Note: This post again proves, as an unknown writer much wiser than me once said, that there’s a short story to be found on every street corner. When the short story happens to be about my father’s hometown of Ratibor and involves one of its famous native sons, Claus Ogerman, who came to America and became one of the most prolific 20th century musical arrangers working with a string of singers who are household names, the tale is even more tantalizing. But it’s topped off by a curious discovery I made comparing two photographs sent to me by separate individuals that serendipitously overlap and relate to Claus.
A reader recently sent me a photograph taken on the Rynek, the Market Square, in Ratibor (today: Racibórz, Poland), my father’s hometown, probably in the early to mid-1940s. The photo was sent to me by “Monika,” a lady I introduced to readers in Post 190. Monika stumbled upon Post 138 while researching photo studios that once existed in Ratibor. Her interest stems from the fact that for a brief period between 1942 and 1944 her father, Leopold “Leo” Simon (Figures 1a-b), lived in Ratibor and apprenticed in a photo shop. From Post 138, she discovered the studio where Leo briefly worked was “Photo-Helios,” which has been the subject of several posts.
Post 138 included photos taken inside “Photo-Helios” of staff that once worked there that were sent to me by a lady named Jessica Nastos, whose great-grandmother also once worked there. As I also discussed in Post 138, the original proprietors of Photo-Helios were Hans and Emma Ogermann. The group photos included staff as well as Emma Ogermann and someone I assumed was her husband, Hans. To her surprise and delight, Monika realized it was her father Leo and informed me I’d misidentified him. (Figures 2a-b)
A brief digression. Following publication of Post 72 dealing with cabinet cards from Ratibor and Berlin, Jakub “Kuba” Stankiewicz, the Director of Jazz Studies at the prestigious Karol Lipiński University of Music in Wrocław, contacted me. A gentleman I now consider a friend whom I met in August in Racibórz (Figure 3), Kuba explained that Ratibor’s famous native son, Claus Ogerman (Figure 4), born Klaus Ogermann, was the son of Hans and Emma Ogermann, owners of Photo-Helios. I refer readers to Post 138 for more background.
Continuing. Monika is a professional photographer, as was her father. Being the curator of some of her father’s surviving pictures, I was curious whether any might have been taken during the short period Leo Simon lived in Ratibor between 1942 and 1944. She could only find one, but it is a remarkable photo as I will explain.
The photograph (Figure 5) is hauntingly alluring made so by the fact the picture was taken at night, and the surface of the image is “crazed,” that is, it has a network of fine cracks and fissures, like those in glazed pottery, old paint, or concrete. These were likely caused by drying or improper storage. Regardless, the structural integrity of the photo has not been compromised, and the architectural elements recognizable.
The picture shows Ratibor’s Rynek during the Second World War before most of the buildings surrounding the extant market square were destroyed by the invading Red Army in 1945. The photo looks towards the south. The Christmas tree proves the picture was taken during the holiday season. Two recognizable architectural features appear that still exist today. These include the Virgin Mary Column (Kolumna Matki Boskiej w Raciborzu) to the right of the Christmas tree, and the so-called Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Parafia Wniebowzięcia Najświętszej Maryi) in the background.
The Virgin Mary Column (Figure 6) was built between 1725 and 1727 by a renowned Baroque sculptor Johann Melchior Österreich as a votive offering to thank St. Mary for saving the town from a cholera epidemic. The column incorporates images of angels and figures of St. Florian (patron saint of fire), St. Sebastian (patron saint of epidemics), and St. Marcel (patron saint of Racibórz). According to prophecy, Racibórz will be flooded should anyone dig up the column’s plinth.
The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Figure 7) is one of the oldest Upper Silesian parish churches and the only one that preserves features of early Silesian Gothic architecture. It is Racibórz’s oldest and most significant church with a history dating back to 1205. The Racibórz parish was probably founded in the mid-thirteenth century during the foundation of the town, which took place around 1240.
Let me switch gears and discuss a separate photograph sent to me by Michał Fita, the former Vice-Mayor of Racibórz. Michał is a collector of Claus Ogerman discography. My wife Ann Finan and I met him at the same time we met Kuba Stankiewicz in Racibórz in August. (Figure 8) This is when I donated memorabilia from the former Bruck family establishment, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, to the local museum, the Muzeum w Raciborzu.
Adjacent the restaurant on market square where my wife and I met Kuba and Michał for lunch, the city of Racibórz has erected an interpretive sign incorporating a photo looking towards the nearby corner where Claus Ogerman’s childhood home once stood. (Figure 9) Recently, Michał sent me a high-quality copy of this photo with an arrow pointing towards the apartment building where Claus grew up. (Figure 10) As readers can see, the house was located on the Rynek in front the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Once I realized the photo sent by Monika was also taken on the Rynek (Figures 11-12), I compared it to the one sent by Michał and serendipitously noticed there is overlap between them. The photo sent by Michał does not show the Virgin Mary Column meaning it was shot closer to the apartment building where Claus grew up; the column is centrally located in the square. However, both photos include the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and appear to have been taken looking roughly towards the south.
In Monika’s photo, readers can clearly see the complete sign for the business establishment “Kaufhaus Silbermann,” seemingly owned by “D. Silbermann.” Barely visible to the right of this establishment is one named “Gebruder Freund.” In Michał’s photo, only the last five letters of Kaufmann Silbermann’s sign are visible, “rmann,” though the complete sign for “Gebrüder Freund” is legible.
To the right of the Christmas tree in Monika’s picture, “Feinkost” can clearly be read below most of the Paul Ackermann store sign. Examining Michał’s photo, these same signs can be seen.
In Monika’s picture, the building that stands in the hazy glow between the Christmas tree and the Virgin Mary Column is the apartment building where Claus grew up. Few details can be made out.
The cars visible in Michał’s photo appear to date from the late 1920s-early 1930s, so the photo was likely taken at least 10 years before Monika’s image.
Curiously enough, Jan Krajczok, another Polish friend from Rybnik, a town 16 miles to the east of Racibórz, sent me yet another historic photo showing the Rynek. (Figure 13) As readers can see, the photo is an aerial shot, in this instance looking roughly towards the north. It is an equally compelling image to the ones sent by Monika and Michał. I’ve pointed out Claus’ childhood home. In this picture, readers can clearly make out the Virgin Mary Column and the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Oderstrasse, the street where the Bruck’s Hotel once stood, can also be seen caddy corner from the Ogerman home on the Rynek (i.e., the Ogerman home was on the south corner of the market square and Oderstrasse (see Figure 13) entered the square from the north). While difficult to point out to readers, I believe I can make out the roof of the former Bruck’s Hotel.
Admittedly, this post will be of limited interest to readers. Nonetheless, I find myself drawn to finding connections between random occurrences such as two historic photos of Ratibor suddenly materializing in my inbox that overlap and happen to show the childhood home of one of the city’s famous native sons.
In the spirit of the holidays and given the who’s who of famous singers for whom Claus did musical arrangements and compositions, I thought I would include YouTube links to a few of his productions.
Frank Sinatra’s major collaboration with Claus Ogerman was on the iconic 1967 bossa nova album, “Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim,” where Ogerman served as the orchestrator and conductor. The album was a commercial success and was nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys.
Barbra Streisand and Claus collaborated on her acclaimed 1976 album, “Classical Barbra.” Ogerman arranged the orchestral scores, conducted the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, and composed the song “I Loved You,” featuring lyrics from a Pushkin poem.
After moving to the United States in 1959, beyond working with Sinatra and Streisand, he also worked with:
Note: This post though of limited interest is broadly speaking about “metadata,” data about data. Essentially, it’s structured information that acts as a “catalog” or “index” for other data, making it easier for me to find, understand, and use that information. Given that I plan to donate the silverware from the Bruck’s Hotel to the Muzeum w Racibórz (Museum in Racibórz), the town where my father was born, I want a record of this donation. While I hope my posts will be of use and interest to readers, I often refer to earlier articles to remind myself how and what I learned during my ancestral investigations.
The Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel (Figures 1-2), the family establishment my family owned in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] for about 75 years between roughly 1850 and 1925, has been the subject of multiple earlier articles. In these prior posts, I’ve discussed its location (Post 11), historically when the hotel was likely to have been built (Post 155), the family members linked to it (Post 11, Post 11, Postscript, & Post 11, Postscript 2), the layout of the building (Post 11), the police oversight of the business (Post 11, Postscript), various events hosted and dignitaries who stayed there (Post 11, Postscript), the final months of the family’s ownership of the hotel (Post 146), the various owners of the business after it left family hands (Post 11), its condition following WWII (Post 11), and its ultimate fate (Post 132).
Much of what I learned, and the associated documents and contemporary advertisements came from my dearly departed friend, Mr. Paul Newerla (Figure 3), who took a keen interest in researching the history of the hotel. Another Polish friend from Rybnik, Poland, Ms. Malgosia Ploszaj (Figure 4), was also instrumental in unearthing a historic portfolio on the Bruck’s Hotel at the Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu, The Polish State Archives in Racibórz.
Through Paul, I learned the hotel was largely intact at the end of WWII save for the bombed-out roof. (Figure 5) However, occupying Russian forces allowed it to burn to the ground after it was “accidentally” set on fire by drunken soldiers who prevented the local firefighters from extinguishing the flames. The reason the building was allowed to burn is rooted in geopolitics. Following the end of WWII, the ruling and occupying Communists expected that the border between Poland and Germany would be established along the Oder-Neisse River. Situated as the hotel was on the west bank of the Oder River, the Communists fully expected that Ratibor would remain in German hands. The Communists had no interest in turning over to the Germans anything useable or salvageable.
One telling historical document dated March 1950 Paul found in the archives and shared with me was a letter written to local authorities setting out a “quota” of 5 million bricks the town was expected to provide for Warsaw for its reconstruction. (Figure 6) The Bruck’s Hotel built constructed as it was out of bricks was an obvious and plentiful source of this material, particularly since it was expected to remain part of Germany. Sadly, the hotel which could easily and would likely have been restored was instead dismantled.
Given the reality that the hotel no longer exists, which could have been a fixture for a vibrant and historic downtown Racibórz, all that remains are scattered artifacts in my possession, specifically, some hotel silverware. As I am preparing to donate these heirlooms to the Muzeum w Racibórz in the coming months, I thought I would write a brief post about them and link them to the specific Bruck ancestors to whom I think they’re connected. Some of the markings on the silverware are monograms specific to the owners, others name the hotel. Hallmarks can be found on some pieces which are official stamps or marks that indicate the purity, manufacturer, and origin of the precious silver metal. They are too difficult to decipher, however.
My great-great-grandparents Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 7) and his wife Charlotte Bruck, née Marle (1811-1861) (Figure 8) were the original family owners of the Prinz von Preußen. Arguably I have one piece of silverware that belonged to Samuel Bruck. It simply has the initial “S.” so may have been from his time. (Figure 9)
Silverware from the next two generation of owners are more clearly identifiable. Fedor Bruck (1834-1892) (Figure 10) and his wife Friederike Bruck, née Mockrauer (1836-1924) (Figure 11) were the second-generation owners. Silverware from this generation is marked by “Fe. Bruck’s Hôtel” (Figure 12) or “F. Bruck’s Hôtel.” (Figure 13) And, finally, my grandparents Felix (1864-1927) (Figure 14) and Else Bruck, née Berliner (1873-1957) (Figure 15) owned the hotel following Fedor Bruck’s death in 1892. Their beautiful interwoven monogram, while intricate, is clearly identifiable by the initials “EFB,” Else & Felix Bruck. (Figure 16)
Other silverware that cannot positively be connected to any specific generation is labeled simply as “Prinz von Preussen” (Figure 17), “Br. (for Bruck)” (Figure 18), or “Bankowsky Ratibor.” (Figure 19) Bankowsky, for which I can find no reference, is likely the local silversmith that produced the hotel’s silverware.
The monogram on a set of forks I’ll be donating is particularly intriguing. (Figure 20) Thinking I had possibly misread the letters in the monogram on this silverware as “SUB,” possibly for Samuel Bruck, I asked my German friend Peter Hanke, the “Wizard of Wolfsburg,” to confirm or refute my interpretation.
According to Peter, the monogram has the letters “B,” “P,” “V,” and another “P,” which obviously stands for “Bruck’s Prinz von Preussen.” Even with Peter’s explanation, I had great difficulty visualizing the letters, so he highlighted them using his grandchildren’s colored pens.
Comparing the forks side-by-side, here is what readers should look for. The monogram is written in a script font called “Kunstler Script.” On Figure 20, readers can see the letter “v” (what really looks like a large “U”) which is marked in red. Then, in red AND blue, there are two “Ps,” the left one facing backwards and the right one facing forwards. Finally, in brown the letter “B” is evident.
The monogram on a large soup spoon of the same vintage appears to read “T.B.” I know of no Bruck ancestor with these initials. (Figure 21)
Another unique coffee spoon that I initially mistook as silverware from the Bruck’s Hotel reads “O.B.,” which clearly stands for my father Otto Bruck. (Figure 22) This is the only example of this style of spoon. My father came from a secular Jewish family, so may have been christened or baptized upon birth. I surmise my father was given this silver spoon on this occasion. The tradition of gifting silver, particularly spoons, dates back as early as the Middle Ages. Initially, silver was seen as an investment in the child’s future, a financial asset to help cover costs or contribute towards significant life events. Interestingly, the phrase “born with a silver spoon in your mouth” originates from this period, referencing those born into wealthy families who could afford silvery cutlery.
In the Middle Ages, silver was believed to have protective properties against evil spirits. Its antibacterial qualities were also recognized, and it was thought that using silver utensils could reduce infections and promote better health, especially for babies.
Note: A page from an 1845 book by Johann Knie translated by one of my cousins discussing trade and commerce in Ratibor (today: Racibórz, Poland) at the time includes a discussion of the regional railway companies involved and the route by which the train arrived in town. The places mentioned provide an opportunity for me to introduce unfamiliar readers to the Meyers Gazetteer, a compilation of German Empire (1871-1918) place names and maps, to better visualize things.
