Charlotte Bruck nee Marle Archives

POST 150: UPPER SILESIAN GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY, PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENTS FROM RATIBOR [RACIBÓRZ, POLAND]

Note: In this post I discuss some primary source documents from Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] and Upper Silesia I was recently made aware of. I also explain to readers how to access these online ancestral records digitized by the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society. Finally, I highlight a few “gems” I uncovered that date back to my earliest known Bruck ancestor from Ratibor.

POST 14, POSTSCRIPT: RATIBOR & THE BRAUER (BREWER) M. BRAUN “LINK” TO AMERICA

POST 149: A CHILDHOOD FRIEND’S EARLY ANCESTORS FROM UPPER SILESIA & RATIBOR [RACIBÓRZ, POLAND] (PART 1-BACKGROUND)

This story begins with an email my good friend Peter Albrecht von Preußen (Figure 1) sent me with a link to a Dropbox account with a stash of primary source documents from Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]. Regular readers will recognize this as the town in Upper Silesia (Figure 2) to which some of my Jewish ancestors had an association of over 100 years and where the erstwhile family establishment, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, was owned through three generations of my family, from around 1850 until 1926.

Having previously and on multiple occasions carefully examined three microfilm rolls of Jewish vital records from Ratibor (i.e., LDS Family History Center (FHC) Microfilms 1184447, 1184448, & 1184449) available through the Mormon Church’s familysearch website and having personally visited and spent many hours at the Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu, the State Archives in Katowice, Branch in Racibórz (Figure 3), scrutinizing civil registration records of vital events for my family, I had scant expectations of finding anything new. I had no reason to believe additional documents of vital events for Jews from Ratibor still exist. I could not have been more wrong.

Figure 3. Entrance to the “Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu,” the State Archives in Katowice, Branch in Racibórz

Below I will walk readers step-by-step through how to access the database I learned about that includes not only primary source documents about Jews from Ratibor and some adjoining towns but also the more extensive Catholic and Lutheran parish records from across Upper Silesia. I will also detail some of the most satisfying discoveries I made about some near and distant forebears, breakthroughs I honestly thought I would never realize. However, I’m going to start at the tail end and explain the origin of these primary source documents.

The source of the documents Peter sent me is the “Górnośląskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne ‘Silius Radicum’,” or the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society “Silesian Roots.” Under an agreement signed on the 21^st of January 2015 with the State Archives in Katowice, the Society obtained permission to digitize genealogical records in the State Archive, a function not then being undertaken by the National Archives. The Society further obtained authorization to post the digitized records to their website.

The published books are classified according to the three main faiths, Roman Catholic, Evangelical, and Jewish within the historical area of Upper Silesia. The records generally cover the years 1800 to 1874 and are duplicates of records which were submitted to the court. At the time these records were created, the Standesämter, the civil registration offices, had not yet been established in Prussia, something which began in 1874.

The Ratibor-related files to which Peter Albrecht sent me the Dropbox link are listed in the following table:

Book Signature Number	Polish & English Names	No. of Pages

1693	*Racibórz akta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego—urodzenia 1851-1855.* Racibórz population records of the Jewish faith, births 1851 – 1855.	304
1694	*Racibórzakta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–urodzenia 1910* Racibórz population records of the Jewish faith, births 1910	12
1695	*Racibórzakta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–małżeństwa 1869-1870* Racibórz records of Jewish population, marriages 1869-1870	299
1696	*Racibórzakta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–małżeństwa 1872-1885* Racibórz records of the Jewish population, marriages 1872-1885	376
1697	*Racibórzakta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–urodzenia, małżeństwa 1852-1853* Racibórz population records of the Jewish faith, births + marriages 1852-1853	386
1698	*Racibórz(powiat)akta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–urodzenia, zgony 1841-1847* Racibórz (county) population records of the Jewish faith, births + deaths 1841-1847	17
1699	*Racibórzakta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–urodzenia, małżeństwa, rozwody, zgony 1815-1844* Racibórz Jewish population records – births + marriages + divorces + deaths 1815-1844	87
1700	*Racibórzakta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–urodzenia, małżeństwa, rozwody, zgony 1845-1847* Racibórz Jewish population records, births + marriages + divorces + deaths 1845-1847	18
1701	*Gorzyceakta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–urodzenia, małżeństwa, zgony 1843-1847* Gorzyce (Groß Gorschütz) Jewish population records, births + marriages + deaths 1843-1847	26
1702	*Kornowacakta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–urodzenia, małżeństwa, zgony1845-1848* Kornowac (Kornowatz) Jewish population records – births, marriages, deaths 1845-1848	24
	TOTAL PAGES	1,549

For my purposes, Signature Books 1701 (Groß Gorschütz) and 1702 (Kornowatz) were of no interest.

While theoretically including records between 1800 and 1874, readers will notice significant gaps in what’s been digitized. Whether those records still exist or have yet to be scanned is unknown. Excluding Signature Books 1701 and 1702 which cover areas outside Ratibor, the table below shows the years for which birth, marriage, divorce, and death records are available for Ratibor through the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society’s website:

Ratibor Births

Ratibor Marriages

Ratibor Divorces

Ratibor Deaths

1815-1844 (Book 1699)

1841-1847 (Book 1698)

1845-1847 (Book 1700)

1851-1855 (Book 1693)

1910 (Book 1694)

1815-1844 (Book 1699)

1845-1847 (Book 1700)

1869-1870 (Book 1695)

1872-1885 (Book 1697)

1815-1844 (Book 1699)

1845-1847 (Book 1700)

1815-1844 (Book 1699)

1841-1847 (Book 1698)

1845-1847 (Book 1700)

Comparing the above to what’s available for Ratibor through the Mormon Church’s Family History Library, we find three films with Jewish records. Microfilm 1184447 includes cemetery deeds between 1888 and 1940; Microfilm 1184448 records deaths between 1865 and 1930; and Microfilm 1184449 documents births between 1815 and 1874 and marriages between 1814 and 1862. Clearly researchers would want to examine both databases since there’s only partial overlap. More on this below.

Before discussing the most informative documents found in the other Signature Books, let me describe the process step by step for accessing the primary source documents digitized by the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society:

Go to https://siliusradicum.pl/en/ksiegi-metrykalne/
On the portal page, readers can select one of four languages: English, German, Polish, or Czech;
While the “User Panel” allows you to sign in or register, the records can be accessed without doing so simply by scrolling down the page to the list of towns;
The towns for which Signature Books are available are listed alphabetically;
By way of example, select “ASC Jewish Community—Racibórz (Ratibor”;
Select “Browse online with Dropbox” towards the bottom of the page, and the ten Signature Books described above will be listed;
Select one, then scroll through the pages, and download relevant pages individually;
Once done perusing all the pages in a particular Signature Book, hit the “Back” button. Select “ASC gminy żydowskiej – Racibórz (Ratibor)” under “Copy to Dropbox” or “Download” and you’ll be taken back to the list of Signature Books. The first page of each Signature Book is a PDF page that describes its contents.

Towns in Upper Silesia besides Ratibor for which Jewish Signature Books have been digitized include Beuthen [today: Bytom, Poland]; Chorzow [today: Chorzów, Poland]; Dzietzkowitz [today: Dziećkowice, district of Mysłowice, Poland]; Gleiwitz [today: Gliwice, Poland]; Gollasowitz [today; Golasowice, Poland]; Kattowitz [Katowice, Poland]; Königshütte [today: Royal Huta, Poland]; Myslowitz [today: Mysłowice, Poland]; Pless [today: Pszczyna, Poland]; Rybnik [today: Rybnik, Poland]; and [Tarnowskie Góry, Poland];

For my purposes, Ratibor Signature Books, 1693, 1695, 1699, and 1700 were most informative.

I dub my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Nathan Bruck (1770-1836) the paterfamilias of the Ratibor line of the Bruck family. As recently as Post 149, Part 1, I wrote it was indeterminately estimated he was born in 1762 or 1770 and died in 1832 or 1836. Thanks to a death register listing I found in Signature Book 1699, I now know his exact death date, the 29th of June 1836, when he was 66 years of age (Figure 4), meaning he obviously was born in 1770. This was the most exciting find in the Signature Books from Ratibor.

Figure 4. The death register listing found in Ratibor Signature Book 1699 showing my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Nathan Bruck died on the 29th of June 1836 at the age of 66

I will devote an upcoming post to the scant but tantalizing clues I’ve collected about Jacob Nathan Bruck, including the number of children I can firmly document that he and his wife, Marianne Aufrecht, begat. Various ancestral trees I’ve found on ancestry.com and in MyHeritage claim that his first offspring was a daughter named Helene Bruck who was purportedly married to an Itzig Mendel Guttman Aufrecht. Serendipitously, I also found Helene Aufrecht, née Bruck’s, death register listing showing she died in 1838 at the age of 68 (Figure 5), meaning that like Jacob Bruck she too was born in 1770. They could conceivably have been twins but were more likely cousins. While it’s possible Jacob’s first daughter was indeed named Helene, something I’ve not yet found evidence of, Helene Aufrecht was assuredly not Jacob’s daughter and Itzig Aufrecht was certainly not Jacob’s son-in-law. Intriguingly, Helene gave birth to a child in 1815 at the improbable age of 45. (Figure 6)

Figure 5. The death register listing found in Ratibor Signature Book 1699 for Marianne Aufrecht, née Bruck, married to Itzig Mendel Guttman Aufrecht, showing she died on the 20th of May 1838 at the age of 68

Figure 6. Birth register listing showing that Helene Bruck and Itzig Mendel Guttman Aufrecht had a boy named Nathan born on the 2nd of September 1815 when Helene would have been 45 years old

I often remind readers that some information found on family trees in ancestry.com, MyHeritage, and Geneanet with respect to dates of vital events and names and numbers of offspring is notoriously unreliable. Unverified vital data is often cloned from existing trees by people seeking to build their own genealogical charts. I typically reject much of this data unless it’s backed up by primary source documentation, particularly as it relates to individuals born in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when records on Jews living then are sparse.

It is not my intention to review all the personally intriguing discoveries I made in perusing the digitized Silius Radicum records from Ratibor, since they are of scant interest to most readers. However, several things stand out that are worth briefly discussing.

