LANDAU, brother of the Noda b’Jehuda (as noted above).))
A couple weeks later, I received a copy of a Jichus Brief that I had heard about from Shimshi a year earlier but had not pursued. It was mentioned in R. Meir WUNDER’s work “Meorei Galicia” (“Encyclopedia of Galician Rabbis and Scholars”). The Jichus Brief was a small sheet with a handwritten family tree in Hebrew prepared in 1930 by Wolf SCHEINWECHSLER of Czestochowa for his nephew Samuel PLAWNER of Krakow. It showed the ancestry of Wolf’s mother Hendla SCHEINWECHSLER geb. LANDAU, both the ancestry of her mother Nesche LANDAU and of her father Jecheskel LANDAU.
Nesche’s ancestry matched what I had pieced together in 1998 and 2008 (and then some). The Jichus Brief seems to match current understandings of the LANDAU ancestry. Nesche's line goes up to R. Israel Jonah LANDAU and then follows his mother's PERETZ family to the THEOMIMs and then the WAHLs. The only mistake or typographical error is that, in Generation 11 (starting from Hendla SCHEINWECHSLER geb. LANDAU), R. Jonah THEOMIM was said to be a son of R. Meir WAHL of Brest, rather than his son-in-law.
To my great pleasure, Haskel was said to be a son of R. Jitzhak LANDAU of Wlodawa who died in Tiberias, with the steps back to the Noda b’Jehuda. The Jichus Brief did not mention the Sha”ch, but it did note descent (via Haskel) from the ReMA, R. Moses ISSERLES (1520-1572), whose great great granddaughter was the wife of the Sha”ch
Although others with whom I have consulted prefer to stick with the received wisdom that Haskel was only married to a daughter of R. Joseph Samuel, I consider the 1860 gravestone and the 1930 Jichus Brief as good independent confirmation that Nesche LANDAU’s husband was Jecheskel (Haskel) LANDAU, son of Jitzhak LANDAU of Wlodawa, great great grandson of his namesake the Noda b’Jehuda, R. Jecheskel (Ezekiel) LANDAU of Prague.
It would be nice to know whether Wolf SCHEINWECHSLER had produced this family tree from his own research (and what sources he had consulted) or whether he was just passing on a family tree that had been prepared some time earlier, or was the result of family memory. Time and the Shoah have erased that chapter of the history of genealogy.
Coming back to the story of Haskel LANDAU, two new supportive pieces of information came to my attention in mid 2014.
First, in June 2014, Joachim in Basel shared with me a collection of Kempen Jewish cemetery gravestone inscriptions copied by R. Bernhard BRILLING from work done earlier by R. Louis LEWIN. He recalled that I had asked him about those inscriptions back in 2008. Fortunately, I immediately turned around and shared the material with Shimshi in (or formerly in) Zurich.
Shimshi’s reading of the 1860 gravestone inscription of Sara REHFISCH geb. LANDAU showed that her father was Jecheskel and that she claimed descent from the Noda b’Jehuda. Based on her age (and name), Sara was the same person as Zorel LANDAU. the daughter of Haskel and Nesche born in Kempen on 23 September 1834.
(Sara’s gravestone inscription also noted her descent from the Sha”ch, R. Shabbatai haKohen (1621-1662) — a whole new rabbinical ancestor. The Sha”ch was buried in the old Jewish cemetery in Holleschau (Holesov) which Don and I happened to visit on 9 November 2012 on our drive from Kojetin to Bautsch (on the way to Breslau with a short stop in Zülz). We saw and photographed his well visited and much honored gravestone. (As an aside to an aside, the Sha”ch studied in Lublin under R. Naftali ben Jitzhak Kohen Zadik (KATZ), our 8x great grandfather who was the great great grandfather of the wife of R. Joseph LANDAU, brother of the Noda b’Jehuda (as noted above).))
A couple weeks later, I received a copy of a Jichus Brief that I had heard about from Shimshi a year earlier but had not pursued. It was mentioned in R. Meir WUNDER’s work “Meorei Galicia” (“Encyclopedia of Galician Rabbis and Scholars”). The Jichus Brief was a small sheet with a handwritten family tree in Hebrew prepared in 1930 by Wolf SCHEINWECHSLER of Czestochowa for his nephew Samuel PLAWNER of Krakow. It showed the ancestry of Wolf’s mother Hendla SCHEINWECHSLER geb. LANDAU, both the ancestry of her mother Nesche LANDAU and of her father Jecheskel LANDAU.
Nesche’s ancestry matched what I had pieced together in 1998 and 2008 (and then some). The Jichus Brief seems to match current understandings of the LANDAU ancestry. Nesche's line goes up to R. Israel Jonah LANDAU and then follows his mother's PERETZ family to the THEOMIMs and then the WAHLs. The only mistake or typographical error is that, in Generation 11 (starting from Hendla SCHEINWECHSLER geb. LANDAU), R. Jonah THEOMIM was said to be a son of R. Meir WAHL of Brest, rather than his son-in-law.
