Regaining Georg LUNGE (probably)

It is time to re-visit the Georg LUNGE story and its implications for my FRIEDLÄNDER family history.  The background can be found in two 2012 blog postings.  First, there was "Finding Georg LUNGE", and then the next day's posting, the update "Losing Georg LUNGE (sort of)".

Meeting a woman at a meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of British Columbia got me back on to the puzzle of my great great great great aunt Rosa FISCHHOF geb. FRIEDLÄNDER (ca.1787-1860) -- whether she was the same person as Rosa FISCHHOF geb. BLÜHDORN, "first" wife of Joseph (Josua) FISCHHOF of Butschowitz, and grandmother of Prof. Dr. Georg LUNGE (1839-1923).  The woman at the JGSBC meeting had ancestors from the Moravian town of Trepitz (Trebic), a little west of Brünn (Brno), and she mentioned using the scanned records on the Czech website Badatelna in her research.  This, of course, reminded me of my own research using Badatelna to look at Jewish community records from Brünn and Butschowitz (Bucovice), a little east of Brünn.

The motivation to find that Joseph FISCHHOF's apparent first wife Rosa BLÜHDORN was the same person as his apparent second wife Rosa FRIEDLÄNDER came from several angles:

1)  The first information about Rosa FRIEDLÄNDER came from the 1828 will of her aunt Rosalie GOTTHEINER geb. FRIEDLÄNDER (1763-1828) with reference to her (Rosa's) daughters Amalie, Friederike and Pauline FISCHHOF; Amalie whom I eventually realized was the same person as the mother of Georg LUNGE.  Rosalie left money to Rosa's daughters and referred to them as granddaughters of her (Rosalie's) brother Joseph FRIEDLÄNDER.

2)  The Butschowitz Jewish community birth records contained information about children of Joseph (Josua) FISCHHOF and Rosa geb. BLÜHDORN born from 1806 to 1816, and then children of Joseph (Josua) FISCHHOF and Rosa geb. FRIEDLÄNDER.  Amalie, Friederike and Pauline were among the first set of children whose mother was listed as Rosa geb. BLÜHDORN.  I was surprised that Rosalie treated those children as though they were the biological children of her niece Rosa, and more surprised that she referred to them as Joseph's "Enkelinnen", if they were really his daughter's step-daughters.

3)  The Butschowitz and Brünn Jewish community death registers did not contain information about the putative death of Rosa FISCHHOF geb. BLÜHDORN, which seemed as though it must have occurred between the birth of her last child David in January 1816 and the birth of Rosa FISCHHOF geb. FRIEDLÄNDER's first child Emma in July 1818.

4)  The Vienna death information about Rosa FISCHHOF geb. FRIEDLÄNDER identified her birth place as Olbersdorf in Prussian Silesia (Olbrachcice, PL).  The BLÜHDORNs came from Olbersdorf in Moravian Silesia (Mesto Albrechtice, CZ).  This led me to wonder whether "my" FRIEDLÄNDERs could have had a connection to Olbersdorf, presumably, the one in Moravia.  But, I also wondered whether the informant at the time of Rosa's death was one of her step-children who provided the birth place of his birth-mother, rather than his step-mother (with an error as to the side of the border -- or more likely, an error in the town name, since Rosa FRIEDLÄNDER probably came from Cosel in Prussian Silesia like her siblings).

Despite those factors suggesting that the two Rosas were actually the same person, I have previously stuck with the scenario in which they were two different people, first and second wives of Joseph (Josua) FISCHHOF.

The last time I pondered this puzzle, I was working on a theory that the two Rosas were one person, and that the two surnames were used because one was her true maiden name (FRIEDLÄNDER) and the other was her first married name (BLÜHDORN).  I postulated a very brief first marriage to a BLÜHDORN from Olbersdorf (so that she might have come to Butschowitz from Olbersdorf, even if not born there).  This was inspired by a Butschowitz marriage of Taubelle, widow of Löbl BLÜHDORN, to Samuel FISCHHOF in 1807.

But that option no longer seemed possible after I learned from a great granddaughter of August BLÜHDORN, son of Moses, that August (b.1805) and Leopold (b.1806) had a sister Rosa who married Joseph FISCHHOF of Butschowitz.  It was possible that she was a good-deal-older half-sister, but family history maintained she was a sister, not a sister-in-law.  If she was a full sister of August and Leopold, then her parents were Moses BLÜHDORN and Johanna BOSCHAN.

When I started to look at available online resources again last week, I did not find any direct clues to help answer the FRIEDLÄNDER / BLÜHDORN question.  However, I did find an interesting notice in the Amts-Blatt der Preußischen Regierung zu Liegnitz (1822) about the 5 Jewish brothers BLÜHDORN:  Aaron, Moses, Marcus, Joseph and Simon.  My understanding of the notice was that at least 4 of the brothers were losing their Prussian citizenship because only Aaron actually lived in Prussia.  Aaron was living in Ober-Glogau, Upper Silesia (Prussia), while at least 3 of his brothers, including Moses, were living in Olbersdorf in Moravian Silesia (Austria).

