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.
Note: In this post, I briefly discuss some primary source documents sent to me by a reader mentioning one of my renowned ancestors, Dr. Jonas Bruck (1813-1883) from Wrocław, Poland [German: Breslau], who owned an inn 120 miles away in the town of Zyttna, Prussia [Żytna, Poland]. Initially uncertain whether this related to my great-great-granduncle, after having the documents translated, I confirmed it was indeed his property.
I beg the indulgence of readers as I continue my examination of primary source documents related to some of my earliest Bruck relatives from Silesia. For reference, in Post 144, I discussed primary source documents referring to my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) who is thought to have been the original owner of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor, Prussia [today: Racibórz, Poland], the family business there owned through three generations.
In this post, I briefly examine a document citing Dr. Jonas Bruck (1813-1883) who was Samuel’s younger brother. (Figure 1) The first mention I found of Jonas was in the same 1820 publication, entitled “Denkschrift über die feierliche Eröffnung des Königl. Evangel. Gymnasium zu Ratibor am 2 Juni 1819” by Dr. Carl Linge, where his older brother Samuel was listed. (Figures 2a-c) Translated as “Memorandum on the ceremonial opening of the Royal Evangelical High School in Ratibor on June 2, 1819,” this publication names all the students who attended the inaugural class upon the high school’s opening in June of 1819.
The Bruck surname was reasonably common in Upper Silesia where my father’s family was concentrated for more than 100 years. When I come across mention of the family surname, I am apt to only make a mental note unless I’m aware of an ancestral connection to the town in question or unless the citation mentions ancestors to which I can link to on my ancestral tree. Thus, a question I received in June from a Polish gentleman named Mr. Jan Krajczok who lives in Rybnik, Poland caused me outwardly to have a dismissive reaction. However, his family’s three centuries-long connection to the nearby village of Żytna (i.e, Rybnik and Żytna are only about 10 miles apart) and the latter’s proximity to Ratibor, where many Brucks hail from, gave me pause. (Figure 3)
Let me provide a little more background. Mr. Krajczok was referred to me by my retired lawyer friend from Racibórz, Paul Newerla, who has written extensively about the history of Ratibor and Silesia. While helping his friends from nearby Żytna, Poland [Germany: Zyttna, Prussia], Jan checked land registration records of 19th century owners in the village and in Register 34 seemingly found Jewish surnames; if true, these surnames would relate to the memories and oral histories of current town dwellers who recall stories of purported Jewish owners of an inn in Zyttna. According to Jan, while the inn no longer stands photos supposedly survive along with a beer glass from the inn. Jan explained that he is trying to find a connection between the last owners listed in the register and the people who occupy the space now.
While researching names found in the primary source documents, including “Heimann Ajruck (which he thinks is “Bruck”),” “Moses Mendel Bruck,” and “Jonas Bruck,” Jan stumbled upon my blog. (Figures 4a-c) He found mention I had made of “my” Dr. Jonas Bruck in Post 68, among others. To remind readers, Dr. Jonas Bruck was the father of my famed ancestor, Dr. Julius Bruck (1840-1902) (Figure 5), from Breslau, Prussia [today: Wrocław, Poland]. I don’t expect readers to recall but in 1867 Dr. Julius Bruck designed a water-cooled diaphanoscopic instrument for translumination of the bladder via the rectum; this instrument consisted of an illuminated platinum thread inserted into a double glass wall cylinder with the instrument’s outer glass chamber cooled by water. Julius and his father Jonas, and their respective wives are interred in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław in a mausoleum-like structure that has been restored. (Figure 6)
Jan wondered whether Dr. Jonas Bruck from Breslau and Jonas Bruck from Zyttna could have been one and the same. Żytna and Wrocław are about 120 miles apart (Figure 7), so I was hard pressed to imagine why the dentist would have owned or managed an inn in Zyttna, unless of course it was an investment which he leased to a tenant. While I was dubious of the link, I’ve been working on my ancestry for long enough to realize that seemingly unrelated people and places connect in unexpected ways. For this reason, I promised Jan that I would ask my German friend, Peter Hanke, the “Wizard of Wolfsburg,” to translate the German-language documents.
My friend Peter learned the following from the land registration records. Under “Moses Mendel Bruck,” the register shows that on the 26th of November 1842 he purchased the plot of land with a building from Adolph Richter for 14 Reichsthaler. (see Figure 4c) Ownership was documented on the 4th of April 1846. The next entry confirms the involvement of “the dentist Dr. Jonas Bruck.” On the 18th of December 1845 he buys the inn from Moses Mendel Bruck for 35 Reichsthaler, and his ownership is also documented on the 4th of April 1846. Dr. Jonas Bruck sells the inn to Johann Kotzian between the 23rd of May 1859 and the 24th of June 1859 for 35 Reichsthaler.
The relationship of Moses Mendel Bruck and Jonas Bruck is not evident to me since I don’t have Moses in my family tree and have never found mention of him in my research. I suspect that he may have been one of Jonas and Samuel Bruck’s older brothers, but this is mere conjecture.
In any case, notwithstanding my doubt as to Dr. Jonas Bruck’s involvement in the ownership of an inn at quite a remove from Wrocław, this is yet another reminder to myself that when researching Bruck relatives in Silesia I should keep an open mind as to how far afield I’m likely to discover relevant information.
Naturally, I shared Peter Hanke’s translation of the primary source documents from Żytna with Jan Krajczok, who in turn shared them with the villagers. The townspeople were absolutely thrilled that evidentiary materials confirmed what had previously only been a faint recollection that a Jewish family had owned an inn in town during the 19th century. Paraphrasing Jan, what was also particularly satisfying is that a historic connection to Jews once living in the area that the Communists had sought to eradicate had been reaffirmed.
Jan concurred that as improbable as it seems that a dentist from Wrocław would own an inn and a plot of land in a small village 120 miles away, he could well imagine that Jonas was the formal owner and that he employed someone to run the establishment.
Karczma in Polish means inn. Jan happens to be a teacher of literature and philosophy and clarified that in Polish culture the person of a Jewish innkeeper is held in high regard. He explained that in Poland’s national poem, Pan Tadeusz—Sir Thaddeus by Adam Mickiewicz, the character Jankiel who is an innkeeper and a friend of the main heroes and a loyal keeper of their secrets, is esteemed and known to virtually all modern-day Poles.
The inn in Żytna was torn down after the war because of its deteriorated condition. Jan sent me a picture postcard of the inn. (Figure 8)
In closing I would note that some contemporaries of our ancestors with identical names have no known connection to our forebears, such as the Samuel Bruck from Zülz discussed in Post 144, while others are indeed our relatives, such as the Dr. Jonas Bruck from Żytna. Discerning between the two is not always a simple exercise.
REFERENCE
Linge, Dr. Carl (Director des Gymnasiums zu Ratibor) (1820). Denkschrift über die feierliche Eröffnung des Königl. Evangel. Gymnasium zu Ratibor am 2 Juni 1819, nebst den dabei gehaltenen Reden des Consistorialrath Dr. Wachler, und des Dr. Linge, und andern Beilagen herausgegeben von Dr. C. L., etc. The British Library. Digitized: August 20, 2018.
Note: In this post, which I anticipate will be of limited interest to most readers, I examine primary source documents related to my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) which shed light on his business activities and legacy. The fact that he owned one of the first hotels in Ratibor in Silesia [today: Racibórz, Poland] and had his hand in other commercial ventures made finding information about him easier than it would have been for a less prominent individual.
Thanks to the assistance of readers, friends, and distant relatives, over the last few months I’ve acquired primary source documents that shed light on the activities of a few of my earliest Bruck relatives from Silesia (Figure 1) when it was a part of Prussia before Germany became a unified state in 1871. Primary source documents including contemporary registers of vital events, such as births, marriages, and deaths; records certifying these occurrences; contemporary handbooks and address directories; and concurrent historical accounts or diaries, are my “gold standard” for verifying the age and context of ancestral events. While these records are not infallible, they come as close as possible to confirming the timing of vital events.
In this post, I will discuss some evidentiary materials that my dear friend Peter Albrecht von Preußen and others have unearthed related to my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863). (Figure 2) Samuel is thought to be the original owner of the family establishment in Ratibor, Prussia [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel (Figure 3), believed to have been purchased in around 1850. However, a recently uncovered memoir penned by Eberhard Friedrich Bruck (1877-1960), one of Samuel’s grandnephews, currently being translated by his granddaughter, Helen Winter née Renshaw (b. 1948), now suggests Samuel’s father, Jacob Bruck (1770-1836), may originally have conceived the idea of building the hotel. As we speak, I am trying to run to ground other primary source documents that can not only confirm which Bruck ancestor first owned the hotel but possibly when the hotel might have been constructed.
Before launching into the documents that Peter Albrecht (Figure 4) and others have found and what I learned about Samuel, I would like to share with readers something I discovered in the process. I mistakenly believed that because the Bruck’s Hotel was in Ratibor, relevant archival materials would be restricted to the “Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu,” that’s to say the “State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz.” Such is not the case. While I’ve assuredly found records about the Bruck’s Hotel in Racibórz’s archives, thanks to one of my readers I recently learned about and obtained archival materials related to the hotel from the State Archives in Wrocław, Branch in Kamieniec Ząbkowicki [formerly Kamenz, Prussia]. These latter materials will be the subject of a future post as they speak to the subject of the last days of my family’s ownership of the hotel in 1926-1927. My point to readers is that even if your family originates from one specific town in Silesia, you should keep an open mind as to which archives you search for ancestral information.
Because Peter’s surname is contained within the name of the former family establishment in Ratibor, Bruck’s Hotel “Prinz von Preußen,” and the fact that both of our families have deep ties to Silesia, caused Peter to take an interest in finding Bruck-related documents. Among other things, his discoveries shed light on my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck’s business activities.
Materials uncovered about Samuel Bruck provide a cautionary tale of the lens through which primary source documents should be examined. Just because historical files are related to an individual with the same name as one’s ancestor does not guarantee they are relevant, particularly if the surname is reasonably common in a geographic area.
In the online extracts of files archived at the Archiwum Państwowe w Opolu, State Archives in Opole [formerly Oppeln, Prussia], Peter found the following two files related to a Samuel Bruck from the former Prussian town of Zülz [today: Biała, informally Biała Prudnicka, Poland]:
“Die letzwillige Bestimmung des Breltesten und Handelsmannes Samuel Bruck Zülz: 1820-1835” (Figure 5)
(“The last will and testament of the brethren and merchant Samuel Bruck Zülz: 1820-1835”)
“Die gerichtliche Annahme und Niederlegung das von dem Kaufmann Samuel Bruck am 13 Januar 1832 verschlossen übergebene Testaments: 1832-1839” (Figure 6)
(“The judicial acceptance and filing of the will handed over by the merchant Samuel Bruck on 13 January 1832 in sealed form: 1832-1839”)
Though the wills relate to a Samuel Bruck who filed testaments in the town of Zülz [today: Biała, informally Biała Prudnicka, Poland], this alone was not enough to convince me they related to someone other than my ancestor. As I just mentioned, I’ve found documents on the Bruck’s Hotel in Ratibor in archives other than Racibórz. For geographic reference, Opole is roughly 26 miles north-northeast of Biała. (Figure 7)
Let me briefly digress. Readers cannot fail to notice that the two wills filed with the court in Zülz date from when Samuel Bruck, born in 1808, would respectively have been only 12 and 24 years of age. However unlikely writing wills at such a young age might appear to us, I try and imagine how different things might have been almost 200 years ago. I considered the possibility that Samuel had been extremely precocious and might have felt obligated to write a will as improbable as this seems.
Persuaded both files might relate to my ancestor, I ordered them. (Figures 8-9) Upon their arrival, I asked my fourth cousin Thomas Koch if he could help me make sense of the 39 pages of records I’d been sent; Thomas is the great-great-grandnephew of Samuel Bruck, thus he has an interest in the Bruck’s Hotel and Samuel Bruck.
There were some immediate clues the wills from Zülz related to someone other than my Samuel Bruck. The Samuel Bruck in question was apparently the owner of a local pawnshop and an ironmonger (i.e., a dealer in iron and hardware), as well as a money lender, trades I’ve never heard associated with the Samuel Bruck from Ratibor. The Zülz wills also refer to Samuel as a parish or community elder, terms unlikely to have been applied to a 12 or 24-year old person. For the most part, the files document what court officials said, the actions of Samuel Bruck, and the fees to be paid by Samuel. Something notably absent that would affirmatively have allowed me to determine the testator are named heirs, none of whom are identified.