To my great pleasure, Haskel was said to be a son of R. Jitzhak LANDAU of Wlodawa who died in Tiberias, with the steps back to the Noda b’Jehuda. The Jichus Brief did not mention the Sha”ch, but it did note descent (via Haskel) from the ReMA, R. Moses ISSERLES (1520-1572), whose great great granddaughter was the wife of the Sha”ch
Although others with whom I have consulted prefer to stick with the received wisdom that Haskel was only married to a daughter of R. Joseph Samuel, I consider the 1860 gravestone and the 1930 Jichus Brief as good independent confirmation that Nesche LANDAU’s husband was Jecheskel (Haskel) LANDAU, son of Jitzhak LANDAU of Wlodawa, great great grandson of his namesake the Noda b’Jehuda, R. Jecheskel (Ezekiel) LANDAU of Prague.
It would be nice to know whether Wolf SCHEINWECHSLER had produced this family tree from his own research (and what sources he had consulted) or whether he was just passing on a family tree that had been prepared some time earlier, or was the result of family memory. Time and the Shoah have erased that chapter of the history of genealogy.
The LANDAU Monologues in Six Parts (5 of 6)
Part 5 of 6 — Amalie LANDAU Revisited
Through that period of discovery, and the preceding decade of stasis, I had been operating on the assumption that Amalie was a daughter of Haskel and Nesche LANDAU whose birth was just not captured in the Kempen records. Based on her age at the birth of Regina in 1864, Amalie was born in about 1838. That would fit well between the birth of Jette in December 1836 and Samuel in February 1842. On the other hand, the Kempen birth records seemed to be complete throughout those years. Why was Amalie’s birth missing?
Back in 1998, in the Myslowitz Jewish community marriage records, I had noted an 1861 marriage of Jakob BACH, Lehrer, and Jettel LANDAU. In 2009, I returned to that marriage entry, made a copy and asked my mother to help me transcribe the old handwriting and translate it:
According to the agreement of June 10 1861 regarding certification of marriages of Jews, the teacher Jacob Bach and the unmarried Jettel Landau both of Creuzburg, declares [sic] that from now on they wish to consider themselves married.
Entered Myslowitz, the eighteenth of June, one thousand eight hundred sixty-one
This time, looking at the marriage of Jakob BACH and Jettel LANDAU, it seemed obvious that Jettel was Amalie, as her name appears (as mother) in the Myslowitz birth records. (While the usual Hebrew name associated with Amalie is Malke, there was at least one woman in Breslau records who was referred to alternately as Amalie and Jettel.)
Later in 2009, when Don and I were in Israel, we visited a daughter of Trude HIRSCHMANN geb. BACH (1906-2004) who had her mother’s family papers. (Trude was an older sister of Ja’acov BACH.) She showed us published death notices for Jakob BACH and for Amalie BACH geb. LANDAU. The April 1925 death notice for Amalie said that she was 89 — b.1835/1836. Based on the birth date for Jette on 30 December 1836; Amalie would have actually been 88, in her 89th year, when she died on 26 April 1925.
(That 1861 marriage had lasted over 62 years when Jakob BACH died on 5 January 1924.)
Through that period of discovery, and the preceding decade of stasis, I had been operating on the assumption that Amalie was a daughter of Haskel and Nesche LANDAU whose birth was just not captured in the Kempen records. Based on her age at the birth of Regina in 1864, Amalie was born in about 1838. That would fit well between the birth of Jette in December 1836 and Samuel in February 1842. On the other hand, the Kempen birth records seemed to be complete throughout those years. Why was Amalie’s birth missing?
Back in 1998, in the Myslowitz Jewish community marriage records, I had noted an 1861 marriage of Jakob BACH, Lehrer, and Jettel LANDAU. In 2009, I returned to that marriage entry, made a copy and asked my mother to help me transcribe the old handwriting and translate it:
According to the agreement of June 10 1861 regarding certification of marriages of Jews, the teacher Jacob Bach and the unmarried Jettel Landau both of Creuzburg, declares [sic] that from now on they wish to consider themselves married.
Entered Myslowitz, the eighteenth of June, one thousand eight hundred sixty-one
This time, looking at the marriage of Jakob BACH and Jettel LANDAU, it seemed obvious that Jettel was Amalie, as her name appears (as mother) in the Myslowitz birth records. (While the usual Hebrew name associated with Amalie is Malke, there was at least one woman in Breslau records who was referred to alternately as Amalie and Jettel.)
Later in 2009, when Don and I were in Israel, we visited a daughter of Trude HIRSCHMANN geb. BACH (1906-2004) who had her mother’s family papers. (Trude was an older sister of Ja’acov BACH.) She showed us published death notices for Jakob BACH and for Amalie BACH geb. LANDAU. The April 1925 death notice for Amalie said that she was 89 — b.1835/1836. Based on the birth date for Jette on 30 December 1836; Amalie would have actually been 88, in her 89th year, when she died on 26 April 1925.
(That 1861 marriage had lasted over 62 years when Jakob BACH died on 5 January 1924.)
The LANDAU Monologues in Six Parts (4 of 6)
Part 4 of 6 — R. Isaac (Jitzhak) LANDAU of Wlodawa
As I was reviewing the LANDAU family tree in “The Unbroken Chain” in January 2008, I finally found a possible candidate for my great great great grandfather Haskel LANDAU. This idea was made possible by having eventually learned the connection between the different versions of his names — in English, Ezekiel; in German, Ezechiel; in Hebrew, Jecheskel; and in Jewish vernacular, Haskel. I am sure that for at least a few years after learning of my ancestor Haskel LANDAU, I had no idea that his name was really Jecheskel (aka Ezekiel).
