Note: This post though of limited interest is broadly speaking about “metadata,” data about data. Essentially, it’s structured information that acts as a “catalog” or “index” for other data, making it easier for me to find, understand, and use that information. Given that I plan to donate the silverware from the Bruck’s Hotel to the Muzeum w Racibórz (Museum in Racibórz), the town where my father was born, I want a record of this donation. While I hope my posts will be of use and interest to readers, I often refer to earlier articles to remind myself how and what I learned during my ancestral investigations.
The Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel (Figures 1-2), the family establishment my family owned in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] for about 75 years between roughly 1850 and 1925, has been the subject of multiple earlier articles. In these prior posts, I’ve discussed its location (Post 11), historically when the hotel was likely to have been built (Post 155), the family members linked to it (Post 11, Post 11, Postscript, & Post 11, Postscript 2), the layout of the building (Post 11), the police oversight of the business (Post 11, Postscript), various events hosted and dignitaries who stayed there (Post 11, Postscript), the final months of the family’s ownership of the hotel (Post 146), the various owners of the business after it left family hands (Post 11), its condition following WWII (Post 11), and its ultimate fate (Post 132).
Much of what I learned, and the associated documents and contemporary advertisements came from my dearly departed friend, Mr. Paul Newerla (Figure 3), who took a keen interest in researching the history of the hotel. Another Polish friend from Rybnik, Poland, Ms. Malgosia Ploszaj (Figure 4), was also instrumental in unearthing a historic portfolio on the Bruck’s Hotel at the Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu, The Polish State Archives in Racibórz.
Through Paul, I learned the hotel was largely intact at the end of WWII save for the bombed-out roof. (Figure 5) However, occupying Russian forces allowed it to burn to the ground after it was “accidentally” set on fire by drunken soldiers who prevented the local firefighters from extinguishing the flames. The reason the building was allowed to burn is rooted in geopolitics. Following the end of WWII, the ruling and occupying Communists expected that the border between Poland and Germany would be established along the Oder-Neisse River. Situated as the hotel was on the west bank of the Oder River, the Communists fully expected that Ratibor would remain in German hands. The Communists had no interest in turning over to the Germans anything useable or salvageable.
One telling historical document dated March 1950 Paul found in the archives and shared with me was a letter written to local authorities setting out a “quota” of 5 million bricks the town was expected to provide for Warsaw for its reconstruction. (Figure 6) The Bruck’s Hotel built constructed as it was out of bricks was an obvious and plentiful source of this material, particularly since it was expected to remain part of Germany. Sadly, the hotel which could easily and would likely have been restored was instead dismantled.
Given the reality that the hotel no longer exists, which could have been a fixture for a vibrant and historic downtown Racibórz, all that remains are scattered artifacts in my possession, specifically, some hotel silverware. As I am preparing to donate these heirlooms to the Muzeum w Racibórz in the coming months, I thought I would write a brief post about them and link them to the specific Bruck ancestors to whom I think they’re connected. Some of the markings on the silverware are monograms specific to the owners, others name the hotel. Hallmarks can be found on some pieces which are official stamps or marks that indicate the purity, manufacturer, and origin of the precious silver metal. They are too difficult to decipher, however.
My great-great-grandparents Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 7) and his wife Charlotte Bruck, née Marle (1811-1861) (Figure 8) were the original family owners of the Prinz von Preußen. Arguably I have one piece of silverware that belonged to Samuel Bruck. It simply has the initial “S.” so may have been from his time. (Figure 9)
Silverware from the next two generation of owners are more clearly identifiable. Fedor Bruck (1834-1892) (Figure 10) and his wife Friederike Bruck, née Mockrauer (1836-1924) (Figure 11) were the second-generation owners. Silverware from this generation is marked by “Fe. Bruck’s Hôtel” (Figure 12) or “F. Bruck’s Hôtel.” (Figure 13) And, finally, my grandparents Felix (1864-1927) (Figure 14) and Else Bruck, née Berliner (1873-1957) (Figure 15) owned the hotel following Fedor Bruck’s death in 1892. Their beautiful interwoven monogram, while intricate, is clearly identifiable by the initials “EFB,” Else & Felix Bruck. (Figure 16)
Other silverware that cannot positively be connected to any specific generation is labeled simply as “Prinz von Preussen” (Figure 17), “Br. (for Bruck)” (Figure 18), or “Bankowsky Ratibor.” (Figure 19) Bankowsky, for which I can find no reference, is likely the local silversmith that produced the hotel’s silverware.
The monogram on a set of forks I’ll be donating is particularly intriguing. (Figure 20) Thinking I had possibly misread the letters in the monogram on this silverware as “SUB,” possibly for Samuel Bruck, I asked my German friend Peter Hanke, the “Wizard of Wolfsburg,” to confirm or refute my interpretation.
According to Peter, the monogram has the letters “B,” “P,” “V,” and another “P,” which obviously stands for “Bruck’s Prinz von Preussen.” Even with Peter’s explanation, I had great difficulty visualizing the letters, so he highlighted them using his grandchildren’s colored pens.
Comparing the forks side-by-side, here is what readers should look for. The monogram is written in a script font called “Kunstler Script.” On Figure 20, readers can see the letter “v” (what really looks like a large “U”) which is marked in red. Then, in red AND blue, there are two “Ps,” the left one facing backwards and the right one facing forwards. Finally, in brown the letter “B” is evident.
The monogram on a large soup spoon of the same vintage appears to read “T.B.” I know of no Bruck ancestor with these initials. (Figure 21)
Another unique coffee spoon that I initially mistook as silverware from the Bruck’s Hotel reads “O.B.,” which clearly stands for my father Otto Bruck. (Figure 22) This is the only example of this style of spoon. My father came from a secular Jewish family, so may have been christened or baptized upon birth. I surmise my father was given this silver spoon on this occasion. The tradition of gifting silver, particularly spoons, dates back as early as the Middle Ages. Initially, silver was seen as an investment in the child’s future, a financial asset to help cover costs or contribute towards significant life events. Interestingly, the phrase “born with a silver spoon in your mouth” originates from this period, referencing those born into wealthy families who could afford silvery cutlery.
