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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.