Convinced the Samuel Bruck from Zülz, though likely related to my Bruck family from Ratibor (Biała and Racibórz are only about 38 miles apart (Figure 10)) in some unknown way, was not the former owner of the Bruck’s Hotel, I investigated other possibilities. I examined the Church of Latter-Day Saints Family Historic Center Microfilm 1271493 for Zülz, and discovered a Samuel Bruck born there on the 10th of September 1761. (Figure 11) It seems likely this Samuel Bruck is the person whose 1820 and 1832 wills were filed locally.
One document, however, that unequivocally relates to the Samuel Bruck from Zülz is a notice about a bankruptcy auction that took place on the 23rd of June 1837 in Zülz (Figures 12a-b), presumably following this Samuel Bruck’s death in 1836 or 1837. The reason for this certainty is that this Samuel Bruck is identified in the notice as a “Eisenhändlert,” an iron trader, just as his wills identify him. According to Peter, while it is unusual for the estate of a deceased person to wind up in bankruptcy, this is possible when there are no heirs and/or no will. We know two testaments existed, so likely there were no heirs.
There is another document in my possession that should have clued me in to the fact that Samuel Bruck from Zülz was not my great-great-grandfather. In connection with his research, my retired lawyer friend from Racibórz, Paul Newerla, who has written extensively about Ratibor and Silesia found a historic publication from 1820 about the grand opening of the Royal Evangelical High School in Ratibor on the 2nd of June 1819. (Figures 13a-c) It lists the names of the enrolled students, including both Samuel Bruck and his younger brother, Jonas Bruck (1813-1883). It is more reasonable to surmise that at the age of 11, Samuel Bruck would have been in school in Ratibor rather than writing wills.
Samuel Bruck is listed in an 1843 merchant member book, entitled “Grosses Adressbuch der Kaufleute, Fabrikanten und handelnden Gewerbsleute von Europa und der hauptplazen der fremden Weltheile: Brandenburg, Preussen, Posen, Pommern, Schlesien,” “Large address book of the merchants, manufacturers, and trading professionals from Europe and the main square of the foreign world salvation: Brandenburg, Prussia, Posen, Pomerania, Silesia.” (Figures 14a-b) Interestingly, 1843 corresponds with the year that a city map of Ratibor shows the location where the Bruck’s Hotel once stood having a building on the lot. (Paul Newerla, personal communication) Samuel Bruck’s listing in the 1843 merchant member guide, however, may or may not have anything to do with his ownership of the Hotel “Prinz von Preußen” at this time. Samuel is known to have been involved in other businesses.
As a related aside, Ratibor was once a walled city. It was not until 1828 that the Oder gate, the tower nearest where the Bruck’s Hotel was eventually built, was demolished; the removal of this gate made it possible to extend Oderstraße, the street on which the Bruck’s Hotel stood (Paul Newerla, personal communication). It’s safe to assume that it was only after 1828 that the Hotel “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel could have been built.
As readers can generally make out from the photo of the hotel (see Figure 3), it was a reasonably large building known to have had 32 guest rooms. How long the hotel took to build, who paid for the construction, and the date of the grand opening are yet unknown. Whether I will be able to work out the answers to these questions is a big unknown.
The famous Austrian composer, Johann Strauss II, is known to have performed twice at the Hotel “Prinz von Preußen” once on the 17th of October 1850, then again, a month later, on the 17th of November 1850. Neither advertisement makes mention of the “Bruck’s Hotel,” only “Prinz von Preußen.” Possibly at the time Samuel Bruck did not yet own the hotel.
By the middle of 1852, Samuel Bruck assuredly owned the establishment because he signed a contract on the 14th of October 1852 permitting the so-called Liedertafel to hold meetings in the hotel’s ballroom beginning in January 1853. (Figures 15a-c) Page 20 (Figure 15c) mentions the “Hotelbesitzer Bruck,” that’s to say, the hotel owner Bruck. This citation occurs in a 1909 publication, entitled “Festschrift zum 75 jährigen Jubelfest der Liedertafel,” “The commemorative publication for the 75th anniversary of the Liedertafel,” in Ratibor. It was released on the 25th and 26th of September 1909 in conjunction with the unveiling of the Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorf monument in Ratibor. (Figure 15d)
The Liedertafel translates literally to “song board.” It was a co-ed musical society or amateur choir, which in the case of the Ratibor group consisted of about 88 members. They met in the large ballroom of the Bruck’s Hotel every Thursday and Friday evening for an à la carte dinner with plenty of alcohol, followed by a sing-along to music played by a pianist, often accompanied by a bassist, cellist, and violinist. Their contract with the hotel suggests Samuel Bruck was a well-regarded and integrated member of the community.
Another mundane document tracked down by Peter Albrecht shows that Samuel Bruck was allowed to operate as an inn keeper by the police after obtaining fire insurance for the hotel through a company in Stettin [today Szczecin, Poland] called “Pommerania.” (Figure 16) Although the announcement published in Oppeln, Prussia [today: Opole, Poland] on the 4th of March 1856 makes no specific mention of fire insurance, to secure police permission to operate the inn, it is implicit that fire insurance was obtained.
An advertisement Samuel Bruck posted in April 1858 indicates that he was involved in more than running an inn and being a lumber wholesaler. According to this ad he also sold lump lime (Figure 17):
Von meinem in Moerau gelegenen Kalkoefen verkaufe ich besten Stueckkalk, den Waggon von 33 Tonnen mit 27 Rthlr. (Reichstahler) frei hier. Gefaellige Auftraege werden prompt und bestens ausgefuehrt.
Ratibor, im April 1858
S. Bruck
im Hotel “Prinz von Preußen”
Translated:
Lime Ad
From my lime kiln located in Moerau I am selling the best lump lime, the wagon of 33 tons with 27 Rthlr. (Reichstahler) free here. Appropriate orders are executed promptly and in the best possible way.
Ratibor, April 1858
S. Bruck
in the hotel “Prince of Prussia”
Let me offer a few comments about this ad. The spelling of many place names in Prussia changed between 1890 and 1900, so “Moerau” became known as “Mohrau,” (Figure 18) and is now known as Morów, Poland. It is about 57 miles northwest of Racibórz. (Figure 19)
From 1855 onwards, a Prussian ton was equivalent to 200 kilos or almost 441 pounds. Thirty-three Prussian tons was equivalent to 6,600 kilos, 6.6 metric tons, or 14,551 pounds. Presumably this was the maximum weight an ox cart could handle.
Samuel Bruck passed away in July 1863. In June 1864, an official notice was placed in the Ratibor paper stating that Samuel Bruck’s handelsgesellschaft, holding company, which had been inherited by Samuel’s seven children, was ceded by the co-heirs to Samuel’s oldest child, Oskar Bruck, making him the sole owner of the S. Bruck Handelsgesellschaft. (Figure 20)
Bei der sub Nr. 69 unseres Firmen-Register fūr den Kaufmann Samuel Bruck eingetragen Firma S. Bruck ist zufolge Verfügung vom 2ten Juni 1864 der Vermerk:
Die Firma ist durch Erbgang auf die Geschwister Oskar, Fedor, Jenny, Emilie, Julius, Helene und Wilhelm Bruck übergangen und die Miterben haben dieselbe dem Kaufmann Oskar Bruck abgetreten, und sub Nr. 189 unseres Firmen-Registers der Kaufmann Oskar Bruck hierselbst als Inhaber der hiesigen Firma S. Bruck zufolge Verfügung von dem selben Tage eingetragen worden.
Ratibor, den 2. Juni 1864
Königliches Kreisgericht, 1. Abtheilung
Translation:
Announcement
According to the decree of June 2, 1864, the company S. Bruck, registered under No. 69 of our register of companies for the merchant Samuel Bruck, is marked:
The company has passed by inheritance to the siblings Oskar, Fedor, Jenny, Emilie, Julius, Helene and Wilhelm Bruck and the co-heirs have ceded the same to the merchant Oskar Bruck, and sub No. 189 of our company register the merchant Oskar Bruck has been registered here as the owner of the local company S. Bruck according to the decree of the same day.
Ratibor, June 2, 1864
Royal District Court, 1st Department
We learn a few unexciting things from this announcement. First, Oskar Bruck was a kaufmann, a merchant, which would have required a four-year apprenticeship. Had I not already known the names of Samuel’s children, this announcement would have provided this information. Samuel Bruck’s Handelsgesellschaft was registered as Number 69 in the District Court, while Oskar Bruck’s Handelsgesellschaft is registered as Number 189. As we speak, I’m trying to determine whether these files still exist in the Racibórz archives.
The final document related to Samuel Bruck involves a landmark Prussian case that his eldest son Oskar Bruck got involved in following his father’s death. The case is discussed at length in a book on Prussian case law published in 1867, entitled “Central-Organ fur die deutsche handels- und Wechselrecht,” “Central Organ for German Commercial and Exchange Law.” (Figure 21)
While the following will be of limited interest to most readers, let me briefly outline and summarize the salient points of this very involved case for readers.
In addition to being an inn owner, Samuel Bruck was a lumber wholesaler, and may have made his money here which enabled him to construct and/or purchase the Bruck’s Hotel. Shortly before his death in 1863, Samuel entered into a contract with a Dutch merchant, David Schwedter, agreeing to sell him 260 pieces of 4” x 4” structural lumber, possibly the equivalent of four ox carts of finished product. The Dutchman lived in the vicinity of Berlin, and had requested Samuel deliver the milled lumber there, which he’d agreed to.
Following Samuel’s death, Oskar Bruck acted on an interim basis on behalf of the the S. Bruck Handelsgesselchaft, which the probate court only officially granted him authority to do in his own name on the 2nd of June 1864 (see Figure 20). Regardless, following his father’s death, he notified Schwedter by mail that the transaction would go forward as planned and that he would run the S. Bruck Handelsgesselchaft.
Either Samuel before his death or Oskar contracted with an agent named Atzpodim who had a warehouse in Brieskow (Figure 22), near Frankfurt an der Oder. Schwedter had agree that Atzpodim would be the pickup point for the lumber. Oskar Bruck shipped the lumber to Atzpodim who acknowledged receipt of the materials. Oskar then notified Schwedter the lumber was ready for pickup at Atzpodim’s warehouse, and invoiced him, as agreed upon.
Three or four days later, Schwedter filed for bankruptcy. Atzpodim had not yet shipped the lumber to Stramer for reasons that are not entirely clear, although possibly Atzpodim through word-of-mouth had learned of Schwedter’s financial woes and sought to protect the young Oskar Bruck. I surmise Atzpodim had been one of Samuel’s trusted business associates over the years.
At this point, the trustee for the Bankruptcy Court in Frankfurt an der Oder sued Atzpodim for release of the lumber. Had the lumber already been delivered, the Bankruptcy Court would have carried it on their books and could then have sold it at a bankruptcy auction; Oskar, as creditor, would have been paid pennies on the dollar. Atzpodim, by not delivering the lumber to Stramer, saved Oskar from a steep financial loss.
Prussian law dealt with merchandise in bankruptcy proceedings where the debtor had taken possession of the merchandise three days or less before the debtor filed for bankruptcy and had paid not in cash but with credit.
In the case at hand, Atzpodim didn’t receive instructions from Oskar Bruck until the 26th of November 1863. Schwedter filed for bankruptcy on the 30th of November 1863. The Supreme Court in Berlin upheld the lower court’s ruling that the lumber shipment fell under the 3-day rule. If the lumber had been delivered to Schwedter, which it obviously wasn’t, he would have been required to return it because he hadn’t paid in cash but by credit, with a so-called Wechsel.
Let me say a few brief words about a Wechsel. According to German law, even today, transactions based on Wechsels can only be transacted by full merchants, meaning those who have completed a 4-year apprenticeship and received a kaufmann’s certificate. Upon certification, the kaufmann is registered either as a sole proprietor or as a Handelsgesellschaft, a trading company, like those Samuel and Oskar Bruck had recorded, in the Handelsregister, commercial register, of the city where the business is licensed.
The Wechsel allows the parties to do several things. It can be used as collateral for a bank loan. It can also be used as a futures contract; thus, with a Wechsel in hand, Schwedter could have sold the lumber at a higher price for a profit. Similarly, Samuel or Oskar could have sold his obligation to produce the lumber to a different sawmill (other than the one they originally contracted with) or another lumber merchant for a profit.