It doesn’t come naturally to me to be curious. My parents were not patient people who would encourage nor answer an endless stream of innocent queries. This line of questioning was quickly squelched. I admire people to whom this trait comes instinctively, who grew up in a more nurturing and cerebral environment. This may explain why I go into more detail on matters of historical context than readers may be interested in knowing. Readers can decide for themselves how much of a topic they want to learn about.
With the above as backdrop, I want to discuss one valuable resource I stumbled upon while doing my ancestral research, the so-called Meyers Gazetteer. Various references to it can be found on the Internet, including links to the database on ancestry.com and familysearch.org. Consequently, I hesitated to write a post about it. However, because I so frequently find myself returning to this compilation of German Empire (1871-1918) place names and maps, it occurred to me it might be valuable for others unfamiliar with this website to be aware of it. In this post I’ve chosen to illustrate using the arrival of the railroad in Ratibor in January 1846 as an example a potential use of the historic maps in the Meyers Gazetteer to better visualize the placement of the railroad; this is done in conjunction with contemporary Google maps.
I’ve previously explained to readers that most of Silesia (Figure 1) where my immediate family hails from is no longer part of Germany. Most of Silesia was given to Poland as compensation after WWII (Figure 2) following Poland’s loss of a much larger swath of land to the USSR in then-eastern Poland, land that is today part of the Ukraine. With Poland’s acquisition of German Silesia, the German town names were all changed to Polish place names that often make it difficult to locate the former German towns on present-day maps. This is where the Meyers Gazetteer is inordinately useful if the former German town name can be found in the database.
The idea for this post came to me recently after asking one of my fourth cousins, Helen Winter, nee Renshaw (Figure 3) from Wolverhampton, England, if she could briefly explain to me the contents of one page from an 1845 book by Johann Knie talking about Ratibor. The text is printed in Fraktur, Black Lettering, that Helen has gained some aptitude reading of late. (Figure 4)
I did not specifically ask for a transcription nor translation. On my own, I figured out the text addressed primarily trade and commerce in Ratibor in around 1845 so felt a summary would be adequate for my purposes. However because Helen took it as an intellectual challenge, an exquisitely done transcription and translation is what I received. And I’m thrilled Helen provided this because unexpectedly part of the text discussed the route by which the railway arrived in Ratibor and the various regional railway companies involved in its construction.
Because multiple German town names were mentioned and I was having trouble visualizing the route, I turned to the Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs, the “Meyers Geographical and Commercial Gazetteer of the German Empire.” As ancestry.com points out “This gazetteer of the German Empire is the gazetteer to use to locate place names in German research. It was originally compiled in 1912. This gazetteer is the gazetteer to use because it includes all areas that were part of the pre-World War I German Empire. Gazetteers published after WWI may not include parts of the Empire that were lost to bordering countries. Overall, this gazetteer includes more than 210,000 cities, towns, hamlets, villages, etc.”
They further note that “Gazetteers are very important to use when doing family history research. They not only help you pinpoint a specific place and associate them with the jurisdictions to which they belong, but they can also provide interesting facts about the community and help you to know where to look for additional records. For example, from Meyers Orts you may learn about the size of the town, if there was a post office, where the nearest train station was located, and where the civil registration office was located.”
The meyersgaz.org website, the portal I primarily use for searching German Empire town names, further remarks: “This is the most important of all German gazetteers. The goal of the Meyer’s compilers was to list every place name in the German Empire (1871-1918). It gives the location, i.e. the state and other jurisdictions, where the civil registry office was and parishes if that town had them. It also gives lots of other information about each place. The only drawback to Meyer’s is that if a town did not have a parish, it does not tell where the parish was, making reference to other works necessary.”
On the homepage of meyersgaz.org they note you’ll find a search box in which you type the name of your place using the following conventions:
You can use a wildcard * (an asterisk) in your search. For example, “*gheim” will return “Balgheim, Bergheim, Bietigheim, Billigheim” and anything else that ends in “gheim.”
You can type only the beginning of a name and it will return all places that begin with those letters. For example, “Neu” will return “Neu Abbau, Neu Abschwangen, Neuacker, Neuafrika,” etc.
You do not need to include umlauts; “Munchen” and “München” will return “München.” You can type umlauts if you wish, but you should not expand umlauts, e.g. “ü” as “ue,” as that will return no hits.
A list of identically named places will appear within different jurisdictions, allowing you to identify the town you’re interested in.
As meyersgaz.org further notes, on the “Entry” page the following will be found:
You will see the name of your town and a menu that includes the following items: Entry, Map, Ecclesiastical, Related, Email, and Feedback.
You will see the entry as it appears in Meyer’s, the extraction of the entry, the explanation of the extraction, and a map. The extractions include and are primarily limited to jurisdiction and parish information. The explanations are helpful for those who do not speak German or are not familiar with the old jurisdictions. For example, you will learn what Kreis, Bezirkskommando, and Landgericht mean.
By clicking on “View entry on PDF of the original page,” you can see the entire page on which the entry appears in the original gazetteer.
Click on “Show previous and next entry” to see the previous and following entries. If there was a correction in the Meyer’s addendum, this will also be noted.
Meyersgaz.org remarks that by clicking on “Map” in the menu or on the map itself, additional information can be found:
You will now see your town on the old Karte des deutschen Reiches. This set of maps was produced during the time of the German Empire and so corresponds chronologically to Meyer’s.
You can zoom in and out and the maps can be moved around with the mouse, so you can easily extend the search further around the main town.
If you click on the words “Toggle Historical Map” in the upper right-hand corner, you can switch to Google Maps. This is especially helpful if you are searching in Poland or other areas of the former German Empire that are now in other countries. This is because you can get the current, i.e. non-German, name of the town.
If you hover on “Toggle Historical Map,” you will see a menu. If you click on the menu items, you will see pins appear on the map that correspond to what you have chosen, either Jurisdiction (all places where other jurisdictions are given, such as Kreis, Bezirkskommando, and Landgericht that are included in the entry), surrounding Standesämter (civil registry offices), Catholic parishes, Protestant parishes, or Jewish synagogues. This will help you determine the location of the nearest parishes, etc., within a 20-mile radius, should you need to do an area search. You can also click on the pins and the names of corresponding towns will appear.
You may also see a map with a large red circle instead of a pin. This means that the place has not been geocoded yet and a specific place on the map has not been identified, but it falls within the area of the red circle.
Interested readers are encouraged to access meyersgaz.org website and try out the site for themselves. The maps have allowed me to track down the location of German towns now located in Poland I would otherwise have had great difficulty finding. With respect to the ensuing discussion, I will partially illustrate this using the arrival of the railroad in Ratibor in 1846. I would add that my interest in the coming of train service to Ratibor is related to when the family establishment in Ratibor, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, was constructed; I believe the two events are closely interconnected and that the family enterprise opened in 1846 or soon thereafter.
Helen Winter’s German transcription of the page from Johann Knie’s 1845 book about the route by which the railroad arrived in Ratibor is as follows:
Die meist schlechte Beschaffenheit der von hier aus führenden Strassen wirkt hemmend auf den Landhandel, namentlich auf den Transito-Verkehr. Um so wichtiger muss für Ratibor die gelungene Anlegung der gleich anfangs erwänten Wilhelms Eisenbahn werden, da sie die Verbindung bilden wird, zwischen der Oberschlesien, oder Breslau-Krakauer Eisenbahn u[nd] der österreichischen von Wien nach Krakau führenden Ferdinands-Rorhbahn, sodass Ratibor die natürliche Zwischenstation alles Personen- und Güter-Verkehrs auf der Eisenbahnlinie von Breslau nach Wien sein wird. Das Privilegium der Bahn ist in der preuss[ische] Gesetz[es]S[ammlung] für 1844, Seite 127-146 nachzulesen. Ihre Entstehung verdankt dieses Unternehmen den Oberschlesien, welche seit 1840 in den öffentlichen Blättern, dann durch Gründung eines Aktien-Bereins dahin strebten, die oberschlesische oder breslaukrakauer Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft auf der Unrichtigkeit des erst gewählten Traktus von Oppeln über Malapane [?? ic ??] nach der russische Grenze, aufmerksam zu machen u[nd] den Bemühungen des königl[iches] Regierungs-Presidenten Grafen Pückler auch gelungen, die oberschlesische Bahngesellschaft zu dem Entschlusse zu bestimmen, von Oppeln aus in der Richtung von Kandrzin bis Kosel u[nd] erst von da in östlicher Richtung über Gleiwitz nach Krakau zu bauen, dadurch wurde es möglich, Kandrzin bei Kosel auch als Anfangspunkt für die Wilhelms-Eisenbahn zu gewinnen. Die Bahn geht von Kandrzin rechts der Oder aufwärts bis Ratibor u[nd] hier mittelst der Stromǔberbrückung zu den links zwischen der Oder u[nd] der Stadt gelegenen Bahnhofe. Diese erste Bahnstrecke beträgt 3 7/8 M[eilen]; ihre Fortsetzung am linken Ober-Ufer bis zu dem wahrscheinlichebn End[gangspunkte] und berübergangspunkte 3 3/8 M[eilen]. Die Erdarbeiten zwischen Kandrzin u[nd] Ratibor sind beinahe gänzlich [EDITOR’S NOTE: gönzlich is, I think, a misprint], die bis Oderberg zum grossen Theil vollendet. Der Brückenbau wird mit allem Nachdruck betrieben; bereits sind die meisten Kammarbeiten vollendet. Die Schwellen sind sämmtlich an der Bahn 30,000 Ctnr. englische Schienen seit dem 1[rste] September 1844 noch mit niederem Eingangszoll beschafft u[nd] der bei schles[ischen] Hütten bestellte Uebrrest grösstenteils auch schon geliefert; so das bei günstiger Witterung die Bahn bis Oktober 1845 wird befahren werden können. Der Bahnhof ist zwischen Oder u[nd] Stadt auf der, für Entwickelung des Verkehrs günstigsten Stelle errichtet u[nd] eilt seine Vollendung ebenfalls entgegen. Die Stadt gabt dazu 15 Morg[en] u[nd] zur Bahnlinie auf dem 3/8 Meilen langen, stäbtischen Terrain ebenfalls circa 10 Morg[en]- Land[es] , welches ein Opfer von 7000 R[eichs]t[ha]l[er] erheischte. Die Abbrechung eines Hauses u[nd] die Erwerdung des zu mehreren Strassen erforberlichen Terrains, so wie der Ausbau dieser Strassen wird der Stadt eben so viel kosten. Die Stadtverordneten-Bersammlung hat nicht angestanden diese Opfer im wohlerwogenen Interessender Kommune dem Direktorium der W[ilhelm] B[ahn] nicht nur zu bringen, sondern selbst anzubieten, weil nur dadurch die Gesellschaft bewogen worden ist, den Baufond um mehr als 150,000 R[eichs]t[ha]l[er] zu erhöhen, um hier bei der Stadt vom rechten auf das linke Oberufer überzugehen u[nd] den Bahnhof an den Stadtmauern erbauern zu können, wärend derselber sonst rechts der Oder, fast 1/2 Meile von hier, erbaut worden wäre. Der Anschluss an die Nordbahn erfolgt dicht bei Oderberg, für die nächsten Jahre mittelst gewöhnlichen Fuhrwerkes; dann aber mittelst Zweiges der Nordbahn von circa 800 Ruth[e] Das Anlage-Kapital für die ganze Wilhelm [Bahn] beträgt statutenmässig 1,200,000 R[eichs]t[ha]l[er].
Below is the translation of the above text with footnotes about the various railway companies involved in construction of the railroad in and around Ratibor; Prussian units of measure; and Prussian currency:
“The mostly poor condition of the roads leading from here has an inhibiting effect on overland trade, especially on transit traffic. It must be all the more important for Ratibor that the connecting route, projected at the very beginning of the Wilhelms-Eisenbahn [Wilhelmsbahn (A) or William Railway] should be successfully completed, between Upper Silesia, or the Breslau-Krakauer (Wrocław-Kraków) Railway (B), and the Austrian route from Vienna along the Ferdinands-Nordbahn [Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway (C)], so that Ratibor will become the natural connecting station for all passengers and goods traffic on the train lines between Breslau and Vienna. (Figure 5) The grant to the Railway is available to read at pages 127 to 146 of the Prussische Gesetzesammlung [Prussian Law Gazette] for 1844. That Company owes its existence to the above named company, which, firstly in the public newspapers, and then by founding a stock corporation, convinced the Upper Silesian, or Breslau-Krakow Railway Company [EDITOR’S NOTE: Upper Silesian Railway Company], of how wrong the originally chosen route, from Oppeln via Malapane (Figure 6) to the Russian border, would have been; the efforts by the royally appointed President of the government, Count Pückler, also succeeded in persuading the Upper Silesian Railway Company to reach the decision to build the line from Oppeln, in the direction of Kandrzin as far as Kosel (Figure 7) and, only from that point, in an easterly direction via Gleiwitz to Krakow, which would make it possible to use Kandrzin, near Kosel, as a starting point for the William Railway. (Figure 8) The railway route goes from Kandrzin, to the right of the Oder, up to Ratibor [EDITOR’S NOTE: meaning upriver as the Oder River flows generally south to north] and here, by means of a bridge across the river, to the station, which is situated on the left bank, between the Oder and the city. This initial railway track is 2 7/8 miles long (D). Its continuation along the upper left bank, up to the probable end of the track and upper crossing point is 3 3/8 miles. The earth works between Kandrzin and Ratibor are now entirely, and those at Oderberg for the most part, completed. The bridge construction is being pursued vigorously; already most of the work on the crest is complete. The sleepers are all on the track; 30,000 Ctnr. (E) of English rails have been procured since 1st September 1844, at a low rate of import duty and most of the remainder, ordered from the foundries of Silesia, have already been delivered; so that, allowing for reasonable weather, the railway can come into use by October 1845. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Train service commenced on the 1st of January 1846] The station, which was being built between the Oder and the city in a location that would facilitate the development of traffic, is also fast approaching completion. The city gave 15 acres of land for the station, and around 10 acres for the railway line on the 3/8 mile long, flat terrain, all of which required the sacrifice of 7,000 Reichsthaler. The City Council did not hesitate, in the interest of the public good, to take some of the financial burden on themselves, rather than expecting the Directors of the William Railway to bear the whole, as this was the only way in which the company could be persuaded to increase the building fund by more than 150,000 Reichsthaler (F), in order that the site of the station could be changed from the right to the left upper bank and that it could be built over the city walls, whereas it would otherwise have been built to the right of the Oder, more than a mile from here. The connection to the Northern Railway will take place close to Oderberg (G) (Figure 9), for the next few years by means of a conventional carriage, then by means of a branch line of the Northern Railway from circa 800 Rods (H) [EDITOR’S NOTE: there seems to be a bit missing in the copy of the book here]. The capital budget for the whole William Railway is fixed by statute at 1,200,000 Reichsthaler.”
