27 November 2012
In Berlin two weeks ago at the archive of the Centrum Judaicum, I copied a couple hundred Todesanzeigen (death reports) from the Breslau Jewish community in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Reviewing a couple of them from the CHOTZEN family, I was re-motivated to look for clues elsewhere about Manfred CHOTZEN whose connection to the large CHOTZEN family tree remains unknown.
I decided to look at one of the Breslau Jewish community files now in the archive of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (online). Looking (again) at the file "Heberolle 1913", I did not find any CHOTZEN clues, but I ran across an entry for a Doris SCHIFF who seems to be connected to the family of Wolff SCHIFF (of Wollstein and Breslau), but whose precise connection also remains unknown.
But sharing the new information about Doris SCHIFF with Irene in Dallas led to an unrelated question from her. She sent me a copy of a page about one of her HAENDLER ancestors. When I asked its origin, she said it was from another Jewish Historical Institute file she ran across while looking for the "Heberolle 1913" file I had mentioned to her.
So, I took a look at the file Irene had found: "Alphabetisches Verzeichnis der im Hauptverzeichnis aufgenommenen Judenfamilien mit Angabe der Geburtsdaten, Hochzeitsdatum, Wohnort, Änderung des Wohnorts, Tod etc." (File No.
105_1182). After the index pages, the second page of family entries included this family:
Family No. 52
Joseph Friedenstein 1781 Febr }
Weib Rifke 1790 Juny } 1807 Juny
Tochter Johanne 1808 Juny 24
Tochter Antonie 1810 Febr
Tochter Lisette 1812 Septbr
Sohn Ethan 1815 Febr 14
Sohn Wolff 1818 May 4
Sohn Marcus 1820 April 20
The family had lived in Schloß Goldmannsdorf and was living in Ober Goldmannsdorf at the time of the listing. Later, in 1822, they moved to Schwirklan near Rybnik O/S.
This FRIEDENSTEIN family will almost certainly turn out to be the family of my great great great grandfather Marcus FRIEDENSTEIN who died in Zawodzie near Kattowitz on 9 July 1859 at the age of only 38 (b.ca.1821). Name, birth date and general location (Upper Silesia) are all nice fits. It only remains to find some direct evidence that the father of "my" Marcus FRIEDENSTEIN was named Joseph.
(And this FRIEDENSTEIN family seems to be the same as one I first learned about in July 2002 from Roger in Princeton. That Josef FRIEDENSTEIN was married to Eva, but they both had children Johanna and Antonie (in the same years) and probably also Lisette (if she is Lea / Helene).)
So, today probably included the discovery of a new set of great great great great grandparents Joseph FRIEDENSTEIN (b.1781) and Rifke (b.1790), but only time will tell.
29 November 2012 (Addendum)
Another page in the same document with information about the family of Baruch LOEBEL has a note at the bottom of the page that says: "Marcus Friedenstein geb. den 15 März 1819 ist zum Freund aus Neuberun gezogen." Is this the same Marcus FRIEDENSTEIN (despite the difference in birth dates), or were there two?
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Monday, October 29, 2012
JACOBSOHN Family - One Year Later
29 October 2012 - as the eye of Hurricane Sandy approaches
One year ago (27 October 2011) at the archive of the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin, I found the Curt Jacobsohn File and learned about the family of my great grandmother Ida RAPHAELSOHN geb. JACOBSOHN.
Nine days ago (20 October 2012), I had a wonderful conversation with my newly found JACOBSOHN family cousin in Buenos Aires.
Today, I received this photograph from our cousins in Buenos Aires -- the image on a postcard written by Rosa WEINBERG geb. JACOBSOHN (1855-1935) to her husband Adolf WEINBERG (1848-1930) in Berlin and posted from Liebstadt on 4 April 1912. It is the building where Ida JACOBSOHN geb. SIMONSOHN (1849-1940), widow of Widder (Victor Moses) JACOBSOHN (1823-1894), lived with their son Curt JACOBSOHN (1877-1940), who was the proprietor of the shop V.M. Jacobsohn (as it says in the window) - and the man on the left is Curt JACOBSOHN. (The other people worked in the shop.)
Today, via Don, I also received an excerpt from the memoir of Lutz RAPHAELSON (1922-2002) which happened to describe that same building and store. He wrote:
"Liebstadt was one of those towns with a few stores around the market square like hundreds of others which serviced the farms in the area. My [step-great] grandmother had one of those stores where you could buy everything from cigars to hats to silk stockings. My [step-great] uncle Curt ran it. It was really a small department store."
The year of discovery keeps yielding new and interesting findings.
One year ago (27 October 2011) at the archive of the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin, I found the Curt Jacobsohn File and learned about the family of my great grandmother Ida RAPHAELSOHN geb. JACOBSOHN.
Nine days ago (20 October 2012), I had a wonderful conversation with my newly found JACOBSOHN family cousin in Buenos Aires.
Today, I received this photograph from our cousins in Buenos Aires -- the image on a postcard written by Rosa WEINBERG geb. JACOBSOHN (1855-1935) to her husband Adolf WEINBERG (1848-1930) in Berlin and posted from Liebstadt on 4 April 1912. It is the building where Ida JACOBSOHN geb. SIMONSOHN (1849-1940), widow of Widder (Victor Moses) JACOBSOHN (1823-1894), lived with their son Curt JACOBSOHN (1877-1940), who was the proprietor of the shop V.M. Jacobsohn (as it says in the window) - and the man on the left is Curt JACOBSOHN. (The other people worked in the shop.)Today, via Don, I also received an excerpt from the memoir of Lutz RAPHAELSON (1922-2002) which happened to describe that same building and store. He wrote:
"Liebstadt was one of those towns with a few stores around the market square like hundreds of others which serviced the farms in the area. My [step-great] grandmother had one of those stores where you could buy everything from cigars to hats to silk stockings. My [step-great] uncle Curt ran it. It was really a small department store."
The year of discovery keeps yielding new and interesting findings.
Monday, October 22, 2012
An IMMERWAHR Reunion
As soon as I got into contact with Micheline in 2009, she was urging me to come to Sanary-sur-Mer so that we could meet. From my perspective, and I think hers as well, the goal was to re-connect our families after 70+ years of separation. Each time I planned a "research trip" to Berlin and Breslau, I considered a trip to meet Micheline, her husband Robert, and her brother Maurice who lived in the same house. Each time, I could not make the logistics work (in the short time available for those trips).
From the beginning Micheline had a sense of urgency. She wanted me to make the trip while she could still see me. Her vision was getting progressively worse. In January 2012, her younger brother Maurice died suddenly. I think this, and Micheline's approaching 90th birthday, finally prompted me to act.
Even though Don and I already had a trip planned to Munich, Kojetin, Breslau, towns in Poland, and Berlin for November, we planned a separate, short trip for the end of September to Sanary-sur-Mer to finally meet Micheline. We had an easy flight from Philadelphia to Brussels to Marseille, and then a 2-hour line to get a rental car that was not there because our reservation had been made for the day before. Fortunately, they found a car for us and we set off for Sanary.
We had done little advance planning, so we got turned around a couple times on the highways leading away from the airport. We also got confused by the highway we planned to take, and were briefly on, until it unexpectedly disappeared. After another couple loops, we got on a slower road heading east through the hills above the Mediterranean coast. We dropped back down to the coast at Bandol, and then had a short drive to get on to the map that Micheline's son Dominique had sent us. With that aid, we got to the right street and the right driveway.
When we rang the bell at the gate, a woman appeared at the second floor window (le premier étage, for her) to say she was coming down. Micheline came around to let us in the gate. We had lovely meeting en français, as all our conversations with Micheline would be. She showed us our rooms on the first floor, and then took us upstairs to meet her husband Robert.
When we went upstairs, I brought Micheline the only gifts I had brought her
(1) a scarf from Wroclaw made in connection with the re-dedication of the "zum weisen Storch" synagogue in 2010, the synagogue whose original construction was financed in the late 1820s, by Micheline's and our ancestor Hillel Philipp SILBERSTEIN (1761-1837) or his son Jakob Philipp SILBERSTEIN (ca.1785-1845); and
(2) copies of the copies of the military records of her great grandfather Colonel André Albert LAFFITTE-ROUZET and his son Colonel Charles LAFFITTE-ROUZET.
Of course, she could not really see these things, but Robert and others can describe them to her.
She told us stories; we went for our first walk -- down to the beach (la plage), and then up the hill and down the steps to the marina (le port); on past the lighthouse, through town, and back to Micheline, who had prepared a meal of fish, zucchini, and salad.
The first evening, Micheline showed us an old old photo album with images of Mathilde IMMERWAHR, her husband Le Colonel, André Albert LAFFITTE-ROUZET, their children Le Colonel Charles, and Gabrielle, her husband Alphonse CLERC, his father Maurice, and the children of Gabrielle and Alphonse, Maurice, Albert and Jean-François. That album had photographs from the 1890s to the 1920s. Micheline was amazing. She cannot see the photos, but she knows that album (and others also) so well that she could find the pages she wanted to show and tell us who was in the photos without really seeing them anymore herself.