In closing, let me say a few things. The specifics of the information contained in some of the primary source documents cited above are less important than the fact they still exist. For researchers seeking comparable information about their ancestors who may have owned or operated businesses, an awareness that such documents may still exist can be useful. Often, it’s a question of knowing where to look and what to ask for. On a personal level, the fact that my family was involved in a legal case that was deemed of sufficient importance to merit inclusion in a book about Prussian commercial and trade law is fascinating.
Cobbling together one’s family history invites a clichéd comparison to the saying that “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Note: In this post I relate the story of how in the process of helping a reader whose grandmother died in 1940 in Ratibor, the birthplace of my father, I improbably discovered information on some of my own ancestors.
Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] (Figure 1), the town in the Prussian province of Upper Silesia where my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, was born in 1907 was one of the largest municipalities in the region. Periodically, readers who are descended from former inhabitants of Ratibor will contact me through my Blog asking for information I have or may have come across related to their ancestors. Often, their relatives are entirely unknown to me but seeing what, if anything, I can uncover about them becomes an extension of my own forensic genealogical endeavors. And, the pleasure I derive in helping others is sometimes magnified when I learn something about my own ancestors in the process. The inspiration for the current post stems from precisely such a situation.
One reader, Dan Ward, recently contacted me after perusing Post 13 and Post 13, Postscript, and learning the “Muzeum w Raciborzu” in Racibórz had given me an Excel spreadsheet with the names of the Jews that had once been interred in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, requesting a copy of this database. This cemetery was demolished in the 1960’s during Poland’s Communist era to further expunge evidence of German residency in the area. Fortunately, before the stout headstones were torn down and sold off locally, a Polish gentleman whom I wrote about in Post 13, Postscript, Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński (Figure 2), had the foresight to photograph all the gravestones; these images served as the basis for the creation of the Excel database, with the Racibórz Museum staff gleaning as much vital information as possible from the high-quality snapshots. Despite the sharp and fine details on the photos, not all the data is discernible. More on this below.
Dan Ward contacted me seeking information on the tombstone and burial location of his grandmother, Rosa Wartenberger née Perl, who according to records he found was buried on the 29th of March 1940 in the Jüdischer Friedhof Ratibor, Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, in Plot 153; she died or committed suicide before she was scheduled to be deported to a concentration camp. As a quick aside, the “Ward” surname is clearly the Anglicized version of the “Wartenberger” family name. Dan sent me screen shots with the source of this information, Jewish Gen. As readers can see, Rosa Wartenberger’s name was misspelled as “Risa Wortenberger,” although the transcriber obviously had trouble deciphering the script. (Figure 3)
Armed with the information Dan sent me, I immediately began my own research. The first thing I checked was the Excel spreadsheet with the names of Jews formerly buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, and Rosa Wartenberg is not listed. Dan would later tell me his grandmother’s maiden name was “Perl,” and I found four individuals with this surname once interred in the Jewish graveyard, but being unfamiliar with Dan’s family tree, I am not sure how they might have been related to her.
Next, I checked address books and phone directories for Ratibor. I have previously told readers about a database on ancestry.com, entitled “Germany and Surrounding Areas, Address Books, 1815-1974 (Adressbücher aus Deutschland und Umgebung, 1815-1974),” with address books for Germany, Poland, and other neighboring countries. In the only address book in this database for Ratibor for the year 1938, I found a single “Wartenberger.” It was for a man named “Kurt Wartenberger,” identified as a “gastwirt,” innkeeper, shown living at “Breite Straße 54.” (Figure 4)
I asked my friend Mr. Paul Newerla from Racibórz, a retired lawyer whom regular readers have often heard me mention, who now researches and writes about the history of Silesia, whether the surname “Wartenberger” is familiar to him. It is not, but in a 1926 Ratibor Address Book not included among the “Germany and Surrounding Areas” directories, he too found “Kurt Wartenberger” listed, identified then as a “destillateur,” distiller, living at “Brunken 54.” (Figure 5) Other than finding Kurt Wartenberger’s name in the 1926 Ratibor directory, Paul could add nothing more.
I found it odd the address number “54” was identical in 1926 and 1938 but that the street names were different. Paul Newerla explained that “Brunken” was a connecting street to what is referred to as the Altendorf district, that’s to say, a little “outside” of Ratibor along the main road towards Oppeln [today: Opole, Poland] and Leobschutz [today: Głubczyce, Poland]. I located this street, respectively, on plan maps of Ratibor from 1927-28 (Figure 6) and 1933 (Figure 7), although a plan map from 1914 names it “Große-Vorstadt.” (Figure 8) In tiny print on all three plan maps, readers can see the number “54,” confirming it was the same corner lot with different street names over time.
I passed along what Paul and I had found to Dan Ward. He confirmed that Kurt had owned a tavern and that family papers in his possession place Kurt’s business at “Große-Vorstadt 54,” papers which must clearly pre-date 1927-28, by which time the street was known as “Brunken.” By 1938, the street had been renamed yet again because it was then called “Breite Straße.” According to Dan, Kurt Wartenberger was murdered in the Shoah in Buchenwald, and, indeed, Yad Vashem lists him as a victim of the Holocaust. (Figure 9)
Next, I retraced Dan Ward’s steps to track down the source of the information on his grandmother, misspelled as mentioned above as “Risa Wortenberger.” The data, as I previously also said, originates from JewishGen, and relocating it was straight-forward. Here, however, is where things took an interesting turn. The source documentation for the data in JewishGen comes from elsewhere, namely, from the Church of Latter-Day Saints’ (LDS) “Family History Library International Film 1184447, Item 2” (Figure 10), which is one of three microfilm rolls with data on the former Jewish inhabitants of Ratibor. While I had last examined this microfilm many years ago, when it was still necessary to order films from the LDS Church in Salt Lake City and have hard copies sent to a local Family History Library for viewing, I clearly remembered this roll as having limited or, at least, confusing information. Now that the Ratibor records are accessible online through familysearch.org, I decided to reexamine film 1184447.
For anyone interested in seeking similar information from familysearch.org for towns they are researching, they can replicate these steps:
1) Go to familysearch.org (you can create a free account);
2) Under the “Search” button, scroll down to “Catalog,” click enter, and go to the following page;
3) Next, type in “Raciborz” under “Place,” or whatever town you are seeking records for (i.e., different spellings yield different results, so for towns that are now located in different countries than they once were, you may need to try alternate spellings);
4) Scroll down to “Poland, Opole, Racibórz (Racibórz),” then hit “Search”;
5) Select “Poland, Opole, Racibórz (Racibórz) – Jewish records (1),” hit enter;
6) Next select “Matrikel, 1814-1940”;
7) On the next screen select “1184447, Item 2” (select the camera icon all the way to the right; if there is a key above a camera icon, the microfilm is unavailable online).
There are 342 pages on Microfilm 1184447 but only pages 220 through 338, referred to as “Item 2,” specifically deal with Ratibor. The film contains “Friedhofsurkunden 1888-1940” for Ratibor, which Peter Hanke, my German friend who helps me with translations and making sense of German records, tells me is more aptly referred to as “Friedhofsdokumente,” or cemetery documents. The cemetery administration would use these files to see which tombs were unused; which ones could be reused after 25 or 30 years if descendants stopped paying to keep their ancestors interred; which tombs were reserved in perpetuity for so-called “family graves”; or simply to help visitors locate specific graves. These files often contain useful information for genealogists, as I illustrate below.
Let me digress for a moment. Given the disparate sources of ancestral information I have accessed over the years, including in this current post, I am often reminded of the American television game show “Concentration” that aired from 1958 until 1991. Basically, the game was based on the children’s memory game of the same name. Players had to match cards which represented prizes they could win. As matching pairs of cards were gradually removed from the board, it would slowly reveal a rebus puzzle that contestants had to solve to win a match. The similarity I see with genealogical research is not so much solving the rebus, but matching pairs of cards. Often years pass before a “genealogical card” I newly discover can be “matched” to one or more I found earlier in my investigations. The challenge, particularly as I get older, is retrieving the earlier “card” from my memory. Such is the case with connections to Microfilm 1184447, Item 2.
I downloaded, saved, and studied all 119 pages from this film, and made several interesting discoveries and connections. Of immediate interest, I found Rosa Wartenberger’s name in an index (Figure 11); as readers can discern from what I have circled in Figure 11, the number “46” appears to the right of Rosa’s name; this refers to the page number in the “Friedhofsdokumente,” on which Rosa’s name and interment date appear. Initially, I found only one page 46, not realizing there was a left page-right page pair.
Let me briefly explain. When the LDS Church originally photographed vital records for Ratibor and other places, they typically started by photographing the left-side pages from the front to the back of the register, then in reverse order from the back to the front photographed the right-side pages; thus, the left page-right page pairs, either identically numbered or consecutively numbered, from any register will not be found on consecutive microfilm images. Thus, while Rosa’s name does not appear on the left-hand page 46, it is found on the right-hand page 46; for reader’s ease, I have “grafted” the two pages in one (Figure 12), and translated, using a different grafted left-right pair of pages, the headers for each column. (Figure 13)
As readers can see, by “Grabnummer,” grave number, 153, the date of Rosa’s interment is shown, the 29th of March 1940, which matches the information in JewishGen. The column titled “Belegt” translates to “occupied,” and signifies when a person was interred, rather than when they died.
Once a researcher understands the organizational “structure” of microfilms with cemetery documents, they are easy though tedious to use. On one left-right pair of pages, I was able to find both sets of great-grandparents on my father’s side. (Figure 14) Oddly, the names of Fedor Bruck (Figure 15) and his wife, Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (Figure 16), are not found in the Excel spreadsheet at the Muzeum w Raciborzu, meaning no photo of their headstone was taken. However, Hermann Berliner (Figure 17) and Olga Berliner née Braun’s names do appear in the Excel spreadsheet indicating a picture of their gravestone exists. (Figure 18)
I know from a family tree in the Pinkus Family Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute that my great-grandmother Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer died in Berlin on the 29th of February 1924 (Figure 19), though she was not buried there. From Microfilm 1184447, I learned she was instead interred on the 11th of May 1924 in Ratibor, almost 10 weeks later, presumably alongside her husband. Jews are typically interred within two to three days after they die, so a 10-week delay is very unusual. (Figure 20)
On Microfilm 1184447, I also found a single page mentioning one of my father’s older brothers who died in infancy, Walter Bruck. (Figure 21) His name is found on a page entitled “Kleiner Kinderfriedhof,” small children’s cemetery. This is further proof of his existence. A brief explanation. After I began immersing myself in family history and creating a family tree years ago, I started to wonder why there was a nine-year age difference between my father’s oldest brother, Fedor Bruck, born in 1895, and my father’s older sister, Susanne Bruck, born in 1904, in an era where families were large. I eventually learned in 2014 when I visited the “Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu” (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz”) that another sibling had been born in 1900 (Figure 22) who died in infancy the next year (Figure 23), named Walter Bruck. I was able to retrieve both his birth and death certificates among the civil records archived at the Archiwum Państwowe. Thus, the discovery of Walter Bruck’s name on Microfilm 1184447 was confirmation he was once buried in the Jüdischer Friedhof Ratibor.
Among the photos that Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński took at the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor before it was demolished is one showing the “Kindergräber,” children’s graves. (Figure 24) As readers can see, the children’s names on some of the headstones can be made out, though most are indecipherable. Interestingly, there is a separate index on Microfilm 1184447, entitled “Großer kinderfriedhof,” big children’s cemetery (Figure 25), with the names of older children buried in the Jewish Cemetery. Infants may have been interred in graves identified only by number, as I discovered in the Weißensee Jewish Cemetery in Berlin.
As a tedious exercise for another day, which I started while researching and writing this post, is cross-checking the names on Microfilm 1184447 with those on the Excel spreadsheet. Some names on Microfilm 1184447 are not in the Excel database, while others are found in both. Preliminarily, I was able to amend death dates or years in the Excel directory, which, as previously mentioned, was compiled from photos, some of which are indistinct.
In closing, I would say one final thing. Based on the Excel index I obtained years ago, I mistakenly concluded then that none of my Bruck relatives had ever been interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, even though I knew some died there when the cemetery was still in use. However, with the benefit of the information I recently acquired from the Jewish records on Microfilm 1184447, I am certain that at least three relatives with the Bruck surname were once buried there. And, this discovery was spurred by helping a reader learn about one of his relatives, a case of helping yourself by aiding others, a most satisfying outcome!
Note: In this post, I discuss a recently obtained list of students who attended Ratibor’s Gymnasium, or high school, between its opening in 1819 and 1849, and facts I’ve gleaned from this registry. While I expected a linear unfolding of the ledger’s contents and information, in some ways it has turned into a game of three-dimensional chess, as I’ll explain. This post also provides an opportunity to lay out the exacting approach I try and take to make a case for ancestral connections relying on primary source documents.
