Note: In this post, I discuss among other things my recent visit to the small town of Żytna, Poland (German: Zyttna) where an inn once owned by my great-great-granduncle Dr. Jonas Bruck at one time stood. During my recent trip, I had the opportunity to meet some locals who are researching and writing about the history of Żytna and elsewhere in Silesia, including documenting its former Jewish inhabitants.
In contemplating a title for the current post, I was reminded of a French proverb my mother used to say to me as a child. The phrase “If Paris were small, we’d put it in a bottle” is an English translation of a well-known French proverb, “Avec des si on mettrait Paris en bouteille” (literally: “With ‘ifs’ one could put Paris in a bottle”). The meaning of the phrase is that it is pointless to speculate about unrealistic or impossible hypothetical situations because “ifs” do not change reality.
Nevertheless, we’re all guilty of senseless conjectures. In my case, I’ve often wondered why my aunt Suzanne and uncle Dr. Franz Müller did not escape to America after Hitler came to power in 1933 and they left Berlin. This would have been a viable option at the time since my uncle and aunt had contacts in America and the financial means to support themselves. Instead, my aunt and uncle went to Fiesole above Florence, then in 1938, after they were forced to leave Italy, they went to the small town of Fayence, France where my uncle’s daughter and son-in-law lived. In August 1942, my aunt Suzanne along with her stepdaughter’s brother-in-law were arrested there by the Vichy French collaborators and deported to and murdered in Auschwitz.
Given the widespread destruction wrought in Europe by the cataclysmic events of the Second World War, including areas of Germany and Poland where much of my Jewish family was concentrated, I’ve often pondered what happened to some of the places associated with my family. While by no means equating the murder of family with the destruction of places connected to them, it was part of the systematic dismantling of the fabric of the community in which they lived and interacted with their neighbors.
The hotel in Ratibor (today: Racibórz, Poland), the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, owned by my family for roughly 75 years, I know survived the war only to see post-war Communist authorities tear it down to “harvest” bricks to reconstruct Warsaw. (Figure 1) And the building in Tiegenhof in the Free City of Danzig (today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland) where my father lived and had his dental clinic was bombed and destroyed during the war by passing Russian bombers after German partisans shot at the planes. (Figure 2)
Readers can thus imagine my interest when I discover a place still exists where I have proof in the form of photos that one of my relatives visited, lived, or worked, such as the home I recently wrote about in Post 188 in Kiesewald (today: Michałowice, Poland). The house in Michałowice is just the second place in Poland I’ve visited where I have photos of my father standing in the same place 90 or more years ago. The first was in Petershagen (today: Zelichowo, Poland), just outside Tiegenhof, where my father had his dental practice between April 1932 and April 1937. I wrote about that visit in Post 7. (Figures 3-4)
For the most part, however, the sites in Europe connected to my Jewish family did not survive the war. The current post is about another location that I learned and wrote about in 2023. It was once owned by one of my esteemed ancestors, Dr. Jonas Bruck (1813-1883). (Figure 5) It was an inn located in the small town of Żytna, Poland about 170km (~105 miles) southeast of Breslau (today: Wrocław, Poland), where Jonas was an eminent dentist.
In Post 145, I discussed primary source documents found and sent to me by a reader, a teacher/historian Mr. Jan Krajczok from Rybnik, Poland, located a mere 17.5km (~11 miles) east of Żytna. Originally uncertain whether the reference in the records to a Jonas Bruck related to my great-great-granduncle, I asked my German friend Peter Hanke for help translating the relevant land registers. As I explained in Post 145, Peter was able to confirm the involvement by the “dentist Dr. Jonas Bruck” in the ownership of the inn in Żytna. Based on Peter’s translation, it is clear my ancestor owned the inn from roughly 1846 to 1859. This was a most unexpected finding. Because of the distance between Breslau and Żytna and because the establishment was an inn, I assume it was an investment property, not a second home.
Jan is a subscriber to my blog and we have periodically corresponded regarding questions mostly related to the history of Silesia. Knowing I would be visiting Racibórz this past August, I asked Jan whether we could meet and perhaps visit the place in Żytna where the inn owned by Jonas once stood. Its precise location is known because contemporary postcards survive; I discussed and illustrated these in Post 145, Postscript.
Jan was most pleased to give my wife and me a tour, and this turned into a highly entertaining get-together. Jan picked us up in Racibórz, and took us to the home of Iwona Witt, née Hadam (Figure 6) and her husband Aurel Witt, residents of Żytna, a town of only about 600 people. Iwona is currently in the final throes of writing a book about the history of her village. Having grown up in the area and knowing most of the locals has given her unprecedented access to people’s homes and their collective memories and stories. Despite Iwona’s local connections, some residents have refused to even let her inside their homes or talk to her about what must be ugly wartime history. Readers can only imagine how difficult it would be for an outsider like me with no facility in Polish to draw out any of the stories Iwona is writing about.
Postcards of the inn once owned by Jonas Bruck along with a beer mug (Figures 7-8) believed to have come from the inn’s restaurant, some illustrated in Post 145, Postscript, were given to Iwona by old time residents along with other local memorabilia. Iwona took us to the site where the inn formerly stood (Figure 9) and explained the circumstances that ultimately led to the inn’s destruction. As the Russians were encircling the area in the final days of the war, the skirmish line between the Russian and German troops was along the main road in front of the inn. (Figure 10) Believing they were being shot at from the upper floors of the inn, the Russians used flamethrowers to fend off the German soldiers and set the structure aflame. While the fire was apparently doused before the inn was destroyed, it was not salvageable and was eventually torn down during the 1950s. Thus, the inn was dismantled long after Dr. Jonas Bruck had sold it.
While the inn did not endure, other contemporary structures such as a building and church tower across the street from the inn have survived. (Figure 11) They can be seen on a historic picture Iwona shared with me during our visit. (Figure 12) The structure to the left of the two women standing in Figure 12 is the inn formerly owned by my great-great-granduncle.
Apropos of the French proverb and its relevance to unrealistic hypotheticals, there are nonetheless occasions when places connected to my family have survived. As mentioned, I’ve visited two of them in Poland, but am aware of another in Fiesole, Italy where, as mentioned above, my aunt and uncle lived after they decamped from Berlin in 1935. It was called the Villa Primavera (Figure 13-14b), and my aunt ran it with another Jewish woman as a bed-and-breakfast until 1938. I’ve tried on three occasions to visit the villa, to no avail. Being the generally persistent sort, I intend to give it another try in February 2026.
In conclusion, I would remind readers that many places in Poland associated with one’s Jewish ancestors, particularly places that are today largely devoid of Jews, have locals who are interested in researching and rediscovering their town’s Jewish history. Such is the case with Iwona who was thrilled to learn of the Jewish connection to her hometown in the personage of my ancestor Jonas Bruck. It is also true of another friend from Rybnik, Małgorzata Płoszaj (Figure 15), who has written two books about its former Jewish inhabitants. And it is also true in my father’s birthplace of Racibórz where yet another friend, Magda Wawoczny, who is enrolled in the Jewish Studies program at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, is researching and writing extensively about the town’s former Jewish families and history. It behooves readers to seek out these local contacts to develop a more rounded view of available resources and historical events.
Note: In this post, I discuss my quest to find and visit a very distinctive house my father and uncle stayed in between Christmas 1934 & New Year’s Eve 1935, located in pre-WWII Germany, now in southwest Poland.
Among my father’s surviving photos are a sequence of pictures (Figures 1a-e) he took between Christmas 1934 and New Year’s Eve 1935 when he and his brother stayed at the so- called Haus Gotzmann in Kiesewald, Germany (today: Michałowice, Poland) in Riesengebirge (today: Karkonosze, Poland; Krkonoše, Czech Republic). In English these are often referred to as the Giant Mountains, and they are in what is today southwest Poland, straddling the border with the Czech Republic.
My father was typically very good at labeling his photos but in this instance, he merely provided the name of the house and its location in Riesengebirge. None of the principals were named, although I obviously recognized my father, Dr. Otto Bruck (1907-1994) (Figure 2), and uncle, Dr. Fedor Bruck (1895-1982). (Figure 3)
Like my father, my uncle was a dentist, and prior to Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 he had his own dental practice in Liegnitz, Germany (today: Legnica, Poland), a distance as the crow flies of about 100km (62 miles) from Michałowice. (Figure 4) In 1933, the Nazi regime passed the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service,” which was the first major piece of legislation to exclude Jews from public life. While not a total ban, this law served as a foundation for hundreds of later decrees designed to systematically marginalize and persecute Jews. Shortly after passing this law, my uncle was forced to shutter his dental practice in Liegnitz.
Rightfully assuming he could continue working under the auspices of an Aryan dentist in Berlin, he relocated there hoping to lose himself in the anonymity of the larger city. This subterfuge worked until 1941, when he was told to report to “an old age transport,” which effectively meant deportation to a concentration camp. As I’ve previously written in Post 17, he went underground at this point and miraculously survived hiding in Berlin for the remainder of the war with the help of friends and family, at great personal risk to them. Only about 5,000 Jews in all of Germany survived in this manner.
Let me digress for a moment and talk briefly about Riesengebirge. Years ago, when my uncle’s illegitimate son Wolfgang Lutze (1928-2014) (Figure 5), my first cousin, was still alive, we were discussing our great-aunt, Elsbeth Bruck (1874-1970). Following the Second World War, Elsbeth, who was the subject of Post 15, became a high-ranking apparatchik in the Communist East German government. (Figure 6) Like many of my Bruck family, she was born in Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland), and apparently worked when young in the family hotel-restaurant there, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. My father who also later briefly worked there as a sommelier told me many of the staff were Polish workers. According to family lore, Elsbeth had an affair with one of the Polish cooks and became pregnant. I’ve seen the small headstone of her son buried in the Weißensee Jewish Cemetery in East Berlin so there is no question Elsbeth had a child who died in infancy in 1908. (Figure 7)
In any case, in talking about our great-aunt, my first cousin Wolfgang used a German proverb which I understood to mean something to the effect that Elsbeth was sent away to Riesengebirge by her family after they discovered she was pregnant for a “change of scenery” or “to clear her head.” Artificial Intelligence notwithstanding I’ve been unable to source the saying. Still, I learned other things about Riesengebirge that provide some colorful background.
During the 18th century the Giant Mountains (Riesengebirge, Krkonoše, Karkonosze) became a favorite destination for tourists from the German states and the Austrian Empire. At the time the mountains were favorably compared with the Alps. I could find no widespread proverbs related to Riesengebirge (Giant Mountains). Rather, the sayings are based on the mountains’ ancient folklore, particularly the legend of the mountain spirit, Rübezahl. The aphorisms are less like traditional proverbs and more like warnings or common wisdom related to the whimsical and powerful mountain spirit (e.g., calling his name is forbidden; beware his unpredictable mood; a “test” for travelers; the origin of weather).
While there is no common German adage about going to Riesengebirge for a change of scenery or to clear one’s head, as was apparently suggested for Elsbeth, the German concept of Fernweh describes a strong yearning for distant places and a desire to travel, and Wanderlust (“wanderlust” is a German loanword) describes a general love of wandering and exploring. These words capture the feeling of wanting to go somewhere new to get away from the familiar. This said there is no evidence to suggest Elsbeth ever spent time or even visited Riesengebirge.
Let me resume my narrative. Knowing my wife and I would be visiting Racibórz and southwestern Poland, we decided to incorporate a visit to the Giant Mountains. I was curious whether the very distinctive house my father and uncle visited in Kiesewald (Michałowice) still exists. I’ve amassed a considerable amount of information looking into this question.
Fatefully, almost immediately after starting my research into Haus Gotzmann, I stumbled on a genealogist named Marta Maćkowiak (Figure 8) living in nearby Jelenia Góra, known in the German era as Hirschberg or Hirschberg im Riesengebirge. Translated as “deer mountain,” Jelenia Góra is only about 18km (11 miles) from Michałowice. (Figure 9) Marta is a professional genealogist who specializes in researching Polish and Polish Jewish genealogy. Knowing I had nothing to lose, I contacted her and explained my interest in finding the house where my father and uncle had stayed in 1934/35. She kindly responded and told me to forward my father’s pictures so that she could investigate.
While waiting for Marta to reply, I asked my teacher/historian friend Jan Krakczok (Figure 10) from Rybnik, Poland, who I also met for the first time during my recent visit to Poland, whether he could track down any additional information on the Haus Gotzmann. In a 1937 Hirschberg Address Book (i.e., “Adressbuch – Einwohnerbuch fur den Landkreis Hirschberg, 1937”) (Figure 11), Jan discovered that by 1937 a lady named Ida Mattner owned or leased the house though the home was still referred to as the “Haus Gotzmann.” By way of clarification, the 1937 Landkreis Hirschberg address book includes listings for nearby Kiesewald-Petersdorf (see explanation below about the physical relationship between these two places). Curiously, the 1937 address book does not provide an address, so the German street name was at this point still unknown to me.