Then she showed us a family history she had written and illustrated mainly with copies of those photographs, but with the occasional original photos, documents and artifacts (French military ribbons). Among the original photos was the "puzzle-piece" image of Micheline's father Albert CLERC with the man they earlier did not know, my grandfather Dr. Walther FREUND. I previously thought that photo was taken when Albert visited Breslau, but Micheline was clear that it was taken in a room in Le Mollard, her family's home in St. Marcellin. There were two other originals from the same batch as that one -- two women sitting on the same sofa in Le Mollard. We only saw those photos briefly; Micheline may have commented that one of the women was her grandmother Gabrielle CLERC, née LAFFITTE-ROUZET. She offered our mother the original photographs of their respective fathers Albert and Walther - which we accepted on our mother's behalf.
She always knew the man in that photograph was someone important to her father because he did not smile much and rarely has a smile in photographs, but with that man, he was smiling.
On Sunday morning, we went upstairs with the scanner. We copied 30 pages from the old photo album and about 10 pages from "L'Histoire" by Micheline. When we scanned the two photographs of the women on the sofa and the image came up on the computer screen, Don and I both immediately recognized the other unknown guest as our grandmother Ellinor FREUND geb. BACH. Dear Reader may remember a similar surprise and pleasure that we had 16 months earlier seeing and scanning photographs in New Mexico when we also ran across a rare glimpse of our grandmother. As then, I made photographs of the photograph with my iPhone to e-mail to my mother at the first e-mail opportunity.
For the second year in a row, our never-met and little-seen grandmother Ellinor won "best in show".
Thursday, September 13, 2012
FISCHHOF & FRIEDLAENDER
As a follow-up to the last 2 blog entries and and earlier one concerning Julius FRIEDLAENDER, I ran across this entry in Peter Clive's book "Beethoven and His World: A Biographical Dictionary" (Oxford 2001), p.111-112:
This may represent a further piece of circumstantial evidence to support the conclusion that the book dealer and music publisher Julius FRIEDLAENDER (1820-ca.1880 (?)) was the first cousin of my great great grandmother Lina IMMERWAHR geb. SILBERSTEIN (1811-1883), because Julius would have been a "step" first cousin of the pianist, composer and professor of music Joseph FISCHHOF (1804-1857) whose library he purchased after Joseph's death.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Losing Georg LUNGE (sort of)
This blog posting is about discovering that Georg LUNGE's grandfather was seemingly married twice, first to Georg's grandmother and then to Rosa FRIEDLAENDER, my great great great great aunt. If that is correct, it makes Georg LUNGE a "step-cousin", though presumably his mother and her siblings and step-siblings were close enough that a family bond persisted.
The Dear Reader will recall, if only because it was in the immediately preceding blog posting (!), that the family connection between Philipp IMMERWAHR (and his siblings, such as my great grandmother Clara FREUND geb. IMMERWAHR) and Prof. Georg LUNGE was through their common FRIEDLAENDER family. The grandmother of Philipp and Clara, Babette SILBERSTEIN geb. FRIEDLAENDER was a sister of Rosa FISCHHOF geb. FRIEDLAENDER, grandmother of Georg LUNGE. Babette and Rosa were daughters of Joseph FRIEDLAENDER.
The name of Rosa FISCHHOF's husband was not mentioned in the Will of her aunt Rosalie GOTTHEINER geb. FRIEDLAENDER. He had already died by 1828 when Rosalie decided to leave some money to Rosa's daughters Amalie, Friederike and Pauline of Brünn. These FISCHHOF girls were not just identified as daughters of Rosa, they were referred to as Enkeltöchter (granddaughters) of Rosalie's brother Joseph FRIEDLAENDER.
In May 2007, from an 1840 Breslau marriage entry for Friederike FISCHHOF and Joseph WIESENBERG, I learned that Friederike's father was Joseph FISCHHOF.
In May 2009, at the archive of the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin, I found a copy of the Todesanzeige (death report) for Amalie LUNGE geb. FISCHHOF. The main piece of new information was that she was born in the town of Butschowitz, near Brünn in Moravia.
Looking online at that time for information on FISCHHOFs with a connection to Butschowitz, led to information about a musician Josef Fischhof (4 Apr 1804, Butschowitz - 28 Jun 1857, Wien) who is mentioned in Hugo GOLD’s “Die Juden und Judengemeinden Mährens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwalt”, at p. 176:
“Zu Fischhof vgl. Wurzbach, Biogr. Lex. d. Kaisert. Österreich IV., S. 254-256 (Nach dieser Quelle hat J. Fischhof gleichnamiger [?] {2)} Vater, 1768 in Butschowitz geboren, eine Broschüre verfaßt, in der er seine Mitbürger zur Leistung des Militärdienstes auffordert.)
2) Vielleicht mit dem im MB erwähnten “Morenu ha-Rabbi R. Josaia Fischhof b. Jehuda” identisch?” [MB = Butschowitzer Memorbuch]
It seemed likely that Joseph was a brother of Amalie, Friederike and Pauline, based on dates and place, and their father being Joseph FISCHHOFF, but there was no direct evidence to show they were from the same FISCHHOF family from Butschowitz (but how many could there be).
Two weeks ago, a great granddaughter of Prof. Georg LUNGE reconnected with me by e-mail to catch up and to ask about the LUNGE family history. In particular, she wondered whether I could identify a photograph of a family portrait - the man identified as "Georg Fischhof LUNGE".
I was not able to help identify the man in the family portrait (other than to question the accuracy of the name written on the photograph), but the question caused me to look again at my FISCHHOF information and to return to the internet for clues.
This time, a similar search led to information in a Geni.com posting that identified about 10 children of Joseph FISCHHOFF and Rosa Blühdorn FRIEDLAENDER. The information in that tree came mainly from Butschowitz Jewish community records (available online at www. badatelna.cz), from Vienna records searchable online (though www.genteam.at), and from the 2011 book "Wie Einmal War", by Georg GAUGUSCH of Vienna, whom Don and I met in the Lohestrasse Jewish cemetery in Breslau (Wroclaw) in October 2011.
The Breslau Jewish community birth records that included the birth of Georg (Josef) LUNGE, identified his mother as Amalie (Cheile) LUNGE geb. FISCHHOF. In the Butschowitz records, the birth of Cheile FISCHHOFF was recorded in May 1806 (4 years earlier than would be expected based on her listed in age in her Heirats-Anzeige in 1834 (24) and her Todesanzeige in 1874 (64)).
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The Butschowitz records also record the births of Friederike (1812) and Pauline (1814). These three FISCHOFF sisters line up perfectly with the girls mentioned in the will of Rosalie GOTTHEINER geb. FRIEDLAENDER.
The catch is that their mother was listed as Rosa geb. BLÜHDORN, not Rosa geb. FRIEDLAENDER. Rosa FRIEDLAENDER does appear in the records for the births of Joseph FISCHHOFF's later children (Emma, August and Julius), born in 1818, 1821 and 1823. The earlier children from Josef in 1804 to David in 1816 all appear to be the children of Rosa BLÜHDORN.
So, it is my conclusion that the two Rosa's are two wives of Joseph FISCHHOFF and that Amalie was a daughter of the first wife Rosa BLÜHDORN, not my great great great great aunt Rosa FRIEDLAENDER. If that is correct then Amalie LUNGE geb. FISCHHOFF was a "step" first cousin of Lina IMMERWAHR geb. SILBERSTEIN, and Prof. Georg LUNGE was a "step" second cousin of Philipp IMMERWAHR.
With that in mind, it is interesting that Rosalie GOTTHEINER's will referred to the FISCHHOF girls as granddaughter of Rosalie's brother Joseph FRIEDLAENDER. This suggests to me that the stepmother Rosa FISCHHOF geb. FRIEDLAENDER considered her step-daughters to be hers, and presumably she raised them to feel that way.
(A copy of "Wer Einmal War" is en route from England; maybe it will provide some more details to support this conclusion.)
The Dear Reader will recall, if only because it was in the immediately preceding blog posting (!), that the family connection between Philipp IMMERWAHR (and his siblings, such as my great grandmother Clara FREUND geb. IMMERWAHR) and Prof. Georg LUNGE was through their common FRIEDLAENDER family. The grandmother of Philipp and Clara, Babette SILBERSTEIN geb. FRIEDLAENDER was a sister of Rosa FISCHHOF geb. FRIEDLAENDER, grandmother of Georg LUNGE. Babette and Rosa were daughters of Joseph FRIEDLAENDER.
The name of Rosa FISCHHOF's husband was not mentioned in the Will of her aunt Rosalie GOTTHEINER geb. FRIEDLAENDER. He had already died by 1828 when Rosalie decided to leave some money to Rosa's daughters Amalie, Friederike and Pauline of Brünn. These FISCHHOF girls were not just identified as daughters of Rosa, they were referred to as Enkeltöchter (granddaughters) of Rosalie's brother Joseph FRIEDLAENDER.
In May 2007, from an 1840 Breslau marriage entry for Friederike FISCHHOF and Joseph WIESENBERG, I learned that Friederike's father was Joseph FISCHHOF.
In May 2009, at the archive of the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin, I found a copy of the Todesanzeige (death report) for Amalie LUNGE geb. FISCHHOF. The main piece of new information was that she was born in the town of Butschowitz, near Brünn in Moravia.