One of the most exciting moments doing forensic genealogy occurs when you discover a copy or original historic document with the names of your ancestors, particularly when the names are those of your oldest known relatives. As a former archaeologist, this is analogous to unearthing an artifact that was last handled by a human hundreds if not thousands of years ago. The context in which an artifact or document is found is key to properly interpreting its significance.
Last year, Mr. Paul Newerla, my friend from Ratibor, retired lawyer and current writer of Silesian history, mentioned that 2019 marked the bicentennial of Ratibor’s Gymnasium, or high school, still used today as a commercial school. To remind readers, Ratibor is the town where my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, was born in 1907. In Post 60, using background information provided by Mr. Newerla, I discussed the high school’s history and a publication Paul found archived at the British Museum written by the school’s first director, Dr. Carl Linge, entitled “Denkschrift über die feierliche Eröffnung des Königl. Evangel. Gymnasium zu Ratibor am 2. Juni 1819. . .,” “Memorandum on the solemn opening of the Royal Evangelical High School in Ratibor on June 2, 1819. . .” (Figure 1) This publication, printed in 1820, included a list of names of all first-year attendees, including two members of my Bruck family with only the initials of their forenames written in elaborate Gothic script, read by Paul as “S. Bruck” and J. Bruck.” (Figure 2) Based on the intimate knowledge of my family tree, I concluded these stood for Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) and Jonas Bruck (1813-1883), brothers who are shown as the children of Jacob Bruck in an abridged typed family tree developed by my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck. (Figure 3)
Typically, attendance at Gymnasiums begins between the ages of 10 and 12, give or take a year, so Samuel’s attendance in 1819 when he would have been 11 years old makes sense. However, his brother Jonas’s attendance in 1819, when he was only six years old seems implausible, unless he was exceptionally precocious. Absent any other incontrovertible evidence, however, this is the preliminary conclusion I came to in Post 60, namely, that Jonas Bruck had attended the Ratibor Gymnasium at a very early age.
Naturally, I became curious whether the original ledger of student names upon which Dr. Linge’s publication was based still exists, whether it is in the Polish State Archives in Racibórz or possibly curated by the Muzeum Racibórzu. Paul explained that because an existing commercial school now occupies the buildings of the former high school (Figure 4), some of the original records are retained there. In the recent past, there had apparently been some discussion about transferring the remaining ledgers to the archive or museum but for unknown reasons these negotiations ended acrimoniously.
Paul offered to contact the commercial school and inquire about the student ledgers, which he knew to have existed at one time because a colleague had shared some pictures of the “Album,” as it is referred to. Paul was recently granted access to the Gymnasium’s records. This turned out to be a frustrating exercise because the school was unable to initially locate the Album of student names for the period 1819 to 1849, even presented with irrefutable evidence of its existence in the form of pictures; Paul even checked the school’s archives, to no avail. Dispiritedly, Paul left his name and number, and asked them to call him if the Album was ever found.
Paul was not optimistic the ledger would turn up. He’s related some horror stories how nearby Polish and Czech Republic parishes have on occasion burned Kirchenbücher, church books, Kirchenmatrikeln, the roll or register of parishioners, and Pfarrmatrikel, parish matriculations, related to former German occupants of the area simply because none of their descendants live locally anymore. To use another archaeological analogy, it’s like pillaging a cultural site, ripping a page from prehistory, so to speak. So, it came as a pleasant surprise when several weeks after Paul’s visit to the former Ratibor Gymnasium he received a call telling him they’d finally located the Album in question. Paul promptly visited the commercial school and took pictures of the entire ledger of students covering the period 1819 through 1849, roughly 90 pages worth of material, which he sent me. (Figure 5)
I’ve been a coin collector much of my life and going through all the pages of the Ratibor Gymnasium Album was comparable to sorting through a cache of pennies in search of pre-1959 wheat chaff coppers. While the names of family members I discovered were relatively few, the information corresponding to each ancestor has provided multiple avenues for further investigation. The challenge is making sense of ancestral connections for people who lived 170 to 200 years ago in the context of what was a very large Bruck family at the time. As I mentioned at the outset, it’s a bit like playing three-dimensional chess
In the table below, I summarize the family data I gleaned from the Ratibor student ledger. Then, I examine using available primary source documents how or whether these people are or may be related.
SUMMARY OF FAMILY NAMES FROM RATIBOR GYMNASIUM ALBUM, 1819-1849
Readers will note that Isaac and Samuel Bruck’s names are listed in succession and bracketed, and the profession of their father is identical, an “Arrendator,” a leaseholder (i.e., holding property by lease). Thus, I assume they were brothers, although I had no prior knowledge of Isaac. Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 7) was my great-great-grandfather, and I have photos of both he and his wife, Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861), later in life. Samuel purchased the family hotel in Ratibor, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, around the middle of the 19th Century, following a career as a wood merchant.
My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck produced an abbreviated typed family tree (Figure 3) that includes the names of Samuel Bruck and his brother Jonas (more on him later), shown to be the sons of Jacob Bruck and his wife Maria Aufrecht. From primary source documents, Jacob (Jakob) Nathan Bruck, his complete name, and Maria Aufrecht are known to have had other children. LDS microfilm roll 1184449 for Ratibor documents the birth of a daughter named Rebecka on the 10th of January 1815. (Figure 8) The same microfilm roll also documents the marriages of three of Jacob’s daughters, Wilhelmina, Dorothea, and Fanny, respectively, in 1814, 1817, and 1822 (Figure 9); the mother is not identified but I presume is Maria Aufrecht. And, yet another primary source document identifies Jacob Nathan Bruck as the father of a son named Marcus Moritz Bruck who married Nanette von Aldersthal in 1836 in Berlin at the age of 36 (Figure 10); again the mother is not named but I presume is Maria. So, from various sources, I can reasonably document that Jacob Nathan Bruck likely had at least eight children (i.e., Wilhelmina, Dorothea, Fanny, Marcus Moritz, Isaac, Samuel, Jonas, and Rebecka).
Let’s move on to Isaac and consider what primary sources are available for him. With the original Ratibor Gymnasium Album for 1819-1849 in hand, and with Isaac Bruck’s full name written out, I am now certain the initial for Isaac’s forename in Dr. Carl Linge’s 1820 publication referenced above was mistakenly recorded as a “J.” rather than an “I.” This led me to initially conclude that Jonas had attended the high school at the precocious age of 6. Not the case.
Isaac’s age at the time he attended the Ratibor Gymnasium in 1819 is stated as 13. Given that the Gymnasium Ratibor Album records students’ names starting on the 11th of May 1819, I generally place Isaac’s birth in the early part of 1806, though it could certainly have been in the latter half of 1805. I discovered a family tree on MyHeritage that gives an Isaac Bruck’s exact date of birth as the 9th of November 1805 in Breslau. However, upon locating the original birth register listing for this individual in the LDS microfilm for Breslau (LDS Roll 1184380, page 34 of 594), I found the listing is for someone named ISAAC BRUG. (Figure 11) Conceivably, an alternate spelling for “Bruck” in the early 19th Century could have been “BRUG,” but because the father is identified as “abr. Meyer Brug,” I’m dubious this is the same Isaac. I’m convinced Isaac’s father was Jacob Nathan Bruck because of his association in the student ledger with the name “Samuel Bruck,” whose father was assuredly Jacob. This is another example of something I rail about, the need to be cautious about adopting and replicating information found in other family trees without confirming the source of the data.
Years ago when I did a basic Google query on Isaac Bruck, I stumbled upon an intriguing announcement in Volume 18 of the “Amtsblatt für den Regierungsbezirk Marienwerder (Official Gazette for the Marienwerder District),” dated the 26th of May 1828 about him. (Figures 12a-b) There is no question the announcement relates to my ancestor as he is said to have come from Ratibor, and his age of 22 in 1828 coincides with my estimate of how old he would have been then had he been born between 1805 and 1806. It seems, the Security Services from the West Prussian town of Graudenz issued a bulletin in May of 1828 alerting the police authorities to arrest Isaac Bruck after he had gone AWOL or escaped from the local penitentiary. He was described as Jewish, 22 years old with black and curly hair, a black beard, a normal sized mouth, having an oval chin and face, of average stature, 5 feet 2 inches, with a scar on his right forearm from a horse bite. Whether Isaac was ever brought to justice remains unknown.
Several other primary sources from Ratibor make mention of Isaac Bruck and his wife Caroline Bruck née Stolz, who is identified as the daughter of Joachim Meyer Stolz. The birth register for Ratibor records Isaac and Caroline gave birth to a daughter named Fany on the 28th of December 1833 (Figure 13), who according to one of my cousins supposedly died in 1834. Isaac and Caroline’s divorce is recorded on the 19th of July 1835, and gives the name of Caroline’s father as “Joachim Meyer Stolz.” (Figure 14) Yet a third primary source from 1835, claiming that Caroline and Isaac are then living separately, states Isaac remarried a woman named Charlotte Leopold; this same document gives the names and dates of birth of Isaac and Caroline’s two other children, Marie born on the 27th of June 1832, and Heinrich on the 6th of January 1835. (Figure 15) Caroline Bruck née Stolz’s death certificate records her death in Berlin on the 24th of January 1875, and claims she was born in 1803 in Rawitsch [today: Rawicz, Poland]. (Figures 16a-b)
The Ratibor Gymnasium Album records Heimann’s enrollment on the 4th of April 1823, when he was 11 years old, placing his birth around 1812. Some ancestral trees claim his full name was “Heinrich Hermann Heimann Bruck.”
The Ratibor Gymnasium Album states that Heimann’s father was a “Destillateur,” a distiller, unlike Isaac and Samuel’s father, who, as mentioned, was an “Arrendator,” a leaseholder. Given that Jacob Nathan Bruck had so many siblings, it’s possible some lived in Ratibor, and that Heimann was one of Jacob’s nephews rather than his son. There is insufficient data to conclusively determine Heimann’s relationship to Jacob Bruck.
A Jonas Bruck, whose father was also a “Destillateur,” a distiller, was enrolled in the Ratibor Gymnasium on the 21st of April 1824, when he was 10 ½ years of age. Once again, the question of whether this Jonas was the son of Jacob Bruck or the son of one of his brothers or cousins is subject to debate. Let me explain.
The Jonas Bruck who was the son of Jacob Nathan Bruck and the father of the famed dentist Dr. Julius Bruck, discussed in Post 68, is buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Breslau; his dates of birth and death are thus known (i.e., b. 5 March 1813-d. 5 April 1883). (Figure 19) In April 1824, when Jonas was enrolled, he would already have been 11 years of age, not 10 ½ as noted. This, and the fact that the father of the Jonas who was enrolled in the Ratibor Gymnasium in April 1824 was “Destillateur” would suggest this is possibly not Jacob’s son. No way to be sure.
Marcus (Markus) Braun was enrolled at the Ratibor Gymnasium on the 19th of May 1829 at the age of 12 ½. Marcus, my great-great-grandfather, a Brauereipachter, or tenant brewer, was the subject of Post 14. He is known to have been born in 1817, and his age in 1829 confirms this.
Oscar (Oskar) Bruck was registered as a student at the Ratibor Gymnasium on the 22nd of May 1845. By this year, the precise date of birth of students rather than their age was recorded, and Oscar’s birth is noted as the 8th of October 1832, which corresponds with data available to me elsewhere (i.e., the Pinkus Family Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute). Oscar Bruck was my great-great-uncle.
On the 3rd of January 1846, a Heimann Bruck from another generation is enrolled at the Ratibor Gymnasium, and his father was “Sattlermeister,” or saddler. His date of birth is noted as the 26th of December 1833. It’s not clear how he’s related to Jacob Nathan Bruck. Figure 15 indicates that Isaac Bruck and Caroline Bruck née Stolz had a son named Heimann, born on the 6th of January 1835, so presumably the parents of the Heimann born on the 26th of December 1833 were someone other.
My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck (Figure 24), brother of Oscar Bruck, was enrolled at the Ratibor Gymnasium on the 27th of April 1848. His date of birth is recorded as the 30th of September 1834, which again corresponds with data available in the Pinkus Family Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute.