From Neil ROSENSTEIN’s work, I first learned that there was an Ezekiel LANDAU who was a son of R. Isaac LANDAU of Wlodawa in Russian Poland. R. Isaac LANDAU is supposed to have died in Eretz Israel. He appears to be the same person as the Jitzhak LANDE who was listed in the 1849 Montefiore Census, living in Tiberius, age 70 (b.ca.1779, Lutsk, Poland), with a wife Miriam (b.ca.1789). Based on Jitzhak’s birth in the 1770s (ages are notoriously inaccurate in old documents), his son Ezekiel could have been born about 1800, which would fit well with Haskel and Nesche having children starting in 1821. (Presumably, Miriam in Tiberias was a later wife)
This Ezekiel (ben Jitzhak) LANDAU was said to have been married to a daughter of R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU of Kempen (see, R. Zwi Jehoshua MICHELSON’s “Sefer Ateret Zwi” and “Sefer Kos Jeshuot” (not sure of the author)). The name of that daughter is not preserved in any known sources.
Interestingly, that unknown daughter was a first cousin of my great great great grandmother Nesche LANDAU geb. LANDAU (b.ca.1804). Nesche’s father was R. Arjeh Jehuda Leib (Loebel) LANDAU (ca.1780-1838), and his much younger brother R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU (ca.1799-1836) was the father of this name-unknown Miss LANDAU. This raised two possible scenarios to me:
(a) that earlier authors were mistaken, and this Haskel LANDAU was actually married to Nesche, not her cousin; or
(b) that Haskel was first married to Nesche LANDAU and then later married her first cousin.
I think the first option is the simplest and most likely, but it does contradict a conclusion of well-respected researchers of the past. The error would only be in identifying Haskel’s father-in-law R. LANDAU of Kempen as Joseph Samuel, rather than his brother Arjeh Jehuda Leib (Loebel Jonas), brothers who were rabbis in the same town and who died only 2 years apart.
The second option could be the more appealing one, since it still maintains the published story that Haskel was a son-in-law of R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU, while also slipping in the marriage to Nesche.
That option can also fit well with the likely ages of the participants. Nesche was born ca.1804. Her husband Haskel was probably born ca.1800. They had children from ca.1821 to 1842. In contrast, R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU (b.ca.1799) was a contemporary of Haskel and Nesche, and he was having his children from ca.1816 to 1835. Any daughter of his who could have married Haskel would have been born in the 1820s or 1830s, at marrying age, perhaps in the 1850s.
Based on the assumption that the granddaughters of Nesche and Haskel named “Nanny” were named in memory of Nesche, it seems likely that Nesche died in the late 1850s. Three of their 4 children who had children after 1850 named daughters Nanny — in 1859, 1863, and after 1852 (perhaps ca.1858). The daughter Hendla SCHEINWECHSLER geb. LANDAU had a string of daughters in the 1850s which allows the window to be narrowed. Hendla named daughters Emma in 1854, Chana in 1856 and then Nani in 1859. Nesche probably died between September 1856 and February 1859.
If Haskel outlived Nesche and re-married, that second marriage would seem to have occurred in the late 1850s or early 1860s.
Back to the daughters of R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU. The identity of the daughter who is said to have married Haskel LANDAU is unknown. But the selection is very limited. In the Kempen Jewish community death records, the entry for R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU lists his surviving family members:
wife Elke (38)
children Isaak (20) - Rosalie (16) - Scheye (18) - Moritz (11) - Jonas (10) - Meyer (4) - Gittel (3)
Unless the widow Elke was pregnant with a daughter at the time that her husband died, R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU left only two daughters, only two candidates to have married Haskel LANDAU — and both have known husbands:
* Rosalie LANDAU (b.ca.1820) married Jochen (Chaim) COHN in 1835. They had children from 1837 to 1862.
* Gittel (Henriette) LANDAU (b.1834) married her first cousin Josef Szyja PERETZ in 1865. They had a daughter in 1867.
Relatively more is known about Rosalie COHN geb. LANDAU, and it seems unlikely that she had a second marriage. If Henriette PERETZ geb. LANDAU had a second marriage, it could either have been a fairly short marriage before 1865 (assuming it ended with Haskel's death), or a very late (for Haskel) marriage beginning sometime after 1867.
Whether or not Haskel (Jecheskel ben Jitzhak) LANDAU had a second marriage to, let’s say, Henriette, it does seem that this Haskel was married to Nesche LANDAU.
As I was reviewing the LANDAU family tree in “The Unbroken Chain” in January 2008, I finally found a possible candidate for my great great great grandfather Haskel LANDAU. This idea was made possible by having eventually learned the connection between the different versions of his names — in English, Ezekiel; in German, Ezechiel; in Hebrew, Jecheskel; and in Jewish vernacular, Haskel. I am sure that for at least a few years after learning of my ancestor Haskel LANDAU, I had no idea that his name was really Jecheskel (aka Ezekiel).