Looking online at that time for information on FISCHHOFs with a connection to Butschowitz, led to information about a musician Josef Fischhof (4 Apr 1804, Butschowitz - 28 Jun 1857, Wien) who is mentioned in Hugo GOLD’s “Die Juden und Judengemeinden Mährens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwalt”, at p. 176:
“Zu Fischhof vgl. Wurzbach, Biogr. Lex. d. Kaisert. Österreich IV., S. 254-256 (Nach dieser Quelle hat J. Fischhof gleichnamiger [?] {2)} Vater, 1768 in Butschowitz geboren, eine Broschüre verfaßt, in der er seine Mitbürger zur Leistung des Militärdienstes auffordert.)
2) Vielleicht mit dem im MB erwähnten “Morenu ha-Rabbi R. Josaia Fischhof b. Jehuda” identisch?” [MB = Butschowitzer Memorbuch]
It seemed likely that Joseph was a brother of Amalie, Friederike and Pauline, based on dates and place, and their father being Joseph FISCHHOFF, but there was no direct evidence to show they were from the same FISCHHOF family from Butschowitz (but how many could there be).
Two weeks ago, a great granddaughter of Prof. Georg LUNGE reconnected with me by e-mail to catch up and to ask about the LUNGE family history. In particular, she wondered whether I could identify a photograph of a family portrait - the man identified as "Georg Fischhof LUNGE".
I was not able to help identify the man in the family portrait (other than to question the accuracy of the name written on the photograph), but the question caused me to look again at my FISCHHOF information and to return to the internet for clues.
This time, a similar search led to information in a Geni.com posting that identified about 10 children of Joseph FISCHHOFF and Rosa Blühdorn FRIEDLAENDER. The information in that tree came mainly from Butschowitz Jewish community records (available online at www. badatelna.cz), from Vienna records searchable online (though www.genteam.at), and from the 2011 book "Wie Einmal War", by Georg GAUGUSCH of Vienna, whom Don and I met in the Lohestrasse Jewish cemetery in Breslau (Wroclaw) in October 2011.
The Breslau Jewish community birth records that included the birth of Georg (Josef) LUNGE, identified his mother as Amalie (Cheile) LUNGE geb. FISCHHOF. In the Butschowitz records, the birth of Cheile FISCHHOFF was recorded in May 1806 (4 years earlier than would be expected based on her listed in age in her Heirats-Anzeige in 1834 (24) and her Todesanzeige in 1874 (64)).
.jpg)
The catch is that their mother was listed as Rosa geb. BLÜHDORN, not Rosa geb. FRIEDLAENDER. Rosa FRIEDLAENDER does appear in the records for the births of Joseph FISCHHOFF's later children (Emma, August and Julius), born in 1818, 1821 and 1823. The earlier children from Josef in 1804 to David in 1816 all appear to be the children of Rosa BLÜHDORN.
So, it is my conclusion that the two Rosa's are two wives of Joseph FISCHHOFF and that Amalie was a daughter of the first wife Rosa BLÜHDORN, not my great great great great aunt Rosa FRIEDLAENDER. If that is correct then Amalie LUNGE geb. FISCHHOFF was a "step" first cousin of Lina IMMERWAHR geb. SILBERSTEIN, and Prof. Georg LUNGE was a "step" second cousin of Philipp IMMERWAHR.
With that in mind, it is interesting that Rosalie GOTTHEINER's will referred to the FISCHHOF girls as granddaughter of Rosalie's brother Joseph FRIEDLAENDER. This suggests to me that the stepmother Rosa FISCHHOF geb. FRIEDLAENDER considered her step-daughters to be hers, and presumably she raised them to feel that way.
(A copy of "Wer Einmal War" is en route from England; maybe it will provide some more details to support this conclusion.)
Monday, September 10, 2012
Finding Georg LUNGE
This blog posting is about finding the family connection to Georg LUNGE, industrial chemist, and Professor of Chemistry at the ETH in Zürich.
For some reason, I think it was my mother who first drew my attention to the passage in Dr. Gerit von LEITNER's book "Der Fall Clara Immerwahr" (1994) that Dr. Philipp IMMERWAHR (1839-1908) was a friend, and a cousin, of the chemist Prof. Dr. Georg LUNGE (1839-1923). Philipp was the father of Dr. Clara HABER geb, IMMERWAHR (1870-1915), first cousin of my mother's father. (All these doctors had Ph.D.s in chemistry.)
That must have been in 1999. At the time, I did not see how Georg LUNGE could be a cousin of Philipp IMMERWAHR. Since Philipp was an older brother of my great grandmother Clara FREUND geb. IMMERWAHR (1845-1914), I thought I knew enough about this family to know all the potential links to Georg LUNGE, whatever his ancestry was.
Eventually, possibly in 2002, I wrote to Dr. von LEITNER to see if she had more information in her research notes for her book that might expand on the published comment that Philipp and Georg were cousins. She responded, but she did not have further details. She suggested I contact the archives of the Max Planck Institute, since they have considerable HABER materials. I did, but they were not able to provide any clues.
In late 2002, I contacted the archive of the ETH in Zürich to see what I could learn about Georg LUNGE's family. They wrote me about his wife and family and also that his parents were Heinrich LUNGE and Amalie FISCHHOF.
Earlier, I had run across this item in the pre-War German-Jewish genealogy periodical, "Jüdische Familien Forschung", Vol. 12, Issue 43 (1936), special edition “Unsere Ahnen” exhibit of family portraits at the Jüdische Museum Berlin:
Dargestellte Personen: Amalie LUNGE, geb. FISCHOF, gest 1870, Breslau,
gemalt von RESCH
Besitzer: die Enkelin Clara GUMPERTZ
(Ernst RESCH was a portrait artist in Breslau who painted portraits of my great grandmother Lina IMMERWAHR geb. SILBERSTEIN, as well as her sisters Rosalie (KROHN) and Sophie (KROHN), and her aunt Amalie SILBERSTEIN geb. KEMPNER.)
There things stood for about 4 years.
In September 2006, I was looking in the new (for me) resource, Stefi JERSCH-WENZEL's “Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden in Polnischen Archiven," Band 2 - Ehemalige preußische Provinz Schlesien, and ran across this entry:
S.245: Amtsgericht Breslau -- 4991 Nr. 303
Testaments-Akten Gottheiner [Gottheimer], Rosalie geb. Friedländer, gest 18.12.1828
1828-1829
Enth. u. a.: Todesanzeige der Rosalie Gottheiner geb. Friedländer. -- Aufsetzung des Testamentes mit Nennung der Erben: Töchter des Brüders Marcus Friedländer (Breslau), Jeanette verehel. Kuh, und Babette verehel. Silberstein, Töchters des Brüders Gerson Friedlaender (Rosenberg O/S) und der Enkelinnen des Brüders Joseph Friedländer in Brünn, die Geschwister Fischoff sowie das weibliche Waiseninstitut der heisigen israelitischen Gemeinde.
I ordered a copy of this Will from the Archiwum Panstwowe w Wroclawiu, the successor to the Breslau Stadtsarchiv, and learned in November 2006 that my great great great great great aunt Rosalie GOTTHEINER geb. FRIEDLAENDER (ca.1763-1828) had left money to 3 granddaughters of her brother Joseph FRIEDLAENDER (at that moment, my newly discovered great great great great grandfather). Those 3 sisters were Amalie, Friederike and Pauline FISCHHOF of Brünn.
A couple weeks later in December 2006, in the course of corresponding with the German author and playwright Sabine Friedrich of Coburg (she wrote a play about Clara IMMERWAHR), I realized the likely identity of Hirsch Lunge’s wife Amalie Fischof with the great niece of Rosalie Gottheiner, geb. Friedlaender.
With that connection, though the previously almost unknown FRIEDLAENDER family, Philipp IMMERWAHR and his cousin Georg LUNGE were confirmed to be cousins -- they were second cousins through their respective mothers' mothers.
A mystery solved, or so it seemed.
For some reason, I think it was my mother who first drew my attention to the passage in Dr. Gerit von LEITNER's book "Der Fall Clara Immerwahr" (1994) that Dr. Philipp IMMERWAHR (1839-1908) was a friend, and a cousin, of the chemist Prof. Dr. Georg LUNGE (1839-1923). Philipp was the father of Dr. Clara HABER geb, IMMERWAHR (1870-1915), first cousin of my mother's father. (All these doctors had Ph.D.s in chemistry.)
That must have been in 1999. At the time, I did not see how Georg LUNGE could be a cousin of Philipp IMMERWAHR. Since Philipp was an older brother of my great grandmother Clara FREUND geb. IMMERWAHR (1845-1914), I thought I knew enough about this family to know all the potential links to Georg LUNGE, whatever his ancestry was.
Eventually, possibly in 2002, I wrote to Dr. von LEITNER to see if she had more information in her research notes for her book that might expand on the published comment that Philipp and Georg were cousins. She responded, but she did not have further details. She suggested I contact the archives of the Max Planck Institute, since they have considerable HABER materials. I did, but they were not able to provide any clues.
In late 2002, I contacted the archive of the ETH in Zürich to see what I could learn about Georg LUNGE's family. They wrote me about his wife and family and also that his parents were Heinrich LUNGE and Amalie FISCHHOF.
