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. . .”
Note: In this post, I present and synthesize some primary source documents I’ve collected proving the existence of my third great-grandparents’ children. A family memoir states they had twelve unnamed children though I can definitively account for only nine of them. I am not surprised given that large families often had children who died at birth or in childhood. I strongly suspect a tenth offspring, the oldest girl, who shows up on several ancestral trees, may have lived to adulthood though I cannot independently prove this. The point of this post is to illustrate the standard to which I hold myself accountable in verifying ancestral data, not simply tell another family story to which readers may not relate.
A distant Bruck relative, Bertha Jacobson, née Bruck (1873-1957) wrote a memoir for her granddaughter, Maria Jacobson (1933-2022). In this memoir, which Maria donated to the Leo Baeck Institute in New York before her death, Bertha notes that my third great-grandparents Jacob Nathan Bruck (1770-1836) and Marianne Bruck, née Aufrecht (b. 1776) had twelve children, though she doesn’t name them. As a challenge to myself, I set out to determine how many of these purported children’s existence I could find proof of in the form of primary source documents, my gold standard. I’ve summarized this data including the source in a table readers will find at the end of this post.
I’ve often admonished followers about cloning ancestral data that one finds on other people’s ancestral trees, especially if source documents are not identified. That said, ancestral trees are sometimes specific enough to direct researchers to other sources that can be independently checked to confirm the veracity of the information in a tree. Below I will give readers an example of how I was able to confirm the burial place of one of Jacob and Marianne’s children in Berlin through data found on an ancestral tree in MyHeritage.
Before delving into the evidence I’ve tracked down for Jacob and Marianne’s children, let me review the vital data I’ve found out about them. In Post 150 I told readers how I discovered my third great-grandfather Jacob Nathan Bruck’s death register listing for Ratibor among the primary source documents digitized by the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society’s “Silius Radicum” project. (Figure 1) The index proved Jacob died in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] on the 29th of June 1836 at the age of 66, meaning he was born in 1770. While I’ve been unable to uncover the exact date he was born, the Geneanet Community Tree Index claims Jacob was born on the 18th of February 1770. (Figure 2) Notwithstanding that the source of this data is Michael Bruck, my fourth cousin once removed, I’ve yet to see the source document from which Michael drew this information.
A related aside. Another one of my distant Bruck relatives, Marianne Polborn, née Bruck (1888-1975) developed a family tree which includes some vital information for Jacob and Marianne Bruck. (Figure 3) Jacob’s date of birth matches that found on the Geneanet Community Tree Index. While I’m inclined to believe the 18th of February 1770 was indeed Jacob’s birth, the skeptic in me asks whether Michael Bruck had access to Marianne Polborn’s ancestral tree, so that everyone is copying the same unverified information from a record that is not a primary source document? This is likely a rhetorical question.
I draw readers’ attention to another date on Marianne Polborn’s ancestral tree, namely Jacob and Marianne’s marriage date, specifically, the 16th of May 1793. Given the confirmed dates of birth for some of Jacob and Marianne’s children towards the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, this seems like a plausible marriage year. While this tree is the sole unconfirmed source of their wedding, even if Marianne was already pregnant when she and Jacob married, a not uncommon occurrence I’ve learned, their oldest child would likely not have been born much before 1794. The earliest confirmed birth year for any of their children, as I will discuss, is 1796.
Another date I draw readers’ attention to is the purported date of birth of Marianne Aufrecht, the 21st of August 1776.
Marianne Polborn does not specify when Marianne Bruck died, although the Geneanet Community Tree Index claims she died on the 3rd of August 1835. (Figure 4) I believe this is a case of “false precision.” Let me explain. By chance, when scrolling through the Church of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) Family History Library Microfilm Roll Number 7990058 with the names of Jews who died between 1832 and 1838 in Neisse [today: Nysa, Poland], located 54 miles northwest of Racibórz, I stumbled on the death register listing of the “witwe Marianne Bruck” who died at 70 years of age on the 3rd of August 1835; “witwe” means widow. (Figure 5) As discussed above, I know for sure Jacob Bruck died in 1836 so obviously in 1835 Marianne would not yet have been a widow. Also, if Marianne’s birth year was 1776, which I’m inclined to believe, had she died in 1835 she would only have been several weeks short of her 59th birthday. Finally, unless Marianne was visiting Neisse, her death there rather than in Ratibor seems odd.
Often the oldest of Jacob and Marianne’s offspring listed on ancestral trees is Helene Bruck shown married to an Itzig Mendel Guttmann Aufrecht. As I discussed in Post 150, I located Marianne’s death register listing in the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society’s database proving she died on the 20th of May 1838 at the age of 68 (Figure 6), identical to the year Jacob Bruck was born, 1770. Thus, the Helene Bruck married to Itzig Aufrecht was not one of Jacob and Marianne’s children, but more likely Jacob’s cousin. It’s conceivable Jacob and Marianne named their first-born daughter Helene, but I cannot independently verify this nor prove she existed.
Wilhelmine Bruck’s existence is incontrovertible. Proof of her marriage to Wilhelm Friedenstein is found on LDS Microfilm 1184449 showing they got married on the 7th of November 1814 in Ratibor, identifying her father as Jakob Nathan Bruck. (Figure 7) Find-A-Grave shows she was born in 1796 and died in 1864, and is interred in the Stary Cmentarz Żydowski we Wrocławiu, the Old Jewish Cemetery, in Wrocław, Poland. (Figure 8) My friend, Dr. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska, is the Branch Manager of this cemetery and sent me a picture of her headstone giving her precise birth and death dates. (Figure 9) Her husband is not buried alongside her.
Although no birth or death information has so far been uncovered for another of Jacob and Marianne’s daughters, her existence again is irrefutable. According to LDS Microfilm 1184449, Dorothea married Salomon Freund on the 25th of February 1817 in Ratbor, and her father is listed as Jakob Nathan Bruck. (see Figure 7)
Moritz Bruck (1800-1863)
A German book published in 1845 entitled “Gelehrtes Berlin in Jahre 1845,” roughly translated as “Scholarly Berlin in 1845,” includes a biography of Moritz Bruck stating he was born on the 24th of December 1800 in Ratibor and that his father was Jacob Bruck. (Figure 10) He was a respected doctor and was actively involved in researching and writing about cholera. Unlike his older brothers, Moritz attended the gymnasium, high school, in Brieg, [today: Brzeg, Poland], 80 miles northwest of Racibórz. His 1824 dissertation written in Latin was entitled “De myrmeciasi,” and was about ants popularly known as bulldog ants, bull ants, or jack jumper ants due to their ferocity; his dissertation includes a dedication page for his father. (Figures 11a-b)
On MyHeritage, I discovered the “Tuchler Family Tree,” which correctly indicates Moritz died on the 25th of October 1863 in Berlin and is buried in the Jüdische Friedhof in der Schönhauser Allee, a fact I confirmed by having one of my German cousins call the cemetery. At a future date, I will include a photo of his headstone. This is one of the few occasions I found vital information on a family tree that I was independently able to verify.
Fanny Bruck (1804-1879)
LDS Microfilm 1184449 indicates that like her sisters Wilhelmine and Dorothea, Fanny got married in Ratibor on the 26th of November 1822 to Isaac Seliger. (Figure 12) Kurt Polborn, my fourth cousin from Germany, shows she died on the 29th of August 1879 in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland]. Given the exactitude of her death, I asked Kurt about it, and he sent me a copy of a letter Fanny wrote on the 19th of February 1873 informing authorities in Breslau her husband Isaac had passed away on the 13th of February 1873. (Figure 13) The Julian and Hebrew calendar dates of death for both Isaac and Fanny are written at the bottom of this correspondence; the source of this letter is the online archives of the Centralna Biblioteka Judaistyczna, Central Jewish Library. I was able to locate Isaac Seliger’s death register listing on LDS Microfilm 7990011 confirming he died on the 13th of February 1873. (Figure 14)
Because the LDS Church does not have the Breslau death register covering the years between 1874 and 1910, I asked my friend Renata from the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław if she could help track down Fanny Seliger’s death register information. Coincidentally, Fanny is buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery. Renata confirmed she was born on the 8th of November 1804 and died on the 29th of August 1879. A photo of her matzevah, headstone, will soon follow. (Figure 15-COMING SOON)
Isaac Bruck (~1805-?)
Isaac Bruck is estimated to have been born in 1805 or 1806. Along with his Samuel Bruck, both of their names show up on the roster of students who attended the inaugural class when Ratibor’s gymnasium, high school, opened in June 1819. (Figure 16) The roster indicates Isaac was 13 years old at the time, while his brother Samuel was 10 years of age. Isaac and Samuel’s unnamed father is listed as an “arendator,” beer tenant or distiller, which Jacob Bruck was known to have been. I discussed this topic in Post 152.
A particularly intriguing document I located mentioning Isaac Bruck was in a gazette entitled “Amtsblatt für den Regierungsbezirk Marienwerder,” dated the 26th of May 1828. The Marienwerder gazette printed a notice to be on the lookout for the deserter Isaac Bruck from Ratibor, who in 1828 was said to be 22 years old. (Figure 17)
The Marienwerder Region (German: Regierungsbezirk Marienwerder) was a government region (Regierungsbezirk) of Prussia from 1815 until 1920 and again 1939-1945. It was a part of the Province of West Prussia from 1815 to 1829, and again 1878–1920, belonging to the Province of Prussia in the intervening years, and to the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia in the years 1939-1945. The regional capital was Marienwerder in West Prussia [today: Kwidzyn, Poland].