In preparing this Blog post, I conferred with one of my fourth cousins. He has in his possession a memoir written by his great-aunt Bertha Jacobson née Bruck, great-granddaughter of Jacob Nathan Bruck, claiming he was one of 17 children and had 12 children of his own with Maria Aufrecht!! One family tree manager, now deceased, has precise vital data on Jacob’s dates and places of birth and death (b. 18 February 1770, Pschow-d. 29 June 1832, Ratibor), as well as the birth years of a few of his children, but cites no source. Given the very precise dates and places, I’m inclined to believe they’re authentic, but I can’t independently confirm this, so I reserve judgement as to their accuracy.
Given the large number of potential ancestors Jacob Bruck may have had and the likelihood that names repeated themselves within and across generations, it’s difficult to pinpoint the relationship among all the Bruck members who attended the Ratibor Gymnasium absent more primary source documents.
In closing, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that many of the family history stories I relate on my Blog would be impossible without the generous assistance of a cadre of researchers and genealogists who offer their help free-of-charge simply because they derive a vicarious “high” from doing so. Obtaining the help of local historians and researchers, particularly native speakers, is especially valuable as they often have knowledge of historic documents, not yet automated, that an outsider, like myself, would be unaware of. The mere existence of my Blog, albeit of limited interest to most of the world, attracts enough attention by people in a position to further my ancestral investigations and allows me to relate some of my tales. To these named and unnamed people I’m eternally grateful.
Note: In this post, I explore some of the information Mr. Paul Newerla, the Racibórz historian, was able to find related to the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) in what is called the “Grundbuch,” or land register, discuss where this information currently resides, and how it rounds out my understanding of the history and ownership of the sugar plant over the years. I also explain to readers that even had I been able to access the land register and backup files on my own, I would have been hard-pressed to make much sense of the materials without the intercession of a lawyer familiar with German real estate law. Mr. Newerla happens to be a retired Polish lawyer who, by virtue of his profession and current study of Silesian history, is well versed in such matters.
Mr. Paul Newerla, my friend from Racibórz, Poland, is a retired lawyer who now specializes in studying and writing about the history of Silesia. Regular readers will recognize his name as I’ve mentioned him in numerous posts related to Ratibor, Germany, the town in Upper Silesia where my father was born in 1907. Perhaps, one of the biggest unintended benefits of having a family history Blog is that Paul stumbled upon it in the course of doing research and reached out to me through Webmail to offer supplementary historical information on the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel which I’d written about. This family establishment was owned through what I’ve determined to be three generations, from roughly the mid-19th Century through the early 1920’s. Our initial exchanges involved the Bruck’s Hotel but have far transcended this subject.
I had the pleasure of personally meeting Paul in 2018 on a visit to Racibórz. (Figure 1) As an aside, I realize many fellow genealogists may never have the opportunity nor resources to visit the places one’s ancestors hail from, but I can’t emphasize enough the value of “having boots on the ground,” so to speak, to further one’s ancestral investigations, as this post will illustrate. It’s worth mentioning that Paul does not speak English, nor do I speak German, so we are compelled to use a few on-line translators to communicate, which presents its own challenges but is far better than nothing.
As I began to research the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Figure 2), I naturally turned to Paul to ask him about the sugar plant’s history. He sent me numerous maps and visuals and provided valuable context for understanding the extent of the sugar industry in Silesia and its influence on the development of railroads; I’ve discussed these topics in earlier posts on the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik. I was specifically interested in what Paul might be able to tell me about the sale by or confiscation of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik from its Jewish owners, the timing, the names of the sellers, and the price for which the business was sold. While he knew little about these matters, coincidentally, during his lawyering days, Paul had handled the legal sale of the former Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik between Polish parties. For this reason, he knew that while the sale of the sugar plant may well have been compelled by the Nazis, the later Polish owners had valid legal rights. Likely, the Nazi overlords wanted to handle the forced sale with a veneer of “legality” by paying the Jewish owners something for their business, even if that payment was vastly below fair market value.
By virtue of Paul’s previous involvement with the sale of the former Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, he knew that the “Grundbuch,” that is the land register, is archived in the Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz”). (Figure 3) The Grundbuch in Germany, including former parts of Germany that are now within Poland, shows the names of the current and previous owners, third party rights in rem (e.g., mortgages), and the description of the property. Land registers were kept for real estate or land, and included, as will be discussed below, the buildings and structures found on the land.
The land registry is a special division of the local German district court (i.e., Grundbuchamt beim Amtsgericht), and land registers are kept in Poland’s counterpart courts even today. Changes of rights to land do not go into effect until they have been recorded in the land register, although some exceptions apply (e.g. an heir becomes owner of a property even if he or she is not registered in the land register). Unless proven otherwise, the correctness of all titles recorded in the Grundbuch is assumed and a buyer can rely on its accuracy.
The old German land registers have been continued by the Polish court, naturally in Polish, and slightly modified in concept. The basic German land register was a thick book with sections for: I. Directory of Properties, II. Owner(s), III. Rights of other persons (e.g., rights of use, real burdens), and IV. Mortgages. The land registers were kept in court in case they were needed there. The documents justifying the individual entries in the land register were in the so-called “files to the land register,” and were held in the archives of the court; notes were made in the files but in the event of a discrepancy between the land register and the files, the former took precedence. In the 1960’s, Polish land registers were introduced that were organized differently; sections I-IV above were retained except they were kept in individual volumes, and in the back of each volume, the documents justifying the entries were maintained. As a result, files to the land registers in the court archives were no longer needed there so were turned over to the State Archives after several years.
There is one other distinction Paul brought to my attention I need to mention. There is also a “Handelregister,” or commercial register, that is maintained by what are called “Registergerichten,” Commercial Register Courts, that’s to say, regional courts above district courts. The Handelregister records “legal persons” of a company, including Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (GmbH), a limited liability company, or LLC. The name of the GmbH emphasizes the fact that the owners (Gesellschafter, also known as members) of the entity are not personally liable or responsible for the company’s debts. GmbHs are considered legal persons. The Handelregister for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik is not available today for reasons that are unclear.
All the above is just background information that will understandably be of scant interest to most readers. Let me continue.
Prior to my queries, Paul had tried for some time to access the land register for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik. He was aware that German land registers, Grundbucher, are archived at the State Archives in Racibórz. The status of these registers is they have not yet been catalogued and therefore are not available to researchers. My interest in the sugar plant renewed Paul’s attempt to gain access to the plant’s Grundbuch, and, as Paul characterizes it, he finally “was allowed into the camp” to search for it; this was only possible because of his longstanding relationship with the State Archives in Racibórz. Paul found it under the number “Woinowitz Sheet 161.” (Figure 4) Fortunately, the land register includes the supporting files or documentation turned over by the Polish court.
Paul photographed and sent me copies of the documents he deemed of greatest value and spent a good deal of time explaining their content and significance. I want to believe that in describing some of what Paul found in the Grundbuch and the auxiliary files, I’ve mostly done justice conveying this to readers, although I welcome readers’ input if I’ve failed in this regard.
Figure 5 shows the size of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik under the column “Größe.” It was 5.44.10 hectares in size, or 13.44 acres.
As alluded to earlier, a Grundbuch is kept for land and shows the structural components located on the property. In the case of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, the extent of the property and the current value of the structural components is shown on Figure 6. The left-hand column of the table below is a German transcription of the structures listed and the right-hand column provides a rough translation and in a few instances some explanation in brackets:
1. Acker, Weide, Graben, Weg, sowie Hofraum“ – was vom Grundbuch “Polnisch Woinowitz” [der früher Ortsnamen] Blatt 60 abgezweigt wurde. Dieses Blatt 60 umfasste Grundstücke des “Dominiums Woinowitz.”
1. Field, willow, ditch, path/way, courtyard space—which were diverted from the land register “Polish Woinowitz” [the former place name] Sheet 60. [Sheet 60 included plots of land of the “Dominium Woinowitz”]
a. Zuckerfabrik mit Maschinen und Kesselhaus
a. Sugar factory with machine and boiler house
b. Gasanstalt
b. Gasworks
c. Eisenbahnwaagehaus
c. Railway scale house
d. Comptoir (Büro) mit Waagehaus
d. Office with scale house [another scale house where incoming sugar beets and outgoing processed sugar were weighed]
e. Rohproduktionshaus mit Wohnung
e. Raw production house with apartment
f. Rohproduktionshaus
f. Raw production house
g. Stall mit Remise und Werkstätten
g. Stable with drawer and workshops
The table below corresponds to the text on Figure 7, and shows the various names for the sugar factory over time, the owners, and the reason for the acquisition or name change:
1. Woinowitz’er Zuckerfabrik Adolph Schück & Comp. zu Woinowitz — Auf Grund der Auflassung vom 24-ten eingetragen am 30-ten Mai 1881
Der Name der Firma ist geändert und lautet jetzt „Woinowitz’er Zuckerfabrik Adolf Schück & Co. Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung zu Woinowitz bei Ratibor O/S.“ [O/S = Oberschlesien] — Eingetragen am 21. Oktober 1910
Nr. 2 statt Nr. 1 nach dem Rezess vom 29. Dezember 1923 eingetragen am 20. Februar 1925.
Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik, Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung Weihendorf Kreis Ratibor — Auf Grund der Firmenänderung eingetragen am 13. August 1938.
1.Woinowitz’er Sugar Factory Adolph Schück & Comp. to Woinowitz — On the basis of the 24th injunction on 30th May 1881
The name of the company has been changed and is now “Woinowitz’er Zuckerfabrik Adolf Schück & Co. Gesellschaft with limited liability to Woinowitz near Ratibor O/S.” [O/S = Upper Silesia] — Registered on 21st October 1910 [FIGURE 8]
No. 2 instead of No. 1 registered on 20th February 1925 after the recess of 29th December 1923.
Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik, limited liability company Weihendorf district Ratibor — Due to the change in the company registered on 13th August 1938.
2. Die Ratiborer Zuckerfabrik, Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung in Ratibor — Aufgelassen am 26. Februar 1942 und eingetragen am 25. Februar 1943.
2.The Ratibor Sugar Factory, limited liability company in Ratibor — Abandoned on 26th February 1942 and registered on 25th February 1943.
3. Die Landwirtschaftliche Warenzentrale Oberschlesien /Raiffeisen) eGmbH in Oppeln — Aufgelassen am 11 Dezember 1942 und eingetragen am 25. Februar 1943.
3. The Agricultural Goods Centre Upper Silesia /Raiffeisen) eGmbH in Opole — Abandoned on 11th December 1942 and registered on 25th February 1943.
Paul provided some additional explanation about the land register and the auxiliary files. He’d hoped to find documents there about the possible expropriation of the sugar plant from the Schück family. However, Paul discovered the files relate only to the actual entries in the land register, and because no mention of the forced sale of the plant by the Nazis is found in the original land register, therefore, no documentation exists in the land register’s backup files.
The land register recorded changes of ownership; in the case of private sales, the purchase contract would be found in the files of the land register. However, because the Zuckerfabrik was a GmbH or an LLC, changes in ownership were recorded in the Handelregister, the commercial register, and the courts notified of such changes via a letter. The change in the name of the LLC could result from new ownership or possibly new shareholders that came into a company. Regardless, a change in the company’s name in the commercial register of the GmbH (LLC) also caused a change in the name of the company in the land register.
Let me provide an example as this may be confusing to readers. If Adolph Schück individually owned a plot of land, it was recorded in the land register under his name. If, on the other hand, Mr. Schück formed a GmbH, which he eventually did and could do even as a single person, he could transfer that property as a non-cash deposit into the GmbH which would then be recorded in the Handelregister. Adolph Schück’s name was also then deleted from the Grundbuch and the GmbH registered in place of his name as the owner of the property. The obvious advantage, as previously mentioned, was that Mr. Schück was no longer personally liable or responsible for the company’s debts.
From earlier posts on the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, readers may recall that Sigmund Hirsch was Adolph Schück’s partner in the sugar plant. I was even able to read his name on several pages Paul sent from the State Archives in Racibórz, so asked whether he was an equal partner. Paul reminded me this information and the size of Sigmund’s investment would be found in the commercial register, which we don’t have access to. However, Paul drew my attention to a four-page document he found at the State Archives, dated the 15th of January 1908, which indirectly answers my question. (Figures 9a-d) Initially, the capital shares owned by Schück and Hirsch were unequal. According to this document, Sigmund Hirsch was obliged to use his annual dividends, which exceeded 27,000 Reichmarks (RM), to increase his capital share of the business until they were equal partners. Additionally, because there was such a large difference in the number of shares owned by the two men, Sigmund Hirsch obtained a security mortgage in the amount of 400,000 RM payable to Adolph Schück.