Even if the Ratibor records in Silius Radicum themselves are unique, some of the data was previously known to me from similar documents in which the same data was recorded. For example, three of the paterfamilias Jacob Nathan Bruck’s oldest daughters were married, respectively, in 1814 (Wilhelmine Bruck), 1817 (Dorothea Babette Bruck), and 1822 (Fanny Bruck). I previously discovered this information on LDS Family History Center Microfilm 1184449 where a register documenting their marriages and family relationships was found. (Figures 7-8) On the typed Jewish Records Indexing-Poland database, much of the same information is recorded, presumably copied from the Mormon Church’s films. (Figure 9)

Figure 7. Page from LDS FHC Microfilm 1184449 showing that two of Jacob Nathan Bruck’s daughters got married, Wilhelmine on the 7th of March 1814 and Dorothea Babette Bruck on the 25th of February 1817

Figure 8. Another register page from LDS FHC Microfilm 1184449 showing that another of Jacob Nathan Bruck’s daughters, Fanny, got married on the 26th of November 1822

Figure 9. Page from the Jewish Records Indexing-Poland database listing the marriages of Jacob Nathan Bruck’s three eldest daughters

In Silius Radicum I discovered register pages for the same three marriages, with family relationships similarly noted. (Figures 10-11) However, the handwriting is noticeably different and the registers dissimilar in appearance, meaning the information was recorded in duplicate and likely stored separately. Clearly, the records that Silius Radicum digitized were never photographed by the Mormon Church. Obviously, this is noteworthy because it means the possibility exists that additional records for Jews from Ratibor and Upper Silesia may eventually materialize.

Figure 10. Register page from Signature Book 1699 listing the marriages of two of Jacob Nathan Bruck’s elder daughters, Wilhelmine in 1814, and Dorothea Babette Bruck in 1817, written in a different hand than the registers on FHC Microfilm 1184449

Figure 11. Another register page from Signature Book 1699 listing the marriage of Fanny Bruck in 1822, again written in a different hand

One of my ancestors from Ratibor through whom I’m related to most of my cousins in America because of his fecundity was the brewer Markus Braun (1817-1870). On LDS Family History Center Microfilm 1184449, the birth register shows he had twelve children with his first wife, Caroline Spiegel, then another two with his second wife, Johanna Goldstein, the last of whom was born after he died and named after him. Signature Book 1693, while only covering the years 1851 through 1855, includes copies of the actual birth certificates for several of Markus’ children with his first wife. In Signature Book 1700, I learned that Markus and Caroline were married on the 25th of August 1846 (Figure 12), and discovered they had a daughter named Sara, the first of 13 rather than only 12 children, on the 28th of October 1846 (Figure 13), shortly after they wed.

Figure 12. Register page from Signature Book 1700 indicating that Markus Braun and his first wife got married on the 25th of August 1846

Figure 13. Another register page from Signature Book 1700 showing that Markus Braun and Caroline Spiegel gave birth to their first child Sara on the 28th of October 1846, several months after they married

Again, the dates of birth of most of Markus’ children was previously known to me from Microfilm 1184449. What is new based on the Signature Books from Ratibor are the actual birth certificates for several of Markus and Caroline’s children and the discovery of a 13^th child with his first wife. This again proves that the documents digitized by Silius Radicum were not previously photographed by the Mormon Church and likely have not been closely studied by people investigating their ancestors from Ratibor.

One of the most extensive records I discovered was a 14-page marriage folio in Signature Book 1695 which includes Ratibor marriages from only 1869 and 1870. This brief period happens to coincide with when Alma Braun (1851-1919) (Figure 14), one of Markus’ daughters, got married to Adolph Schück (1840-1916) (Figure 15) on the 1^st of September 1870, and is their marriage file. One of my German cousins translated and interpreted the document for me. Suffice it to say, the pages contain an astonishing amount of ancestral information, including the precise date Markus Braun died, the 4^th of February 1870, at the age of 52; clearly, he died some months before Alma got married. Additionally, had I not already known this information, the file would have allowed me to work out family relationships which are recorded in detail.

Figure 14. Markus and Caroline Braun’s daughter Alma (1851-1919)

Figure 15. Adolph Schück (1840-1916) whom Alma Braun married on the 1st of September 1870; Adolph was the co-owner of the Zuckerfabrik, sugar factory, in Woinowitz, outside of Ratibor

As I mentioned above, there is some overlap between the Jewish records for Ratibor available online through familysearch and the newer stash found in Silius Radicum. For example, all the offspring of Jacob Nathan Bruck’s three eldest daughters married, respectively, in 1814, 1817, and 1822, are found in both databases. By contrast, for my great-great-grandparents Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 16) and Charlotte Marle (1809-1861) (Figure 17), the Silius Radicum records only include eight of their nine known children; the ninth one can only be found on LDS Microfilm 1184449.

Figure 16. My great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863)

Figure 17. My great-great-grandmother, Charlotte Bruck, née Marle (1809-1861)

In closing, I admit that I do not know whether the Jewish and non-Jewish vital records the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society has digitized are widely known and/or used by ancestral researchers. I can only speak for myself and acknowledge that I was unaware of them. I hope for others who are in my situation that they may discover some hidden “gems” like I did.

POST 113: CHIUNE SUGIHARA, JAPANESE IMPERIAL CONSUL IN LITHUANIA DURING WWII, “RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS”

Note: In this brief post, I discuss how while researching the fate of my great-granduncle’s 14 or 15 children I learned about a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, who saved the lives of upwards of 6,000 Polish and Lithuanian Jews following the Nazi invasion of Poland and the beginning of WWII.

Figure 1. My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck (1834-1892)

Figure 2. My great-grandmother Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924)

Figure 3. Entrance to the family hotel in Ratibor, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel

My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck (1834-1892) (Figure 1) and his wife Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924) (Figure 2), were the second-generation owners of the family hotel in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. (Figure 3) Fedor Bruck and his eight known siblings, born between 1831 and 1849, were the children of Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 4) and Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861) (Figure 5), seven of them believed to have lived into adulthood.

Figure 4. My great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863)

Figure 5. My great-great-grandmother Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861)

The oldest child was Oskar Bruck (1831-1892) married to Mathilde Bruck née Preiss (1839-1922) with whom she had, by my last count, 14 or 15 children born between 1859 and 1877. The sources of this information are two family trees (Figure 6); the Jewish birth register listings from the Church of Latter-day Saints Microfilm No. 1184449 for Ratibor, where most of the children are known to have been born; and ancestral information on MyHeritage. (The names of the children, their birth and death dates, and the sources of the data are summarized on a table at the end of this post). Aware that several of their children were born during the Kulturkampf, the conflict from 1872 to 1878 between the government of Prussia and the Roman Catholic Church, I even asked Paul Newerla, my historian friend from Racibórz, to check the civil birth records at the Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz”) for their children born during this period, to no avail.

Figure 6. The Oskar Bruck-Mathilde Preiss family page from the “Pinkus Family Collection 1500s-1994, 1725-1994,” archived at the Leo Baeck Institute showing the names and some vital data on 12 “kinder” (children) out of 14 or 15 thought to have existed

Realizing that any of Oskar and Mathilde’s surviving great-grandchildren would be my third cousins, I recently tried to determine whether any of their children have living descendants to whom I would be related by blood. Surprisingly, after having conducted a thorough search, I have been unable to find a single living third cousin (i.e., my generation), second cousin once removed (i.e., previous generation), or third cousin once removed (younger generation) descended from any of those 14 or 15 children. I did not include any of Oskar and Mathilde’s children’s spouses where the divorced or surviving spouse remarried and had children who would not be blood relatives. I have tentatively been able to track one of their children, Dr. Erich Bruck (b. 1865) to, of all places, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, and am currently scrounging more information to hopefully bring an intriguing future post to regular readers. The youngest daughter Emma Naumann née Bruck (1877-1942) and her husband Ernst Naumann (1877-1942) were both murdered in Theresienstadt, but otherwise all their other children are believed to have died of natural causes.

What is surprising to me given the enormous collection of family photos I own or that have been shared with me by different branches of my family is that I have not a single photo of my great-granduncle or great-grandaunt nor any of their children. I’m hoping that a reader of this post may recognize an ancestral connection and contact me so I may learn more about this offshoot of my family.

Continuing. As often happens when I embark on searches of remote ancestors is that I make unexpected discoveries, such as the one which forms the basis for this brief Blog post. And truth be told this fortuitous finding is much more significant than unearthing another distant cousin. As an aside, I would never pretend that my ancestors are any more interesting or accomplished than those of readers. In writing about my predecessors, I am more interested in describing the too often tragic social and historic context in which they led their lives to see what lessons and modern-day parallels can be drawn. As Shakespeare wrote in “The Tempest,” “what’s past is prologue.” In other words, history sets the context for the present.

As mentioned above, the table below summarizes the birth and death dates, where known, of Oskar and Mathilde’s children. One of their daughters, Charlotte Bruck (1866-1909) married a man named Rudolf Falk (1857-1912) with whom she had one daughter, Käthe Falk. This is the only one of Oskar and Mathilde’s descendants I’ll directly discuss, one of their granddaughters.

Through the documents I found on ancestry.com, Käthe Falk had already caught my attention. Her first husband was Wilhelm Sinasohn (b. 1880-d. unknown), and her second husband was Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn (1888-1967); I assumed her husbands were related to one another. A January 1925 notation in the upper righthand corner of Käthe and Wilhelm’s 1911 marriage certificate (Figures 7a-c) indicates they were divorced on the 29^th of November 1924; Käthe got remarried on the 11^th of February 1926 (Figures 8a-c) to Erhard Sinasohn, who I would later learn was her first husband’s cousin. Inasmuch as I can determine, Käthe had two sons, Robert Nast and Werner Rudolf Nast (in America, Warren Roger Nast) with her first husband, and none by her second; Nast was the maiden name of their paternal grandmother.

Figure 7a. Cover page of Käthe Falk and Wilhelm Sinasohn’s 1911 marriage certificate

Figure 7b. Page 1 of Käthe Falk and Wilhelm Sinasohn’s 1911 marriage certificate containing a notation in the upper righthand corner stating their divorce became final on the 29th of November 1924

Figure 7c. Page 2 of Käthe Falk and Wilhelm Sinasohn’s 1911 marriage certificate

Figure 8a. Cover page of Käthe Falk and Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn’s 1926 marriage certificate

Figure 8b. Page 1 of Käthe Falk and Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn’s 1926 marriage certificate

Figure 8c. Page 2 of Käthe Falk and Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn’s 1926 marriage certificate

A continuing search on ancestry.com yielded an astonishing document for both Käthe (Figure 9) and her husband (Figure 10), simply a cover sheet entitled “in the Lithuania, Jews Saved by Passports from the Japanese Diplomat Chiune Sugihara, 1940”; the page showed both were Luxembourgers, and that each had been issued a visa dated the 31^st of July 1940 signed by a Japanese consul. Having never heard of Chiune Sugihara, I scurried to learn about him.