(A) The Wilhelmsbahn or William Railway was a private railway company in Prussia. It was founded in 1844 in Ratibor in Upper Silesia to connect the Upper Silesian Railway (Breslau—Oppeln—Kosel–Gleiwitz (Wroclaw—Opole— Koźle—Gliwice)) with the Austrian Emperor Ferdinand’s Railway. The name referred to Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, later the German Emperor Wilhelm I. For the first time, the railway line connected the Austrian railway network with the Prussian one.
(B) Refers to the Upper Silesian Railway Company. In 1842, the Upper Silesian Railway Company, licensed since 1839, opened the first two sections of its main line: Breslau (Wrocław, Poland) to Ohlau (Oława, Poland) (Figure 10) on the 22nd of May and Ohlau (Oława, Poland) to Brieg (Brzeg, Poland) (Figure 11) in August. These are the oldest railway sections of present-day Poland. Step by step the Upper Silesian Railway (Oberschlesische Eisenbahn, OSE) line was extended, in 1846 connecting Katowice. In 1847 Myslowitz (Mysłowice, Poland) at the border of Austrian Galicia was reached and the connection to Kraków and Upper Silesian Railway complete.
(C) The Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway was a railway company during the time of the Austrian Empire. Its main line was intended to connect Vienna with the salt mines in Bochnia near Kraków. The name is still used today in referring to several railway lines formerly operated by that company.
(D) The distances in miles in the text refer to Prussian miles. One Prussian mile equates to 4.66 U.S. miles or 7.5 kilometers.
(E) “Ctnr.” is the abbreviation for a Prussian “Centner.” A Prussian Centner equates to 113.43 American pounds or 51.448 kilograms. The metric Zentner used today is exactly 50 kilograms or 110.23 American pounds.
(F) Abbreviated “Rtl.,” this refers to a Prussian Reichsthaler. The Reichsthaler was a standard thaler silver coin introduced by the Holy Roman Empire in 1566 for use in all German states, minted in various versions for the next 300 years, and containing 25–26 grams fine silver.
(G) According to Johann Knie, the Wilhelmsbahn connected to the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway near Oderberg, shown to the southeast of Ratibor in Figure 9.
(H) The Prussian Ruthe or rod was 12 feet or 3.766 meters.
It is clear from Johann Knie’s 1845 book that, absent Count Pückler’s intervention, the Breslau-Krakauer (Wrocław-Kraków) Railway, that’s to say the Upper Silesian Railway Company, intended to bypass Ratibor in its construction of the railway into Poland. The passage refers to an easterly route from Breslau (Wrocław) to Oppeln (Opole) to a place called Malapane (today: Ozimek) toward Russia which Count Pückler was able to dissuade the Upper Silesian Railway Company from taking. He apparently also convinced the Upper Silesian Railway Company to connect Breslau (Wrocław) to Krakau (Kraków) via Oppeln (Opole), Kosel (also written Cosel; Koźle), Gleiwitz (Gliwice), and Katowice. This was critical because at a place called Kandrzin, just outside present-day Koźle, the Wilhelmsbahn or William Railroad was then able to connect their railway line to the Upper Silesian Railway. Thus, railway passengers could save time when traveling between Breslau and Vienna by avoiding Krakau. We also learn that Ratibor’s City Council donated land and money to offset part of the William Railroad’s construction cost. From Kosel to Ratibor, the tracks ran along the right or east bank of the Oder, then crossed the river near Ratibor via a bridge to the railway station located on the west or left bank of the Oder River, interestingly built over the city walls according to Johann Knie’s text.
In closing I would simply say that the maps and plans in Meyers Gazetteer in combination with contemporary Google maps provide the necessary overview for visualizing how important it was for the small town of Ratibor in the mid-1840s to ensure the railroad passed through town. It enabled the town’s economic expansion and led to the construction of the Bruck’s Hotel sometime between 1846 and 1850.
REFERENCES
Knie, Johann G. (1845). Alphabetisch-statistisch-topographische Uebersicht der Dörfer, Flecken, Städte und andern Orte der Königl. Preuß. Provinz Schlesien.
Note: In a post I’ve long wanted to write, using maps and contemporary accounts, I discuss the history of the property where the inn stood that my family owned from ca. 1850 until 1926 in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. I also make a case for when I think the hotel was likely constructed.
I’ve spilled a lot of ink writing about my next of kin’s business in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel (Figures 1-2), owned by three generations of my family from roughly 1850 until 1926. My recently departed friend Paul Newerla from Racibórz (Figure 3), a lawyer who found his second calling in retirement researching and writing about the history of Ratibor and Silesia, was very instrumental in furthering my understanding of the hotel’s history and generously sharing multiple historical references and illustrations related to the establishment.
Paul was never able to tell me exactly when the inn was constructed and whether a previous owner had built the structure. For the longest time, I imagined the name “Prinz von Preußen” meant it might have been erected and lived in by a member of the von Preußen family, a royal lineage with longstanding ties to Silesia. Another friend whom I’ve often mentioned to readers, Peter Albrecht von Preußen (Figure 4), a descendant of this illustrious bloodline now living in the United States, explained to me that the “Prinz von Preußen” name was franchised from at least the 19th century. Thus, the Bruck Hotel’s incorporation of the Prinz von Preußen honorific may simply reflect a business arrangement. So far evidence of this has not been found.
One document Paul was unable to track down in theArchiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu, the State Archives in Katowice, Branch in Racibórz, was the so-called Grundbuch, the land register, for the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. Grundbuch means the applicable official register held by the Land Registry in which, among other things, the rights of ownership in, and encumbrances on, a plot of land are registered.
In Post 61, I discussed how Paul found the Grundbuch for the Zuckerfabrik, the sugar factory owned by distant family relatives, located in Woinowitz [today: Wojnowice, Poland] outside Ratibor, among the uncatalogued documents in the basement of the Racibórz State Archives. Regular readers know I’ve written multiple posts about the Zuckerfabrik. Had Paul been able to locate the Grundbuch for the Bruck’s Hotel, it might have shed some light on when the building was built and/or exactly when my family purchased the establishment. Whether the file still exists is an unanswered question though I suspect if it did Paul Newerla would have tracked it down.
Another of my Polish friends, Małgosia Ploszaj (Figure 5), from Rybnik, Poland, 15 miles east of Racibórz, was able to find a police file in the Racibórz State Archives related to the Bruck’s Hotel (Figures 6a-b), but this dated to the period that my grandparents, Felix (1864-1927) and Else Bruck (1873-1957), owned the hotel during the first quarter of the 20th century. This file includes reports on periodic inspections conducted by the local police; safety issues my grandparents were compelled to address; authorizations they were required to obtain to operate beyond normal working hours; violations for which they were fined, etc. Nothing in the file related to the history nor tenancy of the hotel prior to my grandparents’ ownership.
My good friend Peter Albrecht von Preußen spent a good deal of time explaining the contents of this police file. Additionally, because of his own family’s connection to Silesia, he spent a lot of time searching publications for mentions of the hotel and the sequential Bruck family members who owned the inn, namely, Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), Fedor Bruck (1834-1892), and Felix Bruck (1864-1927).
One of the most useful public domain sources Peter discovered was a 695-page book entitled “Geschichte der Stadt Ratibor,” “History of the Town of Ratibor,” written by Augustin Weltzel in 1861. (Figure 7) Therein, Peter found mention of a Bruck who was a “gastwirth,” an innkeeper, no doubt Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) the original owner of the Bruck’s Hotel. (Figure 8)
The book is written in Fraktur, which was the subject of Post 154. Unfortunately, the text has not been transcribed into German, nor has it been translated into Polish or English. However, because Peter can read Fraktur, he graciously perused and summarized relevant sections of Weltzel’s book.
This book was commissioned in 1859 by the Protestant Church in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], who had searched in the archives and discovered that the history of the entire Upper Silesian region, a principally Catholic area at the time, had not been documented. As a result, Dr. Weltzel, a Catholic Priest, was contracted to write about Ratibor. This seemingly odd arrangement was an indirect outcome of the First Silesian War from 1740 to 1742 which resulted in Prussia seizing most of the region of Silesia (today mostly in southwestern Poland) from Austria but Catholics in Silesia being guaranteed the right to continue practicing their religion.
Based on Peter’s synopsis and analysis, I can reconstruct a partial history of the property where the Bruck’s Hotel was built and theorize when the hotel is likely to have been constructed. Another of my Polish contacts from Racibórz is Magda Wawoczny, an acquaintance in the Jewish Studies program at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. At my request, she graciously sent me high-resolution plans of Ratibor from 1831 and 1843, as well as a map from 1812 with a birds-eye view of Ratibor and its fortifications, that allow me to clarify using contemporary maps what likely was going on in the area at the time in conjunction with Augustin Weltzel’s description of historic events.
First, a brief digression. I’ve periodically told readers about my “boots on the ground” without whom I would be unable to relate my family stories to the depth I feel is required. As readers can easily tell, I have limited knowledge about many of the subjects I discuss so the assistance of knowledgeable people is crucial. In the case of this post, for example, I felt the need to illustrate with historic maps what Ratibor may have looked like at different points in time to make the case for approximately when the Bruck’s Hotel might have been constructed.
Erroneously recalling there exists a map from 1829 with the Bruck’s Hotel shown, I asked Magda, my student acquaintance from Racibórz, if she could track it down for me. In the process, Magda directed me to a historical portal run by her father, Grzegorz Wawoczny, a historian. The portal includes a post written by a German gentleman, Christoph Sottor, describing the oldest plans of the city of Ratibor. This is how I learned about the 1812, 1831, and 1843 plans of Ratibor mentioned above. This post was very useful and one I encourage readers with an ancestral link to Ratibor to skim:
Historically, Ratibor was a fortified castle-town. The period the Bruck’s Hotel could conceivably have been built is closely related to when the fortifications surrounding Ratibor were dismantled because of the hotel’s proximity to where the protective walls once stood. Let me briefly relate to readers some of the history of the town’s defensive system. The defensive walls have existed in Ratibor since 1299. They were extended in the 14th century, and several fortified towers and three wooden gates were later added. A deep moat was constructed in front of the walls. The curtain walls were reinforced in 1663 in anticipation of a Turkish invasion.
Beginning in the 18th century, the fortifications were gradually eliminated. Between 1764 and 1771 the moat was filled in. According to Weltzel, the wooden gate (Figure 22) of the defensive tower nearest where the Bruck’s Hotel was eventually built was removed in 1825 and relocated to the Ratibor side of the bridge crossing the nearby Oder River; some of the nearby curtain walls were removed but the tower remained.
All that remains of the fortifications today is a Renaissance style tower constructed in 1574 and some remnants of the Gothic curtain walls that abutted this tower. (Figures 9-10) At the apex of the tower, there is an attic with embrasures (sometimes called gun holes) and four turrets. The building provided shelter for the garrison of defenders and was also used as a prison tower.
The removal of the moat, including the gradual elimination of some of the defensive structures, coincides with the end of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). Let me say a few words about this conflict.
The Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) was a global conflict involving most of Europe’s great powers that was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. Without getting too far into the weeds, suffice it to say the opposing alliances were led by Great Britain and France, each seeking to establish global pre-eminence at the expense of the other. France and Spain fought against England and their ally Prussia in Europe and overseas. Long-standing rivalries pitted these adversaries against one another in North America and the West Indies.
No less a personage than Winston Churchill described the Seven Years War, which went by different names in its respective theaters (e.g., Franch and Indian Wars (1754-1763); War of the Conquest in French-speaking Canada; the Third Silesian Wear (1756-1763) between Prussia and Austria) as the first “world war” because of its global reach.
For purposes of this post, suffice it to say that in Europe, Prussia sought greater influence in the German states (i.e., Prussia and the other German states did not unite to form Germany until 1871) while Austria sought to contain Prussian influence as well as regain Silesia which they’d lost at the end of the First Silesian War in 1742. Austria failed in this regard. Based on Augustin Weltzel’s discussions, it is evident the city’s fortifications suffered heavy damage from cannonball strikes during the conflict.
Perhaps, the end of the war, new economic opportunities, ongoing deterioration of the defensive walls and towers, along with a need to expand the city caused town officials to gradually remove the fortifications and towers.
The address of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel was Oderstrasse 16. The inn stood on the northwest corner of Oderstrasse where it met Bollwerk Strasse. A 1929 street map of Ratibor includes the hotel’s name and location (Figure 11), while a 1933 plan shows the number “16” on Oderstrasse. (Figure 12) A map from around 1890 indistinctly outlines an area where the Bruck’s Hotel stood that is identified by the number “104,” which may indicate the lot number. (Figure 13) Since I don’t have copies of all Ratibor’s plans, it’s not clear when the hotel was first plotted on a map.
The “Prinz von Preußen” is listed in John Murray’s 1850 “Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent” as a place for people to stay in Ratibor while voyaging between Breslau and Vienna. (Figures 14a-b) Family ownership of the inn is thought to have begun at around this time.
Next, I’ll discuss a few of the historic maps I had access to, and what they suggest regarding the construction of the Bruck’s Hotel. I’ll also touch on some of Weltzel’s historic accounts for reference.
Let me start by discussing the map that Christoph Sottor dates to 1812 (Figure 15) that I previously described as a birds-eye view of the city with its still-standing fortifications.