According to LDS Microfilms 1194054 and 1194055 for Gleiwitz [today: Gliwice, Poland], Isaac and his wife Caroline Bruck, née Stolz, are known to have separated on the 19th of July 1835. (Figure 18)
Isaac Bruck is my cousin Michael Bruck’s 4th great-grandfather who he estimates died in 1856 or 1857.
Samuel Bruck (1808-1863)
Samuel was my third-great-grandfather, and the original owner of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preussen” Hotel in Ratibor. His existence is beyond doubt. I discussed Samuel in Post 144, so direct readers to that installment.
Heimann Bruck (~1812)
Heimann Bruck first attended Ratibor’s gymnasium, high school, in April 1823 when he was 11 years old. (Figure 19) Heimann’s unnamed father is said to be a “Destillateur,” distiller, which Jacob Bruck is known to have been.
Heimann married Rosalie “Rosa” Bruck on the 21st of August 1832 in Neisse, Prussia [today: Nysa, Poland]. Heimann’s father is identified as “Jacob B.” and Rosa’s father as “David B.” (Figure 20) Jacob and David were likely cousins.
In an 1826 Ratibor publication entitled “Einladungsschrift der Offentlichen Prufung der Schuler des Konigs. Gymnasium in Ratibor am 5, 6, und 7 April,” “Invitation to the Public Examination of the Pupils of the Royal Grammar School in Ratibor on April 5, 6 and 7, 1826,” Heimann Bruck’s name appears as having graduated from fourth class Latin. This may correspond with Heimann’s graduation from the gymnasium. (Figure 21)
Various ancestral trees indicate Heimann died in 1875 but this information is unconfirmed.
Jonas Bruck (1813-1883)
Jonas Bruck’s history is well-known. Primary source documents related to my 2nd great granduncle were discussed in Post 145. Jonas first attended Ratibor’s gymnasium in 1824 at 10 ½ years of age (Figure 22) and is shown in an annual Ratibor yearbook to have graduated in 1828.
Jacob and Marianne last known child is Rebecka Bruck and is their only child whose birth was recorded on LDS Microfilm 1184449 for Ratibor. (Figure 23) Her fate was unknown until I found her death register listing in the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society’s Signature Book 1699 indicating she died in Ratibor on the 16th of September 1819 at 4 years 8 months of age. (Figure 24)
In closing, let me make a few remarks. As readers can tell, I hold myself to a very high standard when documenting vital statistics for individuals I’m researching. On rare occasions, ancestral trees with vital data will direct me to information I can verify. Thanks to German and Polish friends and family, while compiling source documents for this post, I was able to uncover vital information for three additional children of Jacob and Marianne, namely, Wilhelmine Bruck, Moritz Bruck, and Fanny Bruck. While there are likely limits to what more can be uncovered, particularly for their children who died at birth or in infancy, I remain convinced additional primary source documents exist and that I may eventually find them. As things now stand, I’m confident I’ve proven the existence of nine of Jacob and Marianne’s children and confirmed the birth and death dates of six of them.
REFERENCES
Amtsblatt für den Regierungsbezirk Marienwerder. (1828)
VITAL DATA & SOURCE OF INFORMATION ON JACOB NATHAN BRUCK & MARIANNE BRUCK, NÉE AUFRECHT’S CHILDREN
NOTE: My frustration with ancestral data in other people’s family trees is that they are often unsourced. In the table below, I’ve noted whether the data is “confirmed” or “unconfirmed.” I do not generally consider hand drawn family trees to be irrefutable proof of accuracy, nor do I consider the Geneanet Community Tree Index a primary source document. Even among contemporary records, I’ve occasionally found errors though generally consider the information in these registers and certificates to be the best available. I welcome corrections and additions from readers that have a personal interest in the information provided below.
NAME
(relationship)
EVENT
DATE
PLACE
SOURCE
Jacob Nathan Bruck (self)
Birth
18 February 1770 (unconfirmed)
Pschow, Prussia [today: Pszów, Poland]
Marianne Polborn, née Bruck family tree; Geneanet Community Tree Index
Marriage
16 May 1793 (unconfirmed)
Marianne Polborn, née Bruck family tree
Death
29 June 1836 (confirmed)
Ratibor, Prussia [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Upper Silesia Genealogical Society, Ratibor Signature Book 1698_0078; Geneanet Community Tree Index
Marianne Aufrecht (wife)
Birth
21 August 1776 (unconfirmed)
Teschen, Prussia [today: Cieszyn, Poland]
Marianne Polborn, née Bruck family tree; Geneanet Community Tree Index
Marriage
16 May 1793
(unconfirmed)
Marianne Polborn, née Bruck family tree
Death
1835 (unconfirmed)
Geneanet Community Tree Index
Wilhelmine Bruck (daughter)
Birth
24 April 1796 (confirmed)
Headstone at the Stary Cmentarz Żydowski we Wrocławiu (Museum of Cemetery Art, Old Jewish Cemetery), Wroclaw, Poland
Marriage (to Wilhelm Friedenstein)
7 November 1814 (confirmed)
Ratibor, Prussia [today: Racibórz, Poland]
LDS Family History Center Microfilm 1184449; Upper Silesia Genealogical Society, Ratibor Signature Book 1699_0053
Death
21 December 1864 (confirmed)
Headstone at the Stary Cmentarz Żydowski we Wrocławiu (Museum of Cemetery Art, Old Jewish Cemetery), Wroclaw, Poland
Dorothea Babbett Bruck (daughter)
Birth
Marriage (to Salomon Freund)
25 February 1817 (confirmed)
Ratibor, Prussia [today: Racibórz, Poland]
LDS Family History Center Microfilm 1184449
Death
Marcus Moritz Bruck (son)
Birth
24 December 1800 (confirmed)
Ratibor, Prussia [today: Racibórz, Poland]
1845 biography entitled “Gelehrtes Berlin in Jahre 1845”
Marriage (to Nannette v. Aldersthal)
16 October 1836 (confirmed)
Berlin, Germany
Berlin Marriage Certificate
Death
25 October 1863 (confirmed)
Berlin, Germany
Tuchler Family Tree on MyHeritage; buried in the Jüdische Friedhof in der Schönhauser Allee in Gräberfeld J, Erbbegräbnis 170 (Grave Field J, Hereditary Burial 170)
Fanny Bruck (daughter)
Birth
8 November 1804 (confirmed)
Headstone at the Stary Cmentarz Żydowski we Wrocławiu (Museum of Cemetery Art, Old Jewish Cemetery), Wroclaw, Poland
Marriage (to Isaac Seliger)
26 November 1822 (confirmed)
Ratibor, Prussia [today: Racibórz, Poland]
LDS Family History Center Microfilm 1184449; Upper Silesia Genealogical Society, Ratibor Signature Book 1699_0055
Death
29 August 1879 (confirmed)
Breslau, Prussia [today: Wrocław, Poland]
Headstone at the Stary Cmentarz Żydowski we Wrocławiu (Museum of Cemetery Art, Old Jewish Cemetery), Wroclaw, Poland; Letter written & signed by Fanny Seliger dated 19 February 1873 in the online archives of the Central Jewish Library (https://cbj.jhi.pl/documents/375623/8/)
Isaac Bruck (son)
Birth
~1805 (unconfirmed)
Ratibor, Prussia [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Königl. Evangel. Gymnasium zu Ratibor am 2. Juni 1819, roster of students (Isaac said to be 13 years old in June 1819); Amtsblatt für den Regierungsbezirk Marienwerder, Vol. 18, 26 May 1828, p. 213 (Isaac said to be 22 years old in May 1828)
Marriage (to Caroline Stolz)
Separated
14 July 1835 (confirmed)
Gleiwitz, Prussia [Gliwice, Poland]
LDS Family History Center Microfilms 1195054 & 1194055 for Gleiwitz [Gliwice, Poland]
Death
Samuel Bruck (son)
Birth
11 March 1808 (confirmed)
Pschow, Prussia [today: Pszów, Poland]
Caption on family photo; Pinkus Family Collection, Leo Baeck Institute
Marriage (to Charlotte Marle)
18 January 1831 (unconfirmed)
Ratibor, Prussia [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Marianne Polborn, née Bruck family tree
Death
3 July 1863 (confirmed)
Ratibor, Prussia [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Caption on family photo
Heimann Heinrich Bruck (son)
Birth
~1812 (unconfirmed)
Königl. Evangel. Gymnasium zu Ratibor, 1819-1849 roster of students (Heimann said to be 11 years old in April 1823); MyHeritage family tree
Marriage (to Rosalie “Rosa” Bruck)
21 August 1832 (confirmed)
Neisse, Prussia [today: Nysa, Poland]
LDS Family History Center Microfilm 00799058, page 17 of 596 & 68 of 596;
Death
1875 (unconfirmed)
Breslau, Prussia [today: Wrocław, Poland]
MyHeritage family tree
Jonas Bruck (son)
Birth
5 March 1813 (confirmed)
Ratibor, Prussia [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Headstone at the Stary Cmentarz Żydowski we Wrocławiu (Museum of Cemetery Art, Old Jewish Cemetery), Wroclaw, Poland; Königl. Evangel. Gymnasium zu Ratibor am 2. Juni 1819, roster of students (Jonas said to be 10.5 years old on April 1824)
Marriage (to Rosalie Marle)
Death
5 April 1883 (unconfirmed)
Breslau, Prussia [today: Wrocław, Poland]
Headstone at the Stary Cmentarz Żydowski we Wrocławiu (Museum of Cemetery Art, Old Jewish Cemetery), Wroclaw, Poland
Rebecka Bruck (daughter)
Birth
10 January 1815 (confirmed)
Ratibor, Prussia [today: Racibórz, Poland]
LDS Family History Center Microfilm 1184449
Death
16 September 1819 (confirmed)
Ratibor, Prussia [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Upper Silesia Genealogical Society, Ratibor Signature Book 1699_0067
Note: This post is primarily a tribute to my recently deceased friend from Racibórz, Poland, Paul Newerla, who generously and selflessly assisted me in innumerable ways over the years while I was researching and writing about my Bruck family. I am deeply saddened by his passing, but honored to have known him and appreciative he deemed my efforts worthy of his time.