From Neil ROSENSTEIN’s work, I first learned that there was an Ezekiel LANDAU who was a son of R. Isaac LANDAU of Wlodawa in Russian Poland. R. Isaac LANDAU is supposed to have died in Eretz Israel. He appears to be the same person as the Jitzhak LANDE who was listed in the 1849 Montefiore Census, living in Tiberius, age 70 (b.ca.1779, Lutsk, Poland), with a wife Miriam (b.ca.1789). Based on Jitzhak’s birth in the 1770s (ages are notoriously inaccurate in old documents), his son Ezekiel could have been born about 1800, which would fit well with Haskel and Nesche having children starting in 1821. (Presumably, Miriam in Tiberias was a later wife)
This Ezekiel (ben Jitzhak) LANDAU was said to have been married to a daughter of R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU of Kempen (see, R. Zwi Jehoshua MICHELSON’s “Sefer Ateret Zwi” and “Sefer Kos Jeshuot” (not sure of the author)). The name of that daughter is not preserved in any known sources.
Interestingly, that unknown daughter was a first cousin of my great great great grandmother Nesche LANDAU geb. LANDAU (b.ca.1804). Nesche’s father was R. Arjeh Jehuda Leib (Loebel) LANDAU (ca.1780-1838), and his much younger brother R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU (ca.1799-1836) was the father of this name-unknown Miss LANDAU. This raised two possible scenarios to me:
(a) that earlier authors were mistaken, and this Haskel LANDAU was actually married to Nesche, not her cousin; or
(b) that Haskel was first married to Nesche LANDAU and then later married her first cousin.
I think the first option is the simplest and most likely, but it does contradict a conclusion of well-respected researchers of the past. The error would only be in identifying Haskel’s father-in-law R. LANDAU of Kempen as Joseph Samuel, rather than his brother Arjeh Jehuda Leib (Loebel Jonas), brothers who were rabbis in the same town and who died only 2 years apart.
The second option could be the more appealing one, since it still maintains the published story that Haskel was a son-in-law of R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU, while also slipping in the marriage to Nesche.
That option can also fit well with the likely ages of the participants. Nesche was born ca.1804. Her husband Haskel was probably born ca.1800. They had children from ca.1821 to 1842. In contrast, R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU (b.ca.1799) was a contemporary of Haskel and Nesche, and he was having his children from ca.1816 to 1835. Any daughter of his who could have married Haskel would have been born in the 1820s or 1830s, at marrying age, perhaps in the 1850s.
Based on the assumption that the granddaughters of Nesche and Haskel named “Nanny” were named in memory of Nesche, it seems likely that Nesche died in the late 1850s. Three of their 4 children who had children after 1850 named daughters Nanny — in 1859, 1863, and after 1852 (perhaps ca.1858). The daughter Hendla SCHEINWECHSLER geb. LANDAU had a string of daughters in the 1850s which allows the window to be narrowed. Hendla named daughters Emma in 1854, Chana in 1856 and then Nani in 1859. Nesche probably died between September 1856 and February 1859.
If Haskel outlived Nesche and re-married, that second marriage would seem to have occurred in the late 1850s or early 1860s.
Back to the daughters of R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU. The identity of the daughter who is said to have married Haskel LANDAU is unknown. But the selection is very limited. In the Kempen Jewish community death records, the entry for R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU lists his surviving family members:
wife Elke (38)
children Isaak (20) - Rosalie (16) - Scheye (18) - Moritz (11) - Jonas (10) - Meyer (4) - Gittel (3)
Unless the widow Elke was pregnant with a daughter at the time that her husband died, R. Joseph Samuel LANDAU left only two daughters, only two candidates to have married Haskel LANDAU — and both have known husbands:
* Rosalie LANDAU (b.ca.1820) married Jochen (Chaim) COHN in 1835. They had children from 1837 to 1862.
* Gittel (Henriette) LANDAU (b.1834) married her first cousin Josef Szyja PERETZ in 1865. They had a daughter in 1867.
Relatively more is known about Rosalie COHN geb. LANDAU, and it seems unlikely that she had a second marriage. If Henriette PERETZ geb. LANDAU had a second marriage, it could either have been a fairly short marriage before 1865 (assuming it ended with Haskel's death), or a very late (for Haskel) marriage beginning sometime after 1867.
Whether or not Haskel (Jecheskel ben Jitzhak) LANDAU had a second marriage to, let’s say, Henriette, it does seem that this Haskel was married to Nesche LANDAU.
The LANDAU Monologues in Six Parts (3 of 6)
Part 3 of 6 — R. Loebel Jonas (Arjeh Jehuda Leib) LANDAU
I think I made no real progress on my LANDAU research from 1998 to 2008 — though that gap didn’t have to be that long. In 1998, I reviewed all the Kempen birth, marriage and death records available on the LDS microfilms. In early February 2008, I was looking at them again, and probably not for the first time since 1998. But this time, in the death records, an item caught my attention — the entry for Loebel Jonas LANDAU (ca.1780-1838).
In late January 2008, I had added a lot of the family of the Noda b’Jehuda to my family file based on information in Neil ROSENSTEIN’s “The Unbroken Chain” (2nd ed. 1990). The “hook” for including the LANDAU family was that R. Joseph LANDAU of Klimontov, brother of R. Ezekiel LANDAU of Prague, had married a daughter of Bezalel KATZ of Ostra, son of Naftali KATZ (1649-1719), my father's 6x great uncle, and great great grandson of the MaHaRaL of Prague, R. Jehuda Löw ben Bezalel (ca.1520-1609), my 10x great grandfather.