“On the newly made plan (in 1812 on the basis of measurements from 1810) the orientation to the west was improved, buildings in towns near Racibórz were described and projections of several buildings in Racibórz itself were marked. The “Situations-Plan von der Stadt Ratibor” covers a smaller area than the 1811 plan and is on a smaller scale, 1 : 7,200. The plan measures 48 cm x 32.3 cm. It was also created by the geometer Andre Wihrheim. The only copy of the plan is in AP Opole, reference number: AP Opole, Rej. Opole. Kart., sign. IX/92. I only have a blurry picture of him.” [EDITOR’S NOTE: “AP Opole” stands for “Archiwum Państwowe Opole,” the State Archives in Opole, Poland]
The main conclusion one can draw from this map is that the defensive towers and curtain walls were mostly still intact in 1812. This means the Bruck’s Hotel, whose approximate location I’ve shown on the map, could not yet have existed at this time since the curtain walls would have impeded its construction.
According to Weltzel, the Bruck’s Hotel was referred to as the “Prinzen von Preußen” (“Princes of Prussia”) rather than “Prinz von Preußen” (“Prince of Prussia”), with no mention of the Bruck surname. He also tells us the property where the hotel was eventually built had previously been owned by the so-called Schützengilde, the shooting club, and sat along Oder Gasse, as Oderstrasse was then known. The Schützengilde had two structures on their property, a Schützenzwinger, or clubhouse, and a Schießstand, or firing range. The clubhouse faced Oder Gasse, while the firing range sat towards the rear of the property closer to the Oder River.
At the time Weltzel was researching his book he had access to the shooting club’s records dating back to 1620. According to these documents the Schützengilde owned the property on Oder Gasse until 1824/25 when they sold it to the city of Ratibor in two transactions; by May 1825 the city had full possession of the entire property. Using the proceeds from the sale of the property, the shooting club purchased another property in town. Seemingly, Weltzel does not discuss how the city used the property following its acquisition.
Peter Albrecht von Preußen uncovered a YouTube video describing the activities of the Schützengilde today featuring none other than my late friend Paul Newerla. While the video is in both German and Polish with subtitles in both these languages, readers can get a general idea of how the shooting club operates today and view some of the antique weapons members fire:
In essence, Paul Newerla says that today the Schützengilde is principally a historical society and functions as a recreational club rather than as a defensive force as it once did. As previously mentioned, the club relocated from Oder Gasse in 1825, but moved again in 1898 to their present location. The existing clubhouse incorporates a tower (Figure 16) that may be a remembrance of the Oder Thor that once stood adjacent to their property on Oder Gasse. According to Paul, the oldest documents the club possesses date to 1925, so he is appealing to anyone that may have older artifacts or memorabilia to contact the club. And finally, we learn the Schützengilde was inoperative from the 8th of May 1945 until 2004, when it was resurrected.
Let me turn now to the two high resolution maps from 1831 and 1843 that Magda sent me and discuss what inferences can be drawn from them. Both plans show two buildings on the property, the 1843 map more distinctly, where the Bruck’s Hotel would eventually be built. On the 1831 map (Figure 17), in the rear structure, that’s to say the shooting range, readers can vaguely make out what Weltzel refers to as a “wall extension” that paralleled the lane where Bollwerk Strasse was ultimately sited. It would appear the firing range incorporated as an extension a fragmentary part of the curtain walls that once surrounded Ratibor.
One thing we can conclude from the 1843 map (Figure 18) is that the Oder Thor, Oder Tower, the tower closest to where the hotel was ultimately built had apparently not yet been demolished, though as previously mentioned the wooden gate had been removed in 1825. The tower is labelled on the map suggesting it was still in place. It’s difficult to know precisely where the Oder Thor was situated relative to the hotel making it hard to know whether it would have impeded construction of the building; however, the defensive curtain walls would assuredly have prevented construction of the inn.
Another thing we can observe from the 1843 ocular map of Ratibor is that if you extend the line that was formerly part of the curtain wall and the extension of the Schießstand, it lines up perfectly with the side of the Oder Thor that was closest to the Oder River.
So, we return to the question of when the Bruck’s Hotel might have been built and what the impetus for doing so would have been. A French travel guide dated 1836 entitled “Manuel du Voyageur en Allemagne” (Handbook for Travelers in Germany), mentions an auberge or inn in Ratibor, “Auberge de Jaeschke.” (Figure 19) Prior to construction of the Bruck’s Hotel this is believed to have been the only guesthouse in Ratibor.
As previously discussed, the “Prinz von Preußen” is mentioned in John Murray’s 1850 publication “A Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent,” and is described as a “very comfortable hotel.” (see Figure 14b) Clearly, by 1850 the “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel was open for business. This is further confirmed by a concert the famed Austrian composer Johann Strauss delivered on the 17th of October 1850 in the hotel’s concert hall. (Figure 20) A similar recital by Dr. Franz Lizst four years earlier on the 29th of May 1846 was performed at the so-called “Jaschke’schen Saale” (Figure 21), presumably part of the “Auberge de Jaeschke,” indirect evidence the newer and larger Prinz von Preußen concert hall was not yet open.
According to Weltzel, the anticipated arrival of the railroad in Ratibor, which began service on the 1st of January 1846, caused a “building boom” between 1842 and 1850. If the 1843 map is accurate, the Oder Thor still stood at this time, so construction of the hotel post-dates its removal. While there is no smoking gun, the indirect evidence points to the Prinz von Preußen having been built sometime between 1845 and 1847, coinciding with the arrival of the railroad. No doubt regular train service and mention of the Prinz von Preußen in an English travel guide would have accelerated the number of visitors and tourists from Germany, Austria, and far-off places who would have expected modern conveniences. It can only be hoped the hotel’s Grundbuch still exists and is eventually found to definitively answer the question of what year the inn was built.
Knie, Johann G. (1845). Alphabetisch-statistisch-topographische Uebersicht der Dörfer, Flecken, Städte und andern Orte der Königl. Preuß. Provinz Schlesien.
Note: In this post, I discuss the Fraktur typeface, a blackletter script known among other names as Gothic script. It originated in the early 16th century during the Holy Roman Empire and was widely used in Europe until the early 1940s. An 1820 publication typeset in Fraktur bears the names of two of my Bruck ancestors who attended the inaugural gymnasium class in Ratibor in 1819. In working out the name of one of these ancestors, I came to learn that two upper-case Fraktur letters of the early 19th century are indistinguishable.
First, let me briefly describe Fraktur’s characteristics and provide some brief background on its origin and history. Fraktur is defined “as a calligraphic hand of the Latin alphabet and any of several blackletter typefaces derived from this hand.” Letters are designed so that the individual strokes are broken apart, in contrast with typefaces where the letters are connected and flow together in an unbroken fashion, setting them apart from the flowing curves of more common Antiqua typefaces. The word “Fraktur” derives from the Latin word frāctūra (“a break”), which is also the root of the English word “fracture.” The nomenclature is appropriate given that Fraktur letters are spaced apart, not continuous. Fraktur is a notable type of so-called blackletter script, known among other names as Gothic script, with sometimes the entire group of blackletter faces being referred to as Fraktur.
Essentially, Fraktur is characterized by the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet, along with additional characters: the Eszett ⟨ß⟩ in the ⟨ſʒ⟩ form; vowels with umlauts, ä, ö, and ü; a long S (ſ), a unique character found in Fraktur; and a variant form of the letter r known as the r rotunda featured in some Fraktur typefaces. It is worth noting that not all blackface typefaces exhibit these specific Fraktur characteristics.
The first Fraktur typeface originated in the early 16th century, when Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 until his death in 1519, commissioned the design of the “Triumphal Arch” wood cut by Albrecht Durer and had a new typeface created specifically for this purpose. The Triumphal Arch was a composite image printed on 36 large sheets of paper from 195 separate wood blocks; as one of the largest prints ever produced it was intended to be pasted to walls in city halls or the palaces of princes, basically as propaganda.
From the late 18th century to the late 19th century, in most countries that had previously used Fraktur it was gradually replaced by Antiqua (Figure 2), as a symbol of the admiration for and emulation of the classical artistic and literary heritage of Greece and Rome. This transition was vigorously debated in Germany, where it was referred to as the “Antiqua-Fraktur dispute.” The shift affected mostly scientific writing, whereas most literature and newspapers continued to be printed in Fraktur.
Until the early 20th century, typesetting in Fraktur was still quite common in all German-speaking countries and regions, as well as in Norway, Estonia, and Latvia, and to a lesser extent in Sweden, Finland, and Denmark.
Fraktur remained popular in Germany and much of Eastern Europe far longer than elsewhere in Europe so is often referred to as “the German typeface.” Prior to 1941 Hiter viewed Fraktur as a German script that was widely used in Third Reich propaganda publications. While official Nazi documents and letterheads employed the font, in fact the most popular fonts in Nazi Germany were more modernized versions of blackletter typefaces that had been designed in the early 20th century, mainly in the 1930s.
The shift to using these more modernized fonts was controversial, with the press at times admonished for using “Roman characters” under “Jewish influence.” On the 3rd of January 1941, the Nazi Party ended the controversy by switching to international scripts such as Antiqua. With this declaration, the Nazis prohibited the use of Fraktur and the Sütterlin-based handwriting, declaring them to be Judenlettern, Jewish letters. The irony cannot be lost on readers that the Nazis did a complete turnabout from decreeing Fraktur, in which many earlier Nazi propaganda publications had been written, to be Jewish letters, after previously having characterized the fonts to which they shifted to also be under “Jewish influence.”
A few European newspapers, such as the German Frankfurter Allgemeine (Figure 3) as well as the Norwegian Aftenpoſten, still print their name in Fraktur on the masthead, which today is used mostly for decorative typesetting.
So much for the background. The genesis of this post begins in 2019 when Paul Newerla, my recently deceased friend from Racibórz, Poland, the town formerly in Germany to which my family had a three-generation connection, was writing about the 200th anniversary of Ratibor’s gymnasium, high school. While researching the topic, Paul happened upon a publication dated the 2nd of June 1820 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. . .” (Figures 4a-b) archived at the British Museum. It is noteworthy that this document was typeset in Fraktur. More on this below.
Knowing that several of my relatives had attended Ratibor’s high school, Paul sent me a copy of the report. Along with illustrations and maps Paul sent me, this formed the backbone for Post 60. The 1820 publication was written by Dr. Carl Linge, who I would later learn was the school’s first director from the 11th of May 1819 until Easter 1828. Along with an introduction, the publication contained five pages of names of male students, the only enrollees at the time, who attended the inaugural class, including two Bruck siblings. (Figure 4c) Their surnames were listed along with their first initials, what I thought were “J” and “S.”
For reasons that in retrospect seem completely illogical, I assumed that “J” stood for Jonas Bruck and that “S” referred to Samuel Bruck. These siblings, sons of Jacob Nathan Bruck (1770-1836) and Marianne Bruck, née Aufrecht, have been mentioned in multiple earlier posts, most recently in Post 153. Their birth and death years are well known to me. Jonas lived from 1813 to 1883, and Samuel from 1808 until 1863. Knowing Jonas was born in 1813, his attendance in the gymnasium’s inaugural class in 1819 at six years of age should immediately have raised a red flag; instead, I blissfully assumed he was very precocious.
As Paul was continuing his research related to the 200th anniversary of Ratibor’s gymnasium, he managed to track down the original handwritten roster of students who’d attended the school from the 11th of May 1819 until the 13th of April 1849. Astonishingly, he found this roster among the old files of the gymnasium, which today is a technical trade school. The fact that these originals survive given the turmoil during World War II is miraculous.
Among the roster of students who attended the school between 1819 and 1849, I discovered the following Bruck ancestors:
SUMMARY OF FAMILY NAMES FROM RATIBOR GYMNASIUM ALBUM, 1819-1849
Year/
Date of Admission
Line Number/Name
Where From
Father’s Profession
(German & English)
Age or Date of Birth of Student
1819
74. Isaac Bruck
74. Samuel Bruck
Ratibor
“Arrendator”
Leaseholder
13
10
4 April 1823
402. Heimann Bruck
Ratibor
“Destillateur”
Distiller
11
21 April 1824
440. Jonas Bruck
Ratibor
“Destillateur”
Distiller
10 ½
19 May 1829
1829. Marcus Braun
Ratibor
“Wirth”
Innkeeper
12 ½
22 May 1845
1752. Oscar Bruck
Ratibor
“Kaufmann”
Merchant
8 October 1832
3 January 1846
1772. Heimann Bruck
Ratibor
“Sattlermeister”
Saddler
26 December 1833
27 April 1848
1961. Fedor Bruck
Ratibor
“Kaufmann”
Merchant
30 September 1834
While it seems obvious in retrospect, I did not immediately make the connection between the names in the handwritten roster and Carl Linge’s published list of students who attended the gymnasium in its inaugural year in 1819. Regrettably, Paul sent me the page with Isaac and Samuel Bruck’s names separately, cutting off the year they attended the school, initially confounding me. (Figure 5)
Recall that in the published list, only the first letter of the students’ forenames is listed. Wanting to confirm whether the Fraktur letter in Carl Linge’s book was an “I” or a “J,” in other words whether the student was Isaac Bruck or Jonas Bruck, I turned to my friend Peter Hanke. As a trivial matter to most readers, but as a curious fact to me, Peter explained that in Fraktur typefaces of the early 19th century, the “I” and “J” fonts are indistinguishable. I found a few examples of early 19th century Fraktur typefaces that confirm this. (Figures 6a-b)
Additionally, the Wikipedia discussion of Fraktur speaks to this exact point. I quote: “Most older Fraktur typefaces make no distinction between the majuscules ⟨I⟩ and ⟨J⟩ (where the common shape is more suggestive of a ⟨J⟩), even though the minuscules ⟨i⟩ and ⟨j⟩ are differentiated.” Linge’s roster list uses majuscules, or upper-case letters, for the forenames of students meaning that absent the handwritten list found by Paul Newerla, I might never have been certain which Bruck sibling attended the gymnasium in 1819 with Samuel Bruck.
At the time I wrote my earlier posts about Ratibor’s student rosters, I had not yet ascertained when Isaac was born. I’m still not certain though it’s likely in 1805 or 1806. In the 1819 handwritten roster, it’s written that Isaac was 13 years old, a much less precocious age to be attending the gymnasium than at six years which would have been his younger brother Jonas’s age at the time.
REFERENCE
Linge, Carl (1820). “Denkschrift über die feierliche Eröffnung des Königl. Evangel. Gymnasium zu Ratibor am 2. Juni 1819. . .”