Typically, I get up every morning at 4am and head to the gym. On Sundays when I’m done and am driving home my local National Public Radio station is broadcasting a show called “A Way with Words,” co-hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett. They talk with callers from around the world about slang, grammar, old sayings, word origins, regional dialects, family expressions, and speaking and writing well.
In one recent episode, an African-American gentleman from the South called to tell of his use of the word “conversate,” an expression I was unfamiliar with. Use of “conversating” instead of “conversing” is considered non-standard or informal in many English-speaking communities; as readers will surmise, it means to engage in conversation. Since my blog posts are an informal method of telling stories about my ancestors and extended family and the people and the sometimes-tragic events that surrounded their lives, conversating strikes an appropriate balance, like having a fireside chat. It’s been quite a few years since I’ve casually conversated with readers, so the moment seems right.
In the last several months I’ve acquired an astonishing amount of new information, some of it related to my earliest relatives from Ratibor, Prussia [Racibórz, Poland] and other details connected to various family and acquaintances I’ve written about over the years. The particulars will form the basis for some upcoming posts and postscripts to earlier articles.
There is a limit to how much I can reconstruct using only ancestry.com or MyHeritage, so the contributions, interpretations, and observations drawn from family memoirs and diaries, books, websites, and knowledgeable researchers and historians enhance my understanding of how, when, and where my forefathers were active in Ratibor, Prussia, Silesia, and elsewhere the Jewish diaspora took them.
Longtime readers of my blog have periodically heard me refer to my cadre of helpers as my “boots on the ground.” They are an eclectic group consisting of friends and acquaintances, professionals and amateurs, near and distant relatives, and, of course, readers.
Sadly, in the past few days, I’ve heard from no fewer than four Polish acquaintances telling me of the passing of my dear friend from Racibórz, Mr. Paul Newerla, a 91-year-old gentleman and elder statesman, who found a second calling, following his retirement as a lawyer, researching and writing about the history of Ratibor and Silesia. (Figure 1)
Like many of the people who’ve provided color commentary, history, and context for my posts, Paul found me through my blog. Our initial conversations revolved around the business enterprise, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preussen” Hotel (Figure 2), my family owned and operated from around 1850 until 1926 in Ratibor. Our discussions quickly expanded beyond this topic as I was trying to track down primary source documents related to extended family members connected with Ratibor and trying to figure out how long my Bruck family had been associated with the town.
I clearly remember in 2019 when Paul was doing research for an article he was writing about the 200th anniversary of Ratibor’s gymnasium, high school. (Figure 3) He miraculously managed to track down the original roster of students who attended the high school from its founding in 1819 through 1849. (Figure 4) What made this discovery so astonishing is that he found this document not in the Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu, the State Archives in Katowice, Branch in Racibórz, or in the Muzeum w Raciborzu, or Racibórz Museum, but rather among the old files of the gymnasium, now an economic middle school. It goes without saying, on my own I probably could not have accessed this invaluable document with the names of multiple of my early Bruck ancestors even had I been aware of its existence.
Naturally, upon discovering the roster’s whereabouts and making special arrangements to photograph it, Paul sent me copies of the individual pages. Opening each of the roughly 100 pages reminded me of my days as a dirt archaeologist never knowing what the next shovelful or trowel scrapping would reveal. For those of you who’ve never gone through seemingly “dry” documents may not appreciate how enthralling this can sometimes be.
On another occasion, Paul again tracked down and photographed a 73-page document I could assuredly not have accessed on my own. It was the Grundbuch, the land register, for the Zuckerfabrik, the sugar factory, in Woinowitz [today: Wojnowice, Poland] (Figure 5), outside Racibórz. (Figure 6) Grundbuch means the applicable official register held by the Land Registry in which, among other things, the rights of ownership in, and encumbrances on, a plot of land are registered. Long-time readers know that I have written extensively about the Zuckerfabrik because of my family’s ancestral connection to the original co-owners of the factory, Adolph Schück and Sigmund Hirsch.
Paul knew the German land registers are archived at the State Archives in Katowice, Branch in Racibórz; he also knew that because these land registers have not yet been archived, they are currently inaccessible to researchers. Nonetheless, Paul convinced the head of the State Archives in Racibórz to let him into the basement to rummage through the uncatalogued documents to search for the land register for the sugar factory. (Figure 7) He found it in a file entitled “Woinowitz Blatt 161,” Woinowitz Sheet 161. Readers can easily imagine how improbable my gaining access to the basement of the State Archives to search for the Grundbuch would have been.
I could always count on Paul to patiently answer my endless stream of questions, no matter how mundane, and send me references, records, illustrative materials, maps, photos, postcards, etc. to better understand the history of people, places, and events in Ratibor and Silesia. Paul was helpful in multiple other ways, including on several occasions when he visited the State Archives at my request to track down a primary source document I was convinced existed.
I have little doubt a small part of why Paul was so willing to help me is that I am a direct descendant of the original owner of the Bruck’s Hotel in Ratibor and bear the Americanized version of the surname. That said, I’m positive he would have been equally helpful to anyone having an interest in the history of Ratibor and Silesia. That’s the type of man Paul was.
I consider it an extreme honor to have personally met Paul, to have had him show me some of modern Racibórz, and for his patient and professional assistance over the years. Like many others, he provided affirmation that my family history blog fulfills a service which I would not be able to provide absent the contributions and exhortations of dedicated folks like Paul and other readers. I’m deeply thankful for Paul’s help over the years, as well as the assistance provided by other followers of my blog.
Note: In this post, which I anticipate will be of limited interest to most readers, I examine primary source documents related to my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) which shed light on his business activities and legacy. The fact that he owned one of the first hotels in Ratibor in Silesia [today: Racibórz, Poland] and had his hand in other commercial ventures made finding information about him easier than it would have been for a less prominent individual.
Thanks to the assistance of readers, friends, and distant relatives, over the last few months I’ve acquired primary source documents that shed light on the activities of a few of my earliest Bruck relatives from Silesia (Figure 1) when it was a part of Prussia before Germany became a unified state in 1871. Primary source documents including contemporary registers of vital events, such as births, marriages, and deaths; records certifying these occurrences; contemporary handbooks and address directories; and concurrent historical accounts or diaries, are my “gold standard” for verifying the age and context of ancestral events. While these records are not infallible, they come as close as possible to confirming the timing of vital events.
In this post, I will discuss some evidentiary materials that my dear friend Peter Albrecht von Preußen and others have unearthed related to my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863). (Figure 2) Samuel is thought to be the original owner of the family establishment in Ratibor, Prussia [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel (Figure 3), believed to have been purchased in around 1850. However, a recently uncovered memoir penned by Eberhard Friedrich Bruck (1877-1960), one of Samuel’s grandnephews, currently being translated by his granddaughter, Helen Winter née Renshaw (b. 1948), now suggests Samuel’s father, Jacob Bruck (1770-1836), may originally have conceived the idea of building the hotel. As we speak, I am trying to run to ground other primary source documents that can not only confirm which Bruck ancestor first owned the hotel but possibly when the hotel might have been constructed.
Before launching into the documents that Peter Albrecht (Figure 4) and others have found and what I learned about Samuel, I would like to share with readers something I discovered in the process. I mistakenly believed that because the Bruck’s Hotel was in Ratibor, relevant archival materials would be restricted to the “Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu,” that’s to say the “State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz.” Such is not the case. While I’ve assuredly found records about the Bruck’s Hotel in Racibórz’s archives, thanks to one of my readers I recently learned about and obtained archival materials related to the hotel from the State Archives in Wrocław, Branch in Kamieniec Ząbkowicki [formerly Kamenz, Prussia]. These latter materials will be the subject of a future post as they speak to the subject of the last days of my family’s ownership of the hotel in 1926-1927. My point to readers is that even if your family originates from one specific town in Silesia, you should keep an open mind as to which archives you search for ancestral information.