In addition to official partners, Paul explained there were also “silent” partners. They invested their money, presumably reaped a portion of the sugar plant’s profits, but were not recorded in the commercial register. Often, these silent partners were members of the Board of Directors or agents of the company.
Naturally, I was curious whether the land register and/or the backup files indicated in which year the Nazis forced the sale of the Zuckerfabrik and was reminded this information would also be found in the Handelregister. Yet again, however, one document from the State Archives gives an indirect clue; it shows that on the 26th of September 1938, the company name changed to “Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik GmbH” without “Adolf Schück & Co.” (Figure 10), likely corresponding to the end of the Schück family’s stake in the sugar plant. To remind readers, less than three months later December 18, 1938, Erich Schück, Adolph’s son and probable managing director of the sugar plant, killed himself in Berlin. I don’t think the timing is coincidental.
As to the value of the sugar plant in 1938, I remarked to Paul that its value of 189,800 RM seemed low. (Figure 11) He pointed out that while a 1943 letter from the tax office used roughly this same value for that plot of land, it also showed “assets and working capital” of 2,269,351 RM minus unspecified “deductions” of 1,247,223 RM. (Figures 12a-b) To remind readers, in January 2017, a 1937 Reichsmark would have been worth approximately $4.30. Clearly, the income generated by the Zuckerfabrik was significant, and it’s very likely the Jewish owners sold at a significant loss and the heirs never adequately compensated.
Suffice it to say, at the risk of presenting information that would be of no interest to most readers, there are many more documents in the files to the land register that seemingly relate to contracts and financial matters.
I’ve previously alluded to the fact that knowing someone who is familiar with the “landscape” of archival and documentary resources available for an area one’s ancestors originated from can significantly expand one’s understanding of things. I erroneously assumed the land register for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik from the State Archives in Racibórz was the extent of documentary information available; what I initially failed to comprehend is that the original land register for the sugar plant still exists and is retained by the local district court in Poland.
Paul accessed the original Grundbuch and was able to glean additional information not available from the copy of the land register and files in the State Archives. He confirmed that Adolph Schück originally purchased in 1881 only arable land and meadows where the sugar plant, gas station, etc. would eventually be built. (Figure 13) The ownership titled was recorded in the land register on the 27th of March 1881 as “Woinowitzer Zuckerfabrik Adolph Schück & Comp. in Woinowitz.” (Figure 14) At the time, the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik was not yet a GmbH or LLC. On the 21st of October 1910, the name of the company changed to “Woinowitzer Zuckerfabrik Adolph Schück & Co. Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung [Gmbh] zu Woinowitz” (Figure 14), at which time the company became an LLC. Then, on the 13th of August 1938, the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik underwent an ownership change becoming the “Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik, Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung Weihendorf Kreis Ratibor.” (Figure 14) Presumably, this corresponded to the time the Schück and Hirsch heirs were forced to sell the sugar plant.
Subsequent changes are also noted in the Grundbuch. On the 26th of February 1942, the factory was taken over by the “Ratiborer Zuckerfabrik GmbH in Ratibor,” and later that year, on the 11th of December 1942, the factory named changed to “Raiffeisen.” (Figure 14)
Thus, the original land register for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik clarifies a few things: we learn the year Adolph Schück purchased the land (1881); the fact that he purchased land and meadows with no structures on them; the year the firm became a GmbH or LLC (1910); and the date the Schück family ceased to be owners (1938).
Paul was unable to find the Grundbuch for the Woinowitz estate (i.e., “Polnisch Woinowitz“) from which Adolph Schück purchased the land in 1881, so no conclusions can be drawn about the previous property owners. Just to be crystal clear about this, Figure 6 above, the page from the files of the Woinowitz Grundbuch, indicates that Adolph Schück purchased a “field, willow, ditch, path/way, courtyard space” which was “detached” from what was referred to as the Polnisch Woinowitz and this sale was noted in the land register for that estate. Paul was unable to find the Grundbuch for this estate at the District court, although possibly it may eventually turn up at the State Archives in Racibórz.
Let me apologize to readers for the ponderous nature of this post. I’ve gone to such lengths to understand and explain the source of the data related to the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik and the timeline for the benefit of a select audience. As explained, because the Grundbuch’s auxiliary files are not catalogued, they are basically inaccessible to the average individual. However, even if they were generally available, it would still require comprehension of German and an understanding of German land law to make sense of their contents and its significance. This said, for the few readers whose Jewish ancestors may have held property in Germany they were compelled to sell during the Nazi era, there may be a few tendrils of useful information in this post.
Note: In this post, I talk about the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium (High School) in Ratibor, celebrating its 200th anniversary in 2019, and briefly discuss a contemporary publication from 1820 confirming my family’s connection to the city at that time.
This year Racibórz, Poland celebrates “200 Jahre der Königlichen Evangelischen Gymnasium zu Ratibor,” 200 Years of the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium (High School) in Ratibor. Around Easter, my friend Mr. Paul Newerla, retired lawyer and current Silesian historian, presented a lecture at the Muzeum w Raciborzu on this subject. In researching the school’s history, Paul discovered an old book published in Ratibor in 1820 upon the school’s opening, archived at the British Museum, entitled “Denkschrift über die feierliche Eröffnung des Königl. Evangel. Gymnasium zu Ratibor am 2. Juni 1819. . .,” “Memorandum on the solemn opening of the Royal Evangelical High School in Ratibor on June 2, 1819. . .” (Figure 1) Prior to Paul’s discovery, this publication was unknown to local historians.
This 1820 book contains an alphabetical listing of the students enrolled at the time the Gymnasium was opened, that, interestingly, includes two of my earliest ancestors (Figure 2):
These ancestors were brothers Jonas Bruck (1813-1883) (Figure 3) and Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 4), sons of Jacob Nathan Bruck (1770-1832). In Post 11, I told readers the original owner of the family hotel in Ratibor, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, had been my great-great-grandfather, the Samuel Bruck who attended the Ratibor Gymnasium. Previously, I’d known my family’s connection to Ratibor extended back to at least 1850, which corresponded to the approximate time when Samuel Bruck purchased the family hotel. However, Mr. Newerla brought to my attention information proving the Bruck family’s association with Ratibor in fact extended back at least one more generation to Samuel’s father. In Post 11, I reported that according to land registers from the city of Ratibor from the time of Jacob Bruck, he had been an arrendator, a leaseholder, on two properties within Ratibor. These were located, respectively, on Jungfrauenstraße and Stockhaus-Gasse, shown on an 1812 city map sent to me by Mr. Newerla. (Figure 5) How much earlier my Bruck family may have arrived in Ratibor, and from which Silesian town, remains unknown. Regardless, the list of the students enrolled at the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium in 1819 confirms an early 19th century connection to Ratibor by my ancestors.
Let me provide some brief historical background on the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium in Ratibor to help readers better understand the origins of the school, its locations, the age of the students, and their religious makeup.
Following a decision by the Royal Prussian Government on the 1st of October 1817, Ratibor became the seat of the Higher Regional Court of the Province of Upper Silesia. This coincided with the arrival of about twenty lawyers who discovered that Ratibor, then the largest city in Upper Silesia, had no grammar school for their children. Notably, those high schools that existed elsewhere at the time in Upper Silesia were all run by Catholic institutions or were in monasteries and were Catholic. The judges of the Higher Regional Court, as well as many other representatives of the intelligentsia, however, were Protestant. Thus, the President of the Regional Court of the Province of Upper Silesia appealed for the establishment of an Evangelical grammar school in Ratibor, which the King of Prussia granted on the 5th of June 1818. He appropriated 2,500 Reichtalers from the treasury for the maintenance of the new school and gave it the very spacious monastery of the Holy Ghost Dominican Church (Figure 6), which had been secularized in 1811. The monastery was located adjacent old city walls at the end of Jungfrauenstraße, coincidentally along the very street where Jacob Bruck leased property. Because the monastery buildings had to be renovated for school purposes, the Gymnasium was housed for a time in the former Franciscan monastery along Brunken (Figure 7), then located outside the city walls. Ratibor’s city walls, towers and gates, surrounding the town, were only demolished in 1828, after which the Prinz von Preußen was constructed at the corner of Oderstraße and Bollwerkstraße, eventually becoming the Bruck’s Hotel in the mid-19th Century.
When the Ratibor Gymnasium first opened its doors in the former Franciscan monastery, 114 students had passed an entrance examination and been admitted. Even though the high school was Protestant, paying students from all religious denominations could attend. The first class consisted of 40% Protestants, 50% Catholics, and 10% Jews. After only a few years the percent of Jewish students was at 20%, and never dropped much below this level, even though Ratibor’s Jewish population never exceeded 10%. This attests to the importance Jews attached to education.
The renovation of the grammar school on Jungfrauenstraße was not completed until 1827; the renovation included demolition of the east and north wings of the monastery, along with the removal of the city wall near the west wing, as it darkened the school rooms in this wing. Between 1819, when the grammar school opened, and 1827, when renovations were completed, the King of Prussia had issued an edict on January 16, 1821, giving the monastery church adjacent the Gymnasium to the Protestant parish (Figure 8) because their church located elsewhere in Ratibor was in danger of collapse on account of an unstable foundation.
By 1904, the Protestant parish had purchased a plot of land elsewhere in Ratibor on which to erect a new church. The plan had been to sell the former monastery church next to the Gymnasium to the Prussian State, dismantle the church, and use the parcel for the expansion of the grammar school. Even though essential components of the monastery dated to the 14th Century, the Conservator of the Provincial Burgermeister, essentially the Province of Silesia’s executive council, deemed the monastery to be of “insignificant monumental value.” This decision highlighted the power of Ratibor’s Protestants even over the General Conservator of the Province. It was only the refusal by the Prussian State to purchase the monastery that prevented its destruction and allows the facility to exist today as part of the Muzeum w Raciborzu. As a historic preservationist, I find it fascinating how serendipitous the survival of this noteworthy structure is.
By the 1870’s Ratibor’s Gymnasium numbered in excess of 700 students, so an approval and allocation of funds for an extension was obtained that was completed by 1881. (Figure 9) A third floor was eventually added to the high school. (Figure 10)
Attendance in kindergarten was optional. At the age of six one was admitted to elementary school. Schools were denominational until 1873, after which such religious schools were abolished. Compulsory education existed in Prussia since 1765, although unconditional compulsory education for boys and girls was not introduced until 1907. The school year started on the 1st of April, effectively after Easter. Following the fourth grade of elementary school, one could be admitted to high school with passage of an entrance exam, thus around the age of ten.
In the case of Samuel and Jonas Bruck who show up in 1819 as enrolled students in Ratibor’s Gymnasium, their attendance was no doubt due to passage of the entrance exam. Still, Jonas’ attendance at the precocious age of only six, he was born in 1813, seems early. There is no doubt, however, as to the year Jonas was born because he is buried along with one of his renowned sons and their respective wives in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], and his headstone provides his date of birth. (Figures 11a-b) Paul Newerla sent me one page of the register of students admitted to Ratibor’s Gymnasium along with their ages, and most were between 9 and 13 years of age. (Figure 12) This log still exists today, and, as we speak, Paul is working on having it donated to the Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz”). Regardless of whether Paul is successful in this endeavor, he is working to access the log to check for other Bruck relatives who may have attended Ratibor’s Gymnasium over the years.
The names of the classes in the 9-year high school were taken from Latin. The lowest class was labeled “Sexta” (sixth), the next “Quinta” (fifth), then “Quarta.” The next three classes, “Tertia” (third), “Sekunda” (second), and “Prima” (first), each consisted of lower and upper grades, for example, “Untertertia” or “Obersekunda” (“unter” means lower, “ober” means upper). After completing the “Oberprima,” you could take the matriculation exam, the “Abitur,” that if passed allowed you to attend a university.
One other thing of passing interest regarding the Ratibor Gymnasium were its collections. In 1938, these consisted of a teacher’s library with 17,000 books, a student library with more than 2,000 volumes, as well as more than 200 books printed before 1600, and 28 incunabula, that is, books printed before 1501. The Ratibor Gymnasium also preserved collections considered useful such as minerals, plant specimens, seeds, mollusks and birds, as well as valuable numismatic collections. (Figures 13-14) When the Museum Raciborzu was founded in 1927, these collections were handed over to the museum. Unfortunately, the museum’s natural science collection, which was in the former Protestant rectory, burnt down in 1945 and has been completely lost.