EDITOR’S NOTE: My childhood friend’s daughter, Melissa Ashner, first moved to San Diego in late 2011, where my wife and I live. We would periodically get together for lunch or dinner, and invariably our discussion would veer towards some of my ancestral research which I had initiated perhaps a year earlier. At the time my discoveries were coming fast on the heels of one another and would culminate in a 13-week vacation to Europe in 2014 when my wife and I visited places from Poland to Spain associated with my Jewish family’s diaspora.
As Melissa explains, interest in her own family’s history began in 2018 with an offhand joke by her father. As it happens, both of our families have an ancestral connection to Upper Silesia, more specifically, Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] but also other nearby villages and towns. This post was inspired by my discovery that one of Melissa’s earliest recorded relatives, Joachim Marcus Aschner, was one of the original Jews to receive Prussian citizenship following enactment of the Emancipation Edict of 1812. The Bruck family had a connection to this town for over 100 years and this was where my father was born in 1907. There is no doubt in either of our minds that our families would have interacted with one another, particularly since the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor was owned by three generations of my family and would have been known to Melissa’s ancestors.
Knowing that many of the people I write about in my posts are unrelated to readers, there are three things I strive for to keep readers engaged. First, there is a process I typically follow to analyze the primary source data I find, a process which readers may be able to replicate in doing their own ancestral searches. Second, I try and make people aware of archival documents that may be available to ancestral researchers investigating their family’s history, and where these may be found. Third, I try and describe the social, geographic, and historical context my ancestors lived through, context which is important for any ancestral researcher to understand when studying how such events may have impacted their own family’s lives.
In perusing this post, I advise readers not to get caught up in all the family names Melissa cites. Rather, focus instead on her explanation for drawing a lineal connection between herself and Benjamin Moses Aschner (1768-1848) (4th great-grandfather), via Marcus Aschner (1806-1861) (3rd great-grandfather); Moritz Aschner (1831-1890) (2nd great-grandfather); Hugo Aschner (1869-1943) (1st great-grandfather); Martin Aschner (1905-1985) (grandfather); and Harold Ashner (b. 1951) (father). In the absence of existing primary source documents connecting Marcus Aschner and Moritz Aschner, Melissa makes a compelling case by drawing on indirect evidence. Readers can decide for themselves whether her argument is convincing.
My interest in my family’s history began in 2018. It started with a joke from my father that he needed more family members. I initially set out to uncover the whereabouts of his uncle Paul’s family — the war traumatized and separated this generation. However, the process of research and discovery was intriguing, and I quickly began to dig deeper.
Details pertaining to this early generation have been challenging to unravel. However, Joachim Marcus Aschner and Benjamin Moses Aschner were likely brothers. Joachim and Benjamin were both born in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] — Joachim in 1775, and Benjamin in 1767 or 1768. Their sibling relationship is evidenced by their geographical movements from Ratibor to the Smolna district of Rybnik in the early 1800s, as well as by the timing of their registration with local authorities.
Emancipation of Prussian Jews
Under Prussian rule, the Jewish communities in Upper Silesia, which included Rybnik, were subject to the General Juden-Reglement für Süd und Neu-Ostpreussen. These regulations gradually led to the Edikt die Burgerlichen Berhaltnisse der Juden, which emancipated Prussian Jews in 1812 (Sobczak, 2023; History, n.d.).
Consequently, Jews gained access to various trades and professions previously restricted to them and were eligible to become citizens. Surname adoption became mandatory around this time for Prussian Jews, replacing traditional use of patronymics. In order to obtain citizenship, Jews were required to assume a surname (Jewish Naming Customs, 2023; History, n.d.).
The documents below (Figures 1a-c), recorded on May 7, 1814, are civil registrations that are linked with these political and economic shifts. These documents include information pertaining to Joachim’s and Benjamin’s respective families, including names, birthdates, marriage dates, and children’s birth and death dates, where applicable.
From the vital information provided in these figures, a generous amount of information can be extracted. Joachim Marcus Aschner married Katel Henriette Jacob in 1803. They had a daughter, Freidel, in 1804, a son, Wilhelm, in 1805, a daughter, Johanna, in 1812, and a daughter, Rebecca, in 1815.
Benjamin Moses Aschner married Anna Grossman in 1798, and they had a son, Isaac, in 1799. For unknown reasons, this union did not last, and Benjamin remarried in March of 1800. He and his second wife, Rosalie Sarel “Charlotte” Rosenthal, had ten children together, including three sons, Abraham (1801), Adolf (1803), and Marcus (1806), and seven daughters, Handel Johanna (1804), Rebecca (1810), Jeanette (1812), Zorl (1814), Maria (1816), Verone (1819), and Ester (1820). Maria died in 1820.
Now, both Joachim Marcus and Benjamin Moses’s lineages can be traced to present times. However, Benjamin’s lineage has been my primary research focus, as after countless hours of reviewing films, various sources, and considering the possibilities, I am 99% certain that Benjamin is my great-great-great-great-grandfather. I will explain my reasoning as we move through the generations, emphasizing the only instance in which I have been unable to view the primary documents to confirm this with 100% certainty.
Records in Figures 1a and 1c also suggest that Benjamin’s second wife, Charlotte, was born in 1773, and her youngest child was born in 1820. While this would imply that she birthed her daughter, Esther, at the very unlikely age of 47, further discoveries would be necessary to refine my understanding. There also appears to be a discrepancy regarding Benjamin’s year of birth, which isn’t entirely uncommon, even in primary documents (Brook, 2020).
Typhus Epidemic in Rybnik (1847-1848)
Notably, at least three ancestors, including Benjamin, his second wife, and his son with his first wife, passed away between February and March of 1848. Benjamin’s death in Rybnik on February 1, 1848, was documented as Nervenschlage, or nervous system shock. His wife’s records did not mention a cause, but she passed away very shortly after Benjamin, on March 4, 1848 (Figure 2). His first son, Isaac, passed away in Nikolai [today: Mikołów, Poland] on March 19, 1848, from Nervenfieber, or nervous fever.
It is worth noting the context in which this occurred. In 1847-1848, a devastating typhus epidemic swept through Upper Silesia, affecting around 80,000 people in the regions of Pleß [today: Pszczyna, Poland] and Rybnik [today: Rybnik, Poland], with a death toll of 16,000. This major epidemic was further aggravated by a widespread famine, which led to many weakened immune systems (Kamusella, 1999). During this era, medical terminology used to describe illnesses often lacked precision due to the evolving understanding of diseases (Virchow, 1848). Given the vague descriptions and the rapid succession of deaths, it seems plausible that some ancestors may have fallen victim to this epidemic, succumbing to the highly prevalent and often fatal typhus fever—or, at the very least, suffered from illnesses compounded by the effects of famine.
The cross-referencing of details from various relatives has been instrumental in moving forward my research into this branch of the tree. For example, Benjamin’s own death record ambiguously labeled him as a Jewish tradesman. Yet, a more descriptive account appears in Figure 2, the death record of his wife, Charlotte, which identifies him specifically as a Potaschsieder und Handelsmann, translating to “pot-ash boiler and tradesman.”
The Next Generation and Obstacles in Research
Marcus Aschner, born in Rybnik in 1806, was a son of Benjamin and Charlotte. Diverging from the pot-ash boiling trade of his father, he became a soap boiler, or a seifenseider. Marcus married Jeanette Königsfeld in Mikołōw and they had six sons and three daughters together between 1826 and 1850. These nine birth records span several administrative regions—Beuthen [today: Bytom, Poland], Kattowitz [today: Katowice, Poland], and Nikolai [today: Mikołōw,Poland] —towns situated within 12 to 19 kilometers of one other and whose governance frequently shifted.[1] One of those sons was Moritz Aschner – my great-great-grandfather – he was born around 1831.
Herein lies the sole roadblock I have encountered in tracing my lineage to Benjamin Aschner – I have yet to uncover primary documentation that definitively affirms the paternal relationship between Marcus and Moritz Aschner. However, research involves many steps, many angles, and a multifaceted approach, which I have undertaken in exploring this challenge. As such, there are several reasons why I firmly believe that Marcus is the father of Moritz Aschner, and I have listed most of these reasons below:
1. Geographical proximity, chronology, and profession. These are the most obvious supporting factors. Both father, Marcus, and son, Moritz, were Jewish soap boilers in the same general locality.
2. The tradition of naming Jewish children. Marcus Aschner died in 1861, from what was documented as general dropsy. Moritz named his firstborn son Marcus, in 1863. It is customary in Judaism to name the child after a recently deceased close relative.
3. While Moritz’s parents aren’t directly named in records obtained for Moritz, primary records for his siblings do list Marcus and Jeanette as parents, increasing confidence that they are Moritz’s parents as well.
Now, before I get too far ahead of myself with the fourth reason, additional details are necessary. (Figure 3) Moritz Aschner married Rosalie Wachsmann in Beuthen in September 1857. (The marriage index does not mention their parents – that would be too easy, I guess.)
Moritz and Rosalie then had two girls followed by five consecutive boys: Auguste (1857), Hannchen (1861), Marcus (1863), Noa (1864), Benjamin (1865), Lev (1867), and Hugo (1869). Their first-born son, the namesake Marcus, sadly died as an infant, with sister Hannchen passing away the same year. Their second son, Noa, eventually became a known fugitive, robbing a German bank. Their youngest son, Hugo, was born in 1869 in Laurahütte [today: Siemianowice Śląskie, Poland] – he was my great-grandfather (Figure 4).
As adults, Moritz’s children moved away from the family’s soap-boiling trade and branched out into diverse careers. The transportation options in the late nineteenth century expanded their opportunities, and Hugo relocated to Frankfurt, Germany. There, he joined the textile sector, finding employment in a hat factory located at Kaiserstraße 63.
Hugo married Else Stich, my great-grandmother, in Frankfurt in 1899. They had two sons: Phillip Paul Aschner, known as Paul, born in 1900, and Martin Moritz Aschner, known as Martin (and later, “Opa”), born in 1905. Soon after, Hugo and Else relocated to Berlin with their sons, perhaps for business opportunities.
Now, for the fourth reason:
4. In 1909, one of Moritz’s nephews died in Berlin. His name was Paul Aschner (a different Paul Aschner). Hugo, his first cousin, was one of the few relatives in Berlin at the time, and he reported this death to the registrar (Figure 5). This further strengthens the evidence of the family relationships, as Hugo’s tie to Paul was through their parents, who were brothers – sons of Marcus Aschner.
Both Martin, my grandfather, and Paul, my great-uncle, worked in the clothing industry in Berlin. Martin sold ladies gloves and jackets, and Paul owned a clothing shop. (Figure 6) Berlin telephone directories in the early 20th century revealed that Hugo lived with each of his sons at various intervals. Presumably, Else did as well.
Paul Aschner’s business was among many Jewish clothing businesses that were subjected to increasingly aggressive restrictions imposed by the Nazi regime. These challenges included forced sales and liquidation without fair compensation (Fashion and Persecution, 2016). Following the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, Paul could not continue operating his store on Mohrenstraße 37a. Records show transfer of possession in 1935 and liquidation in 1939. Paul temporarily moved his store to Kronenstraße 55, where it operated from 1936-1938.
Paul was also named in an antisemitic smear piece by the publication Der Stürmer (Figure 7). This article, published in January 1938, lists Jewish textile companies that were newly founded in Berlin, naming Paul Aschner among others. The article shames the “so-called businessmen” that “are characterless enough to give their orders to the Jews.” The article goes on to threaten these characterless German businessmen and writes that “Der Stürmer will publish their names soon” (Fashion and Persecution, 2016).[2]
By this time, the circumstances had become dire, compelling Paul, Martin, and many others in the Jewish community to seek refuge beyond Germany’s borders amidst the escalating persecution of the Holocaust.
The Holocaust
Unfortunately, it was incredibly difficult to get out of Germany. Martin, Paul’s brother, left in May 1938, arriving and staying in America. Paul strongly hoped to follow. His urgent telegrams to Martin demonstrate the challenges in obtaining necessary affidavits to leave, and his concerns about the window to submit the required forms amidst the limited space left in the German quota.
At the time, Paul was married to Gerda Neumann. Paul left ahead of Gerda, though details regarding why they did not travel together remain unclear. It is possible that they seized any opportunity to leave, with Gerda intending to follow closely behind Paul. Just one week after his passport visa was issued, Paul was on his way to America.
Details as to the specific reasons are unclear, but my great uncle was not able to stay in America, where he had family. He ended up in Santiago, Chile. Tragically, a few months after Paul’s departure, Gerda was evicted from her residence. She was relocated to Helmstedter Straße 23, a location shared with over 90 other Jewish victims. From there, she and the others were transported to extermination camps where they met a tragic fate (Milgroym, 2023).
It is also unclear as to whether Hugo and Else, my great-grandparents, had tried to leave Germany. It is possible that they pooled together resources to help their sons escape, but I am only speculating. Sadly, both Else and Hugo were deported with Transport 29 from Berlin, Germany to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on February 19, 1943, where they were murdered. (Figures 8-11)
Below, a 75-year-old letter, located among my family’s items, is pictured (Figure 12). While I do not claim to be psychic, I can attest that the weight of this letter was immediately sensed, well before transcribing it – it had been read many times, with a very heavy heart.
The letter follows up on an inquiry to the American Joint Distribution Committee regarding the whereabouts of Hugo and Else Aschner. The letter states that these individuals were deported with Transport No. 43/25414 on February 19, 1943. It advises that these individuals did not return and are not on their lists and closes by expressing regret for the lack of favorable news.
Figure 13, obtained from the Arolsen Archives, presents a letter concerning the transport lists which include Hugo and Else. It outlines that the listed individuals had their property confiscated as part of the deportation process, with the assets being expropriated and transferred to the Reich.
Paul Aschner, my great uncle, changed his name to Pablo and eventually remarried in Santiago, where he had three children. I will omit further details to respect the privacy of his relatives. Martin married my grandmother, Margot Rozansky, in 1942, and they remained married until his death in 1985. I will also taper off here to respect the privacy of my family. In coming years, I know that further details will be discovered. Until then, I thank Richard for the opportunity to share my research journey.