Because Peter’s surname is contained within the name of the former family establishment in Ratibor, Bruck’s Hotel “Prinz von Preußen,” and the fact that both of our families have deep ties to Silesia, caused Peter to take an interest in finding Bruck-related documents. Among other things, his discoveries shed light on my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck’s business activities.
Materials uncovered about Samuel Bruck provide a cautionary tale of the lens through which primary source documents should be examined. Just because historical files are related to an individual with the same name as one’s ancestor does not guarantee they are relevant, particularly if the surname is reasonably common in a geographic area.
In the online extracts of files archived at the Archiwum Państwowe w Opolu, State Archives in Opole [formerly Oppeln, Prussia], Peter found the following two files related to a Samuel Bruck from the former Prussian town of Zülz [today: Biała, informally Biała Prudnicka, Poland]:
“Die letzwillige Bestimmung des Breltesten und Handelsmannes Samuel Bruck Zülz: 1820-1835” (Figure 5)
(“The last will and testament of the brethren and merchant Samuel Bruck Zülz: 1820-1835”)
“Die gerichtliche Annahme und Niederlegung das von dem Kaufmann Samuel Bruck am 13 Januar 1832 verschlossen übergebene Testaments: 1832-1839” (Figure 6)
(“The judicial acceptance and filing of the will handed over by the merchant Samuel Bruck on 13 January 1832 in sealed form: 1832-1839”)
Though the wills relate to a Samuel Bruck who filed testaments in the town of Zülz [today: Biała, informally Biała Prudnicka, Poland], this alone was not enough to convince me they related to someone other than my ancestor. As I just mentioned, I’ve found documents on the Bruck’s Hotel in Ratibor in archives other than Racibórz. For geographic reference, Opole is roughly 26 miles north-northeast of Biała. (Figure 7)
Let me briefly digress. Readers cannot fail to notice that the two wills filed with the court in Zülz date from when Samuel Bruck, born in 1808, would respectively have been only 12 and 24 years of age. However unlikely writing wills at such a young age might appear to us, I try and imagine how different things might have been almost 200 years ago. I considered the possibility that Samuel had been extremely precocious and might have felt obligated to write a will as improbable as this seems.
Persuaded both files might relate to my ancestor, I ordered them. (Figures 8-9) Upon their arrival, I asked my fourth cousin Thomas Koch if he could help me make sense of the 39 pages of records I’d been sent; Thomas is the great-great-grandnephew of Samuel Bruck, thus he has an interest in the Bruck’s Hotel and Samuel Bruck.
There were some immediate clues the wills from Zülz related to someone other than my Samuel Bruck. The Samuel Bruck in question was apparently the owner of a local pawnshop and an ironmonger (i.e., a dealer in iron and hardware), as well as a money lender, trades I’ve never heard associated with the Samuel Bruck from Ratibor. The Zülz wills also refer to Samuel as a parish or community elder, terms unlikely to have been applied to a 12 or 24-year old person. For the most part, the files document what court officials said, the actions of Samuel Bruck, and the fees to be paid by Samuel. Something notably absent that would affirmatively have allowed me to determine the testator are named heirs, none of whom are identified.
Convinced the Samuel Bruck from Zülz, though likely related to my Bruck family from Ratibor (Biała and Racibórz are only about 38 miles apart (Figure 10)) in some unknown way, was not the former owner of the Bruck’s Hotel, I investigated other possibilities. I examined the Church of Latter-Day Saints Family Historic Center Microfilm 1271493 for Zülz, and discovered a Samuel Bruck born there on the 10th of September 1761. (Figure 11) It seems likely this Samuel Bruck is the person whose 1820 and 1832 wills were filed locally.
One document, however, that unequivocally relates to the Samuel Bruck from Zülz is a notice about a bankruptcy auction that took place on the 23rd of June 1837 in Zülz (Figures 12a-b), presumably following this Samuel Bruck’s death in 1836 or 1837. The reason for this certainty is that this Samuel Bruck is identified in the notice as a “Eisenhändlert,” an iron trader, just as his wills identify him. According to Peter, while it is unusual for the estate of a deceased person to wind up in bankruptcy, this is possible when there are no heirs and/or no will. We know two testaments existed, so likely there were no heirs.
There is another document in my possession that should have clued me in to the fact that Samuel Bruck from Zülz was not my great-great-grandfather. In connection with his research, my retired lawyer friend from Racibórz, Paul Newerla, who has written extensively about Ratibor and Silesia found a historic publication from 1820 about the grand opening of the Royal Evangelical High School in Ratibor on the 2nd of June 1819. (Figures 13a-c) It lists the names of the enrolled students, including both Samuel Bruck and his younger brother, Jonas Bruck (1813-1883). It is more reasonable to surmise that at the age of 11, Samuel Bruck would have been in school in Ratibor rather than writing wills.
Samuel Bruck is listed in an 1843 merchant member book, entitled “Grosses Adressbuch der Kaufleute, Fabrikanten und handelnden Gewerbsleute von Europa und der hauptplazen der fremden Weltheile: Brandenburg, Preussen, Posen, Pommern, Schlesien,” “Large address book of the merchants, manufacturers, and trading professionals from Europe and the main square of the foreign world salvation: Brandenburg, Prussia, Posen, Pomerania, Silesia.” (Figures 14a-b) Interestingly, 1843 corresponds with the year that a city map of Ratibor shows the location where the Bruck’s Hotel once stood having a building on the lot. (Paul Newerla, personal communication) Samuel Bruck’s listing in the 1843 merchant member guide, however, may or may not have anything to do with his ownership of the Hotel “Prinz von Preußen” at this time. Samuel is known to have been involved in other businesses.
As a related aside, Ratibor was once a walled city. It was not until 1828 that the Oder gate, the tower nearest where the Bruck’s Hotel was eventually built, was demolished; the removal of this gate made it possible to extend Oderstraße, the street on which the Bruck’s Hotel stood (Paul Newerla, personal communication). It’s safe to assume that it was only after 1828 that the Hotel “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel could have been built.
As readers can generally make out from the photo of the hotel (see Figure 3), it was a reasonably large building known to have had 32 guest rooms. How long the hotel took to build, who paid for the construction, and the date of the grand opening are yet unknown. Whether I will be able to work out the answers to these questions is a big unknown.
The famous Austrian composer, Johann Strauss II, is known to have performed twice at the Hotel “Prinz von Preußen” once on the 17th of October 1850, then again, a month later, on the 17th of November 1850. Neither advertisement makes mention of the “Bruck’s Hotel,” only “Prinz von Preußen.” Possibly at the time Samuel Bruck did not yet own the hotel.
By the middle of 1852, Samuel Bruck assuredly owned the establishment because he signed a contract on the 14th of October 1852 permitting the so-called Liedertafel to hold meetings in the hotel’s ballroom beginning in January 1853. (Figures 15a-c) Page 20 (Figure 15c) mentions the “Hotelbesitzer Bruck,” that’s to say, the hotel owner Bruck. This citation occurs in a 1909 publication, entitled “Festschrift zum 75 jährigen Jubelfest der Liedertafel,” “The commemorative publication for the 75th anniversary of the Liedertafel,” in Ratibor. It was released on the 25th and 26th of September 1909 in conjunction with the unveiling of the Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorf monument in Ratibor. (Figure 15d)
The Liedertafel translates literally to “song board.” It was a co-ed musical society or amateur choir, which in the case of the Ratibor group consisted of about 88 members. They met in the large ballroom of the Bruck’s Hotel every Thursday and Friday evening for an à la carte dinner with plenty of alcohol, followed by a sing-along to music played by a pianist, often accompanied by a bassist, cellist, and violinist. Their contract with the hotel suggests Samuel Bruck was a well-regarded and integrated member of the community.
Another mundane document tracked down by Peter Albrecht shows that Samuel Bruck was allowed to operate as an inn keeper by the police after obtaining fire insurance for the hotel through a company in Stettin [today Szczecin, Poland] called “Pommerania.” (Figure 16) Although the announcement published in Oppeln, Prussia [today: Opole, Poland] on the 4th of March 1856 makes no specific mention of fire insurance, to secure police permission to operate the inn, it is implicit that fire insurance was obtained.
An advertisement Samuel Bruck posted in April 1858 indicates that he was involved in more than running an inn and being a lumber wholesaler. According to this ad he also sold lump lime (Figure 17):
Von meinem in Moerau gelegenen Kalkoefen verkaufe ich besten Stueckkalk, den Waggon von 33 Tonnen mit 27 Rthlr. (Reichstahler) frei hier. Gefaellige Auftraege werden prompt und bestens ausgefuehrt.
Ratibor, im April 1858
S. Bruck
im Hotel “Prinz von Preußen”
Translated:
Lime Ad
From my lime kiln located in Moerau I am selling the best lump lime, the wagon of 33 tons with 27 Rthlr. (Reichstahler) free here. Appropriate orders are executed promptly and in the best possible way.