In the Middle Ages, silver was believed to have protective properties against evil spirits. Its antibacterial qualities were also recognized, and it was thought that using silver utensils could reduce infections and promote better health, especially for babies.
Note: In a post I’ve long wanted to write, using maps and contemporary accounts, I discuss the history of the property where the inn stood that my family owned from ca. 1850 until 1926 in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. I also make a case for when I think the hotel was likely constructed.
I’ve spilled a lot of ink writing about my next of kin’s business in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel (Figures 1-2), owned by three generations of my family from roughly 1850 until 1926. My recently departed friend Paul Newerla from Racibórz (Figure 3), a lawyer who found his second calling in retirement researching and writing about the history of Ratibor and Silesia, was very instrumental in furthering my understanding of the hotel’s history and generously sharing multiple historical references and illustrations related to the establishment.
Paul was never able to tell me exactly when the inn was constructed and whether a previous owner had built the structure. For the longest time, I imagined the name “Prinz von Preußen” meant it might have been erected and lived in by a member of the von Preußen family, a royal lineage with longstanding ties to Silesia. Another friend whom I’ve often mentioned to readers, Peter Albrecht von Preußen (Figure 4), a descendant of this illustrious bloodline now living in the United States, explained to me that the “Prinz von Preußen” name was franchised from at least the 19th century. Thus, the Bruck Hotel’s incorporation of the Prinz von Preußen honorific may simply reflect a business arrangement. So far evidence of this has not been found.
One document Paul was unable to track down in theArchiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu, the State Archives in Katowice, Branch in Racibórz, was the so-called Grundbuch, the land register, for the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. Grundbuch means the applicable official register held by the Land Registry in which, among other things, the rights of ownership in, and encumbrances on, a plot of land are registered.
In Post 61, I discussed how Paul found the Grundbuch for the Zuckerfabrik, the sugar factory owned by distant family relatives, located in Woinowitz [today: Wojnowice, Poland] outside Ratibor, among the uncatalogued documents in the basement of the Racibórz State Archives. Regular readers know I’ve written multiple posts about the Zuckerfabrik. Had Paul been able to locate the Grundbuch for the Bruck’s Hotel, it might have shed some light on when the building was built and/or exactly when my family purchased the establishment. Whether the file still exists is an unanswered question though I suspect if it did Paul Newerla would have tracked it down.
Another of my Polish friends, Małgosia Ploszaj (Figure 5), from Rybnik, Poland, 15 miles east of Racibórz, was able to find a police file in the Racibórz State Archives related to the Bruck’s Hotel (Figures 6a-b), but this dated to the period that my grandparents, Felix (1864-1927) and Else Bruck (1873-1957), owned the hotel during the first quarter of the 20th century. This file includes reports on periodic inspections conducted by the local police; safety issues my grandparents were compelled to address; authorizations they were required to obtain to operate beyond normal working hours; violations for which they were fined, etc. Nothing in the file related to the history nor tenancy of the hotel prior to my grandparents’ ownership.
My good friend Peter Albrecht von Preußen spent a good deal of time explaining the contents of this police file. Additionally, because of his own family’s connection to Silesia, he spent a lot of time searching publications for mentions of the hotel and the sequential Bruck family members who owned the inn, namely, Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), Fedor Bruck (1834-1892), and Felix Bruck (1864-1927).
One of the most useful public domain sources Peter discovered was a 695-page book entitled “Geschichte der Stadt Ratibor,” “History of the Town of Ratibor,” written by Augustin Weltzel in 1861. (Figure 7) Therein, Peter found mention of a Bruck who was a “gastwirth,” an innkeeper, no doubt Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) the original owner of the Bruck’s Hotel. (Figure 8)
The book is written in Fraktur, which was the subject of Post 154. Unfortunately, the text has not been transcribed into German, nor has it been translated into Polish or English. However, because Peter can read Fraktur, he graciously perused and summarized relevant sections of Weltzel’s book.
This book was commissioned in 1859 by the Protestant Church in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], who had searched in the archives and discovered that the history of the entire Upper Silesian region, a principally Catholic area at the time, had not been documented. As a result, Dr. Weltzel, a Catholic Priest, was contracted to write about Ratibor. This seemingly odd arrangement was an indirect outcome of the First Silesian War from 1740 to 1742 which resulted in Prussia seizing most of the region of Silesia (today mostly in southwestern Poland) from Austria but Catholics in Silesia being guaranteed the right to continue practicing their religion.
Based on Peter’s synopsis and analysis, I can reconstruct a partial history of the property where the Bruck’s Hotel was built and theorize when the hotel is likely to have been constructed. Another of my Polish contacts from Racibórz is Magda Wawoczny, an acquaintance in the Jewish Studies program at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. At my request, she graciously sent me high-resolution plans of Ratibor from 1831 and 1843, as well as a map from 1812 with a birds-eye view of Ratibor and its fortifications, that allow me to clarify using contemporary maps what likely was going on in the area at the time in conjunction with Augustin Weltzel’s description of historic events.
First, a brief digression. I’ve periodically told readers about my “boots on the ground” without whom I would be unable to relate my family stories to the depth I feel is required. As readers can easily tell, I have limited knowledge about many of the subjects I discuss so the assistance of knowledgeable people is crucial. In the case of this post, for example, I felt the need to illustrate with historic maps what Ratibor may have looked like at different points in time to make the case for approximately when the Bruck’s Hotel might have been constructed.
Erroneously recalling there exists a map from 1829 with the Bruck’s Hotel shown, I asked Magda, my student acquaintance from Racibórz, if she could track it down for me. In the process, Magda directed me to a historical portal run by her father, Grzegorz Wawoczny, a historian. The portal includes a post written by a German gentleman, Christoph Sottor, describing the oldest plans of the city of Ratibor. This is how I learned about the 1812, 1831, and 1843 plans of Ratibor mentioned above. This post was very useful and one I encourage readers with an ancestral link to Ratibor to skim:
Historically, Ratibor was a fortified castle-town. The period the Bruck’s Hotel could conceivably have been built is closely related to when the fortifications surrounding Ratibor were dismantled because of the hotel’s proximity to where the protective walls once stood. Let me briefly relate to readers some of the history of the town’s defensive system. The defensive walls have existed in Ratibor since 1299. They were extended in the 14th century, and several fortified towers and three wooden gates were later added. A deep moat was constructed in front of the walls. The curtain walls were reinforced in 1663 in anticipation of a Turkish invasion.