REFERENCES
Brook, R. (2020, September 13). POST 93: GUIDE TO THE MORMON CHURCH’S FAMILIAL MICROFILMS: USING THEM TO UNRAVEL MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S LINEAGE. bruckfamilyblog.com. https://bruckfamilyblog.com/category/neisse/
Note: This two-part post is written in collaboration with Melissa Ashner, the daughter of one of my childhood friends from New York. We examine evidence of her distant ancestors from Upper Silesia and Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] while Melissa makes the case for her lineal connection to one of the earliest known Aschners (with a “c”) to which we found reference. We also provide some historic context on the 1812 “Edict Concerning the Civil Status of the Jews in the Prussian State.”
In Post 146, I introduced readers to Mr. Kamil Kotas a gentleman formerly from the Racibórz District of Poland, recently living in Münster in the German state of Westphalia but now returning to Poland. Kamil directed me to files archived at the State Archives in Wrocław Branch in Kamieniec Ząbkowicki with information on my family’s erstwhile enterprise in Ratibor, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel and sent me links to two articles he’s written about Ratibor. Translated, one is entitled “Preliminary list of Jews from Racibórz deported to death camps,” and the second is “Jews with Prussian citizenship in the Racibórz region in the years 1812-1815.”
Kamil’s article on Jews from Racibórz deported to death camps had previously been sent to me in 2019 by Paul Newerla, a friend and elder statesman and retired lawyer who has written extensively about the history of Ratibor and Silesia. In reexamining this article, I noticed a name I’d previously overlooked, that of a man named Salo Aschner, whose surname is misspelled as “Aschener.”
Salo was deported from Opole [German: Oppeln] to Theresienstadt aboard Transport XVIII/2 on the 20th of November 1942, and was among 50 Silesians deported to the concentration camp that day, 38 of whom came from Ratibor. Salo is identified as having been born on the 28th of December 1871 in Dziergowitz [today: Dziergowice, Poland] (also called Oderwalde) and having been a tailor that lived at Leobschützerstrasse 125 [today: ulica Głubczycka]. (Figures 1-2a-b) He is shown as having died on the 10th of April 1943. This information is much more detailed than the entry found for Salo Aschner in Yad Vashem which merely identifies him as a victim of the Holocaust who perished in Theresienstadt. (Figure 3)
The “Aschner” surname resonated because one of my friends growing up in New York was a playmate named Harold Ashner (Figure 5), surname spelled without a “c” since his family’s arrival in America. Kamil’s second article listed Jews from the Racibórz region who received Prussian citizenship between 1812 and 1815 and included an earlier generation Aschner, Joachim Marcus Aschner from Kranowitz [today: Krzanowice, Poland].
Having previously come across primary source documents listing Aschners buried in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor or who had reserved tombs there (Figures 6a-c), I was not surprised to find them among the earliest citizens. I naturally assumed that both Salo Aschner and Joachim Marcus Aschner might be ancestors of my childhood friend from New York. I was more surprised to not find any Brucks among the Jews who received Prussian citizenship between 1812 and 1815, an observation I shared with Kamil. As I’ve explained in previous posts, the roster of students who attended Ratibor’s gymnasium, or high school, upon its opening in 1819 included Isaac Bruck and Samuel Bruck (Figures 7a-b), sons of my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Nathan Bruck indeterminately estimated to have been born in 1762 or 1770 and to have died in either 1832 or 1836.
My discussion with Kamil about his list of Jews from the Racibórz region granted Prussian citizenship led to two interesting discoveries. According to Kamil, the source of this information is a database accessible online through the Upper Silesian Jews House of Remembrance, a new branch of the Museum in Gliwice in Poland (https://skarbnica.muzeum.gliwice.pl/historia/ludzie/pochodzenie-nazwiska-gornoslaskie-rody). Kamil explained that the current Racibórz powiat, that’s to say the second-level unit of local government and administration in Poland, equivalent to a county, district, or prefecture, is different today than it was in the past. For this reason, my Bruck relatives who lived within the boundaries of the county or district as it was construed in past times were not included among the list of the earliest Jews to receive Prussian citizenship. When I broadened my search to the Jews living in all Upper Silesia who received Prussian citizenship, my earliest ancestor Jacob Nathan Bruck’s name showed up. (Figure 8)
The second discovery I made when searching the Museum of Gliwice’s database related to my friend’s family. Not only did I relocate Joachim Marcus Aschner’s name, but I also found the names of two other Aschners, namely, Benjamin Moses Aschner and Moses Abraham Aschner, both from the current Smolna district of Rybnik. It’s not entirely clear how they are related to Joachim, but the three are likely all brothers. (Figure 9)
Harold and I continue to be friends. (Figure 10) However, his daughter Melissa (Figure 11) is the one who has taken an interest in her family’s history. Periodically, we exchange information we’ve uncovered about her family. Upon discovering references to the Aschners from Ratibor and Upper Silesia (Figure 12), I shared this with Melissa to learn whether she recognized the names. In response, she sent me two original register pages (Figures 13a-b) from Rybnik (Figures 14a-b) with vital information on Joachim Marcus and Benjamin Moses Aschner.
At the top of one primary source document readers can vaguely make out the date September 1812, while further down under the far-right column for both individuals is written “Staatsbürger Brief vom 7. Mai 1814,” translated as “citizen letter dated the 7th of May 1814.” These are references to the rights and duties that Jews gained under the so-called Edict of Emancipation of 11 March 1812, rights that were evidently affirmed in writing. This so-called Judenedikt was promulgated by Friedrich Wilhelm III, King of Prussia and was more formally called the “Edict Concerning the Civil Status of the Jews in the Prussian State.”
The Emancipation Edict of 1812 was a decree by the Prussian government granting citizenship to all Prussian Jews. The edict was part of a series of constitutional, administrative, social, and economic reforms instituted in the early 19th century in Prussia. A large measure of civil equality was extended to Jews because of the edict’s enactment, including the abolition of serfdom, allowing them to become landowners, and take up municipal and university posts. In turn, the Jews were required to adopt fixed surnames, use German or another living language in keeping their commercial records, drawing contracts and legal declarations of intention, and use only German or Latin script for their signatures. The Jews were free to practice their religion and their cultural traditions were protected. While they were required to fulfill common citizenly duties, including military conscription, it did not give them the right of appointment in the civil service and army.
The edict was a significant milestone in the long and convoluted path of Jewish emancipation in Europe. It recognized all Jews already resident in Prussia as citizens of Prussia and rescinded all limitations on their rights of residence and commerce, all special taxes, and in general, all special laws relating to the Jews.
Fascinatingly, the slow process of Jewish emancipation in Prussia produced a distinction between the newly assimilated German Jews and the Jews of Eastern Europe, who were viewed as intellectually and morally inferior, and whose “Yiddish derided as a vulgar German dialect.” In popular literature and culture, such as “Fiddler on the Roof,” “so-called ‘ghetto stories’ offered a romantic yet patronizing view of East European Jewish life.” (2008 exhibit at the University of Chicago Library) Volume 2 of “From Absolutism to Napoleon, 1648-1815,” also speaks to this point: “Prussian Jewish policy since 1750 distinguished between the legally protected propertied Jews and their merely tolerated co-religionists. Complicating the Prussian situation were the numerous Polish Jews acquired as subjects through the partitions of Poland (1772-1795), which saw Prussia annex large portions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The 1812 edict confined itself to the pre-1772 protected Jews. . .”
As mentioned above, the primary source document for Joachim Marcus Aschner and Benjamin Moses Aschner indicates they received a letter dated the 7th of May 1814 affirming their Prussian citizenship. Coincidentally, while examining an unrelated primary source document the co-author recently found for his great-great-grandaunt, Wilhelmine Friedenstein, née Bruck (1796-1864), the register noted that the letter she submitted to authorities in Sohrau [today: Zory, Poland] certifying her citizenship was identically dated the 7th of May 1814. (Figure 15) We can only assume that while the Edict of 1812 was promulgated on the 11th of March 1812, letters were sent out en masse to Prussian Jews two years later.
One final thing. In the seventh column identifying the place where Joachim and Moses lived is written Smolna. According to a contemporary map, this was located on the outskirts of Rybnik [today: Rybnik, Poland]. (Figure 16) Their residence on the outskirts of Rybnik may not have been accidental and may have reflected contemporary historic laws that limited the number of Jews who could live in the center of towns.
Germany History in Documents and Images. From Volume 2. Absolutism to Napoleon, 1648-1815. Frederick William III, King of Prussia, “Edict Concerning the Civil Status of the Jews in the Prussian State” (March 11, 1812). https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document_s.cfm?document_id=3650
Note: In this post, I draw a connection between a query I received from a reader on the process for installing Stolpersteine in Racibórz, Poland to a fleeting reference about one of this reader’s earliest ancestors from the second decade of the 19th century.
Having previously boasted that blog stories can be found on any street corner, I am discomfited if I don’t have at least 5 to 10 topics in my hip pocket awaiting future exposition. This sets off alarms and makes me think I’m not being sufficiently imaginative.
Sometimes what I think will be one post morphs into two, while other times two or more topics get condensed into one. The current post is an example of the latter.
Chronologically, this story begins with the publication of Post 142. To remind readers that post was about the installation of the very first so-called Stolpersteine in Racibórz, Poland, the town in Silesia where my father was born when the town was named Ratibor and was part of Germany. A Stolperstein is a ten-centimeter (3.9 in.) concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution. In the case of the ones recently installed in Racibórz, they commemorate three members of the Kochen family deported in 1938 to the Łódź Ghetto, namely, Szyja Kochen (1897-1944), Ester Bajla Kochen (1898-1944), and Natan David Kochen (1935-1944). (Figure 1)
Following publication of Post 142, I was contacted by a Barrister from Toronto, Canada, Perry H. Gruenberger, asking about the process for obtaining permission to install a Stolperstein. Perry explained that his grandparents had last freely lived in Ratibor and been deported and murdered during the Holocaust. Like the Kochen family, he is interested in commemorating his ancestors at their last place of residency in Racibórz.
Ignorant of the city’s requirements, I contacted Ms. Magda Wawoczny, a student acquaintance of mine from Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland who hails from Racibórz and first told me about the Stolpersteine installed there, asking her about the process. She checked with Mr. Nadav Kochen from Israel who’d initiated the installation of the so-called “stumbling stones” in Racibórz for his ancestors.
In brief, Nadav explained that the consent of the Road Department or other administrator or city official of the area where the Stolpersteine are to be installed must be obtained. It goes without saying that the consent of the land owner is required. The “Institute of National Remembrance,” which has apparently been a major impediment to the placement of Stolpersteine in Poland for reasons discussed in Post 142, is seemingly not required. Polish officials Mr. Kochen contacted in Wrocław told him that because Stolpersteine are treated as artistic installations, as the German artist Gunter Demnig intended when he initiated the project in 1992, rather than monuments, the approval of the Institute of National Remembrance is not required.
The person who initiates the installation of the stumbling stone must somehow prove the person(s) lived there and died during the Holocaust and finance the production and installation of the stone. The requirement that the person died may be specific to Poland because based on personal experience in Germany a target of Nazi persecution need not have died to be commemorated by a Stolperstein. If a Stolperstein is proposed in an area designated as a national monument, the consent of the conservator of monuments is also required. And, finally, one must coordinate with the special office in Germany that handles Stolpersteine matters.
Mr. Perry Gruenberger initially contacted me towards the end of September telling me he wants to commission Stolpersteine in honor of his grandparents, Fritz Grünberger (1893-1944) and Henriette Grünberger, née Nesselroth (1897-1944), who had lived and worked in Ratibor. (Figure 2) His grandparents were initially deported to Theresienstadt, then later transported to Auschwitz. Perry explained that his father Günter Grünberger grew up in Ratibor until age 19 (1939) but survived the Holocaust. He escaped to Palestine via Italy.
When readers contact me asking about their ancestors who were victims of the Holocaust or are associated with places where my own relatives may have lived, typically, I check on ancestry.com, MyHeritage, the Arolsen Archives, the Yad Vashem Victims’ Database, as well as in my personal files for documents and images that may make these people’s relatives come to life.
I was quickly able to find Perry’s grandparents in Yad Vashem. (Figures 3a-b; 4a-b) I next checked an Excel database with the names of people formerly interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, which no longer exists, for any Grünbergers. Initially, I found four names with pictures of their headstones which I shared with Perry. (Figures 5-8) He was elated.
Later when I reexamined the Excel database, I noticed a “Siegfried Grünberg (1863-1930)” listed (see Figure 5) and figured out this was Perry’s great-grand-uncle. (Figure 9) I also realized in searching the Yad Vashem Victims’ Database for Perry’s family I would need to check not only “Grünberger” and “Gruenberger,” but also “Grünberg” and “Grunberg.”
Combined, in the Yad Vashem and the Arolsen Archives online databases, I discovered a total of five Grünbergers that had been deported to Theresienstadt or Auschwitz from Ratibor. (Figures 10-13)
Let me briefly digress and share with readers a related discovery I made at about the same time. Long-term followers of my blog know that connections I make between seemingly unrelated documents and contacts most excite me.
In Post 146, I introduced readers to Mr. Kamil Kotas a gentleman formerly from the Racibórz District of Poland, now living in Münster in the German state of Westphalia. Kamil not only directed me to files archived at the State Archives in Wrocław Branch in Kamieniec Ząbkowicki with information on my family’s establishment in Ratibor, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, as previously discussed, but he also sent me links to two articles he’s written about Ratibor. Translated, one is entitled “Preliminary list of Jews from Racibórz deported to death camps,” and the second is “Jews with Prussian citizenship in the Racibórz region in the years 1812-1815.” Serendipitously, both contain information on the Grünbergers.