Based on the current owner or lessee in 1937, I erroneously concluded the owner, known to me at this point only as “Gotzmann,” was Jewish. I assumed he had had his home confiscated or been forced to sell by the Nazis. More on this below.
Several days later Marta wrote telling me she had located the house. She explained that the house is in fact described as Haus Gotzmann and Haus Mattner, so the information Jan had found matched what Marta uncovered. Marta also sent me a link with historic postcards. (Figures 12-14)
Marta happily reported the house still exists, and that its current address is 16 ulica Sudecka in Piechowice. (Figures 15-16) Marta helpfully explained that before the war Piechowice was called Petersdorf, and that Michałowice or Kiesewald, as it was formerly known, was and is still part of Piechowice. (Figure 17) Marta also reported she was able to match some of my father’s photos with a viewpoint near Michałowice called Złoty Widok, located not far from Haus Gotzmann.
Prompted by the information Marta uncovered, I continued my investigations. I tripped over another database I’d curiously never come across, “Kartenmeister.” This is described as an online gazetteer and genealogy tool for locating towns and places that were historically in eastern Prussia and other German-speaking areas especially, but not exclusively, east of the Oder and Neisse rivers. It helps users find the current name of a place and provides historical details such as alternate names, geographical location, church parish affiliations, and population records from specific names. The database includes over 100,000 entries for towns, villages, and other points of interest like mills, battlefields, and cemeteries.
Helpfully, the Kartenmeister database includes a listing for Petersdorf (Figure 18), which as Marta explained includes Michałowice where the Haus Gotzmann was located. Conveniently, the listing included the names AND emails of six people also researching Petersdorf. (Figure 19) Unabashedly, I started working my way through the list. I struck gold when I reached a German gentleman named Holger Liebig.
Initially, I was interested in uncovering the German street for modern-day ulica Sudecka. I thought the German street name in conjunction with owner names from contemporary address books might provide clarification on the sequence of owners; this never panned out because I never found the contemporary address books from the 1930s. Regardless, in a so-called “Häuserbuch,” Holger found some very useful information. A Häuserbuch is described as a German-language term for a “house book.” In a genealogical context, it is a historical record that documents the history of properties and the families who have lived in them. A Häuserbuch can be a valuable resource for tracing a family’s lineage.
By way of clarification, a Häuserbuch is to be distinguished from a “Grundbuch,” a land register, something I’ve alluded to in some earlier posts. A Grundbuch is an official public land register with legal authority over property rights, while a Häuserbuch is a historical or informal private record of a household or family. The Grundbuch (land register) is a formal, public register maintained by a special division of the local court (Grundbuchamt) in Germany. I would later learn from Marta Maćkowiak that the Grundbuch for the Haus Gotzmann was destroyed during the war.
In any case, Holger found the Haus Gotzmann listed in the Häuserbuch under Kiesewald (Kw 73; Agnetendorfer Straße; Haus No. 136). (Figure 20) Significantly, the German street name and number are given. The Häuserbuch provides other information. It indicates that the Haus Gotzmann was built in 1933 by a man named Leo Gotzmann, a dentist from Weißwasser, a town in Upper Lusatia in eastern Saxony, Germany. Weißwasser is located about 130km (80 miles) from Piechowice. (Figure 21) Additionally, Holger learned that Dr. Gotzmann sold the house to Ida Mattner in 1940 (she first rented the house, then later bought it). Though ultimately a dead-end, the Häuserbuch further tells us that Ida Mattner was born in 1896 in Wronke (today: Wronki, Poland), about 50km (31 miles), northwest of Posen (today: Poznań, Poland).
Holger Liebig sent me a link to an old prospectus of Kiesewald showing the “Landhouse” Gotzmann as lot “Nr. 31b.” (Figure 22a) To be clear, this number is not to be confused with the regular house number but rather corresponds to the number on the prospectus identifying the lot. Note that five of the homes on the list of houses shown in the prospectus were connected to members of Holger Liebig’s family. (Figure 22b)
Having ascertained that Dr. Leo Gotzmann was, like my father and uncle, a dentist, I surmised that perhaps a professional relationship had evolved into a friendship. Having determined that Dr. Gotzmann was from Weißwasser, Saxony, I checked for address books from there from the 1930s, to no avail. I similarly checked address books from Hirschberg-Petersdorf for Dr. Gotzmann from this period, again in vain.
However, I struck gold again when I checked in ancestry.com. I found several German military cards for a Dr. Leo Johannes Gotzmann showing he was killed in action on the 6th of December 1941 in Russia. (Figure 23) What convinced me this is the same man my father and uncle was friends with is that he was born in Ratibor on the 24th of December 1892. Additionally, another card in the German military records indicated Leo was from Weißwasser, matching information found in the Kiesewald Häuserbuch. (Figure 24) He was less than three years older than my uncle, born in August 1895, and less than 15 years older than my father born in April 1907. Clearly, my family’s familiarity with Dr. Gotzmann ran through my father’s birthplace.
While I was convinced that Leo Gotzmann was Jewish, unlikely given that he died fighting for the Wehrmacht in Russia, I learned from Jan and another friend from Racibórz that even today there are non-Jewish Gotzmanns, possibly of German descent, living nearby. As we speak, I’m working on trying to obtain Leo Gotzmann’s 1892 birth certificate to confirm that he was in fact not Jewish.
I initially had difficulty reading and tracking down the place where Dr. Gotzmann was killed in action, but eventually deciphered he died at Yukhnov, Russia (German: Juchnow) (Figure 25), likely as the Germans were retreating from Russia following their rout at Stalingrad.
One of the German military cards provided Dr. Gotzmann’s wife’s forename, “Lilly” (Figure 26), but so far, I’ve been unable to track down her surname. She was shown living at Berliner Straße 2 in Weißwasser.
After learning all I was able to by resort to historic directories and documents, I tried something I’ve attempted in the past with mixed results. I wrote a “cold” letter addressed to the unknown current owner of the Haus Gotzmann. Knowing the modern-day address of the home, I merely addressed my letter to “Owner,” included my father’s sequence of photos, explained I was going to be in the area in a few weeks and expressed a hope that I could stop by and take a few pictures of the house; I also provided my contact information. More than two weeks passed before I received a gracious email from the current owner, Ms. Wiola Trybalska, telling me how touched she was by my letter and seeing my father’s old photos of her house. Not only were my wife and I invited to visit, but Wiola cordially asked us to come for lunch.
Our much-anticipated meeting took place on the 30th of August 2025. Along with Wiola, two of her three daughters, Ania and Alexandra, and a family friend Marek were present. (Figure 27) Since all our email exchanges had taken place in English, I mistakenly assumed Wiola was fluent in English. It was Ania, however, who is most fluent in English and translated.
The history of ownership of Haus Gotzmann following Ida Mattner’s proprietorship is unclear. I presume that Ms. Mattner was forced to flee once the Russians occupied Poland, as most Germans did. Possibly a Communist apparatchik occupied the house until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, at which point perhaps the home reverted to private ownership. What is clear is that Wiola’s husband inherited the house from his father, a noted Polish painter, Paweł Trybalski (1937-2023). His studio and some of the props and souvenirs brought back by Pawel’s friends on their travels used by him in some of his paintings are intact.
Wiola showed me a few old photos of people taken at the Haus Gotzmann, and in one of them I recognized a few of the same people my father photographed, presumably Leo Gotzmann and his wife Lilly. (Figure 28) The unknown person could be Ida Mattner, though this is conjecture since I’m uncertain what her relationship was to the Gotzmanns and how she came to lease and eventually own Leo and Lilly Gotzmann’s house.
One thing I had the opportunity to do during my visit with Wiola and her family at the Haus Gotzmann was to recreate photos my father took in 1934/35. Remarkably, those parts of the house inside and outside that my father pictured have hardly changed. The very distinctive alternating brown and white horizontal stripes painted on the outside still exist. I sat on the same steps where my father stood (Figures 29a-b), and in the same place he and his brother once stood. (Figures 30a-b) I also sat on the interior steps where partying guests participated in a masked ball on New Year’s Eve 1935. (Figures 31a-b) Given that Michałowice is 9300km (5,780 miles) from where I now live, I find this haunting. On only one previous occasion have I stood in the same spot I knew my father to have stood thousands of kilometers away and many years ago.
A few final thoughts. (Figure 32) While Wiola and I could not directly communicate with one another save for the intervention of her daughter, we made an immediate connection. I think it’s fair to say we both had this odd sense of having previously “met” and it being “fated” that we should meet again in this life. Wiola and other thoughtful and intelligent people I’ve encountered in my years of doing forensic genealogy convince me that my work transcends my own family history. Given the existential danger that the divisions in our current body politic pose to democracies around the world, a quote attributed to Cicero comes to mind, “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.” My recent trip to Europe, particularly the time spent in Poland, made it clear how real and worrisome the ghosts and horrors of the past are for people living in the shadow of the war in the Ukraine and the dangers posed by an aggressive neighbor.
Readers will rightly perceive that my search to relocate a house my father and uncle visited 90 years has yielded some productive and unexpected discoveries. For readers who may find themselves in similar circumstances, I encourage persistence. I do not pretend this is exclusive to my forensic searches because I’ve occasionally come across others who’ve achieved far more impressive results using old films, photos, diaries and ancestral accounts, and documents related to places their Jewish ancestors lived.
Note: This brief post is a prelude to upcoming posts where I will talk about thrilling events that took place during a five-week European vacation my wife and I recently took.
My wife Ann and I recently returned from a five-week trip to Europe that had us leaving from San Diego and traveling to or through parts of Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, Italy (Figure 1), and France. We visited multiple out-of-the-way places connected to my Jewish family’s history. This required renting a car and driving long distances through often unfamiliar territory and on small backroads. This occasionally led to unexpected adventures and mishaps. Suffice it to say, our vacations are not conventional and are in some ways reminiscent of the semi-structured travel we took through Europe in our youth. Realistically, our advancing age makes it unlikely we’ll take more such trips in the future.
Notwithstanding the pace of our vacation, I had two primary aims during this trip. The first was to revisit the town where my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, was born in 1907, Ratibor, Germany [Racibórz, Poland]. As I’ve frequently discussed, my family owned a hotel restaurant in the town from ca. 1850 to 1925 known as the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. The hotel survived the Second World War intact save for the burned roof, but sadly following their rise to power the Communist authorities dismantled the establishment to “harvest” bricks to rebuild Warsaw. I have old cutlery monogrammed with the three generations of my Bruck family that owned the hotel and decided to donate them to the local museum. I also bequeathed a small briefcase of my father’s surviving dental tools. (Figure 2) While my father never practiced dentistry in his birthplace, coincidentally, the Muzeum w Raciborzu has an entire floor of its exhibit space devoted to old dental machines and equipment so donating my father’s dental instruments there made sense.
The second purpose of my trip to Europe was to attend a restitution ceremony in Paris to retrieve three paintings from the French Ministry of Culture that were seized by the Nazis at the Port of Bordeaux in December 1940 from my father’s first cousin, a man named Fedor Löwenstein. (Figure 3) Following their confiscation, the three surviving paintings, among 25 originally expropriated, were shipped to the Jeu de Paume in Paris where they remain unrecognized as seized works until the early 2010s. Over the years, I’ve written multiple posts about my compensation claim originally filed in 2014. After 11 long contentious and litigious years, I finally achieved the goal of reclaiming the paintings. (Figure 4) The restitution ceremony took place on the 16th of September 2025 at the soon-to-be renovated and now empty Centre Pompidou in Paris, and my wife and I participated in this event where I delivered a formal speech in French, a language I speak passably well. (Figure 5)
In upcoming posts, I will tell readers more about these two events.
Sandwiched between these happenings, which occurred towards the beginning and end of our vacation, my wife and I met a great many other people I’ve encountered through my blog or developed a friendship with over the years. These rendezvous will be the source of additional forthcoming posts. I look forward to relating to readers some delicious little tales connected to our vacation that expand on posts I’ve previously written or that explore new topics.
Note: This post though of limited interest is broadly speaking about “metadata,” data about data. Essentially, it’s structured information that acts as a “catalog” or “index” for other data, making it easier for me to find, understand, and use that information. Given that I plan to donate the silverware from the Bruck’s Hotel to the Muzeum w Racibórz (Museum in Racibórz), the town where my father was born, I want a record of this donation. While I hope my posts will be of use and interest to readers, I often refer to earlier articles to remind myself how and what I learned during my ancestral investigations.
The Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel (Figures 1-2), the family establishment my family owned in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] for about 75 years between roughly 1850 and 1925, has been the subject of multiple earlier articles. In these prior posts, I’ve discussed its location (Post 11), historically when the hotel was likely to have been built (Post 155), the family members linked to it (Post 11, Post 11, Postscript, & Post 11, Postscript 2), the layout of the building (Post 11), the police oversight of the business (Post 11, Postscript), various events hosted and dignitaries who stayed there (Post 11, Postscript), the final months of the family’s ownership of the hotel (Post 146), the various owners of the business after it left family hands (Post 11), its condition following WWII (Post 11), and its ultimate fate (Post 132).
Much of what I learned, and the associated documents and contemporary advertisements came from my dearly departed friend, Mr. Paul Newerla (Figure 3), who took a keen interest in researching the history of the hotel. Another Polish friend from Rybnik, Poland, Ms. Malgosia Ploszaj (Figure 4), was also instrumental in unearthing a historic portfolio on the Bruck’s Hotel at the Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu, The Polish State Archives in Racibórz.
Through Paul, I learned the hotel was largely intact at the end of WWII save for the bombed-out roof. (Figure 5) However, occupying Russian forces allowed it to burn to the ground after it was “accidentally” set on fire by drunken soldiers who prevented the local firefighters from extinguishing the flames. The reason the building was allowed to burn is rooted in geopolitics. Following the end of WWII, the ruling and occupying Communists expected that the border between Poland and Germany would be established along the Oder-Neisse River. Situated as the hotel was on the west bank of the Oder River, the Communists fully expected that Ratibor would remain in German hands. The Communists had no interest in turning over to the Germans anything useable or salvageable.
One telling historical document dated March 1950 Paul found in the archives and shared with me was a letter written to local authorities setting out a “quota” of 5 million bricks the town was expected to provide for Warsaw for its reconstruction. (Figure 6) The Bruck’s Hotel built constructed as it was out of bricks was an obvious and plentiful source of this material, particularly since it was expected to remain part of Germany. Sadly, the hotel which could easily and would likely have been restored was instead dismantled.
Given the reality that the hotel no longer exists, which could have been a fixture for a vibrant and historic downtown Racibórz, all that remains are scattered artifacts in my possession, specifically, some hotel silverware. As I am preparing to donate these heirlooms to the Muzeum w Racibórz in the coming months, I thought I would write a brief post about them and link them to the specific Bruck ancestors to whom I think they’re connected. Some of the markings on the silverware are monograms specific to the owners, others name the hotel. Hallmarks can be found on some pieces which are official stamps or marks that indicate the purity, manufacturer, and origin of the precious silver metal. They are too difficult to decipher, however.
My great-great-grandparents Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 7) and his wife Charlotte Bruck, née Marle (1811-1861) (Figure 8) were the original family owners of the Prinz von Preußen. Arguably I have one piece of silverware that belonged to Samuel Bruck. It simply has the initial “S.” so may have been from his time. (Figure 9)
Silverware from the next two generation of owners are more clearly identifiable. Fedor Bruck (1834-1892) (Figure 10) and his wife Friederike Bruck, née Mockrauer (1836-1924) (Figure 11) were the second-generation owners. Silverware from this generation is marked by “Fe. Bruck’s Hôtel” (Figure 12) or “F. Bruck’s Hôtel.” (Figure 13) And, finally, my grandparents Felix (1864-1927) (Figure 14) and Else Bruck, née Berliner (1873-1957) (Figure 15) owned the hotel following Fedor Bruck’s death in 1892. Their beautiful interwoven monogram, while intricate, is clearly identifiable by the initials “EFB,” Else & Felix Bruck. (Figure 16)
Other silverware that cannot positively be connected to any specific generation is labeled simply as “Prinz von Preussen” (Figure 17), “Br. (for Bruck)” (Figure 18), or “Bankowsky Ratibor.” (Figure 19) Bankowsky, for which I can find no reference, is likely the local silversmith that produced the hotel’s silverware.
The monogram on a set of forks I’ll be donating is particularly intriguing. (Figure 20) Thinking I had possibly misread the letters in the monogram on this silverware as “SUB,” possibly for Samuel Bruck, I asked my German friend Peter Hanke, the “Wizard of Wolfsburg,” to confirm or refute my interpretation.
According to Peter, the monogram has the letters “B,” “P,” “V,” and another “P,” which obviously stands for “Bruck’s Prinz von Preussen.” Even with Peter’s explanation, I had great difficulty visualizing the letters, so he highlighted them using his grandchildren’s colored pens.
Comparing the forks side-by-side, here is what readers should look for. The monogram is written in a script font called “Kunstler Script.” On Figure 20, readers can see the letter “v” (what really looks like a large “U”) which is marked in red. Then, in red AND blue, there are two “Ps,” the left one facing backwards and the right one facing forwards. Finally, in brown the letter “B” is evident.
The monogram on a large soup spoon of the same vintage appears to read “T.B.” I know of no Bruck ancestor with these initials. (Figure 21)
Another unique coffee spoon that I initially mistook as silverware from the Bruck’s Hotel reads “O.B.,” which clearly stands for my father Otto Bruck. (Figure 22) This is the only example of this style of spoon. My father came from a secular Jewish family, so may have been christened or baptized upon birth. I surmise my father was given this silver spoon on this occasion. The tradition of gifting silver, particularly spoons, dates back as early as the Middle Ages. Initially, silver was seen as an investment in the child’s future, a financial asset to help cover costs or contribute towards significant life events. Interestingly, the phrase “born with a silver spoon in your mouth” originates from this period, referencing those born into wealthy families who could afford silvery cutlery.
In the Middle Ages, silver was believed to have protective properties against evil spirits. Its antibacterial qualities were also recognized, and it was thought that using silver utensils could reduce infections and promote better health, especially for babies.
Note: In this post I discuss a collection of family photos I obtained from my second cousins in 2016, focusing on a few of historical significance and of personal interest.
In a post I have long intended to write, I discuss another collection of family ephemera, photos in this instance, I obtained in 2016 from my German second cousin, Margarita Vilgertshofer, née Bruck. This post harkens back and tiers off two posts I wrote that year, Posts 32 and 33. I refer readers to those earlier publications for the details describing how through a serious bit of detecting I was able to track down Margarita and her brother Antonio to Bavaria, Germany (Figure 1) though both were born in Barcelona, in Catalonia, Spain.
Through circumstances I’m still unclear about, a marginal insertion on Antonio’s 1946 birth certificate notes when and where he was married in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1982. (Figure 2) I’ve previously found vital certificates for ancestors where notations on where and when vital events in their lives, typically divorces, took place. What makes this notation so unique and inexplicable is that the birth certificate is from a municipal office in Spain, but the marriage took place in Germany. How and why this information was conveyed to Spain puzzles me.
In a similar vein, the most unusual case I’ve come across of vital data for an ancestor having been transmitted from one country to another is in the instance of one of my father’s first cousins, Heinz Loewenstein. I’ve written extensively about him. He was born in the Free City of Danzig in 1905, got married there in 1931, immigrated with his wife to Palestine in the 1930s, enlisted in the English Army’s Pioneer Corps, was captured during the Battle of Greece in 1941, escaped from German stalags multiple times but always recaptured, then eventually was liberated and returned to Palestine following WWII. He and his wife divorced in Palestine or Israel, and somehow this vital data was illegibly noted in the margin of his marriage certificate from a record presumably obtained by the Federal Republic of Germany (i.e., the Free State of Danzig ceased to exist following the start of WWII and Germany’s invasion of Poland and Danzig in 1939). (Figure 3) Knowing what meticulous record keepers the Germans are may explain why this information was recorded but how the Germans obtained it is the more curious question.
Returning to the subject at hand, I want to discuss several of the more unique pictures I found among my second cousin’s large collection of images. Knowing that perusing other families’ photos can be tedious, I will merely highlight a few of historic significance plus several of personal interest.
The most historically significant photo is one taken in Doorn, Netherlands showing Germany’s last Kaiser, Kaiser Wilhelm II. (Figure 4) The circumstances that resulted in the Kaiser being in Doorn is that following Germany’s defeat during WWI, he abdicated the German throne and went into exile in the Netherlands. The picture includes the Kaiser’s second wife, Empress Hermine of Germany (née Reuß zu Greiz), her daughter by her first marriage, and his retinue in exile. In the center of this group is an unidentified Bruck family member. This photograph was the subject of Post 65, and at the time I wrote that post I had no idea who the family member was.
I only learned the identity of the ancestor by marriage when I obtained a captioned copy of the identical photo from an altogether different source. I discussed this in Post 100. (Figure 5) Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch (1884-1963), the second wife of my accomplished Bruck relative from Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland], Dr. Walther Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), is standing amidst Kaiser Wilhelm II and his entourage. Dr. Bruck was the Kaiser’s wife’s dentist and likely also the Kaiser’s dentist. How precisely this worked with the Kaiser being in Berlin, later in Doorn, and Dr. Bruck being in Breslau is unclear.
Another historically noteworthy photo shows the Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (Figure 6) in the flower school of my great-aunt Franziska Bruck (1866-1942) (Figure 7) in Berlin when she visited it on the 15th of October 1915. The Duchess was the last German Crown Princess and Crown Princess of Prussia as the wife of Wilhelm, German Crown Prince, the son of Wilhelm II. My great aunt Franziska wrote two books featuring the elegant Ikebana-style floral wreaths and bouquets she specialized in, and, according to family lore, is reputed to have put together floral arrangements for the royal family.
Another photo among my cousin’s photo array, which crosses the line between historically noteworthy and personally interesting, shows Margarita’s mother working in Franziska’s flower school and shop in Berlin. (Figure 8) While I knew from her wedding certificate that my beloved Aunt Susanne, later murdered in Auschwitz, had been a managing director in Franziska’s flower shop, I’d never known any other family members who’d worked there.
In any case, the photos discussed above document my family’s personal relationship with Germany’s last royal family.
Further evidence of the Kaiser’s wife’s connection to my Bruck family can be found in Dr. Bruck’s Breslau house guest book, a scan of which I have, which she signed when she visited him in Breslau on the 23rd of April 1923 (Figures 9a-b), presumably to have her teeth worked on. Yet more evidence of the two families’ bond can be found in a signed children’s book that Princess Hermine Reuß gave to Dr. Bruck and his wife upon the birth of their second daughter Renate (Figures 10a-b). Their first daughter Hermine, named after the Princess, unfortunately died shortly after her birth.
My cousin Margarita’s photo collection includes some unique photos of family members. One of the most unusual is of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (1895-1982) in his WWI military attire. (Figure 11) My uncle Fedor has been the subject of a few posts (see Posts 17 & 31) for several reasons. Firstly, he was one of around only 5,000 Jews who survived in Germany during WWII. Secondly, he was assigned to Hitler’s dentist’s surviving dental office following the war. Thirdly, because of his pre-war friendship with one of Hitler’s dentist’s dental assistants, he had knowledge of Hitler’s fate at the end of the war. Warned by the Americans this knowledge could get him kidnapped by the Russians, he fled Berlin. For their part, the Russians were anxious to uphold the specter of Hitler as a surviving “boogeyman” who could return at any moment to again terrorize the world. The photo of my uncle in his military uniform was taken in a studio, though I know from a surviving postcard that during WWI my uncle was based on the Eastern Front in what is today the Ukraine which was then part of Russia.
A brief related anecdote. My uncle’s wife, Verena Brook, née Dick (1920-2007), was 25 years his junior. Upon my uncle’s death in 1982, my aunt offered me some of my uncle’s memorabilia. One of the more unusual items she offered, which in retrospect I should have accepted, was the section of my uncle’s WWI uniform he’d cut out where a bullet had penetrated and he’d been wounded. I suspect I could have used this for DNA analysis.
Moving on to other unique family photos.
One photo I particularly fancy shows Margarita and Antonio’s grandfather, my great uncle Wilhelm Bruck (1872-1952) in 1889. He is standing alongside a so-called Penny-farthing, an early type of bicycle. (Figure 12) It was popular during the 1870s and 1880s, with its large front wheel that provided for high speeds on account of it traveling a large distance for every rotation of the wheel. Because the bicycle had solid rubber tires the only shock absorption was in the saddle.