Beginning in the 18th century, the fortifications were gradually eliminated. Between 1764 and 1771 the moat was filled in. According to Weltzel, the wooden gate (Figure 22) of the defensive tower nearest where the Bruck’s Hotel was eventually built was removed in 1825 and relocated to the Ratibor side of the bridge crossing the nearby Oder River; some of the nearby curtain walls were removed but the tower remained.
All that remains of the fortifications today is a Renaissance style tower constructed in 1574 and some remnants of the Gothic curtain walls that abutted this tower. (Figures 9-10) At the apex of the tower, there is an attic with embrasures (sometimes called gun holes) and four turrets. The building provided shelter for the garrison of defenders and was also used as a prison tower.
The removal of the moat, including the gradual elimination of some of the defensive structures, coincides with the end of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). Let me say a few words about this conflict.
The Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) was a global conflict involving most of Europe’s great powers that was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. Without getting too far into the weeds, suffice it to say the opposing alliances were led by Great Britain and France, each seeking to establish global pre-eminence at the expense of the other. France and Spain fought against England and their ally Prussia in Europe and overseas. Long-standing rivalries pitted these adversaries against one another in North America and the West Indies.
No less a personage than Winston Churchill described the Seven Years War, which went by different names in its respective theaters (e.g., Franch and Indian Wars (1754-1763); War of the Conquest in French-speaking Canada; the Third Silesian Wear (1756-1763) between Prussia and Austria) as the first “world war” because of its global reach.
For purposes of this post, suffice it to say that in Europe, Prussia sought greater influence in the German states (i.e., Prussia and the other German states did not unite to form Germany until 1871) while Austria sought to contain Prussian influence as well as regain Silesia which they’d lost at the end of the First Silesian War in 1742. Austria failed in this regard. Based on Augustin Weltzel’s discussions, it is evident the city’s fortifications suffered heavy damage from cannonball strikes during the conflict.
Perhaps, the end of the war, new economic opportunities, ongoing deterioration of the defensive walls and towers, along with a need to expand the city caused town officials to gradually remove the fortifications and towers.
The address of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel was Oderstrasse 16. The inn stood on the northwest corner of Oderstrasse where it met Bollwerk Strasse. A 1929 street map of Ratibor includes the hotel’s name and location (Figure 11), while a 1933 plan shows the number “16” on Oderstrasse. (Figure 12) A map from around 1890 indistinctly outlines an area where the Bruck’s Hotel stood that is identified by the number “104,” which may indicate the lot number. (Figure 13) Since I don’t have copies of all Ratibor’s plans, it’s not clear when the hotel was first plotted on a map.
The “Prinz von Preußen” is listed in John Murray’s 1850 “Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent” as a place for people to stay in Ratibor while voyaging between Breslau and Vienna. (Figures 14a-b) Family ownership of the inn is thought to have begun at around this time.
Next, I’ll discuss a few of the historic maps I had access to, and what they suggest regarding the construction of the Bruck’s Hotel. I’ll also touch on some of Weltzel’s historic accounts for reference.
Let me start by discussing the map that Christoph Sottor dates to 1812 (Figure 15) that I previously described as a birds-eye view of the city with its still-standing fortifications.
“On the newly made plan (in 1812 on the basis of measurements from 1810) the orientation to the west was improved, buildings in towns near Racibórz were described and projections of several buildings in Racibórz itself were marked. The “Situations-Plan von der Stadt Ratibor” covers a smaller area than the 1811 plan and is on a smaller scale, 1 : 7,200. The plan measures 48 cm x 32.3 cm. It was also created by the geometer Andre Wihrheim. The only copy of the plan is in AP Opole, reference number: AP Opole, Rej. Opole. Kart., sign. IX/92. I only have a blurry picture of him.” [EDITOR’S NOTE: “AP Opole” stands for “Archiwum Państwowe Opole,” the State Archives in Opole, Poland]
The main conclusion one can draw from this map is that the defensive towers and curtain walls were mostly still intact in 1812. This means the Bruck’s Hotel, whose approximate location I’ve shown on the map, could not yet have existed at this time since the curtain walls would have impeded its construction.
According to Weltzel, the Bruck’s Hotel was referred to as the “Prinzen von Preußen” (“Princes of Prussia”) rather than “Prinz von Preußen” (“Prince of Prussia”), with no mention of the Bruck surname. He also tells us the property where the hotel was eventually built had previously been owned by the so-called Schützengilde, the shooting club, and sat along Oder Gasse, as Oderstrasse was then known. The Schützengilde had two structures on their property, a Schützenzwinger, or clubhouse, and a Schießstand, or firing range. The clubhouse faced Oder Gasse, while the firing range sat towards the rear of the property closer to the Oder River.
At the time Weltzel was researching his book he had access to the shooting club’s records dating back to 1620. According to these documents the Schützengilde owned the property on Oder Gasse until 1824/25 when they sold it to the city of Ratibor in two transactions; by May 1825 the city had full possession of the entire property. Using the proceeds from the sale of the property, the shooting club purchased another property in town. Seemingly, Weltzel does not discuss how the city used the property following its acquisition.
Peter Albrecht von Preußen uncovered a YouTube video describing the activities of the Schützengilde today featuring none other than my late friend Paul Newerla. While the video is in both German and Polish with subtitles in both these languages, readers can get a general idea of how the shooting club operates today and view some of the antique weapons members fire:
In essence, Paul Newerla says that today the Schützengilde is principally a historical society and functions as a recreational club rather than as a defensive force as it once did. As previously mentioned, the club relocated from Oder Gasse in 1825, but moved again in 1898 to their present location. The existing clubhouse incorporates a tower (Figure 16) that may be a remembrance of the Oder Thor that once stood adjacent to their property on Oder Gasse. According to Paul, the oldest documents the club possesses date to 1925, so he is appealing to anyone that may have older artifacts or memorabilia to contact the club. And finally, we learn the Schützengilde was inoperative from the 8th of May 1945 until 2004, when it was resurrected.