Through extensive research Kamil has compiled a comprehensive list of Jews from Ratibor deported to death camps. Quoting as to the method he used to draw up this list:
“The list presented below is based on transport lists of people deported from Silesia to the Auschwitz death camp and to the ghetto and Theresienstadt camp. Scans of the lists are publicly available on the German website “Statistik des Holocaust”. Listed below are people whose last place of residence before deportation was Racibórz. In addition to the names and surnames, other information about the victims available on the lists was also seized. The types of information overlap for most of the people included and usually include: first name, last name, for women also maiden name, date and place of birth, occupation before capture, last address of residence. For some people, the dates of death were also written by hand on the typed letters, as well as short markings, the meaning of which could not yet be fully explained (it is assumed that these were identification numbers or transport numbers). As for the people who did not have a date of death inscribed, it does not mean that they survived the capture. It could happen that, for various unknown reasons, information about their deaths was not considered – the war and the Holocaust brought with them many missing and anonymous victims, and even meticulous German keeping of records did not guarantee the creation of gaps in the death register.
The list was prepared according to the order of transports (only brief notes were made about two transports, as there are no specific lists of people for them).”
As just mentioned, five of Perry Gruenberger’s ancestors were deported to Theresienstadt on two separate transports per the information Kamil Kotas has assembled, including Perry’s grandparents. Below is the information related to the Grünbergers, some of which replicates or augments information I found in the online Arolsen Archives and Yad Vashem.
Transport XVIII/2 from Opole to Theresienstadt (Terezín, today in the Czech Republic), dated 20 November 1942.
Grünberger Max, born 22.3.1870 in Gniew in Pomerania, merchant, residing in Racibórz at Weidenstr. 15 (Staszica Street), date of death: 15.7.1943.
Grünberger Emma, née Herzka, born 18.12.1876 in Sedlnice (Sedlnitz) in Moravia, no profession, residing in Racibórz at Weidenstr. 15 (Staszica Street), date of death: 17.12.1942.
Grünberger Flora, née Toczek, born 28.4.1867 in Daniec near Opole, no profession, residing in Racibórz at Friedrichstr. 4 (Głowackiego Street), date of death: 27.11.1942.
EDITORS’ NOTE: I’m uncertain how Max and Emma Grünberger are related to Perry but given the years they were born I suspect that they were Siegfried Grünberger’s younger brother and sister-in-law, in other words Perry’s great-great-uncle and -aunt. Flora Grünberger, née Toczek, I know was Siegfried Grünberger’s wife, another of Perry’s great-great-aunts. The three Grünbergers on the November 20, 1942, transport were among 50 Jews deported from Oppeln, Germany [today: Opole, Poland], 38 of whom came from Ratibor. (see Figure 10)
The second transport with Grünbergers from Ratibor that arrived in Theresienstadt on the 3rd of August 1943 included Perry’s grandparents:
On August 3, 1943, two people sent from Racibórz arrived in Theresienstadt outside the transport (XVIII/6 “Ez”):
Grünberger Fritz, born 2.9.1893, accountant, residing in Racibórz at Horst Wessel pl. 11a (Wolności Square), no information about death.
Grünberger Henriette, born 29.6.1897, seamstress, housewife, residing in Racibórz at Horst Wessel pl. 11a (Wolności Square), no information about death.
According to the Arolsen Archives deportation cards, Fritz and Henriette Grünberger were deported from Theresienstadt, presumably to Auschwitz, on different transports leaving on two closely separated days, respectively, on the 29th of September 1944 (see Figure 12) and on the 6th of October 1944. (see Figure 13)
Turning now to the second article Kamil Kotas has written, which as noted above includes the names of Jews with Prussian citizenship living in the Ratibor region in the period between 1812 and 1815. Relying on a website run by the Museum in Gliwice [German: Gleiwitz], Kamil has compiled and published a list of Jews who were citizens of the Silesian part of the Kingdom of Prussia in the years 1812-1815. The census is based on lists that were published in the years 1814-1815 in the official newspapers of the day in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland].
Some brief history. The lists were a result of the emancipation edict of 1812 affecting Jews in the Kingdom of Prussia, to which most of Silesia belonged to at the time. Under the edict, Jews were granted citizenship on the condition that they use permanent, immutable family names, as the rest of the inhabitants of Prussia had already done. Previously Jews had only used their first names and so-called patronymics, that’s to say, a variation of their fathers’ names. Without permanent surnames, the identification of Jews and administrative and legal proceedings involving them was complicated.
Based on the 1812-1815 censuses, the Museum of Gliwice was able to identify 67 Jews from the area of today’s Racibórz County. Notably, the list included the name of Ascher Grünberger from Annaberg, Kreis Ratibor, Prussia [today: Chałupki, Poland]. Chałupki is located along the current Polish-Czech Republic border about 15.5 miles south-southeast of Racibórz. (Figure 14) Interestingly, as Kamil perceptively notes in his article, only eight of the 67 Jewish citizens residing in the county at the time lived within the city’s limits.
Perry shared his Grünberger family tree with me but regrettably Ascher does not show up on it.
Intriguingly, Kamil has researched and written about an Adolf Grünberger, born in around 1842. He was a Jewish merchant from Ratibor who received Hungarian citizenship on the 10th of October 1886, and emigrated to Timișoara, Romania after he became widowed, eventually remarrying Sharlote Schmidt in 1889 and building a house in Timișoara that still stands. How Adolf is related to Perry Gruenberger is entirely unclear.
As a related aside, my family’s earliest known association with Ratibor dates to 1819 when the names of my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) and his brother Jonas Bruck (1813-1883) are included among the names of students who attended the inaugural class when the city’s gymnasium, or high school, opened. Thus, it was disappointing not to see my family’s surname included among the list of original Jewish inhabitants of Ratibor County. Possibly it’s an omission or my family lived in a different town outside the county’s borders at the time?
In my ensuing post, I will return to the two articles Kamil Kotas sent me, as they not only include members of the Grünberger family, but, astonishingly, also include distant ancestors of a childhood friend from New York. In contrast to Ascher Grünberger to whom Perry cannot draw an unbroken linear connection, in the case of this childhood friend we are able to make a direct connection to his earliest forebear. In collaboration with my friend’s daughter, an avid genealogist, we will briefly explore this connection.
REFERENCES
Kotas, Kamil. Casa Adolf Grünberger. www.ziemiaraciborska.pl/wstepna-lista-raciborskich-zydow-deportowanych-do-obozow-zaglady
Kotas, Kamil. (2022, March 2). Żydzi z obywatelstwem pruskim na ziemi raciborskiej w latach 1812-1815. Ziemia Raciborska.pl.
Kotas, Kamil. (2022, March 2). Żydzi z obywatelstwem pruskim na ziemi raciborskiej w latach 1812-1815. Ziemia Raciborska.pl.
Note: Three “Stolpersteine” or commemorative brass plaques commemorating Holocaust victims were recently installed in Racibórz, Poland, my father’s birth place when it was part of Germany; these are the town’s first-ever “stumbling stones.” In this post, I look briefly into the Kochen family whom these Stolpersteine memorialize and discuss a surprising discovery I made on my journey.
On May 26, 2023, a coaster-sized brass plaque commemorating a victim of Nazi persecution in Nuremberg, Germany became the 100,000th “Stolperstein” installed. Literally meaning “stumbling stone,” Stolpersteine commemorate all victims of Nazi oppression, including Jews but also Roma, Sinti, the physically or mentally disabled, homosexuals, and other persecuted groups (e.g. Communists, members of the anti-Nazi Resistance, Christian opponents, etc.). So far, they have been placed in 27 European countries. The names and fates of the victims are engraved on the brass plaques, along with information on where and when they were deported.
Initiated in 1992 by the German artist Gunter Demnig (Figure 1), his idea was to place a cobblestone-like memorial outside a Holocaust victim’s “last address of choice.” By placing a Stolperstein on a sidewalk or in the middle of a pavement, Demnig hopes people happening upon them will stop, curious to know whom it commemorates and what happened to them. He is convinced “there’s a difference between a teenager opening a book and reading about 6 million murdered Jews, and them learning about the fate of family while standing where they lived.”
Placement of Stolpersteine in the middle of pavements has not been without its detractors. Interestingly, Munich, the historic home of the Nazi movement, banned the implementation of Stolpersteine until recently. The reason for Munich’s opposition actually stems from a member of the city’s Jewish community, a Charlotte Knobloch, herself a Holocaust survivor. Ms. Knobloch argues that it is disrespectful for people to walk over the names of Holocaust victims, allowing the victims’ lives to figuratively be desecrated.
The Munich City Council recently decided to move ahead with plans to commemorate the last known addresses of Holocaust victims in their city but stopped short of allowing the installation of Stolpersteine. The compromise allows plaques on private property with the owners’ approval and on top of posts on public property. While sidewalk plaques remain against the law, there will be a central memorial with a list of the Holocaust victims’ names.
Elsewhere, for example in some places in Poland, such as Szczecin, city authorities have refused to install memorial stones for Holocaust victims because the country’s “Institute of National Remembrance” fears that visitors to the city might think the perpetrators of the crimes were Poles.
Notwithstanding the concerns some people and jurisdictions have expressed about Stolpersteine, it came as a pleasant surprise to learn that several had recently been placed in the town where my father was born, Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]. An acquaintance, Magda Wawoczny, a Jewish studies student from Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland who hails from Racibórz, recently sent me photos of the first ever brass plaques installed in her hometown.
They were for three members of a family deported in 1938 to the Łódź Ghetto (Figure 2), namely, Szyja Kochen (1897-1944), Ester Bajla Kochen (1898-1944), and Natan David Kochen (1935-1944). (Figure 3) The family once lived in an apartment at 10 Breite Strasse, also known in German times as Brunken; the building still stands today (Figure 4), and the address today is ulica Londzina 10. The Stolpersteine were placed in front of this building. And, Gunter Demnig, who initiated the project in 1992 installed the brass plaques himself. (Figures 5-9)
While multiple members of my family died during the Shoah, my family had departed Ratibor no later than 1926, therefore, no Stolpersteine are located there. Stumbling stones have been placed at two separate locations in Berlin for my beloved aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck (1904-1942) (Figure 10) and my great-aunt Franziska Bruck (1866-1942). (Figure 11) From personal experience I know that a target of the Nazis need not have died to have a commemorative stone placed at their last address of choice; two members of my Mombert family by marriage have Stolpersteine placed on the pavement in front of their last residence in Giessen, Germany. (Figure 12)
In the case of the Kochen family from Ratibor, I have no concrete evidence that they interacted with my family, although I’m certain the Kochen family would have been familiar with my family’s establishment, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. Szyja Kochen, the patriarch of the family, is believed to have been a salesman, possibly a “stepper” (i.e., dancer), so unless he dealt in a service required by the hotel, it is unlikely our families’ paths ever crossed. Still, one can never be certain given that Ratibor was a relatively small town with a small Jewish population. Also unknown is how long the Kochen family was associated with Ratibor; my Bruck family was there since the early 19th century.
Aware that three members of the Kochen family had perished in the Holocaust, I checked the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center’s victims’ database. As expected, I found all three listed along with Pages of Testimony that have been submitted by a Nadav Kochen, who I surmise is a grandson or a grandnephew of Szyja and Ester Kochen. Nadav also included two photographs of his ancestors. (see Figure 3)
According to the Stolperstein for Szyja Kochem, he was deported to Łódź, and purportedly murdered there on the 7th of March 1944 in the Łódź Ghetto. By contrast, his wife Ester Bajla Kochen’s Stolperstein and that of his son Natan David Kochen indicate they were murdered in August 1944 at Auschwitz [Oświęcim, Poland]. Obviously, at some point they were moved from the Łódź Ghetto to Auschwitz. (Figure 13)
Among the documents I found for Szyja, Ester, and David Kochen was a list with their names showing their address when they were locked inside the Łódź Ghetto, Pfeffergasse 14, Flat 25; this information comes from a so-called “Jewish Ghetto Inhabitant List.” (Figure 14) The dates of birth on this list match the dates on the Pages of Testimony submitted by Nadav Kochen. Yad Vashem also includes Szyja Kochen’s Łódź work permit with his photo confirming his address (Figure 15); boldly stamped across this document is the word “GESTORBEN,” died.
What immediately caught my attention on the Łódź Jewish Ghetto Inhabitant List was the name of another family member, Frida Kochen, shown as being born on the 28th of December 1925. (see Figure 14) Obviously, no Stolperstein has been placed in her honor in Racibórz, so I assumed her fate might have turned out differently. And, sure enough, I found another list in Yad Vashem, entitled “Stutthof survivors who had been on a barge that was stranded in the bay of Eckernförde in Schleswig-Holstein (Northern German)” with Frida listed under her married name, “Frieda Ben David Cohen,” born in 1925 in Ratibor. (Figure 16) Again, in contrast to her mother and brother, this list makes clear that at some point she had been transferred from Auschwitz to the concentration camp in Stutthof [today: Sztutowo, Poland], located about 370 miles north of Auschwitz. (Figure 17)
I next turned to ancestry.com trying to untangle this surprising finding. I quickly found information for “Fridah Ben David” who I ascertained was the Frida Kochen in question, born on the 28th of December 1925 in Ratibor, and learned she had done an interview with the USC Shoah Foundation on the 5th of February 1998 in Tel Aviv, Israel; unfortunately the dialogue is in Hebrew and no transcript nor translation has been done of the two-hour long testimonial. (Figure 18)
Obviously, Frida avoided the fate of her parents and younger brother, although I’m still trying to understand the circumstances of how she accomplished this. Separately, in ancestry, I discovered Szyja and Ester had two additional offspring, Shoshonah Rozah Fayvel née Kochen (b. 1920 in Ratibor) and Me’ir Maks Kochen (b. 1921 in Ratibor), both of whom also survived the Holocaust. (Figure 19) I’m trying to contact Nadav Kochen who submitted the Pages of Testimony to Yad Vashem hoping he might shed some light on his ancestor’s ordeal. Watch this space for a future postscript.
Even though Frida’s testimonial contains no transcript nor translation, the USC Shoah Foundation’s website includes very brief one-line annotations for the 137 segments of the two-hour interview. These notations provide clues to the places where Frida was held during the war and moved to following the war though in no chronological order.
I know from the document I found in Yad Vashem of Stutthof survivors who were stranded in the bay of Eckernförde in Schleswig-Holstein that Frida was moved from the Stutthof concentration camp to mainland Germany. Let me reconstruct what may have happened based on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s historical accounts of this concentration camp.