Ratibor, April 1858
S. Bruck
in the hotel “Prince of Prussia”
Let me offer a few comments about this ad. The spelling of many place names in Prussia changed between 1890 and 1900, so “Moerau” became known as “Mohrau,” (Figure 18) and is now known as Morów, Poland. It is about 57 miles northwest of Racibórz. (Figure 19)
From 1855 onwards, a Prussian ton was equivalent to 200 kilos or almost 441 pounds. Thirty-three Prussian tons was equivalent to 6,600 kilos, 6.6 metric tons, or 14,551 pounds. Presumably this was the maximum weight an ox cart could handle.
Samuel Bruck passed away in July 1863. In June 1864, an official notice was placed in the Ratibor paper stating that Samuel Bruck’s handelsgesellschaft, holding company, which had been inherited by Samuel’s seven children, was ceded by the co-heirs to Samuel’s oldest child, Oskar Bruck, making him the sole owner of the S. Bruck Handelsgesellschaft. (Figure 20)
Bei der sub Nr. 69 unseres Firmen-Register fūr den Kaufmann Samuel Bruck eingetragen Firma S. Bruck ist zufolge Verfügung vom 2ten Juni 1864 der Vermerk:
Die Firma ist durch Erbgang auf die Geschwister Oskar, Fedor, Jenny, Emilie, Julius, Helene und Wilhelm Bruck übergangen und die Miterben haben dieselbe dem Kaufmann Oskar Bruck abgetreten, und sub Nr. 189 unseres Firmen-Registers der Kaufmann Oskar Bruck hierselbst als Inhaber der hiesigen Firma S. Bruck zufolge Verfügung von dem selben Tage eingetragen worden.
Ratibor, den 2. Juni 1864
Königliches Kreisgericht, 1. Abtheilung
Translation:
Announcement
According to the decree of June 2, 1864, the company S. Bruck, registered under No. 69 of our register of companies for the merchant Samuel Bruck, is marked:
The company has passed by inheritance to the siblings Oskar, Fedor, Jenny, Emilie, Julius, Helene and Wilhelm Bruck and the co-heirs have ceded the same to the merchant Oskar Bruck, and sub No. 189 of our company register the merchant Oskar Bruck has been registered here as the owner of the local company S. Bruck according to the decree of the same day.
Ratibor, June 2, 1864
Royal District Court, 1st Department
We learn a few unexciting things from this announcement. First, Oskar Bruck was a kaufmann, a merchant, which would have required a four-year apprenticeship. Had I not already known the names of Samuel’s children, this announcement would have provided this information. Samuel Bruck’s Handelsgesellschaft was registered as Number 69 in the District Court, while Oskar Bruck’s Handelsgesellschaft is registered as Number 189. As we speak, I’m trying to determine whether these files still exist in the Racibórz archives.
The final document related to Samuel Bruck involves a landmark Prussian case that his eldest son Oskar Bruck got involved in following his father’s death. The case is discussed at length in a book on Prussian case law published in 1867, entitled “Central-Organ fur die deutsche handels- und Wechselrecht,” “Central Organ for German Commercial and Exchange Law.” (Figure 21)
While the following will be of limited interest to most readers, let me briefly outline and summarize the salient points of this very involved case for readers.
In addition to being an inn owner, Samuel Bruck was a lumber wholesaler, and may have made his money here which enabled him to construct and/or purchase the Bruck’s Hotel. Shortly before his death in 1863, Samuel entered into a contract with a Dutch merchant, David Schwedter, agreeing to sell him 260 pieces of 4” x 4” structural lumber, possibly the equivalent of four ox carts of finished product. The Dutchman lived in the vicinity of Berlin, and had requested Samuel deliver the milled lumber there, which he’d agreed to.
Following Samuel’s death, Oskar Bruck acted on an interim basis on behalf of the the S. Bruck Handelsgesselchaft, which the probate court only officially granted him authority to do in his own name on the 2nd of June 1864 (see Figure 20). Regardless, following his father’s death, he notified Schwedter by mail that the transaction would go forward as planned and that he would run the S. Bruck Handelsgesselchaft.
Either Samuel before his death or Oskar contracted with an agent named Atzpodim who had a warehouse in Brieskow (Figure 22), near Frankfurt an der Oder. Schwedter had agree that Atzpodim would be the pickup point for the lumber. Oskar Bruck shipped the lumber to Atzpodim who acknowledged receipt of the materials. Oskar then notified Schwedter the lumber was ready for pickup at Atzpodim’s warehouse, and invoiced him, as agreed upon.
Three or four days later, Schwedter filed for bankruptcy. Atzpodim had not yet shipped the lumber to Stramer for reasons that are not entirely clear, although possibly Atzpodim through word-of-mouth had learned of Schwedter’s financial woes and sought to protect the young Oskar Bruck. I surmise Atzpodim had been one of Samuel’s trusted business associates over the years.
At this point, the trustee for the Bankruptcy Court in Frankfurt an der Oder sued Atzpodim for release of the lumber. Had the lumber already been delivered, the Bankruptcy Court would have carried it on their books and could then have sold it at a bankruptcy auction; Oskar, as creditor, would have been paid pennies on the dollar. Atzpodim, by not delivering the lumber to Stramer, saved Oskar from a steep financial loss.
Prussian law dealt with merchandise in bankruptcy proceedings where the debtor had taken possession of the merchandise three days or less before the debtor filed for bankruptcy and had paid not in cash but with credit.
In the case at hand, Atzpodim didn’t receive instructions from Oskar Bruck until the 26th of November 1863. Schwedter filed for bankruptcy on the 30th of November 1863. The Supreme Court in Berlin upheld the lower court’s ruling that the lumber shipment fell under the 3-day rule. If the lumber had been delivered to Schwedter, which it obviously wasn’t, he would have been required to return it because he hadn’t paid in cash but by credit, with a so-called Wechsel.
Let me say a few brief words about a Wechsel. According to German law, even today, transactions based on Wechsels can only be transacted by full merchants, meaning those who have completed a 4-year apprenticeship and received a kaufmann’s certificate. Upon certification, the kaufmann is registered either as a sole proprietor or as a Handelsgesellschaft, a trading company, like those Samuel and Oskar Bruck had recorded, in the Handelsregister, commercial register, of the city where the business is licensed.
The Wechsel allows the parties to do several things. It can be used as collateral for a bank loan. It can also be used as a futures contract; thus, with a Wechsel in hand, Schwedter could have sold the lumber at a higher price for a profit. Similarly, Samuel or Oskar could have sold his obligation to produce the lumber to a different sawmill (other than the one they originally contracted with) or another lumber merchant for a profit.
In closing, let me say a few things. The specifics of the information contained in some of the primary source documents cited above are less important than the fact they still exist. For researchers seeking comparable information about their ancestors who may have owned or operated businesses, an awareness that such documents may still exist can be useful. Often, it’s a question of knowing where to look and what to ask for. On a personal level, the fact that my family was involved in a legal case that was deemed of sufficient importance to merit inclusion in a book about Prussian commercial and trade law is fascinating.
Cobbling together one’s family history invites a clichéd comparison to the saying that “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Note: This post features a discussion about how an Egyptian mummy landed at the Museum in Racibórz during the European period of “Egyptomania.” This installment allows me to make some intriguing connections to people and places I’ve discussed in earlier posts, while briefly telling readers about scholars who were involved in the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics following the discovery of the Rosetta Stone during Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt and Syria between 1798 and 1801.
One of the featured attractions at the Museum in Racibórz, the town where my father Dr. Otto Bruck was born in 1907 when Ratibor was still part of Germany, is an Egyptian mummy. (Figure 1) While I like to imagine my father wandering through the cavernous spaces of the museum as a child gaping in awe at this ancient object, the fact is the official opening of the museum did not take place until the 4th of December 1927, several years after my father had left for Berlin to attend university. Still, it’s possible my father contemplated this unusual artifact when he was a high school student at the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium in Ratibor (Figure 2) where the mummy then resided.
According to the museum’s website, the idea of establishing the Museum in Racibórz arose at the beginning of the twentieth century and was instigated by lecturers from the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium. The Gymnasium was the subject of Post 60. The site of the present-day museum is a 14th century deconsecrated building that once belonged to the congregation of the Dominican Order that had been abandoned and in ruins since 1911. Following its restoration and official opening in 1927, the first exhibitions included presentations of tin, glass, and porcelain, militaria, sculptures and sacred paintings, liturgical books, and objects, and ethnographic articles. Amidst the exhibits of mostly regional artifacts, what eventually stood out was an Egyptian mummy, along with cartonnage and sarcophagi, that was displayed after 1934. How these materials came to be housed at the Museum in Racibórz is the focus of this blog post.
Anselm Salomon von Schwartz Rothschild, Baron Rothschild (1803-1874) (Figure 3), was an Austrian banker and a member of the Vienna branch of the Jewish Rothschild family. He was lord of nearby Chałupki (German: Annaberg) and Šilheřovice (German: Schillersdorf, Polish: Szylerzowice), located slightly less than 16 miles south of Racibórz along the current Poland-Czech Republic border. (Figures 4-5) In about 1860, following the death of his wife in 1859, Baron Rothschild went on a journey to Egypt and brought back numerous souvenirs, including a complete burial of an Egyptian woman. This was intended as a present for his fiancée, who rejected his overture. As a related aside, I can find no evidence that Baron Rothschild ever remarried, so perhaps this peculiar gift convinced his unnamed fiancée she was no longer interested. In any case, shortly after his return from Egypt, at his palace in Šilheřovice, Rothschild in the presence of guests invited to a social gathering had two sarcophagi opened, the cartonnage cut, and the embalmed linen-covered corpse unwrapped.