Let me turn now to the two high resolution maps from 1831 and 1843 that Magda sent me and discuss what inferences can be drawn from them. Both plans show two buildings on the property, the 1843 map more distinctly, where the Bruck’s Hotel would eventually be built. On the 1831 map (Figure 17), in the rear structure, that’s to say the shooting range, readers can vaguely make out what Weltzel refers to as a “wall extension” that paralleled the lane where Bollwerk Strasse was ultimately sited. It would appear the firing range incorporated as an extension a fragmentary part of the curtain walls that once surrounded Ratibor.
One thing we can conclude from the 1843 map (Figure 18) is that the Oder Thor, Oder Tower, the tower closest to where the hotel was ultimately built had apparently not yet been demolished, though as previously mentioned the wooden gate had been removed in 1825. The tower is labelled on the map suggesting it was still in place. It’s difficult to know precisely where the Oder Thor was situated relative to the hotel making it hard to know whether it would have impeded construction of the building; however, the defensive curtain walls would assuredly have prevented construction of the inn.
Another thing we can observe from the 1843 ocular map of Ratibor is that if you extend the line that was formerly part of the curtain wall and the extension of the Schießstand, it lines up perfectly with the side of the Oder Thor that was closest to the Oder River.
So, we return to the question of when the Bruck’s Hotel might have been built and what the impetus for doing so would have been. A French travel guide dated 1836 entitled “Manuel du Voyageur en Allemagne” (Handbook for Travelers in Germany), mentions an auberge or inn in Ratibor, “Auberge de Jaeschke.” (Figure 19) Prior to construction of the Bruck’s Hotel this is believed to have been the only guesthouse in Ratibor.
As previously discussed, the “Prinz von Preußen” is mentioned in John Murray’s 1850 publication “A Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent,” and is described as a “very comfortable hotel.” (see Figure 14b) Clearly, by 1850 the “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel was open for business. This is further confirmed by a concert the famed Austrian composer Johann Strauss delivered on the 17th of October 1850 in the hotel’s concert hall. (Figure 20) A similar recital by Dr. Franz Lizst four years earlier on the 29th of May 1846 was performed at the so-called “Jaschke’schen Saale” (Figure 21), presumably part of the “Auberge de Jaeschke,” indirect evidence the newer and larger Prinz von Preußen concert hall was not yet open.
According to Weltzel, the anticipated arrival of the railroad in Ratibor, which began service on the 1st of January 1846, caused a “building boom” between 1842 and 1850. If the 1843 map is accurate, the Oder Thor still stood at this time, so construction of the hotel post-dates its removal. While there is no smoking gun, the indirect evidence points to the Prinz von Preußen having been built sometime between 1845 and 1847, coinciding with the arrival of the railroad. No doubt regular train service and mention of the Prinz von Preußen in an English travel guide would have accelerated the number of visitors and tourists from Germany, Austria, and far-off places who would have expected modern conveniences. It can only be hoped the hotel’s Grundbuch still exists and is eventually found to definitively answer the question of what year the inn was built.
Knie, Johann G. (1845). Alphabetisch-statistisch-topographische Uebersicht der Dörfer, Flecken, Städte und andern Orte der Königl. Preuß. Provinz Schlesien.
Note: In this post I discuss some primary source documents from Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] and Upper Silesia I was recently made aware of. I also explain to readers how to access these online ancestral records digitized by the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society. Finally, I highlight a few “gems” I uncovered that date back to my earliest known Bruck ancestor from Ratibor.
This story begins with an email my good friend Peter Albrecht von Preußen (Figure 1) sent me with a link to a Dropbox account with a stash of primary source documents from Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]. Regular readers will recognize this as the town in Upper Silesia (Figure 2) to which some of my Jewish ancestors had an association of over 100 years and where the erstwhile family establishment, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, was owned through three generations of my family, from around 1850 until 1926.
Having previously and on multiple occasions carefully examined three microfilm rolls of Jewish vital records from Ratibor (i.e., LDS Family History Center (FHC) Microfilms 1184447, 1184448, & 1184449) available through the Mormon Church’s familysearch website and having personally visited and spent many hours at the Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu, the State Archives in Katowice, Branch in Racibórz (Figure 3), scrutinizing civil registration records of vital events for my family, I had scant expectations of finding anything new. I had no reason to believe additional documents of vital events for Jews from Ratibor still exist. I could not have been more wrong.
Below I will walk readers step-by-step through how to access the database I learned about that includes not only primary source documents about Jews from Ratibor and some adjoining towns but also the more extensive Catholic and Lutheran parish records from across Upper Silesia. I will also detail some of the most satisfying discoveries I made about some near and distant forebears, breakthroughs I honestly thought I would never realize. However, I’m going to start at the tail end and explain the origin of these primary source documents.
The source of the documents Peter sent me is the “Górnośląskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne ‘Silius Radicum’,” or the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society “Silesian Roots.” Under an agreement signed on the 21st of January 2015 with the State Archives in Katowice, the Society obtained permission to digitize genealogical records in the State Archive, a function not then being undertaken by the National Archives. The Society further obtained authorization to post the digitized records to their website.
The published books are classified according to the three main faiths, Roman Catholic, Evangelical, and Jewish within the historical area of Upper Silesia. The records generally cover the years 1800 to 1874 and are duplicates of records which were submitted to the court. At the time these records were created, the Standesämter, the civil registration offices, had not yet been established in Prussia, something which began in 1874.
The Ratibor-related files to which Peter Albrecht sent me the Dropbox link are listed in the following table:
Book Signature Number
Polish & English Names
No. of Pages
1693
Racibórz akta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego—urodzenia 1851-1855.
Racibórz population records of the Jewish faith, births 1851 – 1855.