Earlier, I had run across this item in the pre-War German-Jewish genealogy periodical, "Jüdische Familien Forschung", Vol. 12, Issue 43 (1936), special edition “Unsere Ahnen” exhibit of family portraits at the Jüdische Museum Berlin:
Dargestellte Personen: Amalie LUNGE, geb. FISCHOF, gest 1870, Breslau,
gemalt von RESCH
Besitzer: die Enkelin Clara GUMPERTZ
(Ernst RESCH was a portrait artist in Breslau who painted portraits of my great grandmother Lina IMMERWAHR geb. SILBERSTEIN, as well as her sisters Rosalie (KROHN) and Sophie (KROHN), and her aunt Amalie SILBERSTEIN geb. KEMPNER.)
There things stood for about 4 years.
In September 2006, I was looking in the new (for me) resource, Stefi JERSCH-WENZEL's “Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden in Polnischen Archiven," Band 2 - Ehemalige preußische Provinz Schlesien, and ran across this entry:
S.245: Amtsgericht Breslau -- 4991 Nr. 303
Testaments-Akten Gottheiner [Gottheimer], Rosalie geb. Friedländer, gest 18.12.1828
1828-1829
Enth. u. a.: Todesanzeige der Rosalie Gottheiner geb. Friedländer. -- Aufsetzung des Testamentes mit Nennung der Erben: Töchter des Brüders Marcus Friedländer (Breslau), Jeanette verehel. Kuh, und Babette verehel. Silberstein, Töchters des Brüders Gerson Friedlaender (Rosenberg O/S) und der Enkelinnen des Brüders Joseph Friedländer in Brünn, die Geschwister Fischoff sowie das weibliche Waiseninstitut der heisigen israelitischen Gemeinde.
I ordered a copy of this Will from the Archiwum Panstwowe w Wroclawiu, the successor to the Breslau Stadtsarchiv, and learned in November 2006 that my great great great great great aunt Rosalie GOTTHEINER geb. FRIEDLAENDER (ca.1763-1828) had left money to 3 granddaughters of her brother Joseph FRIEDLAENDER (at that moment, my newly discovered great great great great grandfather). Those 3 sisters were Amalie, Friederike and Pauline FISCHHOF of Brünn.
A couple weeks later in December 2006, in the course of corresponding with the German author and playwright Sabine Friedrich of Coburg (she wrote a play about Clara IMMERWAHR), I realized the likely identity of Hirsch Lunge’s wife Amalie Fischof with the great niece of Rosalie Gottheiner, geb. Friedlaender.
With that connection, though the previously almost unknown FRIEDLAENDER family, Philipp IMMERWAHR and his cousin Georg LUNGE were confirmed to be cousins -- they were second cousins through their respective mothers' mothers.
A mystery solved, or so it seemed.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
SIMONSOHN Family - A New and Extensive Set of Cousins
After finding the JACOBSOHN family tree in Berlin in late October 2011, I tried to trace the various new lines of the family -- without much success. One family of interest was the SIMONSOHNs from Guttstadt in East Prussia. It they existed, they would be the descendants of my great great great aunt Flora JACOBSOHN (b.1821) and her husband Caspar SIMONSOHN (b.ca.1817).
In November 2011, the first clues came from the Yad vaShem online databases. There was an Emma MARCUS geb. SIMONSOHN, born in Guttstadt in 1861, who was deported from Berlin to Theresienstadt on 14 September 1942, and died there less than 4 weeks later on 9 October 1942. A grandchild of hers submitted a Page of Testimony to Yad vaShem in her memory. The name of the submitter was transcribed as "Lola Wang" of Adelaide, Australia.
Based on the address, I sent an e-mail inquiry to 2 synagogues in Adelhaide and received a response the next morning from the "Honorary Archivist" of the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation: the illegible name was actually Warner DUBIN. I also received links to photographs of the gravestones of Warner and his wife Riva, a link to Australian National Archive catalogue entries for Warner DUBIN, born as Werner DEMBINSKY, and the name of his daughter in Victoria (AU).
I quickly found a person with the right name on Facebook and sent her a note. It took until the end of January 2012 to receive a reply. I had found the right person, but she did not know if her great grandmother Emma was a daughter of Caspar SIMONSOHN. She had forwarded my question to her cousin Gary, the family historian. Another two months later, Gary also noted that he did not know who Emma's parents were.
Since the information from Australia was inconclusive, I went back to the internet to look for other possible candidates for cousinhood. There was enough of Wilma Aden-Grossmann's 2007 book "Berthold Simonsohn. Biographie eines jüdischen Sozialpädagogen und Juristen (1912–1978)" available through Google Books to learn that Berthold's father Alfred SIMONSOHN was also born in Guttstadt, in 1858. The author acknowledged a memoir by Berthold's brother Karl which she had received from Karl's son Alfred SØRENSEN.
At the end of March 2012, I wrote to the author. When something brought me back to the SIMONSOHN search in mid July and I remembered not hearing back from the author, I e-mailed her again. But, then a few minutes later, I decided to see if the Alfred SØRENSEN whose e-mail address I had found was the right one.
That was the crucial step. The next day Alfred replied and did turn out to be the son of Karl. And even though his father had not left any additional information about the family history, he had a copy of a SIMONSOHN family tree prepared by this uncle Berthold. But, he was going off on vacation.
Fortunately, when he came back from vacation, Alfred remembered my inquiry and sent me a most wonderful 50th-birthday-present, just one week early. His uncle Berthold's SIMONSOHN Stammbaum answered my questions -- Emma and Alfred were siblings and they were children of Caspar SIMONSOHN and my great great great aunt Flora geb. JACOBSOHN of Guttstadt -- and provided a very complete update on their descendants and the rest of the extended SIMONSOHN family.
I already knew that Caspar's brother Joachim SIMONSOHN had married Flora's sister Henriette JACOBSOHN. Now, I had information on the descendants of Joachim and Henriette as well. And, confirmation that my great great grandfather Victor Moses JACOBSOHN's second wife Ida was their daughter and his niece. (Victor Moses and Ida were the parents of Curt JACOBSOHN who seems to have been the donor of the JACOBSOHN Stammbaum to what is now the archive of the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin.)
My aunt Eva knew her grandmother Ida RAPHAELSOHN geb. JACOBSOHN and also her step-great grandmother Ida JACOBSOHN geb. SIMONSOHN. I think I remember correctly that Eva considered her step-great grandmother Ida to be nicer or friendlier than her grandmother Ida.
Alfred's and Emma's family lines are pretty much up to date. Now, there are many other new lines of cousins to try to trace. So far, I have only made slight progress on one -- the ALTERTHUM family; 5 sons who all seem to have made it to Palestine, some or all of whom changed their name to ATAR.
After another great expansion of the previously unknown JACOBSOHN side of the family, there is plenty more to follow-up on.
In November 2011, the first clues came from the Yad vaShem online databases. There was an Emma MARCUS geb. SIMONSOHN, born in Guttstadt in 1861, who was deported from Berlin to Theresienstadt on 14 September 1942, and died there less than 4 weeks later on 9 October 1942. A grandchild of hers submitted a Page of Testimony to Yad vaShem in her memory. The name of the submitter was transcribed as "Lola Wang" of Adelaide, Australia.
Based on the address, I sent an e-mail inquiry to 2 synagogues in Adelhaide and received a response the next morning from the "Honorary Archivist" of the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation: the illegible name was actually Warner DUBIN. I also received links to photographs of the gravestones of Warner and his wife Riva, a link to Australian National Archive catalogue entries for Warner DUBIN, born as Werner DEMBINSKY, and the name of his daughter in Victoria (AU).
I quickly found a person with the right name on Facebook and sent her a note. It took until the end of January 2012 to receive a reply. I had found the right person, but she did not know if her great grandmother Emma was a daughter of Caspar SIMONSOHN. She had forwarded my question to her cousin Gary, the family historian. Another two months later, Gary also noted that he did not know who Emma's parents were.
Since the information from Australia was inconclusive, I went back to the internet to look for other possible candidates for cousinhood. There was enough of Wilma Aden-Grossmann's 2007 book "Berthold Simonsohn. Biographie eines jüdischen Sozialpädagogen und Juristen (1912–1978)" available through Google Books to learn that Berthold's father Alfred SIMONSOHN was also born in Guttstadt, in 1858. The author acknowledged a memoir by Berthold's brother Karl which she had received from Karl's son Alfred SØRENSEN.
At the end of March 2012, I wrote to the author. When something brought me back to the SIMONSOHN search in mid July and I remembered not hearing back from the author, I e-mailed her again. But, then a few minutes later, I decided to see if the Alfred SØRENSEN whose e-mail address I had found was the right one.
That was the crucial step. The next day Alfred replied and did turn out to be the son of Karl. And even though his father had not left any additional information about the family history, he had a copy of a SIMONSOHN family tree prepared by this uncle Berthold. But, he was going off on vacation.
Fortunately, when he came back from vacation, Alfred remembered my inquiry and sent me a most wonderful 50th-birthday-present, just one week early. His uncle Berthold's SIMONSOHN Stammbaum answered my questions -- Emma and Alfred were siblings and they were children of Caspar SIMONSOHN and my great great great aunt Flora geb. JACOBSOHN of Guttstadt -- and provided a very complete update on their descendants and the rest of the extended SIMONSOHN family.