One unusual exhibit, given to the Royal Evangelical Church in 1864 by the wealthy Jewish banker baron Anselm von Rothschild (Figure 15), lord of Chałupki and Szilerzowice, survives today in the Muzeum Raciborzu. As an archaeologist, I find this story fascinating. Around 1860, Anselm von Rothschild went on a journey to Egypt and brought back numerous souvenirs, among them a complete burial of an Egyptian woman which he intended as a wedding gift for his fiancée. The peculiar gift was rejected. Oddly, in Rothschild’s palace in Szilerzowice, in the presence of invited dinner guests, the two sarcophagi were opened, the cartonnage undone, and the embalmed corpse unwrapped from its bandages.
In 1864, the baron decided to rid himself of the mummy and donated it to the Antiquity Department of the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium. Along with the other collections preserved by the Gymnasium, the mummy was formally taken over by the Muzuem w Raciborzu when it was founded in 1927. The half-bandaged mummy, sarcophagi, and richly ornamented cartonnage as well as three canopic jars to keep the viscera of corpses, purchased from the Museum of Antiquity in Berlin before the war, today are the greatest attraction of the Muzeum w Raciborzu. (Figure 16) Scientific analysis on the mummy revealed it was an Egyptian woman who lived during the 12th Dynasty (946-722 B.C.) named Dzed-Amonet-ius-anch, meaning “goddess Amonet said she would live.” She was a wealthy married woman, probably the daughter of a priest and barber from Thebes, who apparently died of complications from pregnancy.
The Ratibor Gymnasium is still standing today and is currently used as an economic middle school. (Figure 17) According to Paul Newerla, this middle school is where the volume with the names of students enrolled in the former Gymnasium was once kept, along with portfolios of graduation certificates. As we speak, Paul is trying to track down the current provenience of these materials to access their contents and see what more they can tell us about my Bruck relatives.
1820 Denkschrift ueber die feierliche Eroeffnung des Koenigl. Evangel. Gymnasium zu Ratibor am 2. Juni 1819 nebst den dabei gehaltenen Reden des Consistorialrath Dr. Wachler und des Dr. Linge und anderen Beilagen, Ratibor.
Note: In this post, I present some of my great-great-uncle Dr. Josef Pauly’s observations on his life and family. I also discuss the challenges of relating an ancestor’s story even when their written words are available.
Some years ago, my third cousin Andi Pauly sent me a 17-page memoir by Dr. Josef Pauly (Figure 1), his great-grandfather, written by his ancestor on his 25th wedding anniversary, the 8th of June 1894. Dr. Pauly’s reflections were neatly handwritten in German Kurrent (Figures 2a-b), an old form of German-language handwriting based on late medieval cursive writing, also known as Kurrentschrift. Given the fact that many modern-day Germans can’t even read this old script, I had scant hope I would learn what Dr. Pauly had to say about his life and family.
Still, as regular readers know, I’ve learned never to say “never” as, occasionally, an unexpected opportunity presents itself to further my ancestral research. In previous posts, I’ve mentioned Mr. Paul Newerla, my elderly Polish friend from Racibórz, Poland, the town where my father was born when Upper Silesia was still German (Figure 3); Paul first contacted me through my Blog and has been enormously generous in sharing documents, maps, and photographs and educating me about the history of Silesia, a topic on which he’s an expert. Knowing Paul is fluent in German, I became curious whether Dr. Pauly’s handwriting was even legible, so I sent him the first two pages of the document asking whether he could decipher them. Paul returned a German transcription of these pages, telling me the text was quite readable but was deeply philosophical and not easily translated (Paul does not speak English). With great hesitancy, I asked Paul whether he’d be willing to transcribe the entire 17 pages of Dr. Pauly’s memoirs, and he graciously agreed to do this. I will readily admit to readers that, at times, I’m unabashedly shameless when it comes to requesting help with transcriptions or translations. The result was a neatly typed German transcription. Notwithstanding Paul’s admonition that the memoirs were profound, I naively assumed I could get the gist of them using Google Translate; suffice it to say, this was not the case.
Realizing I was part way to understanding what Dr. Pauly had written, I next brazenly approached my distant cousin, Ronny Bruck (Figure 4), asking whether he could translate the typed transcription into English. Much to his regret, he agreed to my request and some weeks later, after many late evenings and much agonizing, Ronny produced the translation I present below, promising never again to undertake such a difficult translation.
It goes without saying that without Paul and Ronny’s gracious and generous assistance, this post would not be possible. I was interested in a translation of Dr. Pauly’s memoirs for what he might have to say about his family. While the memoir told me told me less about Dr. Pauly’s kin than I’d hoped, it revealed a lot about his personal character and human values he esteemed.
I’ve tightened up the English reading of my cousin Ronny’s translation; my friend Paul’s transcription is included here for any German readers who wish to determine whether I’ve done justice to Dr. Pauly’s original remarks. I’ve taken some liberties conveying what Dr. Pauly may have been trying to communicate; I acknowledge I may have misinterpreted the meaning of certain colloquialisms.
Given my familiarity with Dr. Pauly’s lineage, I was not only able to identify all the family members he mentioned by name, but I was also able to find pictures or portraits of all of them. Dr. Pauly’s words are included in their entirety below in Italics, with some capitalized identifications in brackets. There are a few breaks in the italicized text where I provide some brief commentary, although for the most part Dr. Pauly’s words speak for themselves.
On Dr. Josef Pauly’s 25th wedding anniversary on 8th June 1894, he delivered prepared remarks to his gathered friends and family. In 1916, one of his daughters, Helene Guttentag née Pauly (Figure 5), resurrected his comments from 22 years earlier for the first Christmas family gathering following Josef Pauly’s death the previous month.
Memories of our father Dr. Josef Pauly Born: 10th August 1843 in Tost, Germany [today: Toszek, Poland] Died: 7th November 1916 in Posen, Germany [today: Poznan, Poland]
a sisterly greeting Christmas 1916 from Helene Guttentag née Pauly
Written by Josef Pauly
On our silver wedding anniversary on the 8th of June 1894
Festive days in the family, especially those we celebrate in the autumn of our lives, give reason for backward contemplation, and then you thankfully wonder how everything began. I am thinking of my parents’ home in the little Upper Silesian village [TOST, GERMANY, Figure 3]. There life was given to me, there I saw the father [DR. ZADIG PAULY, Figure 6] whom I am similar to in disposition, even though I consider him morally superior to me. There was also the temperamental and undemanding and imaginative mother [ANTONIE MARLE, Figure 7]. Both were in truth assiduous in nature. From there, from the house of my step-great aunt [THERESE GRÄTZER NÉE MOCKRAUER, Figures 8a-b], separated at an early age from my good father, I got my wife. Religious feelings, sympathy for Catholicism, poetry and romance, and finally for the monarchy, all come from the family home and the Upper Silesian village.
Dr. Pauly was clearly raised Catholic, so the irony that multiple of his “racially Jewish” daughters, sons-in-law, and grandchildren, whom I’ve written about in earlier Blog posts, were murdered or committed suicide during the Nazi era is not lost on me. Josef’s reference to Therese Grätzer née Mockrauer as his “step-great aunt” is puzzling since my knowledge of the Pauly lineage suggests she was a full-fledged great-aunt.
I left my parents’ home at the age of 9 ½, too early for such an impressionable one. After an unhappy, unmonitored youth and high school days, I also came too early to the University of Breslau, and, later, after a few semesters, to the military academy in Berlin. The latter, however, was my luck. It was an encouragement for my fantastic nature. Thankfully I remember my teachers, especially Traubes. The bedside, not science, healed me of confusion. I lacked the peace, rules and concentration to be truly scientific in nature. Fresh from my exams, I went to war via Glatz [GLATZ, GERMANY, Figure 3]. A certain demeanor, brashness, and good nature made me useful in the various circumstances of life; but irritable to the point of exaltation, I did not find mental and physical security until I got married. This was luck again. I have three persons to thank besides God: my wife [ROSALIE PAULY NÉE MOCKRAUER, Figure 9]; her guardian and uncle Geheimrat Grätzer [PRIVY COUNCILLOR DR. MED. JONAS GRÄTZER, Figure 10], whose personality seems more and more respectable to me the older I get, because he has always proven himself wise and honorable; and, professor W.A. Freund [DR. WILHELM ALEXANDER FREUND, Figure 11] from Strassburg [STRASBOURG, FRANCE], who was intellectually far superior to me, the doctor of my body and soul, the latter more valuable.
Josef Pauly left home as a lad and attended the University of Breslau when he was still young, suggesting he was very precocious. He ultimately turned what he characterized as unhappy days to his advantage after his time in a Berlin military academy and the army.
Josef identifies the three most influential people in his life, including his wife and her uncle, whom he refers to only as “Geheimrat Grätzer.” I discovered I had his portrait before learning his full name, Privy Councillor Dr. Med. Jonas Grätzer. Use of the term “Geheimrat” was confusing. I was initially under the impression that it referred to a trusted advisor, perhaps in a governmental position, until Andi Pauly explained that it is an abbreviation for “Geheimer Sanitätsrat,” a honorary title for merited doctors in Prussia.
One of Josef’s professors and mentors was a well-known German gynecologist, Dr. Wilhelm Alexander Freund (1833-1917), who earned his degree at the University of Breslau, and afterwards practiced gynecology in the same city. In 1879 he relocated to Strasbourg, France, where he served as a professor of gynecology and obstetrics.
In 1868, I came to Posen, and in 1869 I got married. All the other things you know already, partly from us, partly from uncle Max [MAX KANTOROWICZ, Figure 12] and aunt Rosa [ROSALINDE PAULY, Figure 13], and partly because you have experienced it. You will agree, if I confess gratefully, that until now the good has prevailed, luck was not lacking. Illness and errors have been overcome as far as possible, good will better than one dared hope for. Distress has never knocked on our door, and, so, I would like to say the following as my confession today:
I believe in God as the creative force of the universe, in an immanent consciousness, in a moral world order; to the invisible God of the world, as first revealed by the Jewish religion, whose goodness is identical with the eternal laws.
I believe that human nature has a propensity for evil and an instinct for good, that it is up to education and the family to lead the latter to victory over the former, so the conscience prevails.
I consider the family to be the natural group in the necessary struggle for existence, which must co-exist however different their civic designs are.
I think parents are the first officials of the family. Everything that man possesses is entrusted to him for administration.
Death is a necessity; suicide is a mortal sin, more seldomly a disease.
I don´t think the earth is a vale of tears but a workplace with occasional and not too abundant leisure, and I don´t think people are angels, however, amongst a few there is no good to be found. A statistic of the good qualities of men would give salvation. I firmly believe, given the enormous capacity of human nature to develop and adapt, that good can be developed through favorable influences. Distress, illness and misery can democratize people. I think it is my duty and that of every wealthy person that they help alleviate these social difficulties, which have been exacerbated by modern conditions, and I measure my respect for rich people according to how much of their wealth they give away to others.
I believe everything has its history, and that being aware that one is living in a certain time is important. I believe that nothing is lost in this world, and that humanity progresses slowly in a zigzagging way. I strive out of war and storm to hear the sounds of peace and recovery from sickness and madness. I try to understand the tasks of the present time with my weak power of insight, and understand it as follows: the current education is real, you must protect the body and the soul. One directs the child’s gaze towards nature; one teaches not only beauty but also lawfulness; one must fill children’s souls with the joy that in toto there exists a body of goodness for everybody. But because everything that a man does is buried in the tablets of his brain, and because one’s own ego only feels at ease in the coexistence of another man’s ego, one must exercise the power of self-control and the power to forget oneself. For that is and remains the greatest glory for man: respect for the connection with the whole. Therefore, the highest pleasure of serving the whole is forgetting oneself.
Whether you conceive of man as a single entity or view body and mind separately is immaterial to me. The individual is the soulful body with natural necessity and happiness. One must differentiate between higher and lower impulses; culture is based on controlling baser impulses to have them serve the greater good.
Between the individual’s own ego and the other’s ego, the individual man steers his frail boat; even though the urge may be dark, man is always conscious of the right path.
I consider work to be the most important part of oneself. Self-knowledge and self-criticism are paramount. Every person can learn it, it does not help to lie to yourself.
It’s wrong to accept one’s innate temperament. Just as a sculptor chisels the hard marble, everyone must form his own temperament. This is not the realm of education but rather religion. It can be awakened in every human being. Within the family dissolves the contrast between one’s necessary selfishness and the necessary sublimation of one’s interest. Just as a mother’s love is the highest revelation (epiphany) of nature so is the love between relatives the highest of culture. When I personally experience the good that happens to my brother or sister, that sensation satisfies me, so I am a happy and fulfilled person.