Figure 9. Page from ancestry.com for Käthe Sinasohn titled “in the Lithuania, Jews Saved by Passports from the Japanese Diplomat Chiune Sugihara, 1940” showing she was a Luxembourger and was issued a Visa dated the 31st of July 1940 by Chiune Sugihara

Figure 10. Page from ancestry.com for Käthe’s husband, Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn, showing he too was issued a Visa dated the 31st of July 1940 by Chiune Sugihara

Chiune Sugihara (Figure 11), I would find out, was a Japanese diplomat who during WWII helped Jews living in Lithuania leave, including Jews who had made their way there after the war began. Let me provide some brief historic context. WWII began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. This caused hundreds of thousands of Jews and other Polish citizens to flee eastward ahead of the advancing German troops; many displaced persons found at least temporary safety in Lithuania. Once there, however, their options for escape were limited and required diplomatic visas to cross international borders. One route involved traveling through Asia, but it required a combination of permits issued by acquiescent foreign envoys trying to address the refugee crisis. However, it required declaring a final destination, with the Dutch Caribbean Island of Curaçao being suggested.

One diplomat willing to help Jews was the Japanese Imperial Consul Chiune Sugihara, the first Japanese diplomat posted to Lithuania. Absent any clear instructions from his government, Sugihara took it upon himself to issue 10-day transit visas to Japan to hundreds of Jewish refugees supposedly possessing destination visas for Curaçao. By the time he received a reply from his own government, he’d already issued 1800 visas. The Foreign Ministry in Japan told him then that individuals to whom he’d issued these visas were really headed to Canada and the United States but had arrived in Japan without money or final destination visas.

Sugihara acknowledged to his superiors he’d issued visas to people who’d not completed all the necessary arrangements for destination visas but explained that Japan was the only transit country available for people going in the direction of the United States and Canada, and that Japanese visas were required to leave the Soviet Union. Despite orders from his government to desist, Sugihara continued issuing visas, even going so far as to sign his name on blank stamped sheets, hoping the rest could be filled in; he was apparently still passing out the visas as he boarded the train for Berlin where he’d been reassigned. At the end of August 1940, the Soviets shuttered all diplomatic consulates, including the Japanese mission, but by then, Sugihara had managed to save thousands of Jews in just a few weeks. For his humanitarian efforts in 1984 Yad Vashem awarded him the title of “Righteous Among the Nations.”

Many of the Jews who managed to escape through Lithuania were either Jewish residents from there or Jews from Poland. Sugihara is estimated to have helped more than 6,000 Jewish refugees escape to Japanese territory. And among those to whom Sugihara issued visas are the granddaughter of Oskar and Mathilde Bruck and her husband. Among the pertinent documents I found on ancestry.com was a “Manifest of Alien Passengers” for the “SS President Taft” with Käthe and Erhard Sinasohn’s names showing they arrived with one of her sons, Werner Rudolf Nast, in San Francisco from Kobe, Japan on the 8^th of February 1941 (Figures 12a-b), slightly more than six months after receiving their visas signed by Chiune Sugihara. Coincidentally, following their escape from Europe and their arrival in the United States, Käthe and Erhard settled in Forest Hills, Queens, the neighborhood adjacent Kew Gardens, Queens, where I was raised.

Figure 12a. Page 1 of the passenger manifest bearing Käthe Falk and Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn’s names, as well as the name of Werner Rudolf Nast, her second son, showing they departed Kobe, Japan on January 25, 1941

Figure 12b. Page 2 of the passenger manifest with Käthe Falk, Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn, and Werner Rudolf Nast’s names showing they arrived in San Francisco on February 8, 1941 and were met by Robert Nast, Käthe’s first son with Wilhelm Sinasohn-Nast

One final fitting note about this valorous Japanese diplomat. On his tombstone is engraved his first name, “Chiune,” the Japanese word which just so happens to translate into “a thousand new lives.”

VITAL STATISTICS FOR OSKAR & MATHILDE BRUCK AND THEIR CHILDREN

NAME (relationship)	VITAL EVENT	DATE	PLACE	SOURCE OF DATA

Oskar Bruck (self)	Birth	8 October 1831	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
	Marriage	29 October 1858	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (marriages)
	Death	6 April 1892	Berlin, Germany	Berlin, Germany death certificate
Mathilde Preiss (wife)	Birth	20 October 1839	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
	Marriage	29 October 1858	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (marriages)
	Death	23 February 1922	Berlin, Germany	Standesamt Berlin XI, Berlin, Germany death certificate
Richard Bruck (son)	Birth	17 August 1859	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Richard Bruck (son)	Death	Unknown
Georg Bruck (son)	Birth	21 July 1860	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Georg Bruck (son)	Death	2 April 1937	Berlin, Germany	Berlin, Germany death certificate
Carl Bruck (son)	Birth	10 May 1862	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Carl Bruck (son)	Death	Unknown
Samuel Bruck (son)	Birth	17 July 1863	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Samuel Bruck (son)	Death	Unknown
Franz Samuel Bruck (son)	Birth	28 September 1864	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Franz Samuel Bruck (son)	Death	19 February 1924	Berlin, Germany	Landesarchiv Berlin, Standesamt Charlottenburg I, Sterberegister, 1921-1931
Erich Bruck (son)	Birth	31 August 1865	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Erich Bruck (son)	Death	Unknown	Argentina ??
Charlotte Bruck (daughter)	Birth	18 September 1866	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Charlotte Bruck (daughter)	Death	7 December 1909	Berlin, Germany	Charlottenburg I, Berlin, Germany death certificate
Margaretha Bruck (daughter)	Birth	19 October 1868	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Margaretha Bruck (daughter)	Death	18 February 1900	Frankfurt am Main, Germany	Frankfurt, Germany death certificate
Gertrud Bruck (daughter)	Birth	9 June 1870	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Gertrud Bruck (daughter)	Death	26 July 1871	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)-notation of death on birth register
Anna Bruck (daughter)	Birth	4 July 1870	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Anna Bruck (daughter)	Death	8 September 1895	Neustadt, Upper Silesia, Germany [today: Prudnik, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Oskar Bruck & Mathilde Preiss)
Martin Bruck (son)	Birth	22 July 1873	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Martin Bruck (son)	Death	Unknown
Marie Bruck (daughter)	Birth	29 June 1874	Plania, Kreiss Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
	Death	20 February 1913	Leipzig, Germany	Borchardt-Pincus-Peiser Family Website (MyHeritage)
Bertha Bruck (daughter)	Birth	5 November 1876	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Oskar Bruck & Mathilde Preiss)
Bertha Bruck (daughter)	Death	July 1949	Santiago, Chile	MyHeritage Family Tree
Emma Bruck (daughter)	Birth	20 October 1877	Berlin, Germany	Standesamt Berlin VI, Berlin, Germany birth certificate
Emma Bruck (daughter)	Death	15 October 1942	Theresienstadt Ghetto, Czech Republic	Theresienstadt death certificate (holocaust.cz)
Selma Bruck (daughter)	Birth	Unknown		Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Oskar Bruck & Mathilde Preiss)
Selma Bruck (daughter)	Death	Unknown

POST 95: DISCOVERING THE FATE OF MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S NIECE, CHARLOTTE BRUCK

Note: In this post, I discuss the sad fate of Charlotte Bruck, my great-grandfather Fedor Bruck’s niece, a victim in this case not of the Holocaust but of a psychiatric disorder.

Figure 1. My great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), first generation owner of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]

Figure 2. My great-great-grandmother Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861)

My great-grandfather, Fedor Bruck (1834-1892), was one of at least nine offspring of Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 1) and Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861). (Figure 2) For context, Samuel Bruck and Fedor Bruck (Figure 3) were, respectively the first- and second-generation owners of the Bruck family hotel in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. (Figure 4) The youngest of Samuel and Charlotte Bruck’s children and Fedor Bruck’s youngest sibling was Wilhelm Bruck (1849-1907). (Figure 5)

Figure 3. My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck (1834-1892), second generation owner of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel

Figure 4. Front entrance to the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel around 1920-1930

Figure 5. My great-granduncle Wilhelm Bruck (1849-1907), youngest sibling of Fedor Bruck, married to the baroness Margarethe “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr (1860-1946) whose surname he took

Figure 6. Baroness Margarethe “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr (1860-1946)

Wilhelm married a baroness named Margarete “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr (Figure 6), and because of the prestige the von Koschembahr name endowed, he adopted her surname, initially in hyphenated manner as Bruck-von Koschembahr; eventually upon some family members arrival in America the Bruck surname was dropped. Wilhelm Bruck and Margarete von Koschembahr had five children, including Charlotte “Lotte” Bruck (Figure 7), niece of my great-grandfather Fedor Bruck and subject of this post.

Figure 7. Charlotte Bruck (1886-1974), daughter of Wilhelm Bruck and Margarete “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr, in 1914 or 1915 (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

As a brief aside, Charlotte’s older brother and the oldest of Wilhelm and Margarete’s children was Gerhard Bruck von Koschembahr (1885-1961) (Figure 8), who emigrated to America in October 1938 with his wife and ten of their thirteen children (Figure 9), one of whom is still living. While I am in contact with descendants of virtually all other branches of my family whom I have written about in my family history blog, I have not yet established contact with this wing of my extended family. If precedent is any indication, descendants of the von Koschembahrs may in time stumble upon my blog and contact me.

Figure 8. Gerhard Bruck von Koschembahr (1885-1961) & his wife Hilda née von Zeidlitz and Neukirch (1891-1954) with their thirteen children in Lugano, Switzerland in the 1930’s; Gerhard was the oldest of Charlotte Bruck’s siblings who dropped the “Bruck” portion of his surname prior to arriving in America

Figure 9. New York Times article dated October 2, 1938 mentioning Gerhard von Koschembahr’s arrival in America with his wife and ten of their thirteen children

With upwards of 900 people in my family tree, which I use primarily to orient myself to the people whom I discuss in my Blog, I have never previously written about Wilhelm Bruck (von Koschembahr). Still, because Charlotte Bruck is in my tree, one genealogist stumbled upon her name and contacted me asking whether I know the fate of Charlotte’s first husband, Walter Edward Stavenhagen. The inquiry, it so happens, came from Charlotte’s granddaughter, Brenda Jay Dunn née Lorenzen (Figure 10), and I explained I have been unable to discover Walter’s fate. Not unexpectedly, Jay told me much more about Charlotte’s family than I could tell her and provided family photographs, which is always immensely satisfying.