My aunt Eva knew her grandmother Ida RAPHAELSOHN geb. JACOBSOHN and also her step-great grandmother Ida JACOBSOHN geb. SIMONSOHN. I think I remember correctly that Eva considered her step-great grandmother Ida to be nicer or friendlier than her grandmother Ida.
Alfred's and Emma's family lines are pretty much up to date. Now, there are many other new lines of cousins to try to trace. So far, I have only made slight progress on one -- the ALTERTHUM family; 5 sons who all seem to have made it to Palestine, some or all of whom changed their name to ATAR.
After another great expansion of the previously unknown JACOBSOHN side of the family, there is plenty more to follow-up on.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
ZUELZ Family History (Part II)
29 July 2012
R. Eleasar ZUELZ and Brainchen ZUELZ geb. LATZ
[Originally written 20 August 2005]
Hirsch FREUND’s wife Rosalie
ZÜLZ (ca.1800-1849) was the daughter of Eloesser ZÜLZ. According to family sources (namely, Tante Doe (ca.1979) (Elisabeth Dorothea FREUND geb. FREUND (1898-1982))), Eloesser ZÜLZ
was a rabbi and teacher, and was from Posen, and his wife was a great aunt of
the journalist and political critic Maximilian HARDEN (1861-1927), who was born
Felix Ernst WITKOWKSI, and whose parents came from Posen Province[1]. As it now turns out, this information was
partly correct.
On August 14, 2005, after a
bout of looking through the newly acquired copy of M. BROCKE’s “Biographisches
Handbuch der Rabbiner” (2004)[2],
I saw an entry about Jonas MELCHERS’ ancestor Natan Nata SCHEIE. One of the cited references was in an article
in the 1905 volume of the Jahrbuch der Jüdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft. I decided to look at that citation, since the
entire publication is available on the internet.
When paging through R.
Leopold WRESCHNER’s article “Rabbi Akiba Eger’s Leben und Wirken” in Jahrbuch
der Jüdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a./Main, 1905) on the
internet[3],
I saw the name “R. Eleasar Zülz” pass by, with reference to a footnote[4]:
27. An ihm ist '[tet] 1 71, 72 gerichtet. Er is auch der Lehrer des erwähnten David
Caro (Lippmann a. a. O. S.7), Schwiegersohn des Begründers des [Bet Schlomo],
S. B. Latz, und Grossvater des Justizrats Freund in Breslau. 1824 wird er in den Vorstand gewählt. (Posen C. XIII 38).
Since this R. Eleasar ZÜLZ is
said to be a grandfather of "Justizrat FREUND in Breslau", and since Wilhelm Salomon FREUND of Breslau, grandson of a R. Eloesser ZÜLZ of Posen, was Justizrat in Breslau, this R. Eleasar is clearly the same person
as the Eloesser ZÜLZ referred to in FREUND family histories. The accuracy of the link seems likely since
the article, and footnote, were written and published during the lifetime of W.
S. FREUND (1831-1915).
According to R. Leopold
WRESCHNER, R. Eleasar ZÜLZ was a rabbi and dajan in the town of Posen; he was
one of five dajanim in Posen in the first decade of the 19th
century.
With this information, I
checked in “Avnei Zikaron” to see whether Samuel Zwi WELTSMAN had noted the
gravestone of R. Eleasar ZÜLZ in Posen when he was cataloguing the gravestone
inscriptions of rabbis and their wives in cemeteries of eastern Germany and
Poland in the early 20th century.
I believe he did. There is an
entry in “Avnei Zikaron” of the Posen gravestone inscription of R. Eleazar ben
Azriel from Zülz, who was dajan in Posen[5]. He died 22 November 1827 (3 Kislew
5588). I am certain that this is the
same person as my great great great grandfather R. Eleasar ZÜLZ.
That R. Eleasar ZÜLZ died in
1827 is consistent with the existence in Posen in 1834 of the widow Brainchen
Lazarus ZILZ[6]. Her name in this entry indicates that she was
the widow of Eleasar ZÜLZ, whose secular name would have been Lazarus, and who
died before 1834 (i.e., in 1827). While
her late husband was a rabbi and dajan in Posen, she is listed as
“Kaufmannswittwe” (businessman’s widow) – I do not believe this should be read
to mean that she was the widow of a merchant, but rather that she was a widow
and a merchant herself.
The footnote in WRESCHNER’s
article also opened up a whole new possibility for researching the identity of
R. Eleasar ZÜLZ’ wife: she is the
daughter of S. B. LATZ[7],
that is Salomon Benjamin LATZ of Posen. So, Brainchen ZÜLZ was “geb. LATZ”[8].
Later in WRESCHNER’s article,
he relates some information about Salomon Benjamin LATZ: he was a very wealthy businessman in Posen;
at R. Akiba EGER’s recommendation he created a trust of 6000 Thalers to finance
the construction of a school and hospital; he set this up in January 1829; on
19 May 1829, he died in Posen[9].
An internet search for
information about Salomon Benjamin LATZ quickly led to the website of the
mathematician Prof. Doron ZIELBERGER of Rutgers University. According to this site (with information from
Thomas FURSTENBERG of Belgium), Salomon Benjamin LATZ lived from 1749 to
1829. Only two of his children are
noted: David (b.1775) and Henriette (b.1784).
Most amazingly, there was also a photograph of a wonderful portrait of Salomon Benjamin LATZ.
Also of considerable note is
the connection to the WITKOWSKI family of Maximilian HARDEN[1] [10]. It turns out that Brainchen’s putative sister
Henriette (Gitel) LATZ (1784-1847) was married to Markus Israel WITKOWSKI
(1773-1831) of Posen. Markus’ brother
Süsskind WITKOWSKI was the grandfather of Maximilian HARDEN – so, my great
great great grandmother Brainchen ZÜLZ, geb. LATZ, was not a great aunt of Maximilian
HARDEN -- but her sister Henriette was.
After years of mystery, it
now appears that the wonderful pastel portraits of Wilhelm Salomon FREUND’s
maternal grandparents are those of R. Eleasar ZÜLZ (d.1827), dajan in Posen,
son of R. Azriel of Zülz, Upper Silesia, and his wife Brainchen ZÜLZ, geb. LATZ,
daughter of Salomon Benjamin LATZ (1749-1829) of Posen.
[New information added 19
January 2008:]
A year later (2006), I got a
copy of Jersch-Wenzel, Stefi, “Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden in Polnischen
Archiven” through inter-library loan and found reference to a file on the last
will and testament of Brainchen ZÜLZ, geb. LATZ in the Poznan Historical
Archive.[11] Another year later (2007), I requested a copy
of this file (and the file on the will of Bertha ZILTZ, geb. BERLINER) and
confirmed that Brainchen was (a) the widow of R. Eleasar ZÜLZ, (b) the daughter
of Salomon Benjamin LATZ, and (c) the mother of Rivka ZÜLZ, the predeceased
wife of Hirsch FREUND.[12] In these papers, the family name is written
as ZILTZ.
Brainchen was said to be 86
when she died in 1862, so she was born about 1776. In addition to their daughter Rivka (Rosalie)
(ca.1800-1849), it turns out that Brainchen and Eleasar also had a son David L.
ZILTZ and two daughters Eva Lina who married Isidor Esaias Schaje BERLINER[13]
of Flatow, and Ernestine who married Hirsch LÖWENSTEIN of Breslau.
From the will of Bertha
ZILTZ, geb. BERLINER (ca.1846-1910),[14]
it was learned that she was the widow of David ZILTZ, and that they had one
daughter named Alwina. Alwina was
unmarried at the death of her mother and may have been disabled; she was left
in the care of the family Isidor and Charlotte WRONKE of Posen.
Eva and Isidor BERLINER had 9
children in Flatow in the 1830s and 1840s:
Lazarus, Cäcilie, Salomon, Merle, Jacob, Joseph, Berta, Rose and Fritze.[15] The daughter Berta BERLINER (b.ca.1842) may
be the same person as David ZILTZ’ wife Bertha, but in her death certificate,
the latter Bertha was said to have been 64 (b.ca.1846) and her parents are
listed as Salomon and Eva BERLINER.
Despite these discrepancies, I think it is likely that the death
certificate contains errors, possibly based on Bertha’s only surviving child
being the not-entirely-well Alwina.
Research is currently
underway to trace the BERLINER and LÖWENSTEIN families. Parts of these families were in Breslau in
the mid to late 19th century, and still in the early 20th
century.[16]
[1]
A very short Zülz Family History was written for my website www.familymemory.org on August 14, 2005, hours before uncovering new information about this part of
the family.
[2] This book was a birthday present from my
mother and had arrived from Germany about a week earlier.
[3] See, www.compactmemory.de,
a website supporting research on Judaic studies, that contains scanned versions
of the complete editions of numerous valuable German publications on Jewish
news, history and religious and cultural studies.
[4]
Wreschner, Jahrbuch der Jüdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a./Main,
1905), p. 8, footnote 27.