Having just added R. Arjeh Jehuda Leib (Loebel) LANDAU, son of R. Israel Jonah LANDAU, to my extended family tree a few days before, when I ran across the death entry for Loebel Jonas LANDAU in the Kempen records, it was easy to see the connection; that he was Loebel “ben” Jonas, more formally, Arjeh Jehuda Leib ben Israel Jonah.
That alone would have been a nice coincidence, running into the Kempen death record just days after learning about this man from “The Unbroken Chain”. But the amazing thing about that death record was that it included all of the then living children of R. Loebel Jonas LANDAU, starting with Nesche (age 34), wife of Haskel LANDAU — most Kempen death records did not come with such complete family information.
Now, I had a link from Amalie through her mother Nesche to R. Arjeh Jehuda Leib (Loebel) LANDAU, and from him into the rabbinic LANDAU family. Amalie could not claim descent from the Noda b’Jehuda, but she was part of the same family — her great great great grandfather R. Jitzhak LANDAU of Opatow (Apt), Lemberg (Lwow / Lviv) and Krakau (Krakow) was the uncle of the famous R. Ezekiel LANDAU of Prague.
I could easily imagine that being from the same family as R. Ezekiel LANDAU could have, over a few generations, been remembered as being descended from R. Ezekiel LANDAU.
And that could have been the end of that trail if not for the fact that Amalie LANDAU’s father Haskel was also a LANDAU.
I think I made no real progress on my LANDAU research from 1998 to 2008 — though that gap didn’t have to be that long. In 1998, I reviewed all the Kempen birth, marriage and death records available on the LDS microfilms. In early February 2008, I was looking at them again, and probably not for the first time since 1998. But this time, in the death records, an item caught my attention — the entry for Loebel Jonas LANDAU (ca.1780-1838).
In late January 2008, I had added a lot of the family of the Noda b’Jehuda to my family file based on information in Neil ROSENSTEIN’s “The Unbroken Chain” (2nd ed. 1990). The “hook” for including the LANDAU family was that R. Joseph LANDAU of Klimontov, brother of R. Ezekiel LANDAU of Prague, had married a daughter of Bezalel KATZ of Ostra, son of Naftali KATZ (1649-1719), my father's 6x great uncle, and great great grandson of the MaHaRaL of Prague, R. Jehuda Löw ben Bezalel (ca.1520-1609), my 10x great grandfather.
Having just added R. Arjeh Jehuda Leib (Loebel) LANDAU, son of R. Israel Jonah LANDAU, to my extended family tree a few days before, when I ran across the death entry for Loebel Jonas LANDAU in the Kempen records, it was easy to see the connection; that he was Loebel “ben” Jonas, more formally, Arjeh Jehuda Leib ben Israel Jonah.
That alone would have been a nice coincidence, running into the Kempen death record just days after learning about this man from “The Unbroken Chain”. But the amazing thing about that death record was that it included all of the then living children of R. Loebel Jonas LANDAU, starting with Nesche (age 34), wife of Haskel LANDAU — most Kempen death records did not come with such complete family information.
Now, I had a link from Amalie through her mother Nesche to R. Arjeh Jehuda Leib (Loebel) LANDAU, and from him into the rabbinic LANDAU family. Amalie could not claim descent from the Noda b’Jehuda, but she was part of the same family — her great great great grandfather R. Jitzhak LANDAU of Opatow (Apt), Lemberg (Lwow / Lviv) and Krakau (Krakow) was the uncle of the famous R. Ezekiel LANDAU of Prague.
I could easily imagine that being from the same family as R. Ezekiel LANDAU could have, over a few generations, been remembered as being descended from R. Ezekiel LANDAU.
And that could have been the end of that trail if not for the fact that Amalie LANDAU’s father Haskel was also a LANDAU.
The LANDAU Monologues in Six Parts (2 of 6)
Part 2 of 6 — Haskel LANDAU & Nesche LANDAU
In 1996 when I first learned about my great great grandmother Amalie LANDAU, I had known about the Mormon’s huge microfilm archive of European records for many years, but I ignored it because I could not imagine that that collection could have anything relevant for research on Jewish family history. Of course, I was wrong about that. For their own reasons, the Mormon’s amassed a huge collection of birth, marriage and death records, residents’ books, census records, etc, including records from Jewish communities all over Europe. In 1998, I finally started to look at these materials, starting with Breslau records, but quickly moving on to other towns in Silesia and in Posen Province — Brieg, Myslowitz, Kempen, etc.
The first new information came from the birth entry for my great great aunt Regina BACH (who later married David RITTER) in Myslowitz Jewish community birth records. That 1864 entry not only had Regina’s birth date and parents Jakob BACH and Amalie LANDAU, but for some reason also included how long Jakob and Amalie had been married (4 years; actually, in their 4th year), Amalie’s age (26; b.ca.1838) and, most interestingly, that Amalie was from Kempen and that her father was Haskel LANDAU.