In multiple earlier posts, I’ve discussed the hotel, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, my family owned in Ratibor [today: Raciborz, Poland] for three generations, from roughly 1850 to around 1925. Several historic photos showing a partial view of the hotel, then located on Oderstrasse, exist. However, among my cousin’s collection is the only known photo of the front entrance of the family establishment. (Figure 13)
The Bruck’s hotel was originally purchased by Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), my great-great grandfather. The second-generation owner of the hotel was Fedor Bruck, my great-grandfather after whom my uncle Fedor Bruck was named. Though I previously had a picture of my great-grandfather, two additional photos of him survive in Margarita’s albums, including one in which he is most fashionably dressed in the finest attire of the day. (Figure 14)
Many years ago before I started doing ancestral research I visited the Mormon Church’s FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City. Archived in the library’s stacks was a pretentiously titled book on my family, entitled “A Thousand Year History of the Bruck Family.” I’ve subsequently obtained a more mundanely named copy, “The Bruck Family: A Historical Sketch.” The book was written by Alfred Julius Bruck, who’d anglicized his name to “Brook” upon his arrival in England. Included in Margarita’s photos is one of Alfred Bruck and his wife, Rosie. (Figure 15) Other pictures confirm they visited Margarita and her family in Munich.
Expectedly there are many pictures of Margarita’s family within her collection, many of them very endearing. (Figure 16) The circumstances that led Margarita and her brother Antonio to having been born in Spain is because her grandfather, Wilhelm Bruck, worked in Spain in the early 20th century on the installation of the first electric lines in Barcelona. While he would return to Germany following the completion of his contractual obligations, following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, his connections in Spain permitted him to immigrate there. Additionally, both of Wilhelm & Antonie Bruck’s two children, Edgar and Eva (Figure 17), were born there so retained Spanish citizenship.
There is an intriguing picture that speaks to the aristocratic lifestyle my great aunt and uncle led in Spain showing Edgar being fed by a wetnurse. (Figure 18) During their residence in Barcelona, Wilhelm and Antonie appear to have lived in Tibidabo, the highest neighborhood in the city. (Figure 19)
Intriguingly there are a few pictures of my immediate family among Margarita’s photos I was previously aware of. One is a cabinet card of my uncle Fedor, my aunt Susanne, and my father Otto as children. (Figure 20) Another is my aunt Susanne and her two cousins, Edgar and Eva, along with a group of other actors who performed together. (Figure 21)
A riveting picture in the collection, reflective of the horrific toll of WWI, was presumably taken at a recuperative center after the war. (Figure 22) Besides medical staff, it presumably shows wounded soldiers who had one of their limbs amputated. Since I recognize no one in the photo I’m uncertain why this picture is in Margarita’s collection.
Note: In this postscript, I discuss the timing and path of construction of the Austrian Ferdinand Northern Railway vis a vis the Wilhelmsbahn Railway, and its likely impact on the family-owned hotel establishment in Ratibor, Prussia, which at least for some time likely benefited from the routing.
Multiple of my earlier posts have discussed the family establishment in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, owned by three generations of my family from roughly 1850 until 1926. Based on the evidence I’ve amassed, I’m convinced that my family owned the hotel from the time it was built sometime between 1846 and 1850, and that its construction was tied to the arrival of the railroad in Ratibor which began service there on the 1st of January 1846.
There are at least two reference points that prove the “Prinz von Preußen” was in existence by 1850. First, the hotel is listed in John Murray’s 1850 “Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent: Being A Guide Through Holland, Belgium, Prussia, and Northern Germany, and Along the Rhine from Holland to Switzerland” as a place for people to stay in Ratibor while voyaging between Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland] and Vienna, Austria. (Figures 1a-b) Second, a notice published announced a recital by the noted Austrian composer Johann Strauss II (1825-1899) at the Prinz von Preußen on the 17th of October 1850. (Figure 2) The composer performed at the hotel while on his way to Vienna, then again a month later on the 17th of November 1850 on his way back through. (Figure 3)
Following publication of Post 156, I did further research on the Wilhelmsbahn or Upper Silesian railway. Just to remind readers, the Wilhelmsbahn was a private railway company in Prussia. It was founded in 1844 in Ratibor in Upper Silesia to connect the Upper Silesian Railway (Breslau—Oppeln—Kosel—Gleiwitz) (today: Wrocław—Opole—Kozle—Gliwice) with the Austrian Emperor Ferdinand Railway. (Figures 4a-b; 5) Construction of this railway through Ratibor for the first time connected the Austrian railway network with the Prussian one.
During my research, I stumbled on the following mention of the opening of the railroad in Racibórz:
“In 1846, the first section of the Wilhelm Railway ((German: Wilhelmsbahn, currently railway line No. 151) connecting Racibórz with Koźle was opened. In Koźle, the line connected with the Upper Silesian Railway ((German: Oberschlesische Eisenbahn) connecting Upper Silesia with Wrocław. In 1847, Wilhelm’s Railway was extended to Bohumín. In the years 1855–1858 further sections of the Wilhelm Railway connecting Racibórz with Katowice through Rybnik (currently railway line No. 140) were opened.”
This obscure reference comes from a report entitled “Road to Rail Potential shift of transport flows” published by the so-called Central Europe TRANS TRITIA. Suffice it to say, that TRITIA is a “European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation” in which three regions of Poland, Slovakia, and Czech Republic cooperate to improve coordination and planning of freight transport.
This seemingly insignificant mention of the Wilhelmsbahn Railway caused me to reexamine the references I’d consulted earlier related to the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway and reconsider the timing and route of its construction. In the process, I discovered I’d left readers a bit hanging as to where exactly the Wilhelmsbahn Railway connected with the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway after it left Ratibor. This, in turn, made me realize the Wilhelmsbahn Railway played a more significant role in the region’s economic development than I’d previously understood and that this no doubt resulted in significantly more business for my family’s hotel in Ratibor. Let me explain.
The Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway was a railway company that existed during the time of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. The main line of this railway was intended to connect Vienna with the salt mines in Bochnia, east of Krakau [today: Kraków, Poland]. Bochnia is located on the river Raba in southern Poland, and the salt mine there is the oldest functioning one in Europe, built in the 13th century.
The Ferdinand Northern Railway never directly reached Kraków or the salt mines in Bochnia. The first rail connection from Vienna to Krakau took place via Oderberg (Bohumín), Ratibor, Kosel, and Myslowitz, and this was provided by the Wilhelmsbahn and the Oberschlesische Eisenbahn (Upper Silesian Railway). The line from Myslowitz to Krakau was built by the Krakau-Oberschlesische Bahn (Kraków and Upper Silesian Railway). Bearing in mind that the towns that are today in the Czech Republic were once part of the Austrian Empire, an entirely Austrian route from Vienna to Krakau did not exist until 1856, nine years after the Ferdinand Northern Railway reached Oderberg (Bohumín) and a full ten years after the Wilhelmsbahn railroad reached Ratibor.
In reviewing the construction timeline of the Ferdinand Northern Railway what I previously failed to fully comprehend is that the Wilhelmsbahn Railway was completed before the Northern Railway’s segment from Oderberg (Bohumín) to Krakau. The significance is that at least for some period Ratibor was an important transit point for people traveling between Vienna and Krakau, and the Bruck’s Hotel would have provided the then-modern amenities voyagers sought. Following completion of the more direct route from Oderberg (Bohumín) to Krakau would have meant that some business was lost, although Ratibor would have continued as a logical way station for people traveling to Breslau, Berlin, and points west from there.
Coincidentally, on the same page as the Prinz von Preußen is mentioned in John Murray’s 1850 “Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent,” Oderberg and the Kaiser Ferdinand Nordbahn (i.e., Ferdinand Northern Railway) are also discussed. The train coming from Prague to the west connected to the Ferdinand Northern Railway via Olmütz [today: Olomouc, Czech Republic] in Prerau [today: Přerov, Czech Republic]. (Figure 7)
Note: A page from an 1845 book by Johann Knie translated by one of my cousins discussing trade and commerce in Ratibor (today: Racibórz, Poland) at the time includes a discussion of the regional railway companies involved and the route by which the train arrived in town. The places mentioned provide an opportunity for me to introduce unfamiliar readers to the Meyers Gazetteer, a compilation of German Empire (1871-1918) place names and maps, to better visualize things.
It doesn’t come naturally to me to be curious. My parents were not patient people who would encourage nor answer an endless stream of innocent queries. This line of questioning was quickly squelched. I admire people to whom this trait comes instinctively, who grew up in a more nurturing and cerebral environment. This may explain why I go into more detail on matters of historical context than readers may be interested in knowing. Readers can decide for themselves how much of a topic they want to learn about.
With the above as backdrop, I want to discuss one valuable resource I stumbled upon while doing my ancestral research, the so-called Meyers Gazetteer. Various references to it can be found on the Internet, including links to the database on ancestry.com and familysearch.org. Consequently, I hesitated to write a post about it. However, because I so frequently find myself returning to this compilation of German Empire (1871-1918) place names and maps, it occurred to me it might be valuable for others unfamiliar with this website to be aware of it. In this post I’ve chosen to illustrate using the arrival of the railroad in Ratibor in January 1846 as an example a potential use of the historic maps in the Meyers Gazetteer to better visualize the placement of the railroad; this is done in conjunction with contemporary Google maps.
I’ve previously explained to readers that most of Silesia (Figure 1) where my immediate family hails from is no longer part of Germany. Most of Silesia was given to Poland as compensation after WWII (Figure 2) following Poland’s loss of a much larger swath of land to the USSR in then-eastern Poland, land that is today part of the Ukraine. With Poland’s acquisition of German Silesia, the German town names were all changed to Polish place names that often make it difficult to locate the former German towns on present-day maps. This is where the Meyers Gazetteer is inordinately useful if the former German town name can be found in the database.
The idea for this post came to me recently after asking one of my fourth cousins, Helen Winter, nee Renshaw (Figure 3) from Wolverhampton, England, if she could briefly explain to me the contents of one page from an 1845 book by Johann Knie talking about Ratibor. The text is printed in Fraktur, Black Lettering, that Helen has gained some aptitude reading of late. (Figure 4)
I did not specifically ask for a transcription nor translation. On my own, I figured out the text addressed primarily trade and commerce in Ratibor in around 1845 so felt a summary would be adequate for my purposes. However because Helen took it as an intellectual challenge, an exquisitely done transcription and translation is what I received. And I’m thrilled Helen provided this because unexpectedly part of the text discussed the route by which the railway arrived in Ratibor and the various regional railway companies involved in its construction.
Because multiple German town names were mentioned and I was having trouble visualizing the route, I turned to the Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs, the “Meyers Geographical and Commercial Gazetteer of the German Empire.” As ancestry.com points out “This gazetteer of the German Empire is the gazetteer to use to locate place names in German research. It was originally compiled in 1912. This gazetteer is the gazetteer to use because it includes all areas that were part of the pre-World War I German Empire. Gazetteers published after WWI may not include parts of the Empire that were lost to bordering countries. Overall, this gazetteer includes more than 210,000 cities, towns, hamlets, villages, etc.”
They further note that “Gazetteers are very important to use when doing family history research. They not only help you pinpoint a specific place and associate them with the jurisdictions to which they belong, but they can also provide interesting facts about the community and help you to know where to look for additional records. For example, from Meyers Orts you may learn about the size of the town, if there was a post office, where the nearest train station was located, and where the civil registration office was located.”
The meyersgaz.org website, the portal I primarily use for searching German Empire town names, further remarks: “This is the most important of all German gazetteers. The goal of the Meyer’s compilers was to list every place name in the German Empire (1871-1918). It gives the location, i.e. the state and other jurisdictions, where the civil registry office was and parishes if that town had them. It also gives lots of other information about each place. The only drawback to Meyer’s is that if a town did not have a parish, it does not tell where the parish was, making reference to other works necessary.”
On the homepage of meyersgaz.org they note you’ll find a search box in which you type the name of your place using the following conventions:
You can use a wildcard * (an asterisk) in your search. For example, “*gheim” will return “Balgheim, Bergheim, Bietigheim, Billigheim” and anything else that ends in “gheim.”
You can type only the beginning of a name and it will return all places that begin with those letters. For example, “Neu” will return “Neu Abbau, Neu Abschwangen, Neuacker, Neuafrika,” etc.
You do not need to include umlauts; “Munchen” and “München” will return “München.” You can type umlauts if you wish, but you should not expand umlauts, e.g. “ü” as “ue,” as that will return no hits.
A list of identically named places will appear within different jurisdictions, allowing you to identify the town you’re interested in.
As meyersgaz.org further notes, on the “Entry” page the following will be found:
You will see the name of your town and a menu that includes the following items: Entry, Map, Ecclesiastical, Related, Email, and Feedback.
You will see the entry as it appears in Meyer’s, the extraction of the entry, the explanation of the extraction, and a map. The extractions include and are primarily limited to jurisdiction and parish information. The explanations are helpful for those who do not speak German or are not familiar with the old jurisdictions. For example, you will learn what Kreis, Bezirkskommando, and Landgericht mean.