[5] R. Eleasar ZÜLZ’ gravestone inscription:
"Here lies buried the lord of the Torah the sage
[word not clear] the rabbi the great light the sharp the famous and well-versed
in the rooms of the Torah our great teacher and rabbi the renowned rabbi Elazar
son of the gaon our great teacher and Rabbi Azriel the memory of the just be
blessed of Ziltuk [Zuelz] head of the Beth Din and the sons of the yeshiva and
Parnes of the holy community of Poznan [Posen] may his soul rest in peace he
died on Thursday eve and was buried on Thursday the 3rd of Kislew 5528. (above
this number is written 5588). [note added] In the year 5528 there was no Thursday
3rd of Kislev so it should read 5588 and so it is written in the book of the
burial society."
(Translation by Dr. Avner FALK, 16 August 2005).
[6] See, entry in “The Naturalized Jews of the
Grand Duchy of Posen in 1834 and 1835”, recompiled by Edward David LUFT, p.97:
Seite
Wohnort Familien- und
Vornamen Character Datum des Patents
75
Posen Zilz, Wtw, Brainchen
Lazarus Kaufmannswittwe 6-7-1834
[7] It is not known whether R. Eleasar ZÜLZ had
more than one wife. From the available
information it is only clear that he had at least one wife who was the daughter
of Salomon Benjamin LATZ. I am assuming
that my great great great grandmother is this wife of R. Eleasar ZÜLZ.
[8] I assume that “Brainchen” is the diminutive
form of the name “Breindel”.
[9] Salomon Benjamin LATZ died in 1829 and his
great grandson Wilhelm Salomon FREUND was born in 1831. It is reasonable to believe that the latter
was named in memory of his great grandfather.
[10]
See, the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906:
“HARDEN, MAXIMILIAN: By : Isidore Singer Frederick T. Haneman
German author; born at Berlin Oct.
20, 1861. Educated in the German capital, where he still resides, he became
well known through his political and social articles in the "Nation,"
"Frankfurter Zeitung," and especially in the "Gegenwart,"
written over the nom de plume of "Apostata"; they were collected and
published under that name in Berlin in 1892. In the same year he founded the
"Zukunft," one of the leading German journals, which he is still
(1903) editing. He was recently arrested and imprisoned by the government under
the charge of lese-majesty. Harden embraced Christianity when a mere boy. His
original name was Witkowski (see his "Zukunft," Oct., 1903).
Bibliography: Meyers
Konversations-Lexikon; Brockhaus' Konversations-Lexikon. S.F. T.H.”
[11] Jersch-Wenzel, Stefi, “Quellen zur Geschichte
der Juden in Polnischen Archiven," Band 1 - Ehemalige preußische
Provinzen: Pommern, Westpreußen, Ostpreußen, Preußen, Posen, Grenzmark
Posen-Westpreußen, Süd- und Neuostpreußen
p.184, No. 3803; Archive No. 11591:
Ziltz, Braenchen geb. Latz, Witwe in Posen 1861-1862
[General note:] Zum
Bestand zählen ausschließlich Testamente, die alphabetisch nach Familiennamen
der Erblasser geordnet sind und meistens durch Angaben zum Beruf desselben
ergänzt werden. Wie die Laufzeit des Bestandes nahelegt, wurden die Akten der
Vorgängerbehörden übernommen. [23 September 2006]
[12] Received copy of file Nr. 11591 from Archiwum
Panstwowe w Poznaniu regarding the testament of Braenchen Ziltz, geb. Latz from
1861; there is reference to her father Salomon and her husband Rabbi Lazarus
Zülz - Rosalie is referred to as Rifka; there are a son David and a daughter
Eva Berliner (wittwe) (will ask Mom to help reading these papers during
Thanksgiving...) (looks like her age at death was “sechs und achtzig”) [17 Nov
2007]
[13] Isidor BERLINER was a son David, son of R.
Esaias Löw BERLINER (1725-1799), Landsrabbiner in Breslau and holder of Breslau
Stamm-Nummer 117.
[14] Received copy of file Nr. 11590 from Archiwum
Panstwowe w Poznaniu regarding the testament of Bertha Ziltz, geb. Berliner
from 1910.
[15] Information from Family Tree of the Jewish
People posting by Kurt FRIEDLAENDER of Melbourne, Australia (Jewish Gen
Researcher 16811), based on records of the Flatow Jewish community.
[16] In her will, Bertha ZILTZ left 8000 Marks to
her nieces Else BERLINER and Frieda BERLINER in Breslau to be paid after the
death of Bertha’s daughter Alwina.
[17] This was written with the plan to print it on acid-free paper and place it
in an acid-free plastic sheath to be placed inside the framed pastel portraits
of R. Eleasar ZÜLZ (d.1827) and Brainchen ZÜLZ, geb. LATZ (ca.1776-1862).
ZUELZ Family History (Part I)
29 July 2012
[This was written 14 August 2005.]
According to family sources, Eloesser ZÜLZ was a rabbi and
teacher, and was from Posen (town or province?), and his wife was a great aunt
of the journalist and political critic Maximilian HARDEN (1861-1927), who was
born Felix Ernst WITKOWKSI, and whose parents came from Posen Province. For this reason, her maiden name has been
said to have been WITKOWSKI; however, substantial research into the WITKOWSKI
family history found no connection to the family of Eloesser ZÜLZ.
For that reason, I have expanded the possible
families to search to include the other families of Maximilian HARDEN’s which
could include this putative great aunt:
LÖWENTHAL, KRAKAU or HIRSCH – and based on dates and ages, the LÖWENTHAL
family seems the most likely to contain a fit.
This remains a mystery of family history.
See Part II
Saturday, May 12, 2012
The Bleichröder Connection
In August 1991, my uncle Andreas FREUND (1925, Breslau - 1996, Paris) finished the original version of his "Chronique Familiale", a family history of the FREUND, IMMERWAHR, SILBERSTEIN, BACH, PERL and associated collateral families -- written in French for the primary benefit of our French cousins. I am no longer certain, but I think it took me a couple years before I noticed this sentence at the start of two paragraphs about Gerson von BLEICHRÖDER (p.19):
I do not recall whether I ever asked Andreas about the family story that there was a connection to the famous Gerson BLEICHRÖDER (1822-1893). I do not think I did. Even if there were no other details to back up the story (I would guess there were none), I regret not asking about the source of the story -- was it his father / my grandfather, or some other member of the FREUND or IMMERWAHR family?
By 1997, I had put a note in the family tree under Marie GUTTENTAG, wife of Otto IMMERWAHR (1836-1867): "sister (?) of bank director Gerson Bleichroder". That was close to the beginning of my interest in the GUTTENTAG families of Breslau and Silesia.
It was not until 2002 that I found the first helpful clue (well, it must have been the second clue after the tip that Marie GUTTENTAG was a part of the story). That was when I reviewed the "Bleichroeder Family Collection" in the archives of the Leo Baeck Institute in New York (file no. AR 6410). There, I learned that Gerson BLEICHRÖDER's wife was Emma GUTTENTAG from Breslau. Her parents were the Breslau banker Loebel GUTTENTAG and Fanny WIENER
I must not have known Emma's birth year because I speculated that it was about 1825 (since Gerson was born in 1822), and I speculated that Marie was born about 1840, since her husband Otto was born in 1836. Adding speculation on top of speculation, I wondered whether Emma and Marie would turn out to be aunt/niece or sisters.
In 2003, in Breslau Jewish community birth data, I found information on the family of Loebel GUTTENTAG and Fanny WIENER. There was information on 4 other children, Bertha, Ida, Agnes and Julius. Emma's birth was not mentioned in the birth lists -- and neither was Marie.
The next step came in 2009 when Don and I visited the Schönhauser Allee Jewish cemetery in Berlin. We went there after learning at the Weissensee cemetery that Dorothea MARCUS geb. SILBERSTEIN (1805-1887) was not buried there, but in the Schönhauser Allee cemetery. The burial information for Dorothea did give the grave location, so when we got to the Schönhauser Allee cemetery, we just wandered all around. Among the gravestones we saw where those for Gerson and Emma BLEICHRÖDER. This only added her birth and death dates -- showing that Emma was either a twin sister to Bertha (or for some reason Bertha (Blume) became known as Emma).
With Emma born in 1830, the likely age gap between Emma and Marie dropped from about 15 years to only 10 years. That is where things stood until last Sunday.
Back in January 2012, thanks to a cousin and friend in Dallas, I learned about a great initiative underway in Europe to digitiize and post online archival files from Judaica collections across the continent, called Judaica Europeana. One of the participating archive is the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (JHI - ZIH in Polish) -- which has scanned and posted its files from the Breslau Jewish community.
The file I opened last week was "Legat des Löbel Guttentag" (file no. 105_0762c). Löbel’s will lists his wife Fanny, geb. Wiener and children Bertha Sachs, Emma Bleichröder, Marie Immerwahr and Julius. There was the answer I had been hoping to find for over 15 years, and which had caused me pay special attention to GUTTENTAG family information all that time. Marie and Emma were sister after all (and Emma and Bertha were not the same person).
With that confirmation, the connection of my family to Gerson von BLEICHRÖDER was really rather close; particularly from the perspective of Andreas' father / my grandfather who might have been Andreas' source for the story. For Dr. Walther FREUND (1874-1952), the link was as close as his uncle Otto's sister-in-law's husband.