That, of course, led to review of Kempen Jewish community records. There were eight birth records for children of a Haskel LANDAU and his wife Nesche LANDAU geb. LANDAU: Taube (1825), Israel Jonas (1827), Juda (1830), a stillborn son (1832), Elke (1833), Zorel (1834), Jette (1836) and Samuel (1842). Amalie’s name did not appear in that set of births from 1825 to 1842. Still, since it seemed unlikely that there would be two Haskel LANDAUs having children in Kempen at the same time, I concluded that this Haskel was probably Amalie’s father, and, therefore, that Nesche LANDAU was her mother. These were my new great great great grandparents.
With both of Amalie’s (presumed) parents being LANDAUs, the search for a link back to the Noda b’Jehuda had twice the chance of success; but still, a journey of a 1000 (or a few) generations starts with finding the parents.
In 1996 when I first learned about my great great grandmother Amalie LANDAU, I had known about the Mormon’s huge microfilm archive of European records for many years, but I ignored it because I could not imagine that that collection could have anything relevant for research on Jewish family history. Of course, I was wrong about that. For their own reasons, the Mormon’s amassed a huge collection of birth, marriage and death records, residents’ books, census records, etc, including records from Jewish communities all over Europe. In 1998, I finally started to look at these materials, starting with Breslau records, but quickly moving on to other towns in Silesia and in Posen Province — Brieg, Myslowitz, Kempen, etc.
The first new information came from the birth entry for my great great aunt Regina BACH (who later married David RITTER) in Myslowitz Jewish community birth records. That 1864 entry not only had Regina’s birth date and parents Jakob BACH and Amalie LANDAU, but for some reason also included how long Jakob and Amalie had been married (4 years; actually, in their 4th year), Amalie’s age (26; b.ca.1838) and, most interestingly, that Amalie was from Kempen and that her father was Haskel LANDAU.
That, of course, led to review of Kempen Jewish community records. There were eight birth records for children of a Haskel LANDAU and his wife Nesche LANDAU geb. LANDAU: Taube (1825), Israel Jonas (1827), Juda (1830), a stillborn son (1832), Elke (1833), Zorel (1834), Jette (1836) and Samuel (1842). Amalie’s name did not appear in that set of births from 1825 to 1842. Still, since it seemed unlikely that there would be two Haskel LANDAUs having children in Kempen at the same time, I concluded that this Haskel was probably Amalie’s father, and, therefore, that Nesche LANDAU was her mother. These were my new great great great grandparents.
With both of Amalie’s (presumed) parents being LANDAUs, the search for a link back to the Noda b’Jehuda had twice the chance of success; but still, a journey of a 1000 (or a few) generations starts with finding the parents.
The LANDAU Monologues in Six Parts (1 of 6)
Part 1 of 6 — Amalie LANDAU
At the beginning of the modern history of genealogy when my brother Don was starting to gather information and prepare family trees with all known information, we thought that our mother’s mother’s mother’s mother was a FRIEDENTHAL; Ernestine FRIEDENTHAL. Supposedly, this FRIEDENTHAL great great grandmother was from the family of R. Ezekiel LANDAU (1713-1793) of Prague, author of “Noda b’Jehuda”, the name of which is his frequent moniker. In the 1980s and early 1990s, I did a bit of research trying to find a line descended from Rabbi LANDAU that included FRIEDENTHALs, but without success. That would have been more or less the state of “knowledge” from the late 1960s or early 1970s until May 1996.
“Less” because at some point, possibly from reading the “Chronique Familiale” by my uncle Andreas FREUND I was able to correct our knowledge about that great great grandmother with the information that she was Ernestine PERL get. FRIEDENSTEIN, not FRIEDENTHAL. I think that same source identified our mother’s mother’s father’s father’s was Jakob BACH, a teacher of Jewish subjects in Upper Silesia (Oberschlesien).
In May 1996, my mother, my brother Don and I made a trip to Prague, Theresienstadt, Breslau, Brieg and Berlin. In Prague, in addition to meeting up with my fairly new friend Mark LUDWIG, violist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and founder and director of the Terezin Chamber Music Foundation, we also met our grandmother’s first cousin Ja’acov BACH (1911-2006) of Tel Aviv (born Karl Adolf BACH in Tarnowitz). He was on a trip to Switzerland, but he made a side visit to Prague to meet us. Over dinner, we learned that Jakob BACH’s wife, Ja’acov’s grandmother, our great great grandmother, was Amalie LANDAU, and she was supposedly descended from R. Ezekiel LANDAU.
While we were in Prague, we eventually got ourselves to the Old Jewish Cemetery at Zizkov (on Fibichova Street). It was at the base of the huge television tower that we had been seeing from every vantage point in the city. The cemetery was closed and surrounded by a metal fence. One metal post was missing and following our mother, Don and I also went through narrow opening. We found the gravestone of R. Ezekiel LANDAU, and then made our way back out through that opening.
With great great grandmother Amalie, we now had a LANDAU ancestor who was said, in family lore, somehow to be descended from the Noda b’Jehuda, R. Ezekiel LANDAU of Prague. Initial research on family trees of R. LANDAU again did not reveal a family line that including our Amalie LANDAU.
We had just been on a slight detour at the beginning. Instead of looking for LANDAU ancestors in our mother’s mother’s mother’s mother's family, they were instead to be found in our mother’s mother’s father’s mother's family.