Figure 10. Jay Dunn née Lorenzen, Charlotte Bruck and her first husband Walter Edward Stavenhagen’s granddaughter, in 2018 in La Jolla, California

Prior to being contacted by Jay Dunn through ancestry on June 24, 2018, I had already uncovered multiple documents related to Charlotte Bruck, although my understanding of her three marriages and life was rather disjointed. Rather than try and inaccurately reconstruct what I already knew at the time, let me briefly highlight major events in her life.

Charlotte (Lottchen, Lotte, Lottel) Bruck got married for the first time on the 3^rd of May 1906 in Berlin to the Protestant landowner Walter Edward Stavenhagen (Figures 11a-b) who owned an estate in Eichwerder in the district of Soldin, Germany [today: Myślibórz, Poland]. Though both of Charlotte’s parents were of Jewish descent, on her wedding certificate, Charlotte is identified as Protestant, indicating she and/or her parents had converted. Following her marriage to Walter at age 19, they moved to Soldin, and Charlotte gave birth to two sons there: Frederick Wilhelm Stavenhagen (1907-1997) and Hans Joachim Stavenhagen (1909-1947). (Figures 12-13a-b)

Figure 11a. Page 1 of Charlotte Bruck and Walter Edward Stavenhagen’s May 3rd, 1906 marriage certificate indicating they were married in Berlin and were Protestant

Figure 11b. Page 2 of Charlotte Bruck and Walter Edward Stavenhagen’s May 3rd, 1906 marriage certificate with Charlotte and Walter’s original signatures

Figure 12. Charlotte and Walter’s two young sons, Frederick Wilhelm Stavenhagen (1907-1997) and Hans Joachim Stavenhagen (1909-1947) (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

Figure 13a. Birth certificate of Hans Joachim Stavenhagen, Jay Dunn née Lorenzen’s father, showing he was born on the 13th of February 1909 in Soldin, Germany [today: Myślibórz, Poland] (document courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

Figure 13b. Translation of Han’s Joachim Stavenhagen’s birth certificate (document courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

Charlotte first became ill following the birth of her second son, possibly the result of postpartum depression or a bi-polar disorder. Charlotte’s mother, Margarethe von Koschembahr Bruck (Figure 14), came and removed her from Walter Stavenhagen’s estate in 1909, whereupon she was briefly hospitalized in Schierke, located in the Harz Mountains of northern Germany. In a diary entry dated the 19^th of November 1909, Charlotte’s maternal grandmother, Amalie Mockrauer von Koschembahr (1834-1918) (Figures 15-16), describes her granddaughter’s circumstances at the time:

Figure 14. Charlotte Stavenhagen née Bruck’s mother, Margarete “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr, in 1938 at age 78

Figure 15. Charlotte Stavenhagen née Bruck’s grandmother, Amalie von Koschembahr née Mockrauer, with Charlotte’s mother, Margarete “Grete” Mathilde von Koschembahr, in 1863

Figure 16. Charlotte Stavenhagen née Bruck’s grandmother, Amalie von Koschembahr née Mockrauer, around 1904 at age 70

GERMAN ENTRY

“Ich bin furchtbar traurig über das Fehlschlagen von Lottchens Friedensversuch. Nachdem sie in Eichwerder (nördlich Mysliborz) mit den besten Vorsätzen und mit festem Muthe eintraf, sich in ihr Schicksal und ihre Pflichten zu fügen, benahm sich Walter abermals unglaublich lieblos, rücksichtslos und roh, so, daß es nach kurzer Zeit für Lotte unmöglich war Stand zu halten. Soweit mir berichtet wurde, ist alles geschehen, um es dem Mann leicht zu machen in Frieden zu leben, allein es war vergeblich. Krank und gebrochen mußte meine arme Lottel ihre Heimath für immer verlassen, nur begleitet von ihrem kleinen Fritzchen, den armen kleinen Hans gab der Mann nicht heraus. Mein armes Gretchen holte ihr Kind, Marianne und Kurt, die von großer Liebe und Treue sind, begleiteten sie. Lotte flüchtete nach Schierke (Ort im Harz), wohin ihr Gretchen nachfolgen mußte, da Lotte sehr krank ist. Welcher Schmerz ist es doch schon wegen der kleinen mutterbedürftigen Kinder! Welche große Sünde hat der bösartige Mann auf sich geladen! Mein lieber allmächtiger Gott hilf uns in dieser Noth!

Das alles muß ich so still für mich mittragen, denn mit Tilla kann ich mich nicht aussprechen – sie hat eine andere Anschauung vom Unglück der Menschen – sie kann froh darüber sein, während ich zwar ergeben aus Gottes Hand alles nehme, aber tief traurig an meine unglücklichen Kinder denke. Seitdem Martha von Schmidt der Tod von uns genommen hat, habe ich Niemanden, mit dem ich ein tröstliches Wort austauschen kann. Ach, wieviel Schwaches giebt es auf der Welt – der Kampf hört hier nicht auf und so sehnt man sich nach der ewigen Reise. –Mit Tilchen kann ich mich darüber deshalb nicht verstehen, weil sie glaubt das Unglück, welches der Herr schickt, soll die Menschen bessern und seine Gnade und Liebe erkennen lassen.”

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

“I am terribly saddened by the failure of Lottchen’s attempt at peace. After she arrived in Eichwerder (today north of Myślibórz, Poland) with the best of intentions and with firm courage to submit to her fate and duties, Walter again behaved in an unbelievably unloving, inconsiderate, and crude manner, so that after a short time it was impossible for Lotte to stand firm. As far as I was told, everything was done to make it easy for the man to live in peace, but it was in vain. Sick and broken, my poor Lottel had to leave her home forever, accompanied only by her little Fritzchen (Note: Charlotte’s older son Frederick); poor little Hans was not released by the man. My poor Gretchen (Note: Charlotte’s mother, Margarethe von Koschembahr) fetched her child, and Marianne and Kurt (Note: Charlotte’s younger sister and brother-in-law, Marianne & Kurt Polborn), who are of great love and loyalty, accompanied her. Lotte fled to Schierke (a place in the Harz Mountains in northern Germany), where Gretchen had to follow her, since Lotte was very ill. What a pain it is already because of the little children in need of a mother! What a great sin the wicked man has brought upon himself! My dear Almighty God help us in this distress!

I have to bear all this so quietly for myself, because I cannot talk to Tilla (Note: Tilla, Tilchen, was Margarethe von Koschembahr’s sister, Mathilde von Koschembahr) – she has a different view of people’s misfortune – she can be happy about it, while I humbly take everything from God’s hand, but think deeply sad about my unhappy children. Since death took Martha von Schmidt (Note: a friend of Amalie von Koschembahr, Charlotte’s grandmother) from us, I have no one with whom I can exchange a comforting word. Oh, how much weakness there is in the world – the struggle does not end here and so one longs for the eternal journey. I can’t get along with Tilchen because she believes that the misfortune the Lord sends should make people better and recognize His grace and love.”

Walter and Charlotte’s marriage certificate has a notation in the upper right-hand corner confirming they were divorced in Berlin on the 19^th of May 1910. (Figure 17) Atypical of the time, Charlotte was granted custody of both of her boys because spousal abuse was suspected, as the diary entry above suggests.

Figure 17. German notation in the upper right-hand corner of Charlotte and Walter Stavenhagen’s marriage certificate noting they got divorced on the 19th of May 1910

According to family history, following her hospitalization in the Harz Mountains, Charlotte lived with her mother in Dresden, Germany until she remarried Karl Eduard Michaelis in 1913, a marriage which lasted only two years. At around this time, Charlotte again showed signs of mental illness, so her family sent her to America in 1915, to a hospital located in Minnesota; her two sons accompanied her to America. Her stay there was relatively brief because she soon moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where she met her third husband, Ernest Gustav Lorenzen (1876-1951), through the German Society there, whom she married around 1916. Ernest Lorenzen was a law professor at Yale University; he would eventually adopt both of Charlotte’s sons by Walter Stavenhagen, and they would take the Lorenzen surname. The 1920 U.S. Federal Census indicates Ernest and Charlotte living with her two sons in New Haven, Connecticut, (Figures 18-19) although by 1930, only Ernest and Charlotte’s older son Frederick lived together. (Figure 20) By 1940, Frederick was married with two daughters and his younger brother was living with them. (Figure 21)

Figure 18. 1920 U.S. Federal Census showing Ernest Gustav Lorenzen living in New Haven, Connecticut with his wife Charlotte and his two adopted sons, Frederick and Hans

Figure 19. Charlotte Bruck with her two sons, Frederick and Hans (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

Figure 20. By 1930 the U.S. Federal Census shows Ernest Gustav Lorenzen living only with his older adopted son, Frederick

Figure 21. The 1940 U.S. Federal Census indicates that Frederick Lorenzen has established his own household in Stamford, Connecticut with his wife and two daughters, and that his younger brother Hans (John) is living with them

Jay Dunn shared a remarkable letter with me dated 1940 written by the Superintendent of the Fairfield State Hospital in Connecticut where Charlotte Lorenzen née Bruck was permanently institutionalized as of around April 1939 until her death in June 1974. To me, this letter is noteworthy for two reasons. One, it is incredibly detailed as to Charlotte’s mental condition and institutionalization over the years, information I would assume would be confidential. And two, the letter was written at the request of Charlotte’s younger son, Hans Joachim Lorenzen, known in America as John Jay Lorenzen; it seems that John’s future father-in-law, William Sweet, sought a medical opinion as to the possibility of Charlotte’s mental condition being hereditary prior to his daughter Brenda’s marriage to John.