By clicking on “View entry on PDF of the original page,” you can see the entire page on which the entry appears in the original gazetteer.
Click on “Show previous and next entry” to see the previous and following entries. If there was a correction in the Meyer’s addendum, this will also be noted.
Meyersgaz.org remarks that by clicking on “Map” in the menu or on the map itself, additional information can be found:
You will now see your town on the old Karte des deutschen Reiches. This set of maps was produced during the time of the German Empire and so corresponds chronologically to Meyer’s.
You can zoom in and out and the maps can be moved around with the mouse, so you can easily extend the search further around the main town.
If you click on the words “Toggle Historical Map” in the upper right-hand corner, you can switch to Google Maps. This is especially helpful if you are searching in Poland or other areas of the former German Empire that are now in other countries. This is because you can get the current, i.e. non-German, name of the town.
If you hover on “Toggle Historical Map,” you will see a menu. If you click on the menu items, you will see pins appear on the map that correspond to what you have chosen, either Jurisdiction (all places where other jurisdictions are given, such as Kreis, Bezirkskommando, and Landgericht that are included in the entry), surrounding Standesämter (civil registry offices), Catholic parishes, Protestant parishes, or Jewish synagogues. This will help you determine the location of the nearest parishes, etc., within a 20-mile radius, should you need to do an area search. You can also click on the pins and the names of corresponding towns will appear.
You may also see a map with a large red circle instead of a pin. This means that the place has not been geocoded yet and a specific place on the map has not been identified, but it falls within the area of the red circle.
Interested readers are encouraged to access meyersgaz.org website and try out the site for themselves. The maps have allowed me to track down the location of German towns now located in Poland I would otherwise have had great difficulty finding. With respect to the ensuing discussion, I will partially illustrate this using the arrival of the railroad in Ratibor in 1846. I would add that my interest in the coming of train service to Ratibor is related to when the family establishment in Ratibor, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, was constructed; I believe the two events are closely interconnected and that the family enterprise opened in 1846 or soon thereafter.
Helen Winter’s German transcription of the page from Johann Knie’s 1845 book about the route by which the railroad arrived in Ratibor is as follows:
Die meist schlechte Beschaffenheit der von hier aus führenden Strassen wirkt hemmend auf den Landhandel, namentlich auf den Transito-Verkehr. Um so wichtiger muss für Ratibor die gelungene Anlegung der gleich anfangs erwänten Wilhelms Eisenbahn werden, da sie die Verbindung bilden wird, zwischen der Oberschlesien, oder Breslau-Krakauer Eisenbahn u[nd] der österreichischen von Wien nach Krakau führenden Ferdinands-Rorhbahn, sodass Ratibor die natürliche Zwischenstation alles Personen- und Güter-Verkehrs auf der Eisenbahnlinie von Breslau nach Wien sein wird. Das Privilegium der Bahn ist in der preuss[ische] Gesetz[es]S[ammlung] für 1844, Seite 127-146 nachzulesen. Ihre Entstehung verdankt dieses Unternehmen den Oberschlesien, welche seit 1840 in den öffentlichen Blättern, dann durch Gründung eines Aktien-Bereins dahin strebten, die oberschlesische oder breslaukrakauer Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft auf der Unrichtigkeit des erst gewählten Traktus von Oppeln über Malapane [?? ic ??] nach der russische Grenze, aufmerksam zu machen u[nd] den Bemühungen des königl[iches] Regierungs-Presidenten Grafen Pückler auch gelungen, die oberschlesische Bahngesellschaft zu dem Entschlusse zu bestimmen, von Oppeln aus in der Richtung von Kandrzin bis Kosel u[nd] erst von da in östlicher Richtung über Gleiwitz nach Krakau zu bauen, dadurch wurde es möglich, Kandrzin bei Kosel auch als Anfangspunkt für die Wilhelms-Eisenbahn zu gewinnen. Die Bahn geht von Kandrzin rechts der Oder aufwärts bis Ratibor u[nd] hier mittelst der Stromǔberbrückung zu den links zwischen der Oder u[nd] der Stadt gelegenen Bahnhofe. Diese erste Bahnstrecke beträgt 3 7/8 M[eilen]; ihre Fortsetzung am linken Ober-Ufer bis zu dem wahrscheinlichebn End[gangspunkte] und berübergangspunkte 3 3/8 M[eilen]. Die Erdarbeiten zwischen Kandrzin u[nd] Ratibor sind beinahe gänzlich [EDITOR’S NOTE: gönzlich is, I think, a misprint], die bis Oderberg zum grossen Theil vollendet. Der Brückenbau wird mit allem Nachdruck betrieben; bereits sind die meisten Kammarbeiten vollendet. Die Schwellen sind sämmtlich an der Bahn 30,000 Ctnr. englische Schienen seit dem 1[rste] September 1844 noch mit niederem Eingangszoll beschafft u[nd] der bei schles[ischen] Hütten bestellte Uebrrest grösstenteils auch schon geliefert; so das bei günstiger Witterung die Bahn bis Oktober 1845 wird befahren werden können. Der Bahnhof ist zwischen Oder u[nd] Stadt auf der, für Entwickelung des Verkehrs günstigsten Stelle errichtet u[nd] eilt seine Vollendung ebenfalls entgegen. Die Stadt gabt dazu 15 Morg[en] u[nd] zur Bahnlinie auf dem 3/8 Meilen langen, stäbtischen Terrain ebenfalls circa 10 Morg[en]- Land[es] , welches ein Opfer von 7000 R[eichs]t[ha]l[er] erheischte. Die Abbrechung eines Hauses u[nd] die Erwerdung des zu mehreren Strassen erforberlichen Terrains, so wie der Ausbau dieser Strassen wird der Stadt eben so viel kosten. Die Stadtverordneten-Bersammlung hat nicht angestanden diese Opfer im wohlerwogenen Interessender Kommune dem Direktorium der W[ilhelm] B[ahn] nicht nur zu bringen, sondern selbst anzubieten, weil nur dadurch die Gesellschaft bewogen worden ist, den Baufond um mehr als 150,000 R[eichs]t[ha]l[er] zu erhöhen, um hier bei der Stadt vom rechten auf das linke Oberufer überzugehen u[nd] den Bahnhof an den Stadtmauern erbauern zu können, wärend derselber sonst rechts der Oder, fast 1/2 Meile von hier, erbaut worden wäre. Der Anschluss an die Nordbahn erfolgt dicht bei Oderberg, für die nächsten Jahre mittelst gewöhnlichen Fuhrwerkes; dann aber mittelst Zweiges der Nordbahn von circa 800 Ruth[e] Das Anlage-Kapital für die ganze Wilhelm [Bahn] beträgt statutenmässig 1,200,000 R[eichs]t[ha]l[er].
Below is the translation of the above text with footnotes about the various railway companies involved in construction of the railroad in and around Ratibor; Prussian units of measure; and Prussian currency:
“The mostly poor condition of the roads leading from here has an inhibiting effect on overland trade, especially on transit traffic. It must be all the more important for Ratibor that the connecting route, projected at the very beginning of the Wilhelms-Eisenbahn [Wilhelmsbahn (A) or William Railway] should be successfully completed, between Upper Silesia, or the Breslau-Krakauer (Wrocław-Kraków) Railway (B), and the Austrian route from Vienna along the Ferdinands-Nordbahn [Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway (C)], so that Ratibor will become the natural connecting station for all passengers and goods traffic on the train lines between Breslau and Vienna. (Figure 5) The grant to the Railway is available to read at pages 127 to 146 of the Prussische Gesetzesammlung [Prussian Law Gazette] for 1844. That Company owes its existence to the above named company, which, firstly in the public newspapers, and then by founding a stock corporation, convinced the Upper Silesian, or Breslau-Krakow Railway Company [EDITOR’S NOTE: Upper Silesian Railway Company], of how wrong the originally chosen route, from Oppeln via Malapane (Figure 6) to the Russian border, would have been; the efforts by the royally appointed President of the government, Count Pückler, also succeeded in persuading the Upper Silesian Railway Company to reach the decision to build the line from Oppeln, in the direction of Kandrzin as far as Kosel (Figure 7) and, only from that point, in an easterly direction via Gleiwitz to Krakow, which would make it possible to use Kandrzin, near Kosel, as a starting point for the William Railway. (Figure 8) The railway route goes from Kandrzin, to the right of the Oder, up to Ratibor [EDITOR’S NOTE: meaning upriver as the Oder River flows generally south to north] and here, by means of a bridge across the river, to the station, which is situated on the left bank, between the Oder and the city. This initial railway track is 2 7/8 miles long (D). Its continuation along the upper left bank, up to the probable end of the track and upper crossing point is 3 3/8 miles. The earth works between Kandrzin and Ratibor are now entirely, and those at Oderberg for the most part, completed. The bridge construction is being pursued vigorously; already most of the work on the crest is complete. The sleepers are all on the track; 30,000 Ctnr. (E) of English rails have been procured since 1st September 1844, at a low rate of import duty and most of the remainder, ordered from the foundries of Silesia, have already been delivered; so that, allowing for reasonable weather, the railway can come into use by October 1845. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Train service commenced on the 1st of January 1846] The station, which was being built between the Oder and the city in a location that would facilitate the development of traffic, is also fast approaching completion. The city gave 15 acres of land for the station, and around 10 acres for the railway line on the 3/8 mile long, flat terrain, all of which required the sacrifice of 7,000 Reichsthaler. The City Council did not hesitate, in the interest of the public good, to take some of the financial burden on themselves, rather than expecting the Directors of the William Railway to bear the whole, as this was the only way in which the company could be persuaded to increase the building fund by more than 150,000 Reichsthaler (F), in order that the site of the station could be changed from the right to the left upper bank and that it could be built over the city walls, whereas it would otherwise have been built to the right of the Oder, more than a mile from here. The connection to the Northern Railway will take place close to Oderberg (G) (Figure 9), for the next few years by means of a conventional carriage, then by means of a branch line of the Northern Railway from circa 800 Rods (H) [EDITOR’S NOTE: there seems to be a bit missing in the copy of the book here]. The capital budget for the whole William Railway is fixed by statute at 1,200,000 Reichsthaler.”
(A) The Wilhelmsbahn or William Railway was a private railway company in Prussia. It was founded in 1844 in Ratibor in Upper Silesia to connect the Upper Silesian Railway (Breslau—Oppeln—Kosel–Gleiwitz (Wroclaw—Opole— Koźle—Gliwice)) with the Austrian Emperor Ferdinand’s Railway. The name referred to Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, later the German Emperor Wilhelm I. For the first time, the railway line connected the Austrian railway network with the Prussian one.
(B) Refers to the Upper Silesian Railway Company. In 1842, the Upper Silesian Railway Company, licensed since 1839, opened the first two sections of its main line: Breslau (Wrocław, Poland) to Ohlau (Oława, Poland) (Figure 10) on the 22nd of May and Ohlau (Oława, Poland) to Brieg (Brzeg, Poland) (Figure 11) in August. These are the oldest railway sections of present-day Poland. Step by step the Upper Silesian Railway (Oberschlesische Eisenbahn, OSE) line was extended, in 1846 connecting Katowice. In 1847 Myslowitz (Mysłowice, Poland) at the border of Austrian Galicia was reached and the connection to Kraków and Upper Silesian Railway complete.
(C) The Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway was a railway company during the time of the Austrian Empire. Its main line was intended to connect Vienna with the salt mines in Bochnia near Kraków. The name is still used today in referring to several railway lines formerly operated by that company.
(D) The distances in miles in the text refer to Prussian miles. One Prussian mile equates to 4.66 U.S. miles or 7.5 kilometers.
(E) “Ctnr.” is the abbreviation for a Prussian “Centner.” A Prussian Centner equates to 113.43 American pounds or 51.448 kilograms. The metric Zentner used today is exactly 50 kilograms or 110.23 American pounds.
(F) Abbreviated “Rtl.,” this refers to a Prussian Reichsthaler. The Reichsthaler was a standard thaler silver coin introduced by the Holy Roman Empire in 1566 for use in all German states, minted in various versions for the next 300 years, and containing 25–26 grams fine silver.
(G) According to Johann Knie, the Wilhelmsbahn connected to the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway near Oderberg, shown to the southeast of Ratibor in Figure 9.
(H) The Prussian Ruthe or rod was 12 feet or 3.766 meters.