At the beginning of the modern history of genealogy when my brother Don was starting to gather information and prepare family trees with all known information, we thought that our mother’s mother’s mother’s mother was a FRIEDENTHAL; Ernestine FRIEDENTHAL. Supposedly, this FRIEDENTHAL great great grandmother was from the family of R. Ezekiel LANDAU (1713-1793) of Prague, author of “Noda b’Jehuda”, the name of which is his frequent moniker. In the 1980s and early 1990s, I did a bit of research trying to find a line descended from Rabbi LANDAU that included FRIEDENTHALs, but without success. That would have been more or less the state of “knowledge” from the late 1960s or early 1970s until May 1996.
“Less” because at some point, possibly from reading the “Chronique Familiale” by my uncle Andreas FREUND I was able to correct our knowledge about that great great grandmother with the information that she was Ernestine PERL get. FRIEDENSTEIN, not FRIEDENTHAL. I think that same source identified our mother’s mother’s father’s father’s was Jakob BACH, a teacher of Jewish subjects in Upper Silesia (Oberschlesien).
In May 1996, my mother, my brother Don and I made a trip to Prague, Theresienstadt, Breslau, Brieg and Berlin. In Prague, in addition to meeting up with my fairly new friend Mark LUDWIG, violist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and founder and director of the Terezin Chamber Music Foundation, we also met our grandmother’s first cousin Ja’acov BACH (1911-2006) of Tel Aviv (born Karl Adolf BACH in Tarnowitz). He was on a trip to Switzerland, but he made a side visit to Prague to meet us. Over dinner, we learned that Jakob BACH’s wife, Ja’acov’s grandmother, our great great grandmother, was Amalie LANDAU, and she was supposedly descended from R. Ezekiel LANDAU.
While we were in Prague, we eventually got ourselves to the Old Jewish Cemetery at Zizkov (on Fibichova Street). It was at the base of the huge television tower that we had been seeing from every vantage point in the city. The cemetery was closed and surrounded by a metal fence. One metal post was missing and following our mother, Don and I also went through narrow opening. We found the gravestone of R. Ezekiel LANDAU, and then made our way back out through that opening.
With great great grandmother Amalie, we now had a LANDAU ancestor who was said, in family lore, somehow to be descended from the Noda b’Jehuda, R. Ezekiel LANDAU of Prague. Initial research on family trees of R. LANDAU again did not reveal a family line that including our Amalie LANDAU.
We had just been on a slight detour at the beginning. Instead of looking for LANDAU ancestors in our mother’s mother’s mother’s mother's family, they were instead to be found in our mother’s mother’s father’s mother's family.
Saturday, November 7, 2015
A BACH Family (or Families) Puzzle - Speculation Cubed
In August 2015, a search for BACH on a very useful online database “Juden im nördlichen Teil des ehemaligen Deutschen Reiches” introduced me to a man named Wolff BACH, Schneider in Kurnik, who was married to Dore and had a son Heymann Wolf BACH in Kurnik in 1844 and daughter Hannchen BACH in Kurnik in 1846. (Heymann died in 1846). There was no obvious connection to my BACH family from Inowroclaw (Hohensalza).
The thing that caught my attention was that Wolff was naming a son Heymann and a daughter Hannchen in the 1840s. My great great great grandparents R. Moses Aron BACH (1809-1879) and Mathilde GOLDMANN (ca.1815-1888), in addition to my great great grandfather Jakob BACH (ca.1838-1924) (and Julie, Fanny, Sarah and Israel (Isaac)), had a daughter Johanna (Hinde) in about 1844 and a son Heymann (Chajim) in 1848.
And Moses Aron BACH’s sister Philippine (Frimet) FINK geb. BACH (ca.1820-1893) named her first son Haim (Joachim) FINK ca.1850 and named her first daughter Johanna (Hannah) in 1852.
And Moses Aron BACH’s sister Flora FRANKENBERG (later FRANK) geb. BACH (ca.1818-1902) named a daughter Hanne in 1851. (Flora and Julius FRANK also named a son Hermann (1846-1850), but no son named Heymann / Heimann / Joachim / Chajim / Haim — upon a new reflection, that may be because Julius FRANK’s father was named Joachim (Heymann) (Chajim) FRANKENBERG. Julius’ mother Jette died in 1834, but perhaps his father Joachim did not die until after 1846 (when Julius and Flora had their last son Aaron), more or less precluding Flora from naming a son Heymann.)
In view of that naming pattern for the children of Moses Aron, Flora and Philippine, the fact that Wolff BACH of Kurnik also named children Heymann and Johanna in the 1840s raised the possibility (maybe even a likelihood) that Wolff was another child of Menachem BACH and Dore CARO.
No additional information about Wolff BACH has come to light (yet). His having children in Kurnik is not a problem. R. Moses Aron BACH had children in Mieschkow, Czerniejewo (Schwarzenau), and Myslowitz. Flora had children in Fordon (and later emigrated to the US). Philippine had children in Hamburg. So, it is clear the family was spreading out from Inowroclaw, with or without an outpost in Kurnik.
Speculation 1 - Wolff BACH of Kurnik is part of the family of Menachem BACH and Dore CARO.
Speculation 2 - Wolf BACH of Kurnik, who was the father of Isaac W. BACH (b.1850), Flora BACH (b.1854) and Leopold (Leo) Walter BACH (b.1857), was the same as Wolff BACH, father of Heymann and Hannchen.