According to the 1940 letter, following Charlotte’s treatment in Minnesota and her relocation to New Haven, she appears to have been well until around 1921, then suffered another relapse from which she again improved by 1922; after 1925, however, she was institutionalized through the remainder of her life. While originally diagnosed with Manic Depressive Psychosis by 1928 she had become delusional. Over time, Charlotte’s original diagnosis was altered to Dementia Praecox, Paranoid Type, whose prognosis was not as good. Today, Dementia Praecox would more generally be referred to as schizophrenia. The Superintendent from the Fairfield State Hospital concluded as follows in his response to John Jay Lorenzen:

“Summing it up then in another manner I might say that if you consider yourself a normal individual in good physical health with no emotional problems which cannot be readily solved, I would not hesitate to contemplate marriage and would not entertain any undue fears that my children might inherit the illness of my parent. Unless one can definitely assure oneself that his heredity is too heavily tainted, I think one would do himself an injustice if he did not make every reasonable effort to live the kind of normal life to which everyone of us is certainly entitled.”

Ernst Lorenzen divorced Charlotte sometime after she was permanently institutionalized, and eventually got remarried. Charlotte’s older son Frederick (Figure 22-23) became a successful lawyer in New York and paid for his mother’s care throughout her life. Jay Dunn’s father, John Jay Lorenzen (Figure 24), obtained an MBA from Harvard around 1933, worked for a time as a stock broker for Smith Barney, then started a cola company called Zimba Kola (Figures 25-26) with a college friend. He was drafted in 1943, became an officer in the Navy (Figure 27), and was sent to the Pacific where he fought valiantly alongside General MacArthur in the battles of Okinawa and Leyte Gulf. He survived the war, only to commit suicide in 1947, likely from depression caused by PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Though Charlotte Bruck and her sons came to America well before Hitler rose to power, her fate and that of her younger son were indeed sad tales.

Figure 22. Frederick Lorenzen as a teenager (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

Figure 23. Frederick Lorenzen at his brother’s wedding on the 26th of September 1940 (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

Figure 24. Hans Joachim Lorenzen, known in America as John Jay Lorenzen, on his wedding day on the 26th of September 1940 (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

Figure 25. Zimba Kola bottle from the cola company John Jay Lorenzen established

Figure 26. Jay Dunn as a three-year-old child holding a bottle of Zimba Kola (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

Figure 27. John Jay Lorenzen in his Navy uniform at age 33 (photo courtesy of Jay Dunn née Lorenzen)

One final fascinating anecdote. Gerhard Bruck von Koschembahr, Charlotte’s oldest brother mentioned above, like his father, also married a baroness, Hilda Alexandra von Zeidlitz and Neukirch (1891-1954). (Figures 28-29) Hilda’s mother, Cornelia Carnochan Roosevelt, married on the 3^rd of February 1889 to Baron Clement Zeidlitz, was a distant relative of President Theodore Roosevelt. (see Figure 9) It is likely that Gerhard Bruck von Koschembahr was able to “disguise” his Jewish ancestry by dropping the Bruck surname. Thus, because of Gerhard’s wife’s connection to the Roosevelts, they sponsored Gerhard’s entrance into America in 1938 with his family at a time when many Jewish families trying to reach America by ship were turned away. The most notorious ship turned away from landing in the United States in the lead up to WWII was the German liner St. Louis carrying 937 passengers, almost all Jewish; the ship was forced to return to Europe, and more than a quarter of the refuges died in the Holocaust.

Figure 28. Wedding photo of Gerhard Bruck von Koschembahr and Hilda Alexandra von Zeidlitz, married on the 21st of March 1914 (photo courtesy of Kurt Polborn)

Figure 29. Headstone of William C. Roosevelt, alongside which Gerhard (Bruck) von Koschembahr and his wife Hilda Roosevelt von Koschembahr are interred

VITAL STATISTICS FOR CHARLOTTE BRUCK & HER IMMEDIATE FAMILY

NAME	EVENT	DATE	PLACE	SOURCE

Charlotte Bruck (self)	Birth	17 August 1886	Berlin, Germany	Marriage Certificate
	Marriage to Walter Edward Stavenhagen	3 May 1906	Berlin, Germany	Marriage Certificate
	Divorce from Walter Edward Stavenhagen	19 May 1910	Berlin, Germany	Notation on marriage certificate
	Marriage to Karl Eduard Michaelis	20 August 1913	Dresden, Germany	Marriage Certificate
	Divorce from Karl Eduard Michaelis	~1915	Dresden, Germany	“Stavenhagen-Bruck-Von Koschembahr Family History” (Jay Dunn)
	Marriage to Ernest Gustav Lorenzen	~1916		1940 letter from Fairfield State Hospital in Connecticut describing Charlotte’s mental history
	Death	5 June 1974	Stamford, Connecticut	Connecticut Death Index
Wilhelm Bruck (father)	Birth	23 February 1949	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Berlin marriage certificate
	Marriage	14 September 1884	Berlin, Germany	Berlin marriage certificate
	Death	15 February 1907	Berlin, Germany	Berlin death certificate
Margarethe Mathilde von Koschembahr (mother)	Birth	28 November 1860	Lissa, Posen, Germany [today: Poznan, Poland]	von Koschembahr family tree
	Marriage	14 September 1884	Berlin, Germany	Berlin marriage certificate
	Death	19 October 1946	Boston, Massachusetts	von Koschembahr family tree
Amalie Mockrauer (grandmother)	Birth	9 September 1834	Leschnitz, Germany [today: Leśnica, Poland]	15 April 1855 Baptism Certificate
	Marriage (to Leopold von Koschembahr)	26 September 1855	London, England	England & Wales Civil Registration Marriage Index
	Death	5 August 1918	Dresden, Germany	Dresden death certificate
Walter Edward Stavenhagen (first husband)	Birth	1 September 1876	Calais, France	1900 Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Germany Census
Walter Edward Stavenhagen (first husband)	Marriage	3 May 1906	Berlin, Germany	Marriage Certificate
Karl Eduard Michaelis (second husband)	Birth	4 January 1884	Berlin, Germany	Birth Certificate
	Marriage	20 August 1913	Dresden, Germany	Marriage Certificate
	Death (died as Carl Edward Midgard)	12 October 1953	Seattle, Washington	Washington Death Certificate
Ernest Gustav Lorenzen (third husband)	Birth	21 April 1876	Kiel, Germany	US Passport Application
	Marriage	~1916		1940 letter from Fairfield State Hospital in Connecticut describing Charlotte’s mental history
	Death	12 February 1951	San Francisco, California	California Death Index
Frederick Wilhelm Stavenhagen (son)	Birth	28 February 1907	Soldin, Germany [today: Myślibórz, Poland]	US Social Security Death Index
	Marriage (to Dorothy P. Walker)	30 June 1931	Portland, Maine	Maine Marriage Index
	Death (died as Frederick W. Lorenzen)	30 December 1997	Stamford, Connecticut	US Social Security Death Index
Hans Joachim Stavenhagen (son)	Birth	13 February 1909	Soldin, Germany [today: Myślibórz, Poland]	Soldin, Germany Birth Certificate
	Marriage (to Brenda Sweet)	17 September 1940	Staten Island, New York	New York Marriage License Index
	Death (died as John Jay Lorenzen)	24 Jun 1947	Greenwich, Connecticut	Connecticut Death Record

POST 89: EVIDENCE OF MY 18th & 19th CENTURIES MARLE ANCESTORS

Note: In this post, I discuss evidence of the Marle branch of my extended family from the late 18^th Century-early 19^th Century, which survives in the “Archiwum Panstwowe Oddzial Pszczyna,” State Archives Pszczyna [Poland] Branch, as well as in the Jewish cemetery that still exists there.

Figure 1. My father, Dr. Otto Bruck, and uncle, Dr. Fedor Bruck, winter 1934-35 in the Riesengebirge (Karkonosze), in southwestern Poland

My father, Dr. Otto Bruck (1907-1994) (Figure 1), had an indifferent if not dismissive attitude towards his ancestors and next of kin apart from his beloved sister Susanne Müller née Bruck (1904-1942), murdered in Auschwitz. By contrast, my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (1895-1982) (Figure 1), the oldest of my father’s siblings, was deeply interested in his forefathers. Upon my uncle’s death in 1982, my aunt gave me a copy of an abbreviated family “tree” my uncle had developed. (Figure 2) This includes the earliest mention I can recollect of the Marle branch of my family, specifically, “Wilhelm MARLE” who was married to “Reisel G. (=GRAETZER).” My uncle’s schematic tree provided no vital dates for the Marles.

Figure 2. A schematized family tree developed by my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck with the earliest mention of the Marle branch of my extended family

In time, I would learn from a German cousin that Wilhelm and Rosalie Marle’s headstones survive in the extant Jewish Cemetery in Pszczyna, Poland, formerly Pless, Prussia. During my and my wife’s 2014 visit to Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], our English-speaking Polish friend, Malgosia Ploszaj, took us the to their graves, approximately 35 miles distant. (Figure 3) Malgosia, who hails from nearby Rybnik, Poland, formerly Rybnick, Prussia, is ardently interested in the history of Jews in Silesia and works with local volunteers to restore and raise fallen Jewish headstones throughout the area. In 2014, only Wilhelm Marle’s headstone had been restored and reset, but subsequently, his wife’s headstone has also been raised. I include pictures here of their beautifully rehabilitated tombstones.

Figure 3. May 2014 photo of me standing by the raised headstone of Wilhelm Marle in the surviving Jewish Cemetery in Pszczyna, Poland

[Just a quick footnote. I have variously found Wilhelm Marle’s wife’s forename spelled as “Reisel,” “Roesel,” “Rosel,” “Raizel,” and “Rosalie.” I will primarily use “Rosalie” as this name appears on her tombstone.]

Let me very briefly digress to provide some context. The subject of Post 88 was my third great-aunt, Antonie Pauly née Marle, an illegitimate daughter of the Rosalie Marle née Graetzer buried in Pszczyna; as previously discussed, Antonie was humorously if not sarcastically referred to as the “Queen of Tost,” even though she was born in Pszczyna not Toszek, Poland as Tost is today known.

Because Wilhelm and Rosalie Marle’s headstones are the very earliest known to me of any ancestors and relate to individuals born in the late 18^th Century, I was particularly interested in learning more about them. Thus, I recently asked my friend, Ms. Madeleine Isenberg, affiliated as a volunteer with the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles, whether she could translate the Hebraic text on Wilhelm (Figures 4-6) and Rosalie Marle’s (Figures 7-9) headstones. Madeleine is fluent in Hebrew and is ardently interested in deciphering and interpreting Hebrew texts on headstones. Madeleine provided a beautiful translation and interpretation of the text on both tombstones.