It is clear from Johann Knie’s 1845 book that, absent Count Pückler’s intervention, the Breslau-Krakauer (Wrocław-Kraków) Railway, that’s to say the Upper Silesian Railway Company, intended to bypass Ratibor in its construction of the railway into Poland. The passage refers to an easterly route from Breslau (Wrocław) to Oppeln (Opole) to a place called Malapane (today: Ozimek) toward Russia which Count Pückler was able to dissuade the Upper Silesian Railway Company from taking. He apparently also convinced the Upper Silesian Railway Company to connect Breslau (Wrocław) to Krakau (Kraków) via Oppeln (Opole), Kosel (also written Cosel; Koźle), Gleiwitz (Gliwice), and Katowice. This was critical because at a place called Kandrzin, just outside present-day Koźle, the Wilhelmsbahn or William Railroad was then able to connect their railway line to the Upper Silesian Railway. Thus, railway passengers could save time when traveling between Breslau and Vienna by avoiding Krakau. We also learn that Ratibor’s City Council donated land and money to offset part of the William Railroad’s construction cost. From Kosel to Ratibor, the tracks ran along the right or east bank of the Oder, then crossed the river near Ratibor via a bridge to the railway station located on the west or left bank of the Oder River, interestingly built over the city walls according to Johann Knie’s text.
In closing I would simply say that the maps and plans in Meyers Gazetteer in combination with contemporary Google maps provide the necessary overview for visualizing how important it was for the small town of Ratibor in the mid-1840s to ensure the railroad passed through town. It enabled the town’s economic expansion and led to the construction of the Bruck’s Hotel sometime between 1846 and 1850.
REFERENCES
Knie, Johann G. (1845). Alphabetisch-statistisch-topographische Uebersicht der Dörfer, Flecken, Städte und andern Orte der Königl. Preuß. Provinz Schlesien.
Note: In a post I’ve long wanted to write, using maps and contemporary accounts, I discuss the history of the property where the inn stood that my family owned from ca. 1850 until 1926 in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. I also make a case for when I think the hotel was likely constructed.
I’ve spilled a lot of ink writing about my next of kin’s business in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel (Figures 1-2), owned by three generations of my family from roughly 1850 until 1926. My recently departed friend Paul Newerla from Racibórz (Figure 3), a lawyer who found his second calling in retirement researching and writing about the history of Ratibor and Silesia, was very instrumental in furthering my understanding of the hotel’s history and generously sharing multiple historical references and illustrations related to the establishment.
Paul was never able to tell me exactly when the inn was constructed and whether a previous owner had built the structure. For the longest time, I imagined the name “Prinz von Preußen” meant it might have been erected and lived in by a member of the von Preußen family, a royal lineage with longstanding ties to Silesia. Another friend whom I’ve often mentioned to readers, Peter Albrecht von Preußen (Figure 4), a descendant of this illustrious bloodline now living in the United States, explained to me that the “Prinz von Preußen” name was franchised from at least the 19th century. Thus, the Bruck Hotel’s incorporation of the Prinz von Preußen honorific may simply reflect a business arrangement. So far evidence of this has not been found.
One document Paul was unable to track down in theArchiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu, the State Archives in Katowice, Branch in Racibórz, was the so-called Grundbuch, the land register, for the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. Grundbuch means the applicable official register held by the Land Registry in which, among other things, the rights of ownership in, and encumbrances on, a plot of land are registered.
In Post 61, I discussed how Paul found the Grundbuch for the Zuckerfabrik, the sugar factory owned by distant family relatives, located in Woinowitz [today: Wojnowice, Poland] outside Ratibor, among the uncatalogued documents in the basement of the Racibórz State Archives. Regular readers know I’ve written multiple posts about the Zuckerfabrik. Had Paul been able to locate the Grundbuch for the Bruck’s Hotel, it might have shed some light on when the building was built and/or exactly when my family purchased the establishment. Whether the file still exists is an unanswered question though I suspect if it did Paul Newerla would have tracked it down.
Another of my Polish friends, Małgosia Ploszaj (Figure 5), from Rybnik, Poland, 15 miles east of Racibórz, was able to find a police file in the Racibórz State Archives related to the Bruck’s Hotel (Figures 6a-b), but this dated to the period that my grandparents, Felix (1864-1927) and Else Bruck (1873-1957), owned the hotel during the first quarter of the 20th century. This file includes reports on periodic inspections conducted by the local police; safety issues my grandparents were compelled to address; authorizations they were required to obtain to operate beyond normal working hours; violations for which they were fined, etc. Nothing in the file related to the history nor tenancy of the hotel prior to my grandparents’ ownership.
My good friend Peter Albrecht von Preußen spent a good deal of time explaining the contents of this police file. Additionally, because of his own family’s connection to Silesia, he spent a lot of time searching publications for mentions of the hotel and the sequential Bruck family members who owned the inn, namely, Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), Fedor Bruck (1834-1892), and Felix Bruck (1864-1927).
One of the most useful public domain sources Peter discovered was a 695-page book entitled “Geschichte der Stadt Ratibor,” “History of the Town of Ratibor,” written by Augustin Weltzel in 1861. (Figure 7) Therein, Peter found mention of a Bruck who was a “gastwirth,” an innkeeper, no doubt Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) the original owner of the Bruck’s Hotel. (Figure 8)
The book is written in Fraktur, which was the subject of Post 154. Unfortunately, the text has not been transcribed into German, nor has it been translated into Polish or English. However, because Peter can read Fraktur, he graciously perused and summarized relevant sections of Weltzel’s book.
This book was commissioned in 1859 by the Protestant Church in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], who had searched in the archives and discovered that the history of the entire Upper Silesian region, a principally Catholic area at the time, had not been documented. As a result, Dr. Weltzel, a Catholic Priest, was contracted to write about Ratibor. This seemingly odd arrangement was an indirect outcome of the First Silesian War from 1740 to 1742 which resulted in Prussia seizing most of the region of Silesia (today mostly in southwestern Poland) from Austria but Catholics in Silesia being guaranteed the right to continue practicing their religion.
Based on Peter’s synopsis and analysis, I can reconstruct a partial history of the property where the Bruck’s Hotel was built and theorize when the hotel is likely to have been constructed. Another of my Polish contacts from Racibórz is Magda Wawoczny, an acquaintance in the Jewish Studies program at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. At my request, she graciously sent me high-resolution plans of Ratibor from 1831 and 1843, as well as a map from 1812 with a birds-eye view of Ratibor and its fortifications, that allow me to clarify using contemporary maps what likely was going on in the area at the time in conjunction with Augustin Weltzel’s description of historic events.
First, a brief digression. I’ve periodically told readers about my “boots on the ground” without whom I would be unable to relate my family stories to the depth I feel is required. As readers can easily tell, I have limited knowledge about many of the subjects I discuss so the assistance of knowledgeable people is crucial. In the case of this post, for example, I felt the need to illustrate with historic maps what Ratibor may have looked like at different points in time to make the case for approximately when the Bruck’s Hotel might have been constructed.
Erroneously recalling there exists a map from 1829 with the Bruck’s Hotel shown, I asked Magda, my student acquaintance from Racibórz, if she could track it down for me. In the process, Magda directed me to a historical portal run by her father, Grzegorz Wawoczny, a historian. The portal includes a post written by a German gentleman, Christoph Sottor, describing the oldest plans of the city of Ratibor. This is how I learned about the 1812, 1831, and 1843 plans of Ratibor mentioned above. This post was very useful and one I encourage readers with an ancestral link to Ratibor to skim:
Historically, Ratibor was a fortified castle-town. The period the Bruck’s Hotel could conceivably have been built is closely related to when the fortifications surrounding Ratibor were dismantled because of the hotel’s proximity to where the protective walls once stood. Let me briefly relate to readers some of the history of the town’s defensive system. The defensive walls have existed in Ratibor since 1299. They were extended in the 14th century, and several fortified towers and three wooden gates were later added. A deep moat was constructed in front of the walls. The curtain walls were reinforced in 1663 in anticipation of a Turkish invasion.
Beginning in the 18th century, the fortifications were gradually eliminated. Between 1764 and 1771 the moat was filled in. According to Weltzel, the wooden gate (Figure 22) of the defensive tower nearest where the Bruck’s Hotel was eventually built was removed in 1825 and relocated to the Ratibor side of the bridge crossing the nearby Oder River; some of the nearby curtain walls were removed but the tower remained.
All that remains of the fortifications today is a Renaissance style tower constructed in 1574 and some remnants of the Gothic curtain walls that abutted this tower. (Figures 9-10) At the apex of the tower, there is an attic with embrasures (sometimes called gun holes) and four turrets. The building provided shelter for the garrison of defenders and was also used as a prison tower.
The removal of the moat, including the gradual elimination of some of the defensive structures, coincides with the end of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). Let me say a few words about this conflict.
The Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) was a global conflict involving most of Europe’s great powers that was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. Without getting too far into the weeds, suffice it to say the opposing alliances were led by Great Britain and France, each seeking to establish global pre-eminence at the expense of the other. France and Spain fought against England and their ally Prussia in Europe and overseas. Long-standing rivalries pitted these adversaries against one another in North America and the West Indies.
No less a personage than Winston Churchill described the Seven Years War, which went by different names in its respective theaters (e.g., Franch and Indian Wars (1754-1763); War of the Conquest in French-speaking Canada; the Third Silesian Wear (1756-1763) between Prussia and Austria) as the first “world war” because of its global reach.
For purposes of this post, suffice it to say that in Europe, Prussia sought greater influence in the German states (i.e., Prussia and the other German states did not unite to form Germany until 1871) while Austria sought to contain Prussian influence as well as regain Silesia which they’d lost at the end of the First Silesian War in 1742. Austria failed in this regard. Based on Augustin Weltzel’s discussions, it is evident the city’s fortifications suffered heavy damage from cannonball strikes during the conflict.
Perhaps, the end of the war, new economic opportunities, ongoing deterioration of the defensive walls and towers, along with a need to expand the city caused town officials to gradually remove the fortifications and towers.
The address of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel was Oderstrasse 16. The inn stood on the northwest corner of Oderstrasse where it met Bollwerk Strasse. A 1929 street map of Ratibor includes the hotel’s name and location (Figure 11), while a 1933 plan shows the number “16” on Oderstrasse. (Figure 12) A map from around 1890 indistinctly outlines an area where the Bruck’s Hotel stood that is identified by the number “104,” which may indicate the lot number. (Figure 13) Since I don’t have copies of all Ratibor’s plans, it’s not clear when the hotel was first plotted on a map.
The “Prinz von Preußen” is listed in John Murray’s 1850 “Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent” as a place for people to stay in Ratibor while voyaging between Breslau and Vienna. (Figures 14a-b) Family ownership of the inn is thought to have begun at around this time.
Next, I’ll discuss a few of the historic maps I had access to, and what they suggest regarding the construction of the Bruck’s Hotel. I’ll also touch on some of Weltzel’s historic accounts for reference.
Let me start by discussing the map that Christoph Sottor dates to 1812 (Figure 15) that I previously described as a birds-eye view of the city with its still-standing fortifications.
“On the newly made plan (in 1812 on the basis of measurements from 1810) the orientation to the west was improved, buildings in towns near Racibórz were described and projections of several buildings in Racibórz itself were marked. The “Situations-Plan von der Stadt Ratibor” covers a smaller area than the 1811 plan and is on a smaller scale, 1 : 7,200. The plan measures 48 cm x 32.3 cm. It was also created by the geometer Andre Wihrheim. The only copy of the plan is in AP Opole, reference number: AP Opole, Rej. Opole. Kart., sign. IX/92. I only have a blurry picture of him.” [EDITOR’S NOTE: “AP Opole” stands for “Archiwum Państwowe Opole,” the State Archives in Opole, Poland]
The main conclusion one can draw from this map is that the defensive towers and curtain walls were mostly still intact in 1812. This means the Bruck’s Hotel, whose approximate location I’ve shown on the map, could not yet have existed at this time since the curtain walls would have impeded its construction.
According to Weltzel, the Bruck’s Hotel was referred to as the “Prinzen von Preußen” (“Princes of Prussia”) rather than “Prinz von Preußen” (“Prince of Prussia”), with no mention of the Bruck surname. He also tells us the property where the hotel was eventually built had previously been owned by the so-called Schützengilde, the shooting club, and sat along Oder Gasse, as Oderstrasse was then known. The Schützengilde had two structures on their property, a Schützenzwinger, or clubhouse, and a Schießstand, or firing range. The clubhouse faced Oder Gasse, while the firing range sat towards the rear of the property closer to the Oder River.
At the time Weltzel was researching his book he had access to the shooting club’s records dating back to 1620. According to these documents the Schützengilde owned the property on Oder Gasse until 1824/25 when they sold it to the city of Ratibor in two transactions; by May 1825 the city had full possession of the entire property. Using the proceeds from the sale of the property, the shooting club purchased another property in town. Seemingly, Weltzel does not discuss how the city used the property following its acquisition.