Mystery solved.
(The phrase "Andreas' father / my grandfather" is used in tribute to my uncle Andreas who liked to sprinkle his conversation with such references, particularly, "my sister / your mother".)
Saturday, March 31, 2012
"Stammbaum der Familie Falk"
 | |||
| "Stammbaum der Familie Falk", Paul Dobrin (Breslau 1937) |
A crucial element behind much of my genealogy research has been the "Stammbaum der Familie Falk", a small, black book of bound typed sheets (typed using carbon paper, it seems), one family group per page. "Kapitel" after "Kapitel", starting with the family of R. Jacob Jehuda Loebel FALK, the Dyhernfurther Rav, his third wife Sara NAUMBURG, and their 11 children (who lived to adulthood), the book outlines the whole FALK family as compiled by the Breslau genealogist Paul DOBRIN -- the whole family as of 1937.
The first knowledge of the Falk Stammbaum came to us before the "me part of us" was aware of family history beyond, perhaps, the fact that the family had lived in California before I came along. Back then in the mid 1960s, my brother Don's interest in genealogy was budding and getting support from our aunt Eva WULKAN geb. FALK (1911-2005) in Chicago. Eva knew that her second cousin Max LEVY (1893-1970) had a copy of the Falk Stammbaum, and in response to specific questions from Don, she would write to Max and convey the answers to Don. The fate of Max LEVY's copy of the Falk Stammbaum is not known.
When our great uncle Siegfried FALK ("Onkel Siegfried") (1888-1969) died in Wellington, New Zealand, his widow Tante Lo sent oil portraits of Siegfried's parents Emanuel FALK (1832-1906) and Johanna KALISCHER (1845-1929) to my father, and I believe that Onkel Siegfriend's copy of the Falk Stammbaum arrived with the portraits.
I do not know what Don did with the Falk Stammbaum when it first came to our home, and to him as the family genealogist, but I remember paging through it, wondering what a "Kapitel" was, learning its organization system (which always seemed cumbersome), finding the page with my father, his sister and their parents, and noticing a few things:
* the Meyer - Wilhelm - Meyer- Wilhelm naming pattern that turned out to lead from R. Jacob Jehuda Loebel FALK's son to Wilhelm (Ze'ev) FALK (1923-1998) of Jerusalem;
* that the last child in Kapitel 1, Aidel FALK, with no birth date, could not be among the last children (births in the 1830s) because she had a son in 1827; and
* that my father was 43 when I was born, and his father was 44 when he was born, and his grandfather was 43 when his father was born, and his great grandfather was 64 when his grandfather was born.
If there are any loyal readers, I would refer them to the blog entry of 8 May 2011 which contains my history with the Stammbaum der Familie Falk. One thing not included there is the story which my beloved cousin Prof. Dr. Ze'ev W. FALK told me on his first visit to us in Wayne, Pennsylvania about the origins of the Falk Stammbaum. According to Ze'ev the Stammbaum was commissioned by the wealthy KROCH banking family as a means of keeping track of the whole FALK family, in order to send family members, annually, writings of the late R. Jacob Loebel KROCH (1815-1897), wife of Bertha FALK (1816-1904), daughter of the Dyhrenfurther Rav.
But another part of the story of the Falk Stammbaum is what became of all the copies which were distributed to family members back in 1937. There was Max LEVY's copy - where is it now? There was Onkel Siegfried's copy (now in Wayne, PA). My recollection is that Ze'ev had the copy of his father Dr. Meyer FALK (1891-1972).
The first new copy I saw (I think) was in Brooklyn when I met R. Dovid BIRNBAUM in 1999. He received his copy from his father Daniel BIRNBAUM who received it from cousin Gerhard GLUSKINOS who received it from his father Willi GLUSKINOS (1881-1965). This was not a formal book version, but whole-punched pages with a metal binder, in a fitted cardboard box. I believe it was a typed version.
The next copy was in Jerusalem with the KADMON family. I believe that this is a handwritten copy with information from as late as 1938. I assume that this was the copy of Martin WOLFSOHN (1890-1970).
I suspect that I am currently not remembering some of the other copies that have come to light in the last 16 years of research.
But the most recently learned of copy was (along with Don) the prompt for this blog entry. Don told me today that when he met our cousin Ariel in Buenos Aires a couple weeks ago, Ariel said that he has his mother's copy of the Falk Stammbaum -- a black-bound typed copy like ours. I assume that this was the copy of Hans Meyer KROCH (1887-1870).
(It is probably not significant that so many original holders of the Falk Stammbaum died in the short period from 1969 to 1972... But even the not-noteworthy can be noted.)
There must be more copies out there yet to be seen.
Twenty years ago, on my Mac SE, I entered the whole content of the "Stammbaum der Familie Falk" into the then-current version of the Reunion (v 2.0 ?) genealogy software. The significantly updated family tree is still maintained in the significantly updated Reunion program (v 9.0), just waiting for a slightly fuller sense of completion to publish it in some form on the internet.
The first knowledge of the Falk Stammbaum came to us before the "me part of us" was aware of family history beyond, perhaps, the fact that the family had lived in California before I came along. Back then in the mid 1960s, my brother Don's interest in genealogy was budding and getting support from our aunt Eva WULKAN geb. FALK (1911-2005) in Chicago. Eva knew that her second cousin Max LEVY (1893-1970) had a copy of the Falk Stammbaum, and in response to specific questions from Don, she would write to Max and convey the answers to Don. The fate of Max LEVY's copy of the Falk Stammbaum is not known.
When our great uncle Siegfried FALK ("Onkel Siegfried") (1888-1969) died in Wellington, New Zealand, his widow Tante Lo sent oil portraits of Siegfried's parents Emanuel FALK (1832-1906) and Johanna KALISCHER (1845-1929) to my father, and I believe that Onkel Siegfriend's copy of the Falk Stammbaum arrived with the portraits.
I do not know what Don did with the Falk Stammbaum when it first came to our home, and to him as the family genealogist, but I remember paging through it, wondering what a "Kapitel" was, learning its organization system (which always seemed cumbersome), finding the page with my father, his sister and their parents, and noticing a few things:
* the Meyer - Wilhelm - Meyer- Wilhelm naming pattern that turned out to lead from R. Jacob Jehuda Loebel FALK's son to Wilhelm (Ze'ev) FALK (1923-1998) of Jerusalem;
* that the last child in Kapitel 1, Aidel FALK, with no birth date, could not be among the last children (births in the 1830s) because she had a son in 1827; and
* that my father was 43 when I was born, and his father was 44 when he was born, and his grandfather was 43 when his father was born, and his great grandfather was 64 when his grandfather was born.
If there are any loyal readers, I would refer them to the blog entry of 8 May 2011 which contains my history with the Stammbaum der Familie Falk. One thing not included there is the story which my beloved cousin Prof. Dr. Ze'ev W. FALK told me on his first visit to us in Wayne, Pennsylvania about the origins of the Falk Stammbaum. According to Ze'ev the Stammbaum was commissioned by the wealthy KROCH banking family as a means of keeping track of the whole FALK family, in order to send family members, annually, writings of the late R. Jacob Loebel KROCH (1815-1897), wife of Bertha FALK (1816-1904), daughter of the Dyhrenfurther Rav.
But another part of the story of the Falk Stammbaum is what became of all the copies which were distributed to family members back in 1937. There was Max LEVY's copy - where is it now? There was Onkel Siegfried's copy (now in Wayne, PA). My recollection is that Ze'ev had the copy of his father Dr. Meyer FALK (1891-1972).
The first new copy I saw (I think) was in Brooklyn when I met R. Dovid BIRNBAUM in 1999. He received his copy from his father Daniel BIRNBAUM who received it from cousin Gerhard GLUSKINOS who received it from his father Willi GLUSKINOS (1881-1965). This was not a formal book version, but whole-punched pages with a metal binder, in a fitted cardboard box. I believe it was a typed version.
The next copy was in Jerusalem with the KADMON family. I believe that this is a handwritten copy with information from as late as 1938. I assume that this was the copy of Martin WOLFSOHN (1890-1970).
I suspect that I am currently not remembering some of the other copies that have come to light in the last 16 years of research.
But the most recently learned of copy was (along with Don) the prompt for this blog entry. Don told me today that when he met our cousin Ariel in Buenos Aires a couple weeks ago, Ariel said that he has his mother's copy of the Falk Stammbaum -- a black-bound typed copy like ours. I assume that this was the copy of Hans Meyer KROCH (1887-1870).
(It is probably not significant that so many original holders of the Falk Stammbaum died in the short period from 1969 to 1972... But even the not-noteworthy can be noted.)
There must be more copies out there yet to be seen.