Figure 4. Wilhelm Marle’s (1772-1846) tombstone

Figure 5. Transcription of text on Wilhelm Marle’s headstone

Figure 6. Translation of text on Wilhelm Marle’s headstone [courtesy of Madeleine Isenberg]

Figure 7. Rosalie Marle née Graetzer’s (1779 or 1780-1849) tombstone

Figure 8. Transcription of text on Rosalie Marle née Graetzer’s headstone

Figure 9. Translation of text on Rosalie Marle née Graetzer’s headstone [courtesy of Madeleine Isenberg]

A few points of clarification. “Kohen” is the Hebrew word for “priest,” thus, a member of the priestly class having certain rights and duties in the synagogue.

As to the reference that Wilhelm Marle’s father was a “chaver,” Madeleine explained that in today’s Hebrew, it would simply mean “friend,” but that at one time it was a sort of title. If a person studied at a yeshiva to gain the certification of a rabbi, it was with the intention he might serve a community as a rabbi or teacher. However, Madeleine found another “classification” of chaver in a paper entitled “Regulations of The Synagogue ‘Altneuschule’ In Prague In Their Historic Context” which I quote:

“In 18^th Century Germany, there were two degrees of rabbinical ordination: the higher degree, using the title ‘moreinu’—our teacher or guide—given to scholars who devoted all their time to Torah study even after marriage and intended to serve the Rabbinate or as a Yeshiva teacher. The lower degree—chaver—was given to students before marriage who intended to take up a trade other than the Rabbinate.” (Gevaryahu & Sicherman 2010)

The German translation of “chaver” on Wilhelm Marle’s headstone is “Kaufmann,” merchant or businessman, indicating that he did not intend to become a rabbi or teacher.

As mentioned, the translation of Wilhelm and Rosalie Marle’s headstones was recently obtained. However, in December 2017, I was contacted through my family tree on ancestry.com by Professor Sławomir Pastuszka from Jagiellonian University in Kraków looking for information on the Marle family. While I was able to provide Professor Pastuszka with some new material, I was the primary beneficiary of our exchanges.

Professor Pastuszka’s data comes from the Archiwum Panstwowe Oddzial Pszczyna, State Archives Pszczyna Branch, located in Pszczyna proper, which is unavailable online. I will briefly summarize and provide some historic context for the information about Wilhelm and Rosalie Marle. Wilhelm Wolf Marle was born on the 14^th of November 1772 in Pless to Isaac (Figure 10) and Magdalena (Figure 11), both of whom died before 1811 and are buried in the Mikołów Jewish Cemetery in Mikołów, Poland [formerly Nikolai, Prussia], a well-preserved Jewish cemetery; Mikołów is located about 19 miles or 30km north of Pszczyna. (Figure 12) The texts on most of the headstones in Mikołów are in Hebrew so without an interpreter it would be difficult for the average visitor to locate Wilhelm Marle’s parents’ headstones. (Figure 13)

Figure 10. Wilhelm Wolf Marle’s father, Isaac Marle, listed in a 1780 census of Pless [photo courtesy of Sławomir Pastuszka]

Figure 11. Wilhelm Wolf Marle’s parents, Isaac Marle and Magdalena, listed in a 1784 census of Pless [photo courtesy of Sławomir Pastuszka]

Figure 12. 1893 map of Silesia with Pless [today: Pszczyna, Poland], Nikolai [today: Mikołów, Poland], Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] and Rybnick [today: Rybnik, Poland] circled

Figure 13. Headstone of unknown individual from the Mikołów Jewish Cemetery in Mikołów, Poland [photo courtesy of K. Bielawski] in Hebrew text

The Marle families was one of the oldest Jewish families in Pless. According to censuses in the Pszczyna Archive, respectively from 1811 (Figure 14) and the 24^th of March 1812 (Figure 15), Wilhelm Wolf Marle was also referred to as “Wolf Marle Schlesinger.” According to Sławomir, “Schlesinger” is a word in Schläsisch, or Silesian German, referring to “the Silesian.” Silesian German or Lower Silesian is a nearly extinct German dialect spoken in Silesia. It is part of the East Central German language area with some West Slavic and Lechitic influences. In German, Schläsisch is Schlesisch.

Figure 14. Wilhelm Marle listed in an 1811 Pless census as “Wolff Marle Schlesinger” [photo courtesy of Sławomir Pastuszka]

Figure 15. Wilhelm Marle again registered in a Pless census dated the 24th of March 1812 as “Wolff Marle Schlesinger”; this same entry also gives his date of birth (14 November 1772); his wife “Roesel’s” date of birth (19 March 1780); their date of marriage (15 August 1799); and the names & dates of birth of their four children at the time [photo courtesy of Sławomir Pastuszka]

Wilhelm Marle married Rosalie Graetzer on the 15^th of August 1799. Records show Rosalie was born in Tost, Prussia [today: Toszek, Poland] on the 19^th of March 1780, daughter of Meyer and Goldine, both from Tost, Prussia. Her headstone states she was 70 years old when she died in October 1849, suggesting she may actually have been born in 1779 rather than 1780.

Other census records indicate Wilhelm Marle was variously a trader [1813], a shopkeeper [1814], and a merchant [1817,1820, 1821, 1822, 1823, 1839, 1842], and that in 1841, he owned a spice shop, an iron shop, and a money exchange.

On January 28, 1802, Wilhelm Marle took over a plot of land from his father with a tenement house located at Deutsche Vorstadt 4, worth 266 Thalers and 20 silver pennies. He sold the property on November 23, 1833. The house still stands today. (Figure 16) In 1814, Wilhelm bought a house at No. 18 on Market Square for 2500 Thalers from Heinrich Theiner, which his son Isaak Marle inherited upon his death. This house also still stands today. (Figure 17)

Figure 16. Tenement house once owned by Wilhelm Marle at Deutsche Vorstadt 4, today at ul. Wojska Polskiego 9, in Pszczyna, as it looked in 2015

Figure 17. House once owned by Wilhelm Marle at No. 18 Market Square, today at Rynek 18, in Pszczyna, as it looked in 2019

The cause of Wilhelm Marle’s death in 1846 was pulmonary edema.

Let me briefly digress to provide some historic context to enable readers to understand when and under what conditions Jews were provided with some civil equality in Prussia. On March 11, 1812, the Prussian King Frederick William III issued an edict that under the first article declared all legally resident Jews of Prussia to be citizens. Article 2 considered Jews to be natives [Einländer] and state citizens of Prussia provided they adopt strictly fixed surnames; that they use German or another living language not only in keeping their commercial records but also in the drawing of contracts and legal declarations of intention; and that they use only German or Latin script for their signatures. Articles 7 and 8 provided that all occupations were open to Jews including academic positions. Article 9, however, postponed the question of Jewish eligibility to state offices. In sum, the Edict provided some civil equality for Jews in exchange for their assumption of fixed surnames, their adoption of German “or another living language” in their professional activities and compliance with other civil duties, including military conscription.

Wilhelm and Rosalie’s dates of birth come from the census record of Pless Jews dated the 24th of March 1812, who, after the emancipation edict, became full citizens of Prussia. Professor Pastuszka emphasized these records contain many errors and dates are not always correct, but this is the only source where complete dates appear.

It was only after the issuance of the Edict of 1812 that Wilhelm Marle could run for office and be elected as one of the first two councilors of the Jewish confession in Pless.

Officially, as implied, Jews in the Kingdom of Prussia had to adopt surnames in 1812, before which they used “nicknames.” The last name “Marle” was originally a nickname used by Wilhelm’s father Isaac. In some documents Sławomir found Wilhelm listed as “Wolf Isaac,” meaning he was “Wolf son of Isaac.” Wilhelm’s mother “Magdalena,” did not have a maiden name. The only Pless census in which her name appears is the one from 1784 at which time she is shown to be 48 years old. (Figure 11)

After the Edict of 1812, women without maiden names typically adopted their father’s first name as a surname. For example, in Pless, a widow listed in the 1811 census named “Pessel Ephraim,” Pessel daughter of Ephraim, was known after her marriage in 1812 to “Abraham Grunthal” as “Pessel Grunthal née Ephraim.” On other occasions women used as their nicknames the nicknames of their fathers, as in the case of Rosalie Marle née Graetzer. Rosalie Graetzer’s mother, “Goldine,” does not appear to have had a surname. While not likely, if I can obtain a picture of her tombstone from the Mikołów Jewish Cemetery, I may be able to confirm this.

Let me move on to the subject of Wilhelm and Rosalie Marle’s children, and the evidence Professor Pastuszka was able to muster about them. Naturally, a few caveats are in order. As previously mentioned, Wilhelm and Rosalie married in 1799. The census of the 24^th of March 1812 lists four of their children, namely, Goldine (b. 2^nd April 1804), Moritz (b. 12^th May 1806), Charlotte (b. 2^nd October 1809, and Handel (b. 28^th August 1812). (Figure 15) However, because no registers of births and deaths of Jews in Pless exist from before 1813, predating the Edict of 1812, we do not know how many additional children Wilhelm and Rosalie may have had between 1799 and 1812 who died at birth or in infancy.

In Pless censuses postdating the one of 1812, Professor Pastuszka found evidence of five additional children, specifically, Isaac Marle (b. 14^th October 1814), Rosel Marle (b. 12^th July 1817), Antonie Therese Marle (b. 1^st February 1820), Fanny Marle (b. 14^th March 1821) and Ernestine Marle (26^th October 1822). A family tree archived in the Pinkus Family Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute (Figure 18), available online, coincides almost exactly with the names and number of Wilhelm and Rosalie’s children from the census data, with one exception, Handel Marle, born in 1812 who died a little more than a year later. Not surprisingly, there are notable differences in the years of birth of Wilhelm and Rosalie and their eight surviving children.

Figure 18. Family tree for Wilhelm Marle & Rosalie Graetzer from the Pinkus Family Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute identifying 8 of their 9 children Professor Sławomir Pastuszka found in Pless censuses from the 18th-19th centuries

The compiled vital data for Wilhelm, his wife, and their nine known children is summarized in the table below, along with the source of the information. Whereas I consider the census records Professor Pastuszka retrieved from the Archiwum Panstwowe Oddzial Pszczyna to be primary source documents, I do not deem the vital data in the family tree from the Pinkus Family Collection to be such. Clearly, the more reliable vital data comes from the Pszczyna Archive.