Peter Albrecht von Preußen uncovered a YouTube video describing the activities of the Schützengilde today featuring none other than my late friend Paul Newerla. While the video is in both German and Polish with subtitles in both these languages, readers can get a general idea of how the shooting club operates today and view some of the antique weapons members fire:
In essence, Paul Newerla says that today the Schützengilde is principally a historical society and functions as a recreational club rather than as a defensive force as it once did. As previously mentioned, the club relocated from Oder Gasse in 1825, but moved again in 1898 to their present location. The existing clubhouse incorporates a tower (Figure 16) that may be a remembrance of the Oder Thor that once stood adjacent to their property on Oder Gasse. According to Paul, the oldest documents the club possesses date to 1925, so he is appealing to anyone that may have older artifacts or memorabilia to contact the club. And finally, we learn the Schützengilde was inoperative from the 8th of May 1945 until 2004, when it was resurrected.
Let me turn now to the two high resolution maps from 1831 and 1843 that Magda sent me and discuss what inferences can be drawn from them. Both plans show two buildings on the property, the 1843 map more distinctly, where the Bruck’s Hotel would eventually be built. On the 1831 map (Figure 17), in the rear structure, that’s to say the shooting range, readers can vaguely make out what Weltzel refers to as a “wall extension” that paralleled the lane where Bollwerk Strasse was ultimately sited. It would appear the firing range incorporated as an extension a fragmentary part of the curtain walls that once surrounded Ratibor.
One thing we can conclude from the 1843 map (Figure 18) is that the Oder Thor, Oder Tower, the tower closest to where the hotel was ultimately built had apparently not yet been demolished, though as previously mentioned the wooden gate had been removed in 1825. The tower is labelled on the map suggesting it was still in place. It’s difficult to know precisely where the Oder Thor was situated relative to the hotel making it hard to know whether it would have impeded construction of the building; however, the defensive curtain walls would assuredly have prevented construction of the inn.
Another thing we can observe from the 1843 ocular map of Ratibor is that if you extend the line that was formerly part of the curtain wall and the extension of the Schießstand, it lines up perfectly with the side of the Oder Thor that was closest to the Oder River.
So, we return to the question of when the Bruck’s Hotel might have been built and what the impetus for doing so would have been. A French travel guide dated 1836 entitled “Manuel du Voyageur en Allemagne” (Handbook for Travelers in Germany), mentions an auberge or inn in Ratibor, “Auberge de Jaeschke.” (Figure 19) Prior to construction of the Bruck’s Hotel this is believed to have been the only guesthouse in Ratibor.
As previously discussed, the “Prinz von Preußen” is mentioned in John Murray’s 1850 publication “A Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent,” and is described as a “very comfortable hotel.” (see Figure 14b) Clearly, by 1850 the “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel was open for business. This is further confirmed by a concert the famed Austrian composer Johann Strauss delivered on the 17th of October 1850 in the hotel’s concert hall. (Figure 20) A similar recital by Dr. Franz Lizst four years earlier on the 29th of May 1846 was performed at the so-called “Jaschke’schen Saale” (Figure 21), presumably part of the “Auberge de Jaeschke,” indirect evidence the newer and larger Prinz von Preußen concert hall was not yet open.
According to Weltzel, the anticipated arrival of the railroad in Ratibor, which began service on the 1st of January 1846, caused a “building boom” between 1842 and 1850. If the 1843 map is accurate, the Oder Thor still stood at this time, so construction of the hotel post-dates its removal. While there is no smoking gun, the indirect evidence points to the Prinz von Preußen having been built sometime between 1845 and 1847, coinciding with the arrival of the railroad. No doubt regular train service and mention of the Prinz von Preußen in an English travel guide would have accelerated the number of visitors and tourists from Germany, Austria, and far-off places who would have expected modern conveniences. It can only be hoped the hotel’s Grundbuch still exists and is eventually found to definitively answer the question of what year the inn was built.
Knie, Johann G. (1845). Alphabetisch-statistisch-topographische Uebersicht der Dörfer, Flecken, Städte und andern Orte der Königl. Preuß. Provinz Schlesien.
Note: Tiering off a few elusive clues I found about my third great-grandfather Jacob Nathan Bruck (1770-1836) from Ratibor [today:Racibórz, Poland], I examine the historic and geographic context in which the events he was involved in played out.
In Post 150 I told readers how I discovered my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Nathan Bruck’s death register listing among the primary source documents digitized by the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society’s “Silius Radicum” project. The index proves Jacob died in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] on the 29th of June 1836 at the age of 66. (Figure 1) As the oldest known Bruck from the Ratibor line, I refer to him as the paterfamilias.
Finding definitive proof of my long-ago ancestor’s death is particularly satisfying as ancestral trees on ancestry.com and MyHeritage, often cloning erroneous information from one another, indeterminately placed his death as 1832. Having never been able to independently verify Jacob’s vital data, it was always an open question of when exactly he died.
In the last several months, I’ve uncovered a smattering of clues from a range of sources that give me a limited sense of Jacob’s life. Before delving into these, I want to touch on a few intriguing finds I’ve made in the process.
First, a little background. According to a memoir written by Bertha Bruck (Figure 2), the grandmother of one of my recently deceased cousins, Jacob Nathan Bruck and his wife Marianne Bruck, née Aufrecht had 12 children. Most of my cousins, whom I consider highly accomplished genealogists, can account for seven or eight of them. I think I can provide corroboration of nine of Jacob and Marianne’s purported 12 children. Presenting the underlying proof relying on evidence-based primary source documents will be the subject of an upcoming post.
While researching one of Jacob and Marianne’s offspring, Marcus Moritz Bruck, I stumbled upon a Bruck Family Tree on Geneanet Community Tree Index. Geneanet is a collaborative website with ancestral data added by participants and intended for all genealogists.
I sound my usual admonishment about the accuracy of any ancestral tree particularly if source documents are not attached and/or identified. Nonetheless, Geneanet corroborates Jacob Nathan Bruck’s date of death as the 29th of June 1836, as I’ve independently discovered; having learned that Jacob was 66 upon his death obviously means that he was born in 1770. Geneanet not only confirms that Jacob was born in 1770, but also provides his exact date and place of birth, the 18th of February 1770 in Pschow [Pszów, Poland]. (Figure 3) Notwithstanding my usual doubts about the accuracy of ancestral trees, the specificity of Jacob’s place and date of death suggests it could be accurately drawn from an entry in some unknown birth register. For the moment, I reserve judgement.
Another intriguing find I made on the Bruck Family Tree in Geneanet is the name and dates of birth and death of Jacob’s father, Nathan Bruck, purportedly born in Upper Silesia in Poland in 1735 who died there in 1825 at age 90. (Figure 4) Again, absent more background information, I remain skeptical as to the veracity of this data.
Some brief historical geography. The historical region of Silesia is now in southwestern Poland. Silesia was originally a Polish province, which became a possession of the Bohemian crown in 1335, passed with that crown to the Austrian Hapsburgs in 1526, and was taken by Prussia in 1742. In 1945, at the end of World War II, Silesia was one of the regions of German territory that was granted to Poland by the Soviet Union in compensation for land in eastern Poland that was incorporated into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, land that is today part of the Ukraine.
For the purposes of this discussion, in 1735 when Nathan Bruck was born Upper Silesia would have been part of the Hapsburg empire. (Figure 5) Where ancestral records from this period are archived and even whether they still exist are unknown. If Nathan did indeed survive until 1825, his death would likely have been recorded in the death register in the Prussian town where he died; it’s possible the register noting his age when he died survives while the Austrian Hapsburg empire birth register no longer exists. At present Nathan’s place of death is unconfirmed.
I would like to briefly touch on a fascinating possibility stemming from the discovery that Nathan Bruck lived until age 90. Because of her ancestral connection to Jacob Nathan Bruck and Nathan Bruck, in passing I told Helen Winter, nee Renshaw, my fourth cousin from Wolverhampton, England, about my discovery, namely, about Jacob’s date of birth and the possibility that his father lived into his 10th decade. In response, Helen casually mentioned an unframed painting that she and her sister once saw 30 or more years ago of a diminished, toothless old man. The unnerving effect it had on young children means the picture remained secreted. Given her family’s ancestral connection to Nathan Bruck, could it be that this painting is a rendering of Nathan Bruck? The search is now on by Helen and her sister to try and relocate this potential “treasure.” Stay tuned!
Jacob Nathan Bruck is my and Helen Winter’s last common Bruck relative, being the third great-grandfather to both of us. Helen’s paternal grandfather, Eberhard Friedrich Bruck (1877-1960) (Figure 6) wrote a memoir for his daughter Margot Renshaw, nee Bruck, Helen’s mother, in which he briefly mentioned Jacob.
The original German passage and the English translation read as follows:
ORIGINAL PASSAGE
Mein Urgrossvater Jacob Bruck, 1762-1832, war Hotelbesitzer. Ihm gehörte das erste Hotel in Ratibor an der Oder ( Oberschlesien ). Das Hotel hiess “Prinz von Preussen”. Es wurde von Jacob Bruck um 1800 erbaut und bestand noch, wie ich aus einer Zeitungsnotis entnahm, 1933. Jacob Bruck war ein unternehmender Mann. Er besass auch eine Werft an der Oder, wo grössere Schiffe ( sog. “Oderkähne”) gebaut wurden. Um das nötige Holz zu erhalten, pachtete er Walder in Osterreichisch- Schlesien.
TRANSLATION
My great grandfather, Jacob Bruck, 1762 -1832 [EDITOR’S NOTE: INCORRECT DATES], was a hotelier. He owned the first hotel in Ratibor on Oder in Upper Silesia. The hotel was called the “Prince of Prussia.” He had it built in around 1800 and it was still standing in 1933, according to a newspaper item I saw. Jacob Bruck was an enterprising man. He also owned a shipyard on the Oder, where large craft (the so called ‘Oder Barges’) were built. To obtain the timber needed for these, he leased forests in Austrian Silesia.
A few observations and comments concerning what Eberhard Bruck wrote about Jacob and his occupational endeavors. As previously discussed, Jacob was born in 1770, not in 1762, and passed away in 1836, not in 1832. Eberhard was born in 1877 so would not personally have known his great-grandfather. Likely, his “memories” of Jacob would be recollections he’d heard of him as a child and would be distorted by the prism through which childhood memories are often processed and remembered.
I have tried to confirm whether what Eberhard wrote vis a vis Jacob Bruck is true, and in the process crafted what I consider to be a more accurate scenario of what likely happened. I will relate this is a future blog post where I recount when the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preussen” Hotel was probably built based on documented accounts of when the walls and towers surrounding and historically protecting Ratibor were torn down. I invite readers to stay tuned for this upcoming post but suffice it for now to say that it’s unlikely that Jacob had the Bruck’s Hotel constructed prior to his death nor that he was its first owner. This does not mean that Jacob did not operate the town’s first hotel as he is known to have owned several parcels of land in Ratibor. More on this below.
As I’ve discussed in earlier posts, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preussen” Hotel survived WWII mostly intact but was dismantled by the Communist authorities to harvest the hotel’s bricks to rebuild Warsaw.
Prior to his passing, I asked my friend Paul Newerla whether Oderkähne, or Oder River barges, had ever been constructed in Ratibor, and he confirmed there had once been a shipyard there along the Oder River. He sent a postcard showing a large craft, possibly of the type Jacob manufactured. (Figure 7) Given that Jacob Bruck was fabricating these before he died in 1836 and that 1839 is the generally accepted date as the birth year of practical photography, no photographs of the barges Jacob manufactured are known.
I also discussed this matter with another good friend, Peter Albrecht von Preußen. As he was reading an 1861 book on Ratibor entitled “Geschichte der Stadt Ratibor und deren Stadtteile” (“History of the Town of Ratibor and Its Districts”) by Augustin Weltzel, I asked him to be on the lookout for any mention of Oder River barges or ship building activities in Ratibor but neither subject was broached.
A quick note about Augustin Weltzel’s 1861 book. Regrettably it is written in Fraktur font, a calligraphic hand of the Latin alphabet and any of several blackletter typefaces derived from this hand; Fraktur was commonly used to write German and other European languages from the 16th to the 20th century. Regrettably, this invaluable book has not been transcribed into modern-day German script, nor translated into Polish or English. On my behalf, Peter read through and synopsized relevant sections for me. Suffice it to say this book is full of valuable historical insights about the history of Ratibor that will serve as the foundation for my theory as to when the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preussen” Hotel could realistically have been constructed.