304
1694
Racibórzakta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–urodzenia 1910
Racibórz population records of the Jewish faith, births 1910
12
1695
Racibórzakta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–małżeństwa 1869-1870
Racibórz records of Jewish population, marriages 1869-1870
299
1696
Racibórzakta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–małżeństwa 1872-1885
Racibórz records of the Jewish population, marriages 1872-1885
376
1697
Racibórzakta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–urodzenia, małżeństwa 1852-1853
Racibórz population records of the Jewish faith, births + marriages 1852-1853
386
1698
Racibórz(powiat)akta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–urodzenia, zgony 1841-1847
Racibórz (county) population records of the Jewish faith, births + deaths 1841-1847
17
1699
Racibórzakta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–urodzenia, małżeństwa, rozwody, zgony 1815-1844
Racibórz Jewish population records – births + marriages + divorces + deaths 1815-1844
87
1700
Racibórzakta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–urodzenia, małżeństwa, rozwody, zgony 1845-1847
Kornowacakta ludności wyznania mojżeszowego–urodzenia, małżeństwa, zgony1845-1848
Kornowac (Kornowatz) Jewish population records – births, marriages, deaths 1845-1848
24
TOTAL PAGES
1,549
For my purposes, Signature Books 1701 (Groß Gorschütz) and 1702 (Kornowatz) were of no interest.
While theoretically including records between 1800 and 1874, readers will notice significant gaps in what’s been digitized. Whether those records still exist or have yet to be scanned is unknown. Excluding Signature Books 1701 and 1702 which cover areas outside Ratibor, the table below shows the years for which birth, marriage, divorce, and death records are available for Ratibor through the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society’s website:
Ratibor Births
Ratibor Marriages
Ratibor Divorces
Ratibor Deaths
1815-1844 (Book 1699)
1841-1847 (Book 1698)
1845-1847 (Book 1700)
1851-1855 (Book 1693)
1910 (Book 1694)
1815-1844 (Book 1699)
1845-1847 (Book 1700)
1869-1870 (Book 1695)
1872-1885 (Book 1697)
1815-1844 (Book 1699)
1845-1847 (Book 1700)
1815-1844 (Book 1699)
1841-1847 (Book 1698)
1845-1847 (Book 1700)
Comparing the above to what’s available for Ratibor through the Mormon Church’s Family History Library, we find three films with Jewish records. Microfilm 1184447 includes cemetery deeds between 1888 and 1940; Microfilm 1184448 records deaths between 1865 and 1930; and Microfilm 1184449 documents births between 1815 and 1874 and marriages between 1814 and 1862. Clearly researchers would want to examine both databases since there’s only partial overlap. More on this below.
Before discussing the most informative documents found in the other Signature Books, let me describe the process step by step for accessing the primary source documents digitized by the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society:
Go to https://siliusradicum.pl/en/ksiegi-metrykalne/
On the portal page, readers can select one of four languages: English, German, Polish, or Czech;
While the “User Panel” allows you to sign in or register, the records can be accessed without doing so simply by scrolling down the page to the list of towns;
The towns for which Signature Books are available are listed alphabetically;
By way of example, select “ASC Jewish Community—Racibórz (Ratibor”;
Select “Browse online with Dropbox” towards the bottom of the page, and the ten Signature Books described above will be listed;
Select one, then scroll through the pages, and download relevant pages individually;
Once done perusing all the pages in a particular Signature Book, hit the “Back” button. Select “ASC gminy żydowskiej – Racibórz (Ratibor)” under “Copy to Dropbox” or “Download” and you’ll be taken back to the list of Signature Books. The first page of each Signature Book is a PDF page that describes its contents.
For my purposes, Ratibor Signature Books, 1693, 1695, 1699, and 1700 were most informative.
I dub my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Nathan Bruck (1770-1836) the paterfamilias of the Ratibor line of the Bruck family. As recently as Post 149, Part 1, I wrote it was indeterminately estimated he was born in 1762 or 1770 and died in 1832 or 1836. Thanks to a death register listing I found in Signature Book 1699, I now know his exact death date, the 29th of June 1836, when he was 66 years of age (Figure 4), meaning he obviously was born in 1770. This was the most exciting find in the Signature Books from Ratibor.
I will devote an upcoming post to the scant but tantalizing clues I’ve collected about Jacob Nathan Bruck, including the number of children I can firmly document that he and his wife, Marianne Aufrecht, begat. Various ancestral trees I’ve found on ancestry.com and in MyHeritage claim that his first offspring was a daughter named Helene Bruck who was purportedly married to an Itzig Mendel Guttman Aufrecht. Serendipitously, I also found Helene Aufrecht, née Bruck’s, death register listing showing she died in 1838 at the age of 68 (Figure 5), meaning that like Jacob Bruck she too was born in 1770. They could conceivably have been twins but were more likely cousins. While it’s possible Jacob’s first daughter was indeed named Helene, something I’ve not yet found evidence of, Helene Aufrecht was assuredly not Jacob’s daughter and Itzig Aufrecht was certainly not Jacob’s son-in-law. Intriguingly, Helene gave birth to a child in 1815 at the improbable age of 45. (Figure 6)
I often remind readers that some information found on family trees in ancestry.com, MyHeritage, and Geneanet with respect to dates of vital events and names and numbers of offspring is notoriously unreliable. Unverified vital data is often cloned from existing trees by people seeking to build their own genealogical charts. I typically reject much of this data unless it’s backed up by primary source documentation, particularly as it relates to individuals born in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when records on Jews living then are sparse.
It is not my intention to review all the personally intriguing discoveries I made in perusing the digitized Silius Radicum records from Ratibor, since they are of scant interest to most readers. However, several things stand out that are worth briefly discussing.
Even if the Ratibor records in Silius Radicum themselves are unique, some of the data was previously known to me from similar documents in which the same data was recorded. For example, three of the paterfamilias Jacob Nathan Bruck’s oldest daughters were married, respectively, in 1814 (Wilhelmine Bruck), 1817 (Dorothea Babette Bruck), and 1822 (Fanny Bruck). I previously discovered this information on LDS Family History Center Microfilm 1184449 where a register documenting their marriages and family relationships was found. (Figures 7-8) On the typed Jewish Records Indexing-Poland database, much of the same information is recorded, presumably copied from the Mormon Church’s films. (Figure 9)
In Silius Radicum I discovered register pages for the same three marriages, with family relationships similarly noted. (Figures 10-11) However, the handwriting is noticeably different and the registers dissimilar in appearance, meaning the information was recorded in duplicate and likely stored separately. Clearly, the records that Silius Radicum digitized were never photographed by the Mormon Church. Obviously, this is noteworthy because it means the possibility exists that additional records for Jews from Ratibor and Upper Silesia may eventually materialize.