VITAL STATISTICS FOR WILHELM WOLF MARLE, HIS WIFE & AND THEIR NINE KNOWN CHILDREN

NAME (relationship)	VITAL EVENT	DATE	PLACE	SOURCE OF DATA

Wilhelm Wolf Marle (self) [In Pless censuses from 1811 and 24^th of March 1812, he was named Wolf Marle Schlesinger]	Birth	14 November 1772	Pless, Prussia [today: Pszczyna, Poland]	Pless Census of 24^th of March 1812 (Pszczyna Archives)
	Marriage to Rosalie Grätzer	15 August 1799	Tost, Germany [today: Toszek, Poland]
	Death	31 October 1846	Pless, Prussia [today: Pszczyna, Poland]	Headstone in the Jewish cemetery in Pszczyna, Poland
Rosalie Graetzer (wife) (Figure 19)	Birth	19 March 1780	Tost, Germany [today: Toszek, Poland]	Headstone in the Jewish cemetery in Pszczyna, Poland
	Marriage to Wilhelm Marle	15 August 1799	Tost, Germany [today: Toszek, Poland]
	Death	26 October 1849	Pless, Prussia [today: Pszczyna, Poland]	Headstone in the Jewish cemetery in Pszczyna, Poland
Goldine Marle (daughter)	Birth	2 April 1804	Pless, Prussia [today: Pszczyna, Poland]	Pless Census of 24th of March 1812 (Pszczyna Archives)
	Marriage to Simon Pincus Oppler	10 December 1823	Rosenberg, Germany [today: Olesno, Poland]	Jewish Records Indexing-Poland (LDS Microfilm 1184449)
	Death	1853	Kreuzburg, Germany [today: Kluczbork, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection, Marle Family Tree
Moritz (Moses) Marle (son)	Birth	12 May 1806	Pless, Prussia [today: Pszczyna, Poland]	Pless Census of 24th of March 1812 (Pszczyna Archives)
Moritz (Moses) Marle (son)	Death	1866	Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection, Marle Family Tree
Charlotte Marle (daughter) (Figure 20)	Birth	2 October 1809	Pless, Prussia [today: Pszczyna, Poland]	Pless Census of 24th of March 1812 (Pszczyna Archives)
	Marriage to Samuel Bruck	18 January 1831	Pless, Prussia [today: Pszczyna, Poland]
	Death	17 August 1861	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Handel Marle (son)	Birth	28 August 1812	Pless, Prussia [today: Pszczyna, Poland]
Handel Marle (son)	Death	29 November 1813	Pless, Prussia [today: Pszczyna, Poland]
Isaak Marle (son)	Birth	15 October 1814	Pless, Prussia [today: Pszczyna, Poland]	Headstone in the former Jewish cemetery in Ratibor, Germany; Pinkus Family Collection, Marle Family Tree
	Marriage to Friederike Traube	11 April 1842	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	LDS Microfilm 1184449
	Death	14 May 1884	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Headstone in the former Jewish cemetery in Ratibor, Germany; Pinkus Family Collection, Marle Family Tree
Rosalie Marle (illegitimate daughter of Rosalie Graetzer) (married to Jonas Bruck)	Birth	12 July 1817	Pless, Prussia [today: Pszczyna, Poland]	Headstone in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław
	Death	6 June 1890	Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland]	Headstone in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław
Antonie Marle (daughter) (married to Zadig Pauly) (Figures 21a-b)	Birth	1 February 1820	Pless, Prussia [today: Pszczyna, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection, Marle Family Tree
	Death	17 September 1893	Posen, Germany [today: Poznan, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection, Marle Family Tree
Fanny Marle (daughter) (married to Salomon Mühsam)	Birth	14 March 1821	Pless, Prussia [today: Pszczyna, Poland]
Fanny Marle (daughter) (married to Salomon Mühsam)	Death	17 November 1909	Berlin, Germany	Schlesische Jüdische Familien ancestry tree
Ernestine Marle (daughter)	Birth	25 October 1822	Pless, Prussia [today: Pszczyna, Poland]
	Marriage Registration to Gustav Graeffner	30 June 1851	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	LDS Microfilm 1184449
	Marriage to Gustav Graeffner	13 July 1851	Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection, Marle Family Tree
	Death	7 June 1898	Obernigk, Germany [today: Oborniki Śląskie, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection, Marle Family Tree

Figure 19. Painting of Rosalie Marle née Graetzer (1780-1849)

Figure 20. My great-great-grandmother Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861)

Figure 21a. Painting of Antonie Pauly née Marle (1820-1893)

Figure 21b. Photo of Antonie Pauly née Marle (1820-1893)

Figure 22. Wilhelm Marle & Rosalie Marle née Graetzer’s tombstones [photo courtesy of Sławomir Pastuszka]

REFERENCE

Gevaryahu, Gilad J. J. & Dr. Harvey Sicherman. “Regulations of The Synagogue “Altneuschule’ In Prague In Their Historic Context.” January 20, 2010

POST 11: RATIBOR & BRUCK’S “PRINZ VON PREUßEN“ HOTEL

NOTE: This Blog post marks a transition from stories about Tiegenhof, the town in the Free State of Danzig where my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, was a dentist, to Ratibor in Upper Silesia, Germany [today: Raciborz, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland], the town where my father was born in 1907. The next series of posts will cover the Bruck family’s association and connection to Ratibor, although future posts will likely take me back to Tiegenhof, as I uncover more information about my father’s circle of acquaintances and friends there. This post will detail the Bruck family’s historic ties to Ratibor, but will also discuss the available documentary evidence, unearthed in both in Ratibor and elsewhere, that inspired and guided much of the research I later undertook related to my family.

NOTE ABOUT FIGURES: HYPERLINKS WILL BE FOUND BELOW SOME FIGURES AND MAPS ALLOWING READERS TO OPEN THESE ITEMS IN A SEPARATE WINDOW AND VIEW THEM AT FULL SIZE.

Figure 1-Map of Central Europe (1815-1866) with location of Ratibor circled (source: Putzger Historischer Weltatlas)

The Bruck family’s most enduring link to the former German town of Ratibor, Upper Silesia (Figure 1), was its long-standing ownership of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen“ Hotel. (Figures 2, 3) Family control of the hotel appears to have extended through three generations, beginning no later than the mid-19th Century and continuing through the first quarter of the 20th Century. Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 4) and his wife Charlotte Bruck, nee Marle (1811-1861) (Figure 5) were the original family owners of the Prinz von Preußen. In time, Samuel’s son, Fedor Bruck (1837-1894) (Figure 6) and his wife Friederike Bruck, nee Mockrauer (1836-1924) (Figure 7) took over the hotel. Following Fedor’s death in 1892, his widow Friederike, and two of her daughters, Franziska Bruck (1866-1942) and Elsbeth Bruck (1874-1970), ran the hotel. When Friederike, Franziska and Elsbeth left for Berlin in 1902, the hotel passed into the hands of the oldest of Fedor and Friederike’s children, Felix Bruck (1864-1927) (Figure 8) and his wife, Else Bruck, nee Berliner (1873-1927) (Figure 9), that’s to say, my grandparents. None of Felix and Else’s children ever managed the hotel, although I recall my father telling stories of working in the hotel as a young boy fetching wine from the cellar, a sommelier in training.

Figure 2-Bruck’s Hotel as it looked at the time the hotel was owned by Ernst Exner in the 1930’s

Figure 3-Front entrance to Bruck’s Hotel ca. 1920’s-1930’s

Figure 5-Charlotte Bruck, nee Marle (1811-61)

Figure 7-Friederike Bruck, nee Mockrauer (1836-1924)

Figure 9-Else Bruck, nee Berliner (1873-1957)

There are indirect clues as to when Samuel Bruck acquired the Prinz von Preußen. Jewish birth records available for Ratibor on-line through the Mormon Church’s website at familysearch.org (Microfilm Roll #1184448), cover the period from approximately 1817 through 1874. Charlotte Bruck is known to have given birth to at least nine children between 1831 and 1849. Birth records of the time recorded the profession or occupation of the father, and in all instances for Samuel Bruck, either “Kaufmann” or “Handelsmann” (merchant, tradesman, or businessman) is documented; Samuel Bruck is known to have been a successful wood merchant before he purchased the Prinz von Preußen. By contrast, the birth records for his son, Fedor Bruck, always registered his occupation as “Gastwirt” or “Gasthofbesitzer” (innkeeper). This suggests that Samuel Bruck bought the Prinz von Preußen following the birth of his last child in 1849 after his career as a wood merchant.

Figure 10-Plan map of Ratibor from 1927-28 with location of Bruck’s Hotel circled

While no longer in existence, the Bruck’s Hotel Prinz von Preußen once stood at Oderstraße 16 [today: ulica Odrzanska], at the corner of Oderstraße and Niederwallstraße [today: 3 Maja, Sawickiej, Podwale] (Figure 10), only a short distance from the River Oder. John Murray’s English-language “A Handbook for Travelers on the Continent,” a traveler’s guidebook published in 1850, touted the “Prinz von Preußen” as a very comfortable hotel; later editions characterized the hotel as the best one in Ratibor. At the time, a town of 6,000 inhabitants, Ratibor was described as an ideal place for persons traveling by rail between Breslau [today: Wroclaw,Poland] and Vienna, then part of the Austrian Empire, to spend the night. The journey by rail from Ratibor to Breslau was a six hour trip, while the train ride from Ratibor to Vienna took 12 to 13 hours.

Figure 11-King Leopold I of Belgium who spent a night at the **Prinz von Preußen in 1853**

The “Prinz von Preußen” must have been one of the most fashionable hotels to stay at in this part of Prussia because in a book on Ratibor, entitled “Geschichte der Stadt Ratibor“ by Augustin Weltzel, the author records that on May 10, 1853, King Leopold I of Belgium spent the night. (Figure 11) King Leopold I was a German prince who became the first king of the Belgians following their independence in 1830, and reigned between July 1831 and December 1865; he was the uncle of Queen Victoria.

A historian, Ms. Katrin Griebel from Zittau, Saxony, who has studied the surviving personal papers of Franziska Bruck (Figure 12) and Elsbeth Bruck (Figure 13) archived at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau outside Berlin, to which future Blog posts will be devoted, has gleaned some anecdotes about the Bruck family and the hotel from the personal papers of these two great-aunts. According to Ms. Griebel, the building occupied by the Bruck’s Hotel was the former palace of a marquis. Upon the nobleman’s death, the palace became known as the “Prinz von Preußen.”