In 1864, the baron decided to donate the souvenirs from his Egyptian journey to the Antiquity Department of the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium in Racibórz. When the museum in Racibórz opened in 1927, they formally took possession of the mummy though at the time it was on loan to a museum in Gliwice (German: Gleiwitz) that refused to return it until 1934, keeping it for a dozen years.
According to a tourist brochure developed for Racibórz’s Information Center by Grzegorz Wawoczny, coincidentally the father of Magda Wawoczny who authored Post 139, the following is written: “Scientific research on the mummy done by the famous German Egyptologist Charles Richard Lepsius revealed that the Egyptian woman lived during the 12th dynasty (946-722 B.C.). Her name was Dzed-Amonet-ius-anch, which means ‘goddess Amonet said she would live.’ She was a rich married woman, probably daughter of a priest and barber from Thebes. She died young at the age of about 20. The reason for her death, according to radiological research, was most probably pregnancy complications.”
Regular readers may recall from Post 136 my discussion on Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt and Syria between 1798 and 1801. As I previously wrote, this campaign was initiated to defend French trade interests and to establish scientific enterprise in the region. This is also the expedition that led to the discovery of the renowned trilingual Rosetta Stone, which we all learned about in grade school was the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The Rosetta Stone is a stele composed of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 B.C. during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. Because the decree has only minor differences between the three versions, it was key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts.
The writing systems used in ancient Egypt were deciphered in the early nineteenth century, largely through the work of Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832) and Thomas Young (1773-1829). The decipherment of the ancient hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone marked the beginning of the scientific study of Egyptology.
Scientists had long wondered about the function and nature of hieroglyphic script, whether the scripts recorded a language and the degree to which the signs were phonetic (representing speech sounds) or ideographic (another term for ideogram which is a written character symbolizing the idea of a thing without indicating the sounds used to say it). Prior to Champollion and Young’s work, many thought hieroglyphic script was only used for sacred and ritual functions, and that as such it was unlikely to be decipherable since it was tied to esoteric and philosophical concepts and did not record historical information. Young built on the work of earlier scholars and identified the meaning of many hieroglyphs, including phonetic glyphs in a cartouche containing the name of an Egyptian king of foreign origin, Ptolemy V. Comparing Ptolemy’s cartouche with others, by the early 1820s Champollion realized that hieroglyphic script was a mixture of phonetic and ideographic elements. This upended earlier assumptions and made it possible to begin to uncover many kinds of information recorded by the Egyptians.
After Young’s death in 1829 and Champollion’s in 1832, decipherment efforts languished. Then, in 1837 the aforementioned German Egyptologist Charles Richard Lepsius, who identified the Egyptian mummy at the Museum of Racibórz, pointed out that many hieroglyphs represented combinations of two or three sounds rather than one, thus correcting one of the most fundamental faults in Champollion’s work. Further refinements by later scholars meant that by 1850 it was possible to fully translate ancient Egyptian texts.
In France, Napoleon’s discoveries precipitated a period of “Egyptomania,” which refers to a period of renewed interest in the culture of ancient Egypt sparked by Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign in the 19th century. Napoleon was accompanied by many scientists and scholars during this campaign, which led to a large interest in the documentation of ancient monuments in Egypt. Thorough documentation of ancient ruins led to an increase in the interest about ancient Egypt.
Egyptomania was not confined to French culture. My earlier Post 136 was specifically focused on a Nubian boy, Sabac el Cher, who was “gifted” to Prince Friedrich Heinrich Albrecht of Prussia (1809-1872) in February 1843 while the prince was on his “Oriental Journey,” seemingly a compulsory destination among the upper classes. In that post I cited a diary written by Georg Erbkam, entitled “Diary of my Egyptian Journey, 1842-1843.” Erbkam was an architect and part of a research expedition commissioned by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who happens to have been Friedrich Heinrich Albrecht’s older brother. On the 7th of April 1843 the two groups met up while traveling in Egypt.
Among the scientists who was involved in the research expedition commissioned by the Prussian King was none other than Charles Richard Lepsius. He was recruited by the Prussian King at the recommendation of other scientists to lead an expedition to Egypt and the Sudan to explore and record the remains of the ancient Egyptian civilization. According to his Wikipedia entry, “The Prussian expedition was modelled after the earlier Napoleonic mission, with surveyors, draftsmen, and other specialists. The mission reached Giza in November 1842 and spent six months making some of the first scientific studies of the pyramids of Giza, Abusir, Saqqara, and Dahshur. They discovered 67 pyramids recorded in the pioneering Lepsius list of pyramids and more than 130 tombs of noblemen in the area. While at the Great Pyramid of Giza, Lepsius inscribed a graffito written in Egyptian hieroglyphs that honours Friedrich Wilhelm IV above the pyramid’s original entrance; it is still visible.”
I would conclude by saying that the involvement of the German Egyptologist Charles Richard Lepsius in the identification of an Egyptian mummy that curiously resides at the Museum of Racibórz who was also involved in the decipherment of the hieroglyphs resonates with me as a retired archaeologist in a way it may not with readers. If so, I apologize to readers for wasting your valuable time.
REFERENCES
“Decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decipherment_of_ancient_Egyptian_scripts
Erbkam, Georg Gustav: Tagebuch meiner egyptischen Reise. Teil 3. Ägypten, 1844-1845.
Note: In this post, I discuss how I’m related to two living Brucks I’ve known for half-a-dozen years, and how I inadvertently stumbled on the answer and responded to their question, “Where’s the smoking gun?”
This story begins in 1951. Soon after I was born, my parents received a congratulatory note from my father’s uncle, Wilhelm “Willy” Bruck, then living in Barcelona, Spain. (Figure 1) As a boy, I would later meet my great-uncle’s daughter Eva in New York when she came to visit the family but never realized who she was. (Figure 2) Though I met her only once, I remember her fondly because she gave me an old silver coin I still cherish (i.e., readers will recall I’ve been a lifelong coin collector). Because of my father’s rather dismissive attitude towards family, except for his beloved sister Susanne murdered in Auschwitz, naturally he lost contact with most of his relatives. Thus, when I began my forensic investigations into my family, I was left to reconstruct and find family descendants on my own, years after my father was gone and might have helped.
Aware some family members had wound up in Barcelona, I began my search there vaguely cognizant my great-uncle Willy may have had grandchildren. To remind readers, I discussed the search for my great-uncle and his descendants in Posts 32 and 33. Since this remains one of my all-time favorite family quests, I will briefly remind readers how I met the two Brucks, first cousins to one another, as what can only be characterized as serendipity. I thought perhaps my great-uncle’s grandchildren, my second cousins that’s to say, might live in Barcelona. I started by checking the White Pages for Barcelona and found nary any Brucks there. I expanded my search to all of Spain and discovered 14 listings. I immediately did the calculus, and said to myself, “No problem, I’ll write to all of them!” And, this is in fact what I did in late 2013.
Many weeks passed with no responses. Then, early one Saturday morning, I received a call from a gentleman in Haifa, Israel by the name of “Michael Bruck.” I had no known relatives there so was intrigued why this namesake was calling. He quickly explained I’d written to his first cousin Ronny Bruck in Alicante, Spain inquiring about my great-uncle Willy. Aha! Michael is the family genealogist, so Ronny forwarded him my letter, ergo his call. I must share one other alluring aspect of this story that corroborates what Branch Rickey, the brainy former General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, once said: “Luck is the residue of design.” That’s to say, luck doesn’t just happen, you create the circumstances to get lucky. For those who may be familiar with the postal service in Spain, they’ll know it’s notoriously unreliable. The letter I sent to Ronny inquiring about my great-uncle Willy not only arrived safely, but it arrived in his mailbox on his 65th birthday, making him believe some unknown cousin from America was sending him well-wishes! The stars were obviously properly aligned.
All my letters to the Brucks residing in Spain had included a photo of my great-uncle, and Michael immediately noted the family resemblance (Figure 3), even though he’d never come across Wilhelm Bruck’s name in connection with his own research. In 2014, my wife and I had already planned to spend 13 weeks in Europe visiting places associated with my family from northeastern Poland to southern Spain, so I suggested we all meet in Spain. Meeting there was not possible, so Ronny suggested Germany instead, and Michael and his wife joined us from Israel. Thus, in 2014, we met in person at the home of my first cousin. (Figures 4-5) Despite our in-depth respective knowledge of our family trees, over the years, Michael and I could never pinpoint how closely or distantly we are related.