Thanks to Ted's and Gary's family trees posted on Ancestry.com, I have learned of this family of Wolf (or Wolfe) BACH who had at least the son Isaac W. in Kurnik; quite possibly Isaac's sister Flora and brother Leopold (Leo) Walter were also born in Kurnik, though family lore is that Leo was born in Berlin. These siblings came to the US early (by my family's standards); Isaac in 1863, Flora in 1865 and Leo in 1880. Flora seems to have settled in New York. Isaac was first in Denver, but then lived the rest of his life in New York. Leo settled in Denver and remained there.
Gary's mother's baby book identified her great grandparents as Wolfe BACH and Johanna.
Speculation 3 - If that is correct, and if that Wolfe was the same person as Wolff who was the father of Heymann and Hannchen, then the simplest speculation would be that Wolff was first married to Dore and had children with her in the mid 1840s, and then, presumably after Dore's death, he re-married Johanna in the late 1840s and had children with her in the 1850s.
For now, it is just speculation upon speculation. I will hope to update this story some day with some actual evidence.
All this speculation-to-the-3rd-power came after the earlier speculation that the parents of Menachem BACH or Deborah (Dore) CARO may have been named Heymann (Chajim) and Johanna (Hannah) based on the names of their childrens' children. And that had led to the speculation-to-the-nth-degree, that the RAPHAELSOHN ancestor Elisabeth (Liebe) CARO's father Heymann CARO of Chodziesen (Kolmar) was somehow the same person as speculative-Heymann, father of Deborah CARO.
The thing that caught my attention was that Wolff was naming a son Heymann and a daughter Hannchen in the 1840s. My great great great grandparents R. Moses Aron BACH (1809-1879) and Mathilde GOLDMANN (ca.1815-1888), in addition to my great great grandfather Jakob BACH (ca.1838-1924) (and Julie, Fanny, Sarah and Israel (Isaac)), had a daughter Johanna (Hinde) in about 1844 and a son Heymann (Chajim) in 1848.
And Moses Aron BACH’s sister Philippine (Frimet) FINK geb. BACH (ca.1820-1893) named her first son Haim (Joachim) FINK ca.1850 and named her first daughter Johanna (Hannah) in 1852.
And Moses Aron BACH’s sister Flora FRANKENBERG (later FRANK) geb. BACH (ca.1818-1902) named a daughter Hanne in 1851. (Flora and Julius FRANK also named a son Hermann (1846-1850), but no son named Heymann / Heimann / Joachim / Chajim / Haim — upon a new reflection, that may be because Julius FRANK’s father was named Joachim (Heymann) (Chajim) FRANKENBERG. Julius’ mother Jette died in 1834, but perhaps his father Joachim did not die until after 1846 (when Julius and Flora had their last son Aaron), more or less precluding Flora from naming a son Heymann.)
In view of that naming pattern for the children of Moses Aron, Flora and Philippine, the fact that Wolff BACH of Kurnik also named children Heymann and Johanna in the 1840s raised the possibility (maybe even a likelihood) that Wolff was another child of Menachem BACH and Dore CARO.
No additional information about Wolff BACH has come to light (yet). His having children in Kurnik is not a problem. R. Moses Aron BACH had children in Mieschkow, Czerniejewo (Schwarzenau), and Myslowitz. Flora had children in Fordon (and later emigrated to the US). Philippine had children in Hamburg. So, it is clear the family was spreading out from Inowroclaw, with or without an outpost in Kurnik.
Speculation 1 - Wolff BACH of Kurnik is part of the family of Menachem BACH and Dore CARO.
Speculation 2 - Wolf BACH of Kurnik, who was the father of Isaac W. BACH (b.1850), Flora BACH (b.1854) and Leopold (Leo) Walter BACH (b.1857), was the same as Wolff BACH, father of Heymann and Hannchen.
Thanks to Ted's and Gary's family trees posted on Ancestry.com, I have learned of this family of Wolf (or Wolfe) BACH who had at least the son Isaac W. in Kurnik; quite possibly Isaac's sister Flora and brother Leopold (Leo) Walter were also born in Kurnik, though family lore is that Leo was born in Berlin. These siblings came to the US early (by my family's standards); Isaac in 1863, Flora in 1865 and Leo in 1880. Flora seems to have settled in New York. Isaac was first in Denver, but then lived the rest of his life in New York. Leo settled in Denver and remained there.
Gary's mother's baby book identified her great grandparents as Wolfe BACH and Johanna.
Speculation 3 - If that is correct, and if that Wolfe was the same person as Wolff who was the father of Heymann and Hannchen, then the simplest speculation would be that Wolff was first married to Dore and had children with her in the mid 1840s, and then, presumably after Dore's death, he re-married Johanna in the late 1840s and had children with her in the 1850s.
For now, it is just speculation upon speculation. I will hope to update this story some day with some actual evidence.
All this speculation-to-the-3rd-power came after the earlier speculation that the parents of Menachem BACH or Deborah (Dore) CARO may have been named Heymann (Chajim) and Johanna (Hannah) based on the names of their childrens' children. And that had led to the speculation-to-the-nth-degree, that the RAPHAELSOHN ancestor Elisabeth (Liebe) CARO's father Heymann CARO of Chodziesen (Kolmar) was somehow the same person as speculative-Heymann, father of Deborah CARO.
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