One of my ancestors from Ratibor through whom I’m related to most of my cousins in America because of his fecundity was the brewer Markus Braun (1817-1870). On LDS Family History Center Microfilm 1184449, the birth register shows he had twelve children with his first wife, Caroline Spiegel, then another two with his second wife, Johanna Goldstein, the last of whom was born after he died and named after him. Signature Book 1693, while only covering the years 1851 through 1855, includes copies of the actual birth certificates for several of Markus’ children with his first wife. In Signature Book 1700, I learned that Markus and Caroline were married on the 25th of August 1846 (Figure 12), and discovered they had a daughter named Sara, the first of 13 rather than only 12 children, on the 28th of October 1846 (Figure 13), shortly after they wed.
Again, the dates of birth of most of Markus’ children was previously known to me from Microfilm 1184449. What is new based on the Signature Books from Ratibor are the actual birth certificates for several of Markus and Caroline’s children and the discovery of a 13th child with his first wife. This again proves that the documents digitized by Silius Radicum were not previously photographed by the Mormon Church and likely have not been closely studied by people investigating their ancestors from Ratibor.
One of the most extensive records I discovered was a 14-page marriage folio in Signature Book 1695 which includes Ratibor marriages from only 1869 and 1870. This brief period happens to coincide with when Alma Braun (1851-1919) (Figure 14), one of Markus’ daughters, got married to Adolph Schück (1840-1916) (Figure 15) on the 1st of September 1870, and is their marriage file. One of my German cousins translated and interpreted the document for me. Suffice it to say, the pages contain an astonishing amount of ancestral information, including the precise date Markus Braun died, the 4th of February 1870, at the age of 52; clearly, he died some months before Alma got married. Additionally, had I not already known this information, the file would have allowed me to work out family relationships which are recorded in detail.
As I mentioned above, there is some overlap between the Jewish records for Ratibor available online through familysearch and the newer stash found in Silius Radicum. For example, all the offspring of Jacob Nathan Bruck’s three eldest daughters married, respectively, in 1814, 1817, and 1822, are found in both databases. By contrast, for my great-great-grandparents Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 16) and Charlotte Marle (1809-1861) (Figure 17), the Silius Radicum records only include eight of their nine known children; the ninth one can only be found on LDS Microfilm 1184449.
In closing, I admit that I do not know whether the Jewish and non-Jewish vital records the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society has digitized are widely known and/or used by ancestral researchers. I can only speak for myself and acknowledge that I was unaware of them. I hope for others who are in my situation that they may discover some hidden “gems” like I did.
Note: In this post, I shift from discussing primary source documents related to my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), thought to have been the original owner of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor, Prussia, to talking about my grandfather Felix Bruck (1864-1927), assuredly the last Bruck family owner of the hotel. I examine some records that shed light on the final months of my family’s connection to the establishment.
The inspiration for several recent posts comes from interested readers, ancestral researchers, family, and friends and acquaintances. These people have either sent me contemporary accounts or made me aware of primary source documents in various Polish State Archives related to some of my earliest Bruck relatives from Silesia. (Figure 1) These records, though not infallible, provide a framework for evaluating and assessing the accuracy of vital data obtained elsewhere, as well as placing my ancestors in their proper historic and cultural context. As mentioned elsewhere, primary source documents are my gold standard.
In May of this year, I was contacted by a gentleman, Mr. Kamil Kotas, formerly from the Powiat Raciborski, Racibórz District of Poland, now living in Münster in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Having stumbled on my blog and seen the various posts about the former family-owned hotel in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, Kamil told me he’d come across two files citing the Bruck’s Hotel from the interwar years during his online search of the Polish State Archives. (Figures 2-3) He realized my bibliography made no mention of either, so sent me links to the two files:
Having nothing specifically to do with my family, what immediately caught my attention when I opened the links is that the files are archived at the Archiwum Państwowe we Wrocławiu Oddział w Kamieńcu Ząbkowickim, State Archives in Wrocław Branch in Kamieniec Ząbkowicki. Regular readers may recall that Kamieniec Ząbkowicki, Poland is the current name of the German Silesian town of Kamenz where my dear friend Peter Albrecht von Preußen’s family once owned the still-standing castle. I wrote about the castle in Post 135. Kamieniec Ząbkowicki and Racibórz are about 79 miles apart. (Figure 4) In any case, this puts an exclamation point on something I’ve repeatedly stressed, namely, that you should not confine your search for information about your ancestors to the town where they once lived.
Because the online tags for the two files on the Bruck’s Hotel give no clue as to what they contain, I ordered both. After several weeks they arrived, and I turned to my friend Peter Hanke to help me make sense of the file from 1926. While the “Bruck’s Hotel” name was retained by future owners after it was sold by my grandfather Felix Bruck (Figure 5), I knew he had sold it before his death in June 1927. (Figure 6) Consequently, I’ve confined my examination to the earlier of the two files.
The hotel “Prinz von Preußen” is owned by the hotel owner Felix Bruck and was managed alternately by the owner and tenants. Currently, the actual tenant of the hotel is the Peace Lodge e.V. in Ratibor, which handed over the management to Hugo Eulenstein in July 1926. Eulenstein, born in Hammestädt [= Hammerstedt] in Th[uringia] in 1869, moved from Barmen [now a district of Wuppertal] and formerly managed the Grand Hotel on Lake Geneva, then was reportedly general manager of both the Caux and Montreux hotels and then owner of the Continental Hotel in Montreux, which he lost because of the war. He is also said to have been a director at the Carlton Hotel in Frankfurt a.M. and the Bayerischer Hof in Munich.
Eulenstein is the concession holder and reportedly pays an annual rent of 12000 Reichsmark. The hotel was rebuilt and renovated in 1925. The staff consists of 1 chef de cuisine, 4 to 5 waiters, 1 valet and 5 to 6 girls for the kitchen and guest rooms. The value of the existing stock is estimated at about 5000 to 6000 Reichsmark.
The financial situation is not considered unfavorable, but in the opinion of our informants the development of the circumstances remains to be seen, especially since the former tenant Max Künzer managed the hotel without success. At present, a small loan is considered permissible and at the same time it is recommended that a certain degree of caution not be disregarded.