Fast forward to the present. My previous post told the story about obtaining the complete roster of students who were enrolled in the Ratibor Gymnasium, high school, between its opening in 1819 and 1849; Ratibor is the town in Upper Silesia where my father was born in 1907, and where many Brucks hail from. Among the first-year students who attended the Ratibor Gymnasium upon its opening were two brothers, Isaac and Samuel Bruck. (Figures 6a-b) As I told readers in Post 73, Samuel Bruck is my great-great-grandfather, and is known to me. (Figure 7) His brother Isaac was completely unfamiliar to me, so I casually checked on ancestry.com and MyHeritage, to no avail. Not expecting to find anything through a Google search, I nonetheless checked Isaac’s name there. Imagine my surprise, then, when I was “kicked” into a query that had been posted by Michael Bruck in 2012 on Genealogy.com inquiring about him. (Figure 8)
As followers can read, Michael asked the genealogical community for information on Isaac Bruck and his wife Caroline Stolz from Ratibor; he went on to say that their daughter Marie Friederike Bruck married David Isaac there on the 29th of June 1857, and that Friederike was Michael’s great-great-grandmother. Upon seeing Michael’s message, it immediately became clear how we’re likely related. While I qualify the previous statement, there is absolutely no question in my mind how Michael, Ronny, and I are related. We are fourth cousins once removed. Let me briefly review the evidence, again by reference to primary source documents as in the previous post.
To remind readers what I said in Post 73, in the Ratibor Gymnasium Album, the names “Isaac Bruck and Samuel Bruck” occur in succession and are “bracketed” together with their unnamed father’s profession identically described as “Arrendator,” leaseholder. (Figures 6a-b) From a condensed family tree developed by my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck reproduced here (Figure 9), I know that Samuel’s father was Jacob Nathan Bruck and that by association, so too is Isaac’s father. To me, the names in association with one another and their father’s profession being the same is “the smoking gun,” the answer to the question Michael and Ronny once posed.
The marriage register listing of Michael’s great-great-grandmother Marie Friederike Bruck to David Isaak dated the 19th of June 1857 survives and can be found on LDS Microfilm Roll 1184449. (Figure 10)
Below is a transcription and a translation of the marriage register listing for Isaac(k) Bruck’s daughter and her husband.
Register No.
Datum
1857
Vor & Zuname
Bräutigam
Gewerbe
Wohnhaft
Name der Braut
& ihrer Eltern
Gewerbe
Wohnhaft
(Register Number)
(Date
1857)
(First & last name of the groom)
(Occupation,
Residence)
(Name of the bride)
(& her parents’ occupation & residence)
GERMAN
113
29.6
David ISAAK, 32 Jahre, Sohn d[es] zu Wrirtzen verstorb[enen] Handelsmanns Hirsch ISAAK & der dort lebenden Ehefrau Cheinchen geb. CASPER
Handlungskommis, Berlin
Marie Friederike BRUCK, Ratibor, 24 Jahre
zu Altendorf verstorb[ener] Sattlermeister / p. Kaufm[ann] Isaak BRUCK & Ehefrau Caroline geb. STOLZ, Ratibor
ENGLISH
113
29 June
David ISAAK, 32 years old, son of the merchant Hirsch ISAAK, who died in Wrietzen, and his wife Cheinchen née CASPER, who lives there
Clerk, assistant or commercial employee, Berlin
Marie Friederike BRUCK, Ratibor, 24 years old
Died in Altendorf, master saddler / p. businessman Isaak BRUCK & wife Caroline née STOLZ, Ratibor
As readers can see, in the far-right column, Marie Friederike’s parents are identified, Isaak (spelled with a “k”) Bruck and Caroline Stolz, with a notation that Isaak died in Altendorf, a suburb of Ratibor (Figure 11), obviously before his daughter got married in 1857.
The town where the groom comes from is incorrectly spelled “Wrietzen,” when it should have read “Wriezen.” It’s a town in the district Märkisch-Oderland, in Brandenburg, Germany.
One final point. Some may wonder, as I did, why Michael and Ronny’s surnames are Bruck when this originates in their matrilineal line. (Figure 12) Michael explained that some of David and Marie Friederike Isaac’s children were in the clothing business in Berlin and owned several shops there in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; on account of persistent anti-Semitism, they started to use their mother’s maiden name. One of David and Marie Friederike’s sons, Max Isaac and his wife, formally applied to the Berlin authorities to use the Bruck name permanently on the 3rd of November 1919, evidence of which survives. (Figure 13)
It’s satisfying to have figured out how Michael, Ronny, and I are related, albeit in the scheme of things, it’s not seemingly a near ancestral link. That said, I maintain close ties with Michael and Ronny, and we regularly communicate. Furthermore, Ronny, by dint of his familiarity with Sütterlin, the German saw-toothed script briefly taught in schools there, has translated numerous family documents penned in this writing. This has enormously furthered my family research.
Note: In this post, I discuss a recently obtained list of students who attended Ratibor’s Gymnasium, or high school, between its opening in 1819 and 1849, and facts I’ve gleaned from this registry. While I expected a linear unfolding of the ledger’s contents and information, in some ways it has turned into a game of three-dimensional chess, as I’ll explain. This post also provides an opportunity to lay out the exacting approach I try and take to make a case for ancestral connections relying on primary source documents.
One of the most exciting moments doing forensic genealogy occurs when you discover a copy or original historic document with the names of your ancestors, particularly when the names are those of your oldest known relatives. As a former archaeologist, this is analogous to unearthing an artifact that was last handled by a human hundreds if not thousands of years ago. The context in which an artifact or document is found is key to properly interpreting its significance.
Last year, Mr. Paul Newerla, my friend from Ratibor, retired lawyer and current writer of Silesian history, mentioned that 2019 marked the bicentennial of Ratibor’s Gymnasium, or high school, still used today as a commercial school. To remind readers, Ratibor is the town where my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, was born in 1907. In Post 60, using background information provided by Mr. Newerla, I discussed the high school’s history and a publication Paul found archived at the British Museum written by the school’s first director, Dr. Carl Linge, entitled “Denkschrift über die feierliche Eröffnung des Königl. Evangel. Gymnasium zu Ratibor am 2. Juni 1819. . .,” “Memorandum on the solemn opening of the Royal Evangelical High School in Ratibor on June 2, 1819. . .” (Figure 1) This publication, printed in 1820, included a list of names of all first-year attendees, including two members of my Bruck family with only the initials of their forenames written in elaborate Gothic script, read by Paul as “S. Bruck” and J. Bruck.” (Figure 2) Based on the intimate knowledge of my family tree, I concluded these stood for Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) and Jonas Bruck (1813-1883), brothers who are shown as the children of Jacob Bruck in an abridged typed family tree developed by my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck. (Figure 3)
Typically, attendance at Gymnasiums begins between the ages of 10 and 12, give or take a year, so Samuel’s attendance in 1819 when he would have been 11 years old makes sense. However, his brother Jonas’s attendance in 1819, when he was only six years old seems implausible, unless he was exceptionally precocious. Absent any other incontrovertible evidence, however, this is the preliminary conclusion I came to in Post 60, namely, that Jonas Bruck had attended the Ratibor Gymnasium at a very early age.
Naturally, I became curious whether the original ledger of student names upon which Dr. Linge’s publication was based still exists, whether it is in the Polish State Archives in Racibórz or possibly curated by the Muzeum Racibórzu. Paul explained that because an existing commercial school now occupies the buildings of the former high school (Figure 4), some of the original records are retained there. In the recent past, there had apparently been some discussion about transferring the remaining ledgers to the archive or museum but for unknown reasons these negotiations ended acrimoniously.
Paul offered to contact the commercial school and inquire about the student ledgers, which he knew to have existed at one time because a colleague had shared some pictures of the “Album,” as it is referred to. Paul was recently granted access to the Gymnasium’s records. This turned out to be a frustrating exercise because the school was unable to initially locate the Album of student names for the period 1819 to 1849, even presented with irrefutable evidence of its existence in the form of pictures; Paul even checked the school’s archives, to no avail. Dispiritedly, Paul left his name and number, and asked them to call him if the Album was ever found.
Paul was not optimistic the ledger would turn up. He’s related some horror stories how nearby Polish and Czech Republic parishes have on occasion burned Kirchenbücher, church books, Kirchenmatrikeln, the roll or register of parishioners, and Pfarrmatrikel, parish matriculations, related to former German occupants of the area simply because none of their descendants live locally anymore. To use another archaeological analogy, it’s like pillaging a cultural site, ripping a page from prehistory, so to speak. So, it came as a pleasant surprise when several weeks after Paul’s visit to the former Ratibor Gymnasium he received a call telling him they’d finally located the Album in question. Paul promptly visited the commercial school and took pictures of the entire ledger of students covering the period 1819 through 1849, roughly 90 pages worth of material, which he sent me. (Figure 5)
I’ve been a coin collector much of my life and going through all the pages of the Ratibor Gymnasium Album was comparable to sorting through a cache of pennies in search of pre-1959 wheat chaff coppers. While the names of family members I discovered were relatively few, the information corresponding to each ancestor has provided multiple avenues for further investigation. The challenge is making sense of ancestral connections for people who lived 170 to 200 years ago in the context of what was a very large Bruck family at the time. As I mentioned at the outset, it’s a bit like playing three-dimensional chess
In the table below, I summarize the family data I gleaned from the Ratibor student ledger. Then, I examine using available primary source documents how or whether these people are or may be related.