The Germans established the Stutthof camp in a wooded area west of Stutthof [today: Sztutowo, Poland], a town about 22 miles east of Danzig [today: Gdansk, Poland] in September 1939. Stutthof was secluded. To the north was the Bay of Danzig, to the east the Vistula Lagoon, and to the west the Vistula River. The land was very wet, almost at sea level. As a related aside, Danzig is where my father apprenticed as a dentist; the Bay of Danzig where he sometimes went sailing; Stutthof where he often went to the beach; and the Vistula Lagoon where he engaged in winter sports.
Originally, Stutthof was a civilian internment camp under the Danzig police chief. In November 1941, it became a “labor education” camp, administered by the German Security Police. Finally, in January 1942, Stutthof became a regular concentration camp.
Tens of thousands of people were deported to Stutthof, mostly non-Jewish Poles, Polish Jews from Warsaw and Białystok, as well as Jews from forced labor camps in the occupied Baltic states, which the Germans evacuated in 1944 as the Red Army was approaching. I can find no clue as to why Frida would have been transferred all the way from Auschwitz to Stutthof.
Conditions in the camp were brutal. Typhus epidemics regularly swept the camp and many prisoners died. Those too weak to work were gassed in the camp’s small gas chamber. Camp doctors were complicit in killing many injured or sick prisoners by injection. Purportedly, more than 60,000 people died in the camp.
The Germans used Stutthof prisoners as forced laborers. Some prisoners worked in SS-owned businesses while others labored in local private industrial enterprises. In Post 121 and Post 121, Postscript I discussed Gerhard Epp’s use of forced laborers from Stutthof in his nearby metal working and munitions workshop; Gerhard was the brother of two close friends of my father from Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland], 10 miles to the south of Stutthof, when my father had his dental practice between 1932 and 1937.
The part of the story I want to focus on is the evacuation of prisoners from Stutthof, which was barbaric. By January 1945, there were nearly 50,000 prisoners in the 105 subcamps of Stutthof, mostly Jews. Beginning at around this time, about 5,000 prisoners were marched to the Baltic Sea, forced into the water, and machine gunned. The remainder of the prisoners were marched towards eastern Germany but were cut off by advancing Soviet forces. The Germans forced the survivors back to Stutthof, thousands of whom died en route on account of the severe winter conditions and brutal treatment by SS guards.
By late April 1945, because Stutthof was completely encircled by Soviet forces, the remaining prisoners were removed by sea. Again many prisoners were forced into the sea and gunned down. Over 4,000 were sent by small barge to Germany. (Figure 20) The list of survivors includes Frida’s name showing she made it to Eckernförde in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein and was incarcerated in an adjacent concentration camp in Kiel. She was finally liberated by British Army troops in May 1945. It is estimated that of the 50,000 prisoners held in Stutthof in January 1945, 25,000, or one in two, died during the evacuation. This makes Frida’s survival even more remarkable.
The annotated interview the USC Shoah Foundation conducted with Frida lists a host of places connected to her presumed movements following her liberation, including cities in Germany (i.e., Schafstedt) Austria (i.e., Innsbruck, Bad Gustein, and Klagenfurt), and Italy (i.e., Udine Displaced Person’s Camp, Savona). Absent translation and chronology, it is mere conjecture whether these movements were by choice or necessity.
Knowing Frida eventually emigrated to British Palestine, I theorize she boarded the ship named the “Josiah Wedgewood” in Savona, which she specifically mentioned in her testimonial. Savona is a seaport community in the west part of the northern Italian region of Liguria and is known to have been one of the embarkation ports for this ship boarding Jewish refugees attempting to reach Palestine. There exists a June 1946 photography by Emil Reynolds showing some of the 1,300 European refugees aboard the former Canadian corvette Josiah Wedgewood after it was fired upon and captured on June 27th by British warships after the corvette tried to land illegally in Palestine. (Figure 21) It’s unknown whether Frida was aboard the ship at this time. What is conclusive is that unlike so many of her fellow inmates in the Łódź Jewish Ghetto and in the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Stutthof, and Kiel, Frida survived and thrived. (Figure 22)
FOOTNOTE: A Polish reader of my blog was dismayed and pained by my failure to specifically mention that non-Jewish Polish victims of Nazi German crimes should be among the groups recognized through installation of Stolpersteine in Poland. I wholeheartedly agree. While acknowledging the importance of commemorating innocent victims of the Holocaust, the reader stressed that I was “. . .distorting the historical truth by saying ‘Nazi crimes’ instead of ‘Nazi German crimes’” The reader emphasized that Nazism was a creation of German culture and it was supported in a democratic vote by Germans, and by failing to make this clear I avoided distinguishing between victims and executioners.
I don’t use the term “Nazi crimes” in this post. I was talking about German war crimes based on the extermination policies of Germany’s National Socialist regime. I acknowledge mention should be made of the millions of non-Jewish Polish citizens killed by the Germans during WWII. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, “It is estimated that the Germans killed between 1.8 and 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians during World War II. In addition, the Germans murdered at least 3 million Jewish citizens of Poland.” My blog post was in no way intended to minimize the enormous number of non-Jewish Polish victims of Nazi aggression, which should most assuredly be commemorated, but rather was to indicate the efforts that some Polish towns and cities are making to recognize some of their Jewish victims.
REFERENCES
Ben David, Fridah. Personal interview with USC Shoah Foundation. 5 February 1998.
Ben-Tzur, Tzvi and Aryeh Malkin. “The Voyage of the ‘Josiah Wedgewood’.” http://www.palyam.org/English/Hahapala/hf/hf_Wedgwood.pdf
Dege, Stefan. “’Stolpersteine’: Commemorating victims of Nazi persecution.” DW, 30 May 2023. https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=stolpersteine%3a+commemorating+victims+of+Nazi+persecution&d=4770772662747258&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=NjbMU3Tw6fh5fwT1QFxwCDfU2uG9SmRu
Markusz, Katarzyna. “Polish city refuses to install memorial stones for Holocaust victims.” 23 December 2019, The Times of Israel. https://www.timesofisrael.com/polish-city-refuses-to-install-memorial-stones-for-holocaust-victims/
Rafter, Catherine. “Munich compromises on Holocaust Memorial Plans.” Observer, 5 August 2015. https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=munich+compromises+on+holocaust+memorial+plans&d=4994802452810164&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=MqJZbPJj4z_fX5-uIPDyOAtbDaiFWg_J
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Jewish refugees wait aboard the Josiah Wedgewood after British navy fired at the ship.” Photograph Number: 37543
The following is a guest post written by Ms. Magda Wawoczny, a student in Jewish studies at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, who hails from Racibórz, Poland. Magda first contacted me in 2021 when she was working on her bachelor’s degree and interviewed me about my family’s connection to Ratibor (today: Racibórz, Poland), when the city was part of Germany. Regular readers know that my family owned the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor from around 1850 through the mid-1920s. Knowing I had visited Racibórz on a few occasions, Magda was also interested in my impressions of the city.
In May 2023, Magda reached out to me again in connection with her ongoing master’s degree work in Jewish studies, still centered around her hometown. Surprisingly, she asked if I could help her get in touch with Monica Lewinsky’s father, Dr. Bernard Lewinsky, who is a Radiation Oncologist in Los Angeles. Unbeknownst to me, Monica’s immediate ancestors come from Ratibor and her great-grandfather, Salo Lewinsky, was once buried in the former Jewish cemetery in Ratibor.
More recently Magda has been researching a Jewish woman by the name of Minna Linzer, née Guttmann (1873-1928) whose body had been exhumed in 1972 from the former Jewish cemetery in Ratibor prior to its destruction in 1973 and reburied in the town’s Catholic cemetery. The reason for this is explained in the current post. Magda’s interest in contacting Dr. Lewinsky stems from the fact that the Lewinsky and Linzer families were friends. Whereas the Lewinsky family emigrated to El Salvador during the 1920s and thereby survived the Holocaust, most of Minna Linzer’s family stayed in Ratibor and therefore perished.
Separately, but at around the same time as I was trying to reach Dr. Bernard Lewinsky, a German lady by the name of Ms. Jessica Nastos contacted me through my blog’s webmail. Jessica had stumbled upon Post 72 where I discussed so-called cabinet cards. One studio I’d specifically mentioned that produced these cards in Ratibor was the Helios Photo Studio, which was the subject of my previous post. Jessica told me her mother had once worked in the studio and offered to send me contemporary photos of the studio including a picture of an old envelope with the studio’s name and logo. Upon receiving the pictures, I realized they included images of the Linzer’s that Magda has been researching, including most family members from Ratibor who died in the Holocaust; astonishingly, there was even a picture of Minna Linzer, née Guttmann with her oldest son Jan (German: Hans). Minna’s husband, Hermann Linzer (1874-1944), carried this photo with him throughout World War I, and a bullet hole through the photo attests to a wound he suffered during the war. (Figure A)
When so many Jews were murdered by the Nazis in their effort to obliterate proof of their existence, it is bitter satisfaction to uncover photos of some of these people to emphasize the fact that the Nazis ultimately failed.
With the above as backdrop, I now turn the lectern over to Magda.
POST 139: THE STORY OF A JEWISH WOMAN BURIED IN RACIBÓRZ’S CATHOLIC CEMETERY
BY
MAGDA WAWOCZNY
JAGIELLONIAN UNIVERSITY
The most important places related to the Jewish heritage of Racibórz that survived the end of World War II were the synagogue and the cemetery. While the synagogue was destroyed by a fire on the 9th of November 1938 on Kristallnacht (Figure 1), it endured as a ruin until it was demolished, the exact date of which is still being investigated. By contrast, the cemetery survived basically intact. Unfortunately, the Jewish inhabitants of Racibórz disappeared from the city’s landscape during the war—those who managed to escape after Kristallnacht survived outside Germany, those who remained died in concentration camps. As a result, the Jewish cemetery in Racibórz was eventually razed since the community which it had served no longer existed to take care of it. Or so it seemed until now. . .
Currently, for the purposes of my master’s thesis, I am researching the Jewish cemetery which was ultimately demolished in 1973. Based on the available sources, it is known that before the liquidation, photo documentation of all the burials and headstones was made by Mr. Kazimierz Świtliński (Figure 2) at the request of the city authorities. The documentation is on file at the Museum of Racibórz, and illustrates impressive tombstones made of marble, granite, and sandstone. In this post I will focus on one belonging to Minna Linzer, née Guttmann. (Figure 3)
During my archival investigations, my attention was drawn to an application by a woman from Racibórz who requested permission from the city authorities to exhume the body of her grandmother Minna Linzer from Ratibor’s former Jewish cemetery and transfer it together with the tombstone to the Catholic cemetery in the Ostróg district on Rudzka street. The woman emphasized that in the face of the anticipated liquidation of the cemetery, she felt an obligation to save the grave of her grandmother that she had taken care of and maintained for many years. The granddaughter was Elizabeth (Elzbieta) “Lilly” Slawik, née Grzonka. Her application to the city authorities was accompanied by a card with the inscription “eternal memory of those lost in the Auschwitz camp: Hermann Linzer, Jan Linzer, Małgorzata and Henryk Schiftan, Lota and Maks Tichauer.” (Figure 4)
Knowing only Elizabeth’s name and address, I started searching for her relatives. Fortunately, I managed to reach Elizabeth’s son, Minna’s great-grandson currently living in Germany. He explained that Elizabeth was the daughter of a Jewish man and a Catholic woman, and that the above-mentioned names are inscribed on the relocated grave in the Catholic cemetery. Elizabeth’s son mentioned that his mother took care of his great-grandmother’s tomb, and when she learned it was about to be destroyed, asked permission for the grave to be exhumed. Fascinatingly, he also mentioned that his mother had looked after the grave of Monica Lewinsky’s great-grandfather, Salo Lewinsky. (Figure 5) Despite directions from Elisabeth’s son to Minna’s grave in the Catholic cemetery, it was not easy to find.
Having been given the name of Salo Lewinsky’s still living grandson, Bernard Lewinsky, by Lilly’s son, I decided to try and contact him. For this purpose, I asked Richard Brook, author of this blog, for help. Dr. Lewinsky is an oncologist in Los Angeles, so he was quickly able to get in touch with him. Upon establishing contact, Dr. Lewinsky confirmed that his father George Lewinsky (1903-1989) had remained in contact with Elisabeth who took care of his father’s grave. Until the death of Bernard’s father, the families remained in contact. Unfortunately, the grave of Bernard’s grandfather, Salo, could not be saved when the Jewish cemetery was dismantled.
Thanks also to Richard’s help, I was able to obtain some information on the names inscribed on Minna Guttmann’s headstone and found on the card accompanying Elizabeth’s request to exhume her grave, such as their former place of residence, their occupations, and the date of the deportations to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
A breakthrough in my research came when Richard coincidentally received an email from Elizabeth’s great-granddaughter, Jessica Nastos, about the Helios Photo Studio which was the subject of Richard’s blog Post 138; it turns out “Lilly” had worked there. Thanks to Jessica, I learned that Elizabeth was the child of a Jew, Jan Linzer (mentioned on the card accompanying Elizabeth’s application to the city authorities), and a Catholic, Paulina Grzonka, who could not be together due to the Nazi rule and the specter of war. (Figure 6) To protect themselves and Elizabeth, Paulina and Jan decided not to get married, although they symbolically exchanged rings as keepsakes, with each other’s initials engraved on them. Paulina (1895-1971) and Elizabeth (1926-2016) survived, while Jan (1901-1945) died in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Thanks to Jessica’s information, it was possible to establish the identities of the people on the card. Minna Linzer (1873-1928) was the first wife of Hermann Linzer (1874-1944). She died in 1928, and after her death Hermann got remarried to a woman named Amalie Nebenzahl (1884-1944). Both died in 1944 in Theresienstadt. Hermann and Minna had four children: Jan (German: Hans), Małgorzata (German: Margaret), Lota, and Leo. Leo, the youngest son, was the only one who survived the war. (Figure 7) Małgorzata and Lota together with their husbands also died in Theresienstadt.
Thanks to Jessica, based on photos from the 1990s, which show a relocated grave in the Catholic cemetery, I was able to find it. It is still there and in very good condition. (Figure 8) When it seemed that only archival documents and stories remained of the city’s Jewish heritage, it turns out that there is a preserved remnant of Jews in Racibórz, and Minna’s grave is proof of that.