In the letter, the credit agency W. Schimmelpfeng asks the Friedensloge e.V. in Ratibor whether it “. . .would provide information about the personal and financial circumstances of Mr. Eulenstein.”
In a reply letter from my grandfather Felix Bruck dated the 22nd of November 1926 from Berlin he writes: “Mr. Eulenstein is not my tenant but that of the Friedensloge e.V. in Ratibor, to whom I have leased my hotel for several years. I do not know Mr. Eulenstein personally, nor am I aware of his circumstances. The Friedensloge should be able to give you the most information.”
In a letter dated the 12th of November 1926, the following is written:
“Bruck’s Hotel is one of the oldest hotels in Ratibor. Since June 26, 1900, the hotel has been registered in the Commercial Register A under the name “Fedor Bruck Hotel Prinz von Preussen Ratibor” under No. 24. Over the years, the hotel was managed alternately by the owner (Bruck) and by tenants. The last tenant was Max Künzer. He went bankrupt on June 23, 1926. I have reported about it to you under 25 June 1926. Due to the lack of any bankruptcy estate, the bankruptcy proceedings were discontinued after some time. At present the actual tenant of this hotel is the Jewish Lodge in Ratibor. They pay an annual rent of 11000 Reichsmark to the owner Bruck. However, the Lodge leased the hotel to the hotelier Hugo Eulenstein and he has been running it since July 13, 1926. He has a good reputation as a professional. He managed the Grand Hotel on Lake Geneva, was general manager of the two hotels Caux above Montreux and then owner of the Hotel Continental in Montreux (Figure 8), which he lost because of the war. He is also said to have been director of Carlton Hotel in Frankfurt a.M. and of the Bayerischer Hof in Munich. In the innkeeper circles it is strange that Eulenstein comes to Ratibor after such a brilliant career.
Eulenstein was born on December 15, 1869 in Hammestädt [= Hammerstedt] in Th[uringia], married to Hertha née Voth from Cologne since August 7, 1919, and in Ratibor since August 7, 1926. He came from Barmen [now a district of Wuppertal]. He has one child aged 6 years. His deceased father was a landowner. No disadvantageous things have become known about him so far.
He is a concession holder, and the business is in his name. He is not yet registered under commercial law. The annual rent is reduced and is said to be 12,000 Reichsmark. Eulenstein claims to have invested a working capital of 15000 Reichsmark in the business. The hotel was rebuilt and renovated last year. It meets all the requirements of modern times. The staff consists of 1 chef de cuisine, 4-5 waiters, 1 valet and 5-6 girls for the kitchen and guest rooms. According to experience so far, it will have an annual turnover of about 160000 Reichsmark. His warehouse will have a value of 5000-6000 Reichsmark. House and land ownership is not available. His financial situation is still little known in Ratibor but is generally considered favorable. Complaints about his mode of payment have not yet become known. A loan of a few hundred Reichsmark does not seem questionable at present. Nevertheless, caution would be advisable. Without obligation.”
EDITOR’S REMARKS:
The letter is signed and dated the 14th of November 1926, perhaps by an officer of the credit agency who received the letter. Initially, I thought the letter was written by my grandfather, but I now think it was written by a representative from the tenant organization, the Friedensloge e.V.
This is the most informative of the documents contained in the file, providing the date when the Firm of “Fedor Bruck Hotel Prinz von Preussen Ratibor” was registered in the Handelsregister on the 26th of June 1900.
These pages confirm the Friedensloge e.V. was my grandfather’s tenant after Max Künzer went bankrupt and the Peace Lodge subleased the hotel to the experienced hotelier Hugo Eulenstein. Some vital statistics about Hugo and his family are also provided.
My historian friend from Racibórz sent me a series of undated Bruck’s Hotel advertisements from the time my grandfather owned the hotel to the period post-dating his ownership. (Figures 9a-b) One indicates that Max Künzer was the “inh. =inhaber,” owner, when it’s known that he was merely a tenant who went bankrupt. Another undated advertisement shows Hugo Eulenstein as the owner.
November 12, 1926: Felix Bruck, owner; Max Künzer, former tenant, bankrupt
November 18, 1926: Felix Bruck, Ratibor, “knows nothing”
November 25, 1926: Friedensloge e.V. Ratibor
May 21, 1927: Bruck’s Hotel Prinz von Preußen Hugo Eulenstein as the current owner
EDITOR’S REMARKS:
From Pages 4-5, we know that the tenant Max Künzer filed for bankruptcy on the 23rd of June 1926. It appears the Friedensloge e.V. Ratibor subsequently leased the hotel from my grandfather, and in turn subleased it to the hotelier Hugo Eulenstein. No later than the 21st of May of 1927, Hugo had purchased the hotel from my grandfather, who died on the 23rd of June 1927 in Berlin.
As previously mentioned, the above 1926 file discussing my family’s hotel establishment in Ratibor interestingly originates from the State Archives in Wrocław Branch in Kamieniec Ząbkowicki.
Coincidentally, I have another relevant primary source document embedded in a file archived at the Branch State Archives in Katowice, Racibórz, copied for me by Ms. Magda Wawoczny, the Polish student acquaintance from Jagiellonian University. The information on this one page (Figure 10) coincides with the period when my grandfather’s tenant, Max Künzer, went bankrupt. Translated, the text reads:
(no. 37): On August 14, 1926, the Ratibor District Court determined that a debt of 600 Reichsmark exists for inventory taken over.
The creditor is Felix Bruck from Berlin (district W15), Düsseldorferstrasse 24I, who had registered this amount on July 14, 1926.
Given the timing of Max Künzer’s bankruptcy, I surmise the following may have happened. When Mr. Künzer leased the Bruck’s Hotel, which also gave him access to the restaurant and bar, my grandfather likely additionally transferred the inventory to Max. This would have included food pantry items for the kitchen, liquor for the bar, pots, pans, glasses, silverware, china, linen, cleaning supplies, etc., in other words any items required for the daily operation of the hotel. When Mr. Künzer went bankrupt, the bankruptcy court likely seized any remaining inventory, and sold them to repay creditors While the court determined my grandfather was owed 600 Reichsmark, it’s unclear from the register entry that any monies were ever disbursed to him as a creditor, likely one of many.