Twenty years ago, on my Mac SE, I entered the whole content of the "Stammbaum der Familie Falk" into the then-current version of the Reunion (v 2.0 ?) genealogy software. The significantly updated family tree is still maintained in the significantly updated Reunion program (v 9.0), just waiting for a slightly fuller sense of completion to publish it in some form on the internet.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Jaroslaw's and the JAROSLAWs - History of a Family and a Corporation
25 March 2012
In November 1996, thanks to Simon S. in Berlin, I learned about an entirely "new" branch of my family -- the SCHREIBER family descended from the sister of my great great grandmother Sara FALK geb. NAUMBURG (ca.1787-1851), Hinde SCHREIBER geb. NAUMBURG (ca.1784-ca.1818) and R. Benjamin SCHREIBER (1779-1839), rabbi in Schrimm and Grätz. That tree included their son Meier SCHREIBER, married to Ernestine (Ester) MITTWOCH, who had a daughter Friederike (Frieda) who married David JAROSLAW and had the children Hedwig and Benno.
That is where things stood for over a decade.
In 2010, from a partial list of gravestones of the Lohestrasse (ul. Slezna) Jewish cemetery in Breslau, I learned that Friederike died on 18 August 1875, at the age of just 32.
And, that is where things stood until last week.
My last blog entry described learning that my grandmother Gertrud FALK geb. RAPHAELSOHN (1886-ca.1943) had been put into forced labor for the firm Scherb & Schwer KG. That led me to try to learn about the company that had taken advantage of my grandmother (and so many others) during the last year or two of her life, before she was deported to Auschwitz and murdered.
A website on the components used to make the Enigma machine ("Hellschreiber") included information on Scherb & Schwer as one of the component manufacturers. The firm Scherb & Schwer was the "Arjan" successor company to the formerly Jewish-owned company Jaroslaw's Erste Glimmer-Waren Fabrik.
The history of Jaroslaw's can be traced, in a limited way, through Berliner Adressbücher entries:
1882 - no entry
1883-1891 - Inhaber C. Jaroslaw [seems to be Clara Jaroslaw, geb. Fürst]
1892-1897 - Inhaber D. Jaroslaw
1898-1903 - Inhaber D. Jaroslaw & Dr. B. Jaroslaw
1904 - Inhaber [not given] (entries for David and Dr. Benno)
1905-1909 - Inhaber [not given] (entries for Ww. Clara and Dr. Benno)
1910 - Inhaber Jaroslaw'sche Erben (entry for Ww. Clara; and a Bernhard)
1911-1912 - Inhaber [not given] (entries for Ww. Clara and Dr. Benno)
1913-1925 - Inhaber Jaroslaw'sche Erben (entry for Dr. Benno)
1926 - Inhaber Jaroslaw'sche Erben (entry for Ww. Else geb. Lobrina)
1927-1930 - Inhaber [not given] (entry for Ww. Else geb. Lobrina)
1931-1940 - Inhaber [not given] (no Jaroslaw family entries)
1941 - no entry [see, Scherb & Schwer KG]
After Friederike died (1875), David JAROSLAW got remarried to Clara FÜRST. It is not clear who formed Jaroslaw's since the earliest directory entries list Clara as the proprietor. An entry in "Handelsblatt der Chemiker-Zeitung" by Georg Krause (Vol. 6) (Coethen 1882) mentions the company as being in Berlin, but with "Inhaber" Clara Jaroslaw, geb. Fürst being in Breslau. The family seems to have moved to Berlin around 1883. (The family was living in Breslau from at least 1870 when David JAROSLAW is listed: Gold- u. Silberarb., Schwedn. Straße 45 I. -- they are not listed in the 1868 directory.)
The confirmation that the JAROSLAW family of Jaroslaw's was the same as the family of David JAROSLAW and Friederke SCHREIBER came from the "Vita" section at the end of Benno JAROSLAW's published dissertation, "Bestimmung der Löslichkeit von Jod in einigen organischen Flüssigkeiten" (1895) [Determination of the Solubility of Iodine in Organic Liquids]:
"Natus sum Benno Jaroslaw anno MDCCCLXXIII die VII. m. Mai Vratislaviae patre Davido, matre Frederica e gente Schreiber. Quae cum praematura morte nobis erepta esset, pater Claram e gente Fuerst in matrimonium duxit, quam vivam magnopere veneror. Fidei addictus sum iudaicae. ..."In November 1996, thanks to Simon S. in Berlin, I learned about an entirely "new" branch of my family -- the SCHREIBER family descended from the sister of my great great grandmother Sara FALK geb. NAUMBURG (ca.1787-1851), Hinde SCHREIBER geb. NAUMBURG (ca.1784-ca.1818) and R. Benjamin SCHREIBER (1779-1839), rabbi in Schrimm and Grätz. That tree included their son Meier SCHREIBER, married to Ernestine (Ester) MITTWOCH, who had a daughter Friederike (Frieda) who married David JAROSLAW and had the children Hedwig and Benno.
That is where things stood for over a decade.
In 2010, from a partial list of gravestones of the Lohestrasse (ul. Slezna) Jewish cemetery in Breslau, I learned that Friederike died on 18 August 1875, at the age of just 32.
And, that is where things stood until last week.
My last blog entry described learning that my grandmother Gertrud FALK geb. RAPHAELSOHN (1886-ca.1943) had been put into forced labor for the firm Scherb & Schwer KG. That led me to try to learn about the company that had taken advantage of my grandmother (and so many others) during the last year or two of her life, before she was deported to Auschwitz and murdered.
A website on the components used to make the Enigma machine ("Hellschreiber") included information on Scherb & Schwer as one of the component manufacturers. The firm Scherb & Schwer was the "Arjan" successor company to the formerly Jewish-owned company Jaroslaw's Erste Glimmer-Waren Fabrik.
The history of Jaroslaw's can be traced, in a limited way, through Berliner Adressbücher entries:
1882 - no entry
1883-1891 - Inhaber C. Jaroslaw [seems to be Clara Jaroslaw, geb. Fürst]
1892-1897 - Inhaber D. Jaroslaw
1898-1903 - Inhaber D. Jaroslaw & Dr. B. Jaroslaw
1904 - Inhaber [not given] (entries for David and Dr. Benno)
1905-1909 - Inhaber [not given] (entries for Ww. Clara and Dr. Benno)
1910 - Inhaber Jaroslaw'sche Erben (entry for Ww. Clara; and a Bernhard)
1911-1912 - Inhaber [not given] (entries for Ww. Clara and Dr. Benno)
1913-1925 - Inhaber Jaroslaw'sche Erben (entry for Dr. Benno)
1926 - Inhaber Jaroslaw'sche Erben (entry for Ww. Else geb. Lobrina)
1927-1930 - Inhaber [not given] (entry for Ww. Else geb. Lobrina)
1931-1940 - Inhaber [not given] (no Jaroslaw family entries)
1941 - no entry [see, Scherb & Schwer KG]
After Friederike died (1875), David JAROSLAW got remarried to Clara FÜRST. It is not clear who formed Jaroslaw's since the earliest directory entries list Clara as the proprietor. An entry in "Handelsblatt der Chemiker-Zeitung" by Georg Krause (Vol. 6) (Coethen 1882) mentions the company as being in Berlin, but with "Inhaber" Clara Jaroslaw, geb. Fürst being in Breslau. The family seems to have moved to Berlin around 1883. (The family was living in Breslau from at least 1870 when David JAROSLAW is listed: Gold- u. Silberarb., Schwedn. Straße 45 I. -- they are not listed in the 1868 directory.)
The confirmation that the JAROSLAW family of Jaroslaw's was the same as the family of David JAROSLAW and Friederke SCHREIBER came from the "Vita" section at the end of Benno JAROSLAW's published dissertation, "Bestimmung der Löslichkeit von Jod in einigen organischen Flüssigkeiten" (1895) [Determination of the Solubility of Iodine in Organic Liquids]:
Another connecting and confirming clue, was the 1905 passenger list from a trip that Dr. Benno JAROSLAW took to the US. He traveled from Dover, England to New York, NY on the S.S. Hamburg on 19 May 1905. He is listed as a 32-year-old (b.ca.1873) single man, a "manufacturer" living in Friedenau near Berlin.
This ties in nicely with the information in the National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1861-1941, with information on the death of David JAROSLAW:
"JAROSLAW David of "Friedenau" 60 Frege-strasse Berlin Germany died 19 November 1903 Administiration (with Will) (Limited) London 8 October to Leopold Van der Velde merchant the attorney of Clara Jaroslaw widow Effects £1765 11s. 2d."
The Berliner Adressbücher entries further suggest that Benno was married to Else LUBRINA and that Benno died in 1925 or early 1926.
Based on British patent office records, the "Jaroslaw'sche Erben" seem to have included not just David's widow Clara and son Dr. Benno JAROSLAW, but also two other women. This bibliographic data from one British patent, for example:
- Title: "Method of Manufacturing Plastic Masses from Albuminous Substances, Like Casein" Patent No.: GB272947
Assignees: Schröder, Richard, Schröder, (née Jaroslaw), Meta, Jaroslaw, (née Labrinus), Else, and Levis, (née Jaroslaw), Sophie, (trading as Jaroslaw's Erste Glimmerwaren-Fabrik in Berlin). June 17, 1926
So, far I have not uncovered what became of Benno's sisters and I do not know if he and Else had children. There was a Sophie LEVIS (b.ca.1879) who sailed to England in 1934 on the S.S. Barrabool; her last permanent residence was given as Palestine. But for now, the information on the JAROSLAW family that owned the company that later came to "employ" my grandmother, essentially ends with the expropriation of their business.
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