Seeing that Moses BLÜHDORN of Olbersdorf had a brother named Joseph, I briefly wondered whether that Joseph might have changed his name from BLÜHDORN to FRIEDLÄNDER, causing his daughter's records to also reflect that name change.  But, the timing did not seem to work, and "my" Joseph FRIEDLÄNDER had the siblings Rosalie and Gerson, not Aaron, Moses, Marcus and Simon.  Another theory by the wayside.

I tried falling back on the always-hopeful approach of finding living members of descendants to see if they might have more information about the common ancestors.  The last child of Joseph (Josua) FISCHOFF and Rosa geb. FRIEDLÄNDER was Julius FISCHOFF (1823-1887).  He had a daughter in 1860 whom he named Rosa after her grandmother who had just died a few months earlier.  This Rosa had one grandson who, I found, was living in Vienna, in Rosa's apartment as it turned out.  He did not have new information about his great great grandmother Rosa, but it was fun to make contact with this 4th cousin of my mother.

Looking at this part of the tree made me wonder what Julius FISCHHOF's Hebrew name had been.  Unfortunately, available information related to Julius' death did not include his Hebrew name.  At the time, I was wondering if his Hebrew name was Joseph, but in retrospect that was not so likely, since his oldest brother or half-brother was named Josef.

My pondering then took me back to the information about Rosa FISCHHOF geb. FRIEDLÄNDER from the time of her death in Vienna in 1860; specifically, that she was born in Olbersdorf (Obersdorf (sic)) in Prussian Silesia.  It seemed like it might be useful to learn the source of that birth information that was incorporated in the Vienna death registry.  From my experience with Breslau Jewish community records from the 19th century, it seemed possible that there could be a Vienna Jewish community death document that would identify the person who provided the personal details about Rosa, "the informant".

I decided to write to two experts on Vienna Jewish genealogy, Georg in Vienna and Randy in Los Angeles.  The next morning, I had responses from both.  Randy sent me a transcription of Rosa's 1860 gravestone inscription that appeared to come from a collection of such Grabinscrhiften.  It was a welcome complement to a photograph of the gravestone I had received back in 2012; the Hebrew text was a bit too fuzzy to read.

In Georg's response, he pointed out that for the children of Joseph (Josua) FISCHOFF and "the Rosas", the maiden name seems to vary in various documents.  Two of the marriage register entries for Karl (1851) and Joseph (1852) were interesting.  Both were sons of Rosa geb. BLÜHDORN according to Butschowitz Jewish community birth records.  In Karl's marriage entry, his mother is identified as "Rosa geb. BLÜHDORN am Leben"  In Joseph's marriage entry from the next year, his mother is identified as "Rosalia geb. FRIEDLÄNDER aus Kosel in Preußisch Schlesien".

That alone provides good support for the two Rosas being one.  If Rosa BLÜHDORN was living in 1851, then she did not die in the 1816-ish gap between her disappearance and the appearance of Rosa FRIEDLÄNDER in 1817.

Georg also noted a set of birth register entries from the Jewish community of Brünn for the FISCHHOF family in which the mother for all the children is identified as Rosa geb. FRIEDLÄNDER.

From the Butschowitz, Brünn and Vienna documents, Georg proposed a very interesting theory:  that Rosa BLÜHDORN and Rosa FRIEDLÄNDER were the same person, and that their mother was first married to a FRIEDLÄNDER and then to a BLÜHDORN.  This would nicely explain the use of both names, one as her current family's name BLÜHDORN, and the other her true birth name FRIEDLÄNDER.

The birth dates of the known children of the two couples would permit this:  Joseph FRIEDLÄNDER had children from ca.1787 to 1797, while Moses BLÜHDORN and Johanna BOSCHAN had children in 1805 and 1806 (at least).

This would make the common link Johanna BOSCHAN, suggesting that she was first married to Joseph FRIEDLÄNDER of Cosel -- and that she was our unknown great great great great grandmother.

It would also suggest that Joseph FRIEDLÄNDER died between about 1797 and 1804.  I have never found information about Joseph's life or death.  I had assumed that he had died about 1816, because the 1815 Brieg marriage entry for Marcus (Max) FRIEDLÄNDER did not include information that his father was dead, while his sister Jeanette's 1817 Breslau marriage entry did note that Joseph had died in Cosel before then.  However, if the Brieg entry just omitted the father's "status", then Joseph could certainly have died much earlier.  

There is no Joseph FRIEDLÄNDER in Cosel according to the 1812 Silesian Prussian Citizenship Index.  This would be consistent with his having died already by 1804.  And that would also explain why Rosa named her first son Josef in 1804.

Supporting the idea that Johanna BOSCHAN was the wife of Joseph FRIEDLÄNDER and the mother of Rosa (and Babette, Marcus (Max) and Jeanette), Georg pointed out that Rosa's gravestone inscription appears to identify her in Hebrew as "Rachel bat Hannah".  I do not recall ever seeing an old gravestone identify the mother.  But if that is possible, then it certainly provides nice support for the idea that Johanna (Hannah) BOSCHAN was Rosa's mother.

Rosa would also then be a half-sister of August BLÜHDORN as maintained by his descendants.

And Georg LUNGE would go back to being a 2nd cousin of Philipp IMMERWAHR

All this done under the watchful gaze of Rosa's sister Babette SILBERSTEIN geb. FRIEDLÄNDER (ca.1790-1849), whose portrait (photographic reproduction) hangs on the wall in front of me.