Returning briefly to the issue of Oder River barges, Peter discovered that on average an Oderkahne was 130 feet long, 13 to 15 feet wide, and 3 to 4 feet deep, so by no means a small boat. Assuming these were assembled on land, the factory or shop would have had to have been very close to the river. Possibly the shipyard was located outside Ratibor’s city limits, and therefore not mentioned in Weltzel’s book.
Intriguingly, Peter sent me a photograph of the type of barge I initially imagined Jacob Bruck was constructing. (Figure 8) The reason it seems more representative of barges Jacob Bruck was building is that they were mostly used to transport agricultural products from Ratibor to Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], which this one appears to have been suited for. According to Weltzel, the three primary industries at the time wrote his book were weaving, grain production, and limestone manufacturing.
The pole on the barge in Figure 8 would have been attached to a rope which in turn would have been fastened and pulled upstream by a horse from the banks of the Oder. Once unloaded, it could basically float empty downriver. The “newer” type of barge illustrated in Figure 7, which began to appear between around 1850 to 1860, would have been steam-powered. According to Weltzel, the Oder River was not well suited for larger barges between Ratibor and Breslau, even during the rainy seasons in the spring when high waters would have made navigating larger craft easier.
A constant concern for the city were the bridges spanning the Oder River which collapsed or were destroyed no fewer than a dozen times historically because of fires, wars, flooding, ice buildup, and strong currents undermining the structures. The bridges were constantly rebuilt in different locations but because of the sandy sediment of the Oder they rarely survived for long until advanced building techniques were devised.
Eberhard Bruck’s fleeting reference to the fact that Jacob obtained his wood to build barges from Austrian Silesia sent me on a search to find maps delineating this area. In the attached figure, readers can see where “Oster Schlesien,” Austrian Silesia, was situated. (Figure 9) According to Paul Newerla, later shipyards apparently obtained their wood from Slovakia and Hungary, perhaps cheaper alternatives. Regardless, all three areas would have been logical places from which to obtain wood given their proximity to Ratibor.
Other fleeting references to Jacob Bruck can be found in a 1995 book by Thomas Wardenga entitled “Häuserbuch der Stadt Ratibor” (“House register of the town of Ratibor”). This book includes an 1812 map of Ratibor showing the town’s lots at the time, identifying property owners. Jacob is shown as the co-owner of three lots. (Figure 10)
Jacob is identified as a so-called “arrendator.” Not recognizing or being able to obtain a clear translation of this obscure and obsolete occupation, I turned to Paul Newerla, my recently deceased friend, for clarification. Translated, this is what Paul explained about Jacob’s line of work:
Arendator [EDITOR’S NOTE: ALSO SPELLED AS “ARRENDATOR”] is known to be a tenant of a pub, for example. During my research, I came across several instances where a tavern was leased by the noble owner of the village, for example. The right to produce spirits (distiller) was sometimes associated with the bar. However, the tenant had to buy the beer from the owner’s brewery. Sometimes it was the other way round: the right to brew beer was linked to the arrende, but the brandy had to be bought from the “lord”. In such cases, it can be said that a person could have been both “arrendator” and “distiller” and/or beer tenant (brewer).
Recently, while doing further research I discovered an excellent article by Alan Weiser entitled “The Arenda System: A Boon or Bane for Jews.” According to the author, “The arenda has been defined by the University of Virginia in its course on European Jewry as a system of leasing property in early modern Poland in which in exchange for a predetermined rent the lessor agreed to transfer to the lessee control over property or rights; thus, enabling the lessee to pocket any income produced from the leased property or rights. The arenda provided a livelihood for a significant proportion of Polish Jewish families.” Jacob as the lessee in an arenda contract would have been called an “arendar” or “arrendator.”
It has been suggested that because of the pressure the Jewish arendars were under to make payments to magnates and kings who owned the leased properties this resulted in large scale Jewish community debt causing the arendars to apply harsh measures to their serfs to ensure high productivity as soon as possible. According to Alan Weiser, “There was considerable anti-Semitic backlash resulting from this interaction.”
I encourage readers interested in learning more about the Arenda system to read Alan Weiser’s article and review his bibliographic references.
Thanks to another of my Polish acquaintances, Mr. Kamil Kotas from Chałupki, Poland, known in Prussian times as Annaberg, I was made aware of another very obscure reference to Jacob Bruck I would never have found on my own. On the Leo Baeck Institute’s website, in a file entitled the “Ratibor Community Collection,” Kamil found a typed German report translated as “The Jewish Community of Ratibor and its Cemetery” by C. Baendel. According to this document Jacob Bruck was one of the members of the Jewish community in Ratibor authorized to carry out the transaction of purchasing the land for the Jewish cemetery in 1814; according to C. Baendel, the deed is dated the 4th of October 1814.
Interestingly, the deed was signed by all those authorized on the Jewish side authorized to negotiate the purchase, while on the selling side, the three heirs of a man named Johann Huttny had to use the help of a witness to confirm their signatures (they were probably illiterate) and a translator (they were probably from the Slavic-speaking local population). C. Bandel notes the cemetery was once used to mine brown coal, the prospects of which do not appear to have been lucrative. He also mentions the centennial celebration of the cemetery was set for the 26th of November 1913. The link to C. Baendel’s document can be found among the references.
The Polish website, Cmentarz Żydowski w Polsce, List of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland, provides additional historical background on the Ratibor Jewish cemetery. Prior to its acquisition in 1814, Jews from Ratibor were buried in nearby Zülz [today: Biała Prudnicka, Poland], Nikolai [today: Mikołów, Poland], Langendorf [today: Hlučín, Czech Republic], or Hotzenplotz [today: Osoblaha, Czech Republic], or further afield in Bodzanów in central Poland. Purportedly, burials did not begin until 1817, though the oldest documented headstone dated from 1821. The last burials took place, respectively, in March 1940 and February 1941.
As I discussed in Post 13 and Post 13, Postscript, the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor was demolished during Poland’s Communist Era in 1973. Quoting from an anonymous resident of Racibórz, who sent a letter to the Polish website Cmentarz Żydowski w Polsce, described the events as follows: “One day gentlemen appeared, described all the tombstones with colored paint, then arranged them according to some key. The most beautiful ones were taken to the reconstruction of the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The less attractive ones were sold to stonemasons. The remains of the stones were still lying around for a long time. It looked terrible; the real devastation of the cemetery, demolished, felled, dug up stones. What was left was chaos, rubble, and so the bushes were overgrown. I think that the destruction was undertaken due to the necessity of delivering the marbles to Warsaw.”
A plaque was placed at the cemetery by a Pawel Głogowski in April 2014 (Figure 11), and more recently on 19th of December 2023, a ceremony was held there with representatives from Warsaw’s Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich Polin, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews; Director of the Museum in Racibórz; and several Jewish attendees including a Rabbi who offered a prayer. (Figure 12) Fragmentary pieces of headstones were collected. (Figure 13)
In closing, I would note that while the historical references to my third great-grandfather are elusive, they’ve provided me the opportunity to discuss a wide number of topics including the geopolitical landscape at the time; ship building in Ratibor; the source of wood used in barge construction; the Arenda System; and the purchase of land for the construction of the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor and its ultimate destruction.
Note: This post is primarily a tribute to my recently deceased friend from Racibórz, Poland, Paul Newerla, who generously and selflessly assisted me in innumerable ways over the years while I was researching and writing about my Bruck family. I am deeply saddened by his passing, but honored to have known him and appreciative he deemed my efforts worthy of his time.
Typically, I get up every morning at 4am and head to the gym. On Sundays when I’m done and am driving home my local National Public Radio station is broadcasting a show called “A Way with Words,” co-hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett. They talk with callers from around the world about slang, grammar, old sayings, word origins, regional dialects, family expressions, and speaking and writing well.
In one recent episode, an African-American gentleman from the South called to tell of his use of the word “conversate,” an expression I was unfamiliar with. Use of “conversating” instead of “conversing” is considered non-standard or informal in many English-speaking communities; as readers will surmise, it means to engage in conversation. Since my blog posts are an informal method of telling stories about my ancestors and extended family and the people and the sometimes-tragic events that surrounded their lives, conversating strikes an appropriate balance, like having a fireside chat. It’s been quite a few years since I’ve casually conversated with readers, so the moment seems right.
In the last several months I’ve acquired an astonishing amount of new information, some of it related to my earliest relatives from Ratibor, Prussia [Racibórz, Poland] and other details connected to various family and acquaintances I’ve written about over the years. The particulars will form the basis for some upcoming posts and postscripts to earlier articles.
There is a limit to how much I can reconstruct using only ancestry.com or MyHeritage, so the contributions, interpretations, and observations drawn from family memoirs and diaries, books, websites, and knowledgeable researchers and historians enhance my understanding of how, when, and where my forefathers were active in Ratibor, Prussia, Silesia, and elsewhere the Jewish diaspora took them.
Longtime readers of my blog have periodically heard me refer to my cadre of helpers as my “boots on the ground.” They are an eclectic group consisting of friends and acquaintances, professionals and amateurs, near and distant relatives, and, of course, readers.
Sadly, in the past few days, I’ve heard from no fewer than four Polish acquaintances telling me of the passing of my dear friend from Racibórz, Mr. Paul Newerla, a 91-year-old gentleman and elder statesman, who found a second calling, following his retirement as a lawyer, researching and writing about the history of Ratibor and Silesia. (Figure 1)
Like many of the people who’ve provided color commentary, history, and context for my posts, Paul found me through my blog. Our initial conversations revolved around the business enterprise, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preussen” Hotel (Figure 2), my family owned and operated from around 1850 until 1926 in Ratibor. Our discussions quickly expanded beyond this topic as I was trying to track down primary source documents related to extended family members connected with Ratibor and trying to figure out how long my Bruck family had been associated with the town.
I clearly remember in 2019 when Paul was doing research for an article he was writing about the 200th anniversary of Ratibor’s gymnasium, high school. (Figure 3) He miraculously managed to track down the original roster of students who attended the high school from its founding in 1819 through 1849. (Figure 4) What made this discovery so astonishing is that he found this document not in the Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu, the State Archives in Katowice, Branch in Racibórz, or in the Muzeum w Raciborzu, or Racibórz Museum, but rather among the old files of the gymnasium, now an economic middle school. It goes without saying, on my own I probably could not have accessed this invaluable document with the names of multiple of my early Bruck ancestors even had I been aware of its existence.
Naturally, upon discovering the roster’s whereabouts and making special arrangements to photograph it, Paul sent me copies of the individual pages. Opening each of the roughly 100 pages reminded me of my days as a dirt archaeologist never knowing what the next shovelful or trowel scrapping would reveal. For those of you who’ve never gone through seemingly “dry” documents may not appreciate how enthralling this can sometimes be.
On another occasion, Paul again tracked down and photographed a 73-page document I could assuredly not have accessed on my own. It was the Grundbuch, the land register, for the Zuckerfabrik, the sugar factory, in Woinowitz [today: Wojnowice, Poland] (Figure 5), outside Racibórz. (Figure 6) Grundbuch means the applicable official register held by the Land Registry in which, among other things, the rights of ownership in, and encumbrances on, a plot of land are registered. Long-time readers know that I have written extensively about the Zuckerfabrik because of my family’s ancestral connection to the original co-owners of the factory, Adolph Schück and Sigmund Hirsch.
Paul knew the German land registers are archived at the State Archives in Katowice, Branch in Racibórz; he also knew that because these land registers have not yet been archived, they are currently inaccessible to researchers. Nonetheless, Paul convinced the head of the State Archives in Racibórz to let him into the basement to rummage through the uncatalogued documents to search for the land register for the sugar factory. (Figure 7) He found it in a file entitled “Woinowitz Blatt 161,” Woinowitz Sheet 161. Readers can easily imagine how improbable my gaining access to the basement of the State Archives to search for the Grundbuch would have been.
I could always count on Paul to patiently answer my endless stream of questions, no matter how mundane, and send me references, records, illustrative materials, maps, photos, postcards, etc. to better understand the history of people, places, and events in Ratibor and Silesia. Paul was helpful in multiple other ways, including on several occasions when he visited the State Archives at my request to track down a primary source document I was convinced existed.
I have little doubt a small part of why Paul was so willing to help me is that I am a direct descendant of the original owner of the Bruck’s Hotel in Ratibor and bear the Americanized version of the surname. That said, I’m positive he would have been equally helpful to anyone having an interest in the history of Ratibor and Silesia. That’s the type of man Paul was.
I consider it an extreme honor to have personally met Paul, to have had him show me some of modern Racibórz, and for his patient and professional assistance over the years. Like many others, he provided affirmation that my family history blog fulfills a service which I would not be able to provide absent the contributions and exhortations of dedicated folks like Paul and other readers. I’m deeply thankful for Paul’s help over the years, as well as the assistance provided by other followers of my blog.