Figure 12-Franziska Bruck (1866-1942), renowned Berlin florist

Figure 13-Elsbeth Bruck (1874-1970), ardent lifelong Socialist

Personal family papers also tell us that Fedor Bruck, son of Samuel Bruck, did not enjoy working in the hospitality industry, preferring to be a musician. He took violin lessons, and is reputed to have spent a goodly sum of money honing this craft. His daughter, Elsbeth Bruck, was an ardent socialist her entire life. When she was working in the Prinz von Preußen, she is reputed to have been engaged to a Polish cook working in the kitchen there. Her parents were not at all amused, and sent her to the Riesengebirge [today: Krkonoše (Czech), Karkonosze (Polish); mountain range in the north of the Czech Republic and the southwest of Poland] to “get some fresh air and clear her head.” Later, Elsbeth was an actress and peace-activist, and was imprisoned in Görlitz in 1916 and, again, in 1918, for her activism. When she lived in Munich, she gave birth out-of-wedlock to a child who died in infancy (Wolfgang Bruck’s Death Certificate No. 448). Her family is known to have disapproved of Elsbeth’s free-spirited lifestyle. During the Nazi era, she was in exile first in Czechoslovakia, then in London. After the war, she returned to Germany and spent the remainder of her life in the German Democratic Republic, formerly East Germany. She is buried in the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde in the former East Berlin, adjacent the “Memorial to the Socialists.” (Figure 14)

In March 2014, I attended a presentation, sponsored by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles, by Mr. Roger Lustig, a specialist on genealogical records from the former Prussian state. Following his presentation, I contacted Roger, and narrated my family’s connection to Ratibor. I described the microfilm records I’d been able to find for Ratibor through familysearch.org, records very familiar to Roger, that broadly cover the period from 1814 to 1940, but indicated there appear to be gaps; I asked Roger whether some of the documents were to be found elsewhere or had been destroyed during WWII.

Figure 15-Entrance to the **„Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu“**

Because Roger also has ancestors from Ratibor, he was anxious to help me out. He made clear that most of the birth, marriage, and death records from Ratibor from roughly the 1870’s onward would be found in the “Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu“ (Polish State Archives in Raciborz) (Figure 15), that’s to say, as civil rather than religious documents. The basis for this situation is rooted in the 19th Century when the Roman Catholic Church was under frequent attack by liberal nationalists in Germany and elsewhere in Europe who saw the existence of a Church loyal to the Pope as a threat to national unity. The most hostile of these attacks on the Church took place in Germany, and was known as the Kulturkampf (“Cultural Struggle“). The Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck sought to break the influence of the Catholic Church which he saw as a threat to the recently established German Empire. While the Kulturkampf was primarily a dispute between the Roman Catholic Church and the Prussian state, clearly, when recording of Catholic marriages and other vital events at a registry office of the state became mandatory, other religious denominations were affected.

In any event, the Church of Latter Day Saints, has not yet gotten around to making copies of the registers in the civil archives, so the only way to view them is to personally visit these repositories across Poland. My wife and I already had plans to spend thirteen weeks in Europe in 2014 visiting places from Poland to Spain associated with the Bruck family diaspora, so decided to incorporate another visit to Raciborz.

To facilitate my investigations, Roger offered to put me in touch with an English-speaking Polish researcher, Ms. Malgosia Ploszaj, who has spent many years researching the Jews from her hometown of Rybnik, located only a half-hour from Raciborz; he explained she could help me navigate the State Archives in Raciborz. Roger quickly sent Malgosia an email telling her about our planned visit and our interest in examining the archival records there. Within hours, Malgosia sent an introductory email offering her assistance during our upcoming visit. Since our scheduled trip to Raciborz was still several months away, Malgosia even offered to visit the Polish State Archives in Raciborz in advance to scope out what might be available on the Bruck family’s ties to Ratibor.

Imagine my surprise when barely a week later Malgosia recounted her visit to the State Archives, and told me she‘d found a portfolio of documents related to the Bruck’s Hotel “Prinz von Preußen,“ covering the period from roughly 1912-1928; needless to say, I was amazed such documents would have survived the destruction wrought by WWII. Eventually Malgosia photographed and sent me all these documents, and I forwarded them to German relatives who reviewed and gleaned interesting tidbits from them.

While most of the handwritten documents related to the Bruck‘s Hotel are penned in Sütterlin, the signatures, including several by my grandfather, Felix Bruck, are Latinized. The subject of the documents are primarily administrative, and record dealings with the local police who apparently handled such matters as approving extended business hours to accommodate returning WWI veterans; undertaking inspections of the hotel and recording violations; authorizing sale of alcoholic beverages; reviewing and approving proposed hotel renovations; and authorizing subleasing of the hotel’s restaurant under the auspices of the Bruck name.

Figure 16-Bruck’s Hotel floor plan from archival dossier

Of particular interest in the portfolio are the hotel’s floor plans. (Figure 16) The hotel is known to have had two kitchens, one to prepare normal meals and another to deliver kosher fare to its Jewish guests. In published advertisements of the hotel, respectively, from 1925 (Figure 17), 1926 (Figure 18), and 1931 (Figure 19), numerous amenities were noted. These included 40 well-appointed hotel rooms with running warm and cold water, a conference room, an exhibition area, a secretarial pool, a hotel phone as well as a phone to call other parts of Germany, a first class kitchen, good cultivated wine and beer, “real” liquor, local access to hockey and tennis arenas and more.

Figure 17-1925 Bruck’s Hotel advertisement showing hotel then owned by Max Kunzer

Figure 18-1926 hotel advertisement indicating Hugo Eulenstein was the owner at the time

Figure 19-By 1931, an advertisement shows that Ernst Exner was the current owner

It is not entirely clear when the Prinz von Preußen was sold by my grandfather, Felix Bruck. The archival dossier includes a August 1925 document in which the entrepreneur “Max Kunzer” is allowed to install a beer pressure device using carbolic acid rather than compressed air. However, by August 1926, the owner of record is a “Hugo Eulenstein” who requests and is granted permission to sell alcoholic beverages in the Bruck’s Hotel. Mr. Eulenstein‘s association with the hotel may have been brief. By 1931, the Bruck’s Hotel had a new “Geschaftsleitung” or “executive board,” headed by an “Ernst Exner,” formerly of the Sachs Hotel in Patschkau [today: Paczków, Nysa County, Opole Voivodeship, Poland].

Figure 20-Worker’s demonstration on Ratibor’s main square in the late 1940’s-early 1950’s showing the Bruck’s Hotel still standing after WWII

The length of Mr. Exner’s ownership of the Bruck’s Hotel is unknown, although it is certain the Bruck’s Hotel was damaged in the latter throes of World War II by the Russian Army, although how badly remains unclear. One of the curators at the Muzeum Raciborzu sent me an outstanding photo of Ratibor’s main square, probably taken towards the end of the 1940’s or early 1950‘s, showing workers demonstrating around the Virgin Mary’s Column with St. Jacob’s Church seen along the right side; squarely in the center of the picture in the background can be seen the Bruck’s Hotel still standing tall. (Figure 20)

The decision to tear down the Bruck’s Hotel and other brick structures once located along Oderstrasse appears related to at least two things. While the structural integrity of the hotel may have been compromised during the war, it appears that Polish authorities were also looking to scavenge bricks throughout Poland to rebuild Warsaw and, perhaps, at the same time eradicate some traces of the German-era. Regardless, today the Bruck’s Hotel no longer stands and the cultural landscape of the area where it once stood looks vastly different.

Felix Bruck’s name appears in a 1916 Berlin phone directory, and shows him living in Berlin-Charlottenburg in the same area as his sister Franziska Bruck (Figure 12), a famous florist about whom more will be said in future posts. Even if the sale of the Bruck’s Hotel did not take place until the early 1920’s, quite possibly my grandfather had ceded management of the hotel to another family member or it was being co-managed with a potential buyer. Felix Bruck is known to have suffered from diabetes, a disease which may have been better treated in Berlin but which, ultimately, was the cause of my grandfather’s demise in 1927.

Figure 21-Hotel knives variously embossed with “Bruck’s Hotel” and **“Prinz von Preußen”**

The Bruck’s Hotel “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel was probably referred to as either the “F. Bruck’s Hotel” or the “Prinz von Preußen.” This is borne out by silverware (knives, forks, spoons) in my possession, some of which have written on them “Prinz von Preußen,” and others which are inscribed with the name “F. Bruck’s Hotel.” (Figure 21) It seems likely that these items were taken as “souvenirs” by Felix and Else Bruck upon their sale of the hotel, and reflected the silverware in use in the dining room at that time. Regardless, the monogram of the three generations of Bruck family to have owned the hotel are reflected in the surviving silverware.

By now, readers have perhaps divined that where possible I enjoy illustrating my Blog posts with photos and artifacts related to the topic at hand that come from a variety of sources. In a future post, I’ll eventually relate to the reader the challenging process I went through to find two of my second cousins, that’s to say, my great-uncle’s grandchildren. Suffice it to say for now, that this great-uncle, Wilhelm Bruck visited his brother Felix at the Prinz von Preußen in Ratibor in June 1914, and wrote an endearing postcard to his wife Antonie „Toni“ Bruck who’d stayed behind in Berlin with their two children. (Figures 22, 23) A copy of this postcard was given to me by Wilhelm’s grandchildren after I eventually located them. The translation of this postcard can be found here.

Figure 22-Front of Bruck’s Hotel postcard written by Wilhelm Bruck to his wife “Toni” in June 1914

Figure 23-Postcard dated June 30, 1914 written by Wilhelm Bruck to his wife from the Bruck’s Hotel in Ratibor

ALSO SEE: POST 11, POSTSCRIPT: RATIBOR & BRUCK’S “PRINZ VON PREUßEN” HOTEL

REFERENCES

Murray, John

1850 Handbook for Travelers on the Continent: Being a Guide Through Holland, Belgium, Prussia and Northern Germany, and Along the Rhine From Holland to Switzerland (Seventh Edition). John Murray, Albemarle Street. London (p. 437)

1856 Handbook for Travelers on the Continent: Being a Guide to Holland, Belgium, Prussia, Northern Germany, and the Rhine from Holland to Switzerland (Eleventh Edition). John Murray, Albemarle Street, London (p. 426)

Weltzel, Augustin

2010 Geschichte Der Stadt Ratibor (1861). Kessenger Legacy Reprints. Kessenger Publishing.