The parents, whose children have such a prevailing attitude, don´t believe this is rare. You know about the three sisters who renounced their own ambitions for the sake of their brother’s study [WILHELM PAULY, Figure 14]. The beautiful fire of such a sacrifice raises the hearth of the family like an inviolable sanctuary. Such an attitude can be educational, if one is honest. How terrible it would be if every intemperate remark uttered within the family went unpunished, so that instead of contributing to the greater good, personal considerations and selfishness prevailed, rather than striving to do right by one’s blood relatives in material and non-material ways.
Here, Dr. Josef Pauly highlights the sacrifice that three of his unnamed daughters made for the benefit of the only one of his nine children who was a male, namely, Wilhelm Pauly. For Josef, renouncing personal aspirations for the benefit of family exemplified the most high-minded ideal.
In a thoughtful bourgeois family, the older sister who raises her brother seeks to influence the younger sibling spiritually as a matter of course. This duty, which is not difficult to practice and understand, creates the most beautiful and secure relationship.
“What you have inherited from your fathers, acquire it to own it.”
Ennoble the blood relationship by making a sacrifice for the other, strive for spiritual influence on one another, then you will be closer together and you will permanently ally yourselves.
I hear only partially this sentiment at this social event which you have dedicated to us today. With gratitude to the Almighty, I see you all gathered here, blood relatives by birth and by fortune; many but not excellently talented, but all sufficiently gifted for the good and simple.
And so I should like to hear, above all else, a quiet vow from this event, of humor and casual mood, that you want to be mindful not only of the vicissitudes of life, but also in everyday life by the commitment placed on you by God and nature which the dying Johannis and his great interpreter Gotthold Ephraim Lessing [Figure 15] summed up in the words:
“Children, love each other with that pure love which is a ray of God´s love”
Given the moral turpitude I see among some of my contemporaries, I find great comfort in reminding myself this was not always so. Many of Dr. Josef Pauly’s words and beliefs resonate with me though I recognize his values are not always congruent with my own nor relevant to the modern age. Despite the steps involved in bringing Dr. Josef’s words to light, first transcribing the German text, then translating them into English, and finally rewriting his words to try and capture their “true” meaning, highlights the challenge a biographer faces even when the subject’s own words are available to them. Still, where a subject’s words are available, it is preferable to presenting them to readers even if in a slightly distorted manner and even if the meaning is not always entirely obvious.
Note: This postscript provides an opportunity to acknowledge a “righteous man,” Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński, the Polish gentleman I learned was responsible for photographing and documenting the tombstones in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor. I recently learned about this Polish gentleman from Mr. Paul Newerla, the retired lawyer and Racibórz historian, who was a friend of Mr. Świetliński. In the process, I also learned about “lost treasure” recovered in Racibórz.
Readers will recall from my earlier post that the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor was “liquidated,” not during the Third Reich but rather during Poland’s Communist era. I learned that prior to its destruction, all the tombstones, the oldest of which dated to 1821, the youngest to 1940-1941, and their locations within the cemetery were photographed and plotted on a map. I was told the original photographs and plan maps are stored at the Muzeum Raciborzu, so I arranged with the museum to view and photograph all these materials in 2015.
It had been cynically suggested that the headstones had been photographed perhaps by an agent of the Polish security services, possibly to fend off future attempts by Jewish descendants to reclaim property confiscated from their relatives by the Nazis. Exactly how documenting the tombstones would have blocked such claims is not clear, on the contrary.
Regardless, in June 2018, when I met Mr. Paul Newerla, Racibórz historian, I asked him whether he knew the history about the images. Paul told me the pictures and maps had been made by a now-deceased friend of his, Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński. (Figure 1) Mr. Świetliński was the college-educated Chief of Racibórz’s Parks Department, and an excellent gardener. He produced two copies of all the images and photo albums (Figure 2), one of which he donated to the Muzeum Raciborzu, the other which he retained for himself. Produced as they were in the days before digital photography, developing the pictures came at great personal cost and sacrifice.
In anticipation of preparing this post, Paul Newerla passed along an article, which I will return to below, that included a little background on Mr. Świetliński and on the fate of the Jewish kirkut or “cemetery” in Racibórz. Roughly translated from Polish, I quote:
“In 1972-73, the kirkut was liquidated. Local stonemasons were permitted to remove Classical, neo-Gothic, and modernist matzevot [“tombstone”], which they later turned into tombstones in Catholic cemeteries. Today, only old trees remain in the necropolis.” (Figure 3)
From this article, we learn Mr. Świetliński photographed the tombstones sometime before 1972, and the disposition of the Jewish tombstones.
Among the photographic images captured by Mr. Świetliński from the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor are ones showing the “kindergräber,” or children’s graves (Figure 4); most of these graves appear to have headstones inscribed with the name and dates of birth and death of the children, some with sufficient clarity to make out specific information. (Figure 5) I had hoped I might be able to find an image showing the grave of my father’s older brother, Walter Bruck, who died in infancy in Ratibor in 1901, to no avail.
The former children’s tombstones in Ratibor are unlike the kindergräber I recently had the opportunity to visit in the Jüdischer Friedhof Weißensee in East Berlin, where at least three of my ancestors are interred, including one of my father’s first cousins who also died in infancy; here, the children’s tombstones are inscribed only with numbers (Figure 6), but without an index it is impossible to know who was buried where. Fortunately, an index does survive for the cemetery in East Berlin.
The information on Mr. Świetliński and the disposition of the headstones from the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor in the article sent to me by Paul Newerla are only footnotes to the broader subject of the article. The original article deals with an intriguing bit of local history and relates to a file from 60 years ago marked “CONFIDENTIAL” that was found at the Polish State Archives in Racibórz.
Apparently, a chest of papers and documents owned by Leon Blum, the former Socialist Prime Minister of France who was Jewish, wound up in Racibórz, hidden there in 1943 by the Germans; seemingly, the chest was squirreled away in the synagogue at the Jewish cemetery, once located on the outskirts of town along Leobschützstraße [today: Wilczej Górze and Fojcik głubczycki streets]. The problem, according to maps drawn by Mr. Kazimierz, is that no synagogue or chapel existed on the cemetery grounds. Possibly, the chest was stored at the synagogue on Schuhbankstraße [today: ulica Szewska], once located in Ratibor’s city center. (Figures 7 & 8) While torched on Kristallnacht (Figure 9), the synagogue survived WWII but was ultimately dismantled during the Communist era. Interestingly, a black, sealed chest belonging to Leon Blum was eventually discovered in Racibórz, although the final correspondence, dated December 22, 1945, found in the “Confidential” file, makes no mention of where. Possibly it was found in one of the larger family tombs at the cemetery, perhaps in the synagogue, or maybe even in the private home of a person who hid Blum’s souvenirs. It’s assumed the black, sealed chest was transferred to Katowice, as Polish authorities had requested be done in 1945, and from there to the French embassy.
Needless, to say, the question of how Leon Blum’s chest of personal papers wound up in Racibórz very much intrigued me, almost like a scene out of “The Monuments Men,” so I posed this question to Paul Newerla. According to Paul, Leon Blum’s papers were confiscated by the Nazis in Paris around 1943 by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg or “ERR,” the Nazi Party organization dedicated to appropriating cultural property during the Second World War and deposited in Racibórz. At the time, the town was deemed to be sufficiently out of reach of Allied bombers and Russian forces to ensure the papers were not inadvertently destroyed.
Mr. Świetliński is owed a major debt of gratitude. I characterize him as a “righteous man,” because in my mind he anticipated that one day Jewish descendants might want to know where their ancestors had been buried, see images of their ancestors’ graves, and know that someone, unrelated to the deceased, cared enough to record the existence of their relatives. And, possibly, Mr. Świetliński thought future generations of Poles might be curious that a Jewish community once thrived in Racibórz and want to know how and why it disappeared.
Note: This short postscript provides additional historic context about the events that ultimately led to the demolition of the Bruck’s “Prinz Von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor, Germany, information obtained from Mr. Paul Newerla, retired lawyer and Racibórz historian.
Unlike Tiegenhof, in the former Free State of Danzig (today: Nowy Dwor Gdanski, Poland), where my father practiced dentistry between 1932 and 1937, where many elegant buildings from the German era still stand, in Ratibor (today: Racibórz, Poland), where my father was born, few of the classic German structures still exist in the city center. I touched on the reason for this in my original post, as well as in the first postscript.
As too often happens, when one is not a student of European history or when one relies too heavily on Wikipedia or other superficial Internet sources, the nuances of history are lost or distorted. Such is the case with the explanation of why the Bruck’s “Prinz Von Preußen” Hotel, owned by three generations of my family, was torn down after WWII. In the interest of setting the record straight and of adhering to my principle of being as historically accurate as possible, I’m adding another postscript. I owe clarification of the actual historic events to Racibórz historian, Mr. Paul Newerla (Figure 1), although I assume full responsibility for any mischaracterization or inaccuracy surrounding the exact circumstances that sealed the hotel’s fate.
Readers will recall a post-WWII picture of the Bruck’s Hotel included in the original post capturing at a distance a view of the still standing hotel. (Figure 2) To the untrained eye, it appears the hotel was largely intact, and could easily have been rebuilt. This was confirmed by Mr. Newerla, who observed that only the roof had been burned but that the walls and the vaults between the floors seemed to be in good condition, and that the building could have been restored. Mr. Newerla explained why this never occurred, which gets to the crux of why one sometimes needs to probe more deeply into the explanation of historic events.
Ratibor was “conquered” by the Soviets on March 31, 1945. Naturally, some sections of the city had been destroyed by air raids and street-by-street fighting in the final stages of WWII. Nonetheless, during April and even into May, following German capitulation, Soviet soldiers continued to routinely destroy parts of Ratibor, systematically burning houses. Mr. Newerla sent me a 1949 map of Ratibor’s city center, showing in red buildings that were burned or damaged, and in yellow structures that had been demolished. (Figure 3)
According to the findings of Polish authorities, Ratibor’s city center had been 80 percent destroyed, although Mr. Newerla estimates the actual percentage was closer to 60 percent. Following WWII, however, no construction work was carried out, and one building after another was torn down. The goal was to obtain bricks for the reconstruction of Warsaw. Even houses that had suffered only minimal damage that could have been rebuilt with limited financial resources were torn down. In the Racibórz Archives, Mr. Newerla discovered a letter dated 1950 from the city administration justifying their plan; in a section entitled “Demolition,” city administrators established a “quota” of 5,000,000 bricks Ratibor was expected to provide for the reconstruction of Warsaw. A poor reproduction of this letter written in Polish is included. (Figure 4) Mr. Newerla told me it took the city several years to amass this number of bricks.
The question of why Ratibor was expected to ante up 5,000,000 bricks, however, requires further examination.
Racibórz, administratively once part of Upper Silesia, Germany and now in the southwestern part of Poland, is located on the western banks of the Oder River. In the post-WWII period, Polish authorities were still not certain where the German-Polish border would be established. It was assumed the line would be set along the Oder River, so that Ratibor would remain a part of the “new” Germany. Operating under this assumption, the Poles probably felt it was their “due” to retrieve what they could from Germany, the country that had been largely responsible for widespread destruction throughout Poland during WWII. Ironically, though, the boundary with Germany in southwestern Poland was established not along the Oder River, but further to the west along the Neisse River (Oder-Neisse Line); Polish authorities never dreamed the border would be established this far west. Thus, towns in what became Poland were needlessly destroyed, idiomatically-speaking, a case of “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face”; this included not only Ratibor, but also Oppeln (today: Opole, Poland), Breslau (today: Wrocław, Poland), etc. By contrast, Mr. Newerla explained that former German towns on the right bank or east of the Oder River, such as Gleiwitz (today: Gliwice, Poland), Beuthen (today: Bytom, Poland) Hindenburg (today: Zabrze, Poland), etc. that authorities knew would remain Polish, were never dismantled.
The impact of the wholesale demolition of Ratibor’s city center in the early 1950’s is visible even today. Most of the city center is not built up, and there are green spaces or concrete squares where German buildings once stood. The systematic demolition of German-era buildings impacted yet another structure associated with my family’s connection to Ratibor, specifically the Berliner Brauerei, subject of Post 14. This brewery was located on Neumarkt, and in historic photographs and postcards of this square, one can see the monument to John of Nepomuk in the foreground. (Figures 5 & 6) Interestingly, this column still stands today, in the middle of a parking lot, while the family brewery is long gone. (Figures 7 & 8)