SUMMARY OF FAMILY NAMES FROM RATIBOR GYMNASIUM ALBUM, 1819-1849
Readers will note that Isaac and Samuel Bruck’s names are listed in succession and bracketed, and the profession of their father is identical, an “Arrendator,” a leaseholder (i.e., holding property by lease). Thus, I assume they were brothers, although I had no prior knowledge of Isaac. Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 7) was my great-great-grandfather, and I have photos of both he and his wife, Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861), later in life. Samuel purchased the family hotel in Ratibor, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, around the middle of the 19th Century, following a career as a wood merchant.
My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck produced an abbreviated typed family tree (Figure 3) that includes the names of Samuel Bruck and his brother Jonas (more on him later), shown to be the sons of Jacob Bruck and his wife Maria Aufrecht. From primary source documents, Jacob (Jakob) Nathan Bruck, his complete name, and Maria Aufrecht are known to have had other children. LDS microfilm roll 1184449 for Ratibor documents the birth of a daughter named Rebecka on the 10th of January 1815. (Figure 8) The same microfilm roll also documents the marriages of three of Jacob’s daughters, Wilhelmina, Dorothea, and Fanny, respectively, in 1814, 1817, and 1822 (Figure 9); the mother is not identified but I presume is Maria Aufrecht. And, yet another primary source document identifies Jacob Nathan Bruck as the father of a son named Marcus Moritz Bruck who married Nanette von Aldersthal in 1836 in Berlin at the age of 36 (Figure 10); again the mother is not named but I presume is Maria. So, from various sources, I can reasonably document that Jacob Nathan Bruck likely had at least eight children (i.e., Wilhelmina, Dorothea, Fanny, Marcus Moritz, Isaac, Samuel, Jonas, and Rebecka).
Let’s move on to Isaac and consider what primary sources are available for him. With the original Ratibor Gymnasium Album for 1819-1849 in hand, and with Isaac Bruck’s full name written out, I am now certain the initial for Isaac’s forename in Dr. Carl Linge’s 1820 publication referenced above was mistakenly recorded as a “J.” rather than an “I.” This led me to initially conclude that Jonas had attended the high school at the precocious age of 6. Not the case.
Isaac’s age at the time he attended the Ratibor Gymnasium in 1819 is stated as 13. Given that the Gymnasium Ratibor Album records students’ names starting on the 11th of May 1819, I generally place Isaac’s birth in the early part of 1806, though it could certainly have been in the latter half of 1805. I discovered a family tree on MyHeritage that gives an Isaac Bruck’s exact date of birth as the 9th of November 1805 in Breslau. However, upon locating the original birth register listing for this individual in the LDS microfilm for Breslau (LDS Roll 1184380, page 34 of 594), I found the listing is for someone named ISAAC BRUG. (Figure 11) Conceivably, an alternate spelling for “Bruck” in the early 19th Century could have been “BRUG,” but because the father is identified as “abr. Meyer Brug,” I’m dubious this is the same Isaac. I’m convinced Isaac’s father was Jacob Nathan Bruck because of his association in the student ledger with the name “Samuel Bruck,” whose father was assuredly Jacob. This is another example of something I rail about, the need to be cautious about adopting and replicating information found in other family trees without confirming the source of the data.
Years ago when I did a basic Google query on Isaac Bruck, I stumbled upon an intriguing announcement in Volume 18 of the “Amtsblatt für den Regierungsbezirk Marienwerder (Official Gazette for the Marienwerder District),” dated the 26th of May 1828 about him. (Figures 12a-b) There is no question the announcement relates to my ancestor as he is said to have come from Ratibor, and his age of 22 in 1828 coincides with my estimate of how old he would have been then had he been born between 1805 and 1806. It seems, the Security Services from the West Prussian town of Graudenz issued a bulletin in May of 1828 alerting the police authorities to arrest Isaac Bruck after he had gone AWOL or escaped from the local penitentiary. He was described as Jewish, 22 years old with black and curly hair, a black beard, a normal sized mouth, having an oval chin and face, of average stature, 5 feet 2 inches, with a scar on his right forearm from a horse bite. Whether Isaac was ever brought to justice remains unknown.
Several other primary sources from Ratibor make mention of Isaac Bruck and his wife Caroline Bruck née Stolz, who is identified as the daughter of Joachim Meyer Stolz. The birth register for Ratibor records Isaac and Caroline gave birth to a daughter named Fany on the 28th of December 1833 (Figure 13), who according to one of my cousins supposedly died in 1834. Isaac and Caroline’s divorce is recorded on the 19th of July 1835, and gives the name of Caroline’s father as “Joachim Meyer Stolz.” (Figure 14) Yet a third primary source from 1835, claiming that Caroline and Isaac are then living separately, states Isaac remarried a woman named Charlotte Leopold; this same document gives the names and dates of birth of Isaac and Caroline’s two other children, Marie born on the 27th of June 1832, and Heinrich on the 6th of January 1835. (Figure 15) Caroline Bruck née Stolz’s death certificate records her death in Berlin on the 24th of January 1875, and claims she was born in 1803 in Rawitsch [today: Rawicz, Poland]. (Figures 16a-b)
The Ratibor Gymnasium Album records Heimann’s enrollment on the 4th of April 1823, when he was 11 years old, placing his birth around 1812. Some ancestral trees claim his full name was “Heinrich Hermann Heimann Bruck.”
The Ratibor Gymnasium Album states that Heimann’s father was a “Destillateur,” a distiller, unlike Isaac and Samuel’s father, who, as mentioned, was an “Arrendator,” a leaseholder. Given that Jacob Nathan Bruck had so many siblings, it’s possible some lived in Ratibor, and that Heimann was one of Jacob’s nephews rather than his son. There is insufficient data to conclusively determine Heimann’s relationship to Jacob Bruck.
A Jonas Bruck, whose father was also a “Destillateur,” a distiller, was enrolled in the Ratibor Gymnasium on the 21st of April 1824, when he was 10 ½ years of age. Once again, the question of whether this Jonas was the son of Jacob Bruck or the son of one of his brothers or cousins is subject to debate. Let me explain.
The Jonas Bruck who was the son of Jacob Nathan Bruck and the father of the famed dentist Dr. Julius Bruck, discussed in Post 68, is buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Breslau; his dates of birth and death are thus known (i.e., b. 5 March 1813-d. 5 April 1883). (Figure 19) In April 1824, when Jonas was enrolled, he would already have been 11 years of age, not 10 ½ as noted. This, and the fact that the father of the Jonas who was enrolled in the Ratibor Gymnasium in April 1824 was “Destillateur” would suggest this is possibly not Jacob’s son. No way to be sure.
Marcus (Markus) Braun was enrolled at the Ratibor Gymnasium on the 19th of May 1829 at the age of 12 ½. Marcus, my great-great-grandfather, a Brauereipachter, or tenant brewer, was the subject of Post 14. He is known to have been born in 1817, and his age in 1829 confirms this.
Oscar (Oskar) Bruck was registered as a student at the Ratibor Gymnasium on the 22nd of May 1845. By this year, the precise date of birth of students rather than their age was recorded, and Oscar’s birth is noted as the 8th of October 1832, which corresponds with data available to me elsewhere (i.e., the Pinkus Family Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute). Oscar Bruck was my great-great-uncle.
On the 3rd of January 1846, a Heimann Bruck from another generation is enrolled at the Ratibor Gymnasium, and his father was “Sattlermeister,” or saddler. His date of birth is noted as the 26th of December 1833. It’s not clear how he’s related to Jacob Nathan Bruck. Figure 15 indicates that Isaac Bruck and Caroline Bruck née Stolz had a son named Heimann, born on the 6th of January 1835, so presumably the parents of the Heimann born on the 26th of December 1833 were someone other.
My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck (Figure 24), brother of Oscar Bruck, was enrolled at the Ratibor Gymnasium on the 27th of April 1848. His date of birth is recorded as the 30th of September 1834, which again corresponds with data available in the Pinkus Family Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute.
In preparing this Blog post, I conferred with one of my fourth cousins. He has in his possession a memoir written by his great-aunt Bertha Jacobson née Bruck, great-granddaughter of Jacob Nathan Bruck, claiming he was one of 17 children and had 12 children of his own with Maria Aufrecht!! One family tree manager, now deceased, has precise vital data on Jacob’s dates and places of birth and death (b. 18 February 1770, Pschow-d. 29 June 1832, Ratibor), as well as the birth years of a few of his children, but cites no source. Given the very precise dates and places, I’m inclined to believe they’re authentic, but I can’t independently confirm this, so I reserve judgement as to their accuracy.
Given the large number of potential ancestors Jacob Bruck may have had and the likelihood that names repeated themselves within and across generations, it’s difficult to pinpoint the relationship among all the Bruck members who attended the Ratibor Gymnasium absent more primary source documents.
In closing, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that many of the family history stories I relate on my Blog would be impossible without the generous assistance of a cadre of researchers and genealogists who offer their help free-of-charge simply because they derive a vicarious “high” from doing so. Obtaining the help of local historians and researchers, particularly native speakers, is especially valuable as they often have knowledge of historic documents, not yet automated, that an outsider, like myself, would be unaware of. The mere existence of my Blog, albeit of limited interest to most of the world, attracts enough attention by people in a position to further my ancestral investigations and allows me to relate some of my tales. To these named and unnamed people I’m eternally grateful.