The documents discussed above relate to the final months of my grandfather’s ownership of the family hotel in Ratibor, from mid-to-late 1926. However, several years ago, another of my Polish acquaintances, Małgosia Płoszaj from Rybnik, Poland, copied and sent me an additional file related to the Bruck’s Hotel that is also archived at Branch State Archives in Katowice, Racibórz. I recently had my friend Peter Albrecht summarize the contents of this “Polizei Verwallung zu Ratibor,” Ratibor police station file. (Figure 11a-b)
This police folder includes a collection of the Prinz von Preußen’s hotel and liquor licenses, violations to the stipulations of these permits, and compliance with fire safety and electrical requirements of the Prussian State. The records date from June 1912 until August 1928. The file documents the Ratibor Police Department’s enforcement of the 1808 Kingdom of Prussia’s liquor licensing requirements, including liquor production, wholesaling, and retail sales at the establishment. Over time, fire safety plans, related for example to gas lighting, also had to be submitted, as well as plans for addressing electrical requirements.
In conjunction with a new or renewed application for a liquor license and business permit, building drawings had to be submitted. The permit was granted on the 11th of June 1912 by the City Council (Der Stadtausschuss) following submission of the building drawings on the 20th of May 1912 and inspection by the city’s inspector. Several changes were requested by the inspector including that the curtains be impregnated with fire-retardant and that the locks between the ballroom (Saal) and the side room (Gesellschaftsraum) be removed since only the side room had an exit door to the outside of the building.
Many of the pages in the file involve applications by groups who wanted to hold an event in the ballroom and were requesting an extension of the curfew or “last call,” or the so-called “Sperrstunde,” beyond the normal 10pm hour.
My grandfather was only fined once for a violation, for the minor infraction of a patron not signing the guest book upon their departure.
In closing, I will concede that much of the information found in primary source documents mentioning my grandfather and the Bruck’s Hotel is rather mundane in nature, but I would again stress to ancestral researchers that the mere survival of similar records between 100 and 200 years of age help paint a portrait of a past very much different than the one we live in. And, often, buried within these documents are tidbits of chronological and contextual information that round out one’s understanding of our ancestors’ lives.
REFERENCE
Hyckel, Georg. Ein Führer durch die Stadt Ratibor und ihre Geschichte. Ratibor, ca. 1930.
Note: In this post, which I anticipate will be of limited interest to most readers, I examine primary source documents related to my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) which shed light on his business activities and legacy. The fact that he owned one of the first hotels in Ratibor in Silesia [today: Racibórz, Poland] and had his hand in other commercial ventures made finding information about him easier than it would have been for a less prominent individual.
Thanks to the assistance of readers, friends, and distant relatives, over the last few months I’ve acquired primary source documents that shed light on the activities of a few of my earliest Bruck relatives from Silesia (Figure 1) when it was a part of Prussia before Germany became a unified state in 1871. Primary source documents including contemporary registers of vital events, such as births, marriages, and deaths; records certifying these occurrences; contemporary handbooks and address directories; and concurrent historical accounts or diaries, are my “gold standard” for verifying the age and context of ancestral events. While these records are not infallible, they come as close as possible to confirming the timing of vital events.
In this post, I will discuss some evidentiary materials that my dear friend Peter Albrecht von Preußen and others have unearthed related to my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863). (Figure 2) Samuel is thought to be the original owner of the family establishment in Ratibor, Prussia [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel (Figure 3), believed to have been purchased in around 1850. However, a recently uncovered memoir penned by Eberhard Friedrich Bruck (1877-1960), one of Samuel’s grandnephews, currently being translated by his granddaughter, Helen Winter née Renshaw (b. 1948), now suggests Samuel’s father, Jacob Bruck (1770-1836), may originally have conceived the idea of building the hotel. As we speak, I am trying to run to ground other primary source documents that can not only confirm which Bruck ancestor first owned the hotel but possibly when the hotel might have been constructed.
Before launching into the documents that Peter Albrecht (Figure 4) and others have found and what I learned about Samuel, I would like to share with readers something I discovered in the process. I mistakenly believed that because the Bruck’s Hotel was in Ratibor, relevant archival materials would be restricted to the “Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu,” that’s to say the “State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz.” Such is not the case. While I’ve assuredly found records about the Bruck’s Hotel in Racibórz’s archives, thanks to one of my readers I recently learned about and obtained archival materials related to the hotel from the State Archives in Wrocław, Branch in Kamieniec Ząbkowicki [formerly Kamenz, Prussia]. These latter materials will be the subject of a future post as they speak to the subject of the last days of my family’s ownership of the hotel in 1926-1927. My point to readers is that even if your family originates from one specific town in Silesia, you should keep an open mind as to which archives you search for ancestral information.
Because Peter’s surname is contained within the name of the former family establishment in Ratibor, Bruck’s Hotel “Prinz von Preußen,” and the fact that both of our families have deep ties to Silesia, caused Peter to take an interest in finding Bruck-related documents. Among other things, his discoveries shed light on my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck’s business activities.
Materials uncovered about Samuel Bruck provide a cautionary tale of the lens through which primary source documents should be examined. Just because historical files are related to an individual with the same name as one’s ancestor does not guarantee they are relevant, particularly if the surname is reasonably common in a geographic area.
In the online extracts of files archived at the Archiwum Państwowe w Opolu, State Archives in Opole [formerly Oppeln, Prussia], Peter found the following two files related to a Samuel Bruck from the former Prussian town of Zülz [today: Biała, informally Biała Prudnicka, Poland]:
“Die letzwillige Bestimmung des Breltesten und Handelsmannes Samuel Bruck Zülz: 1820-1835” (Figure 5)
(“The last will and testament of the brethren and merchant Samuel Bruck Zülz: 1820-1835”)
“Die gerichtliche Annahme und Niederlegung das von dem Kaufmann Samuel Bruck am 13 Januar 1832 verschlossen übergebene Testaments: 1832-1839” (Figure 6)
(“The judicial acceptance and filing of the will handed over by the merchant Samuel Bruck on 13 January 1832 in sealed form: 1832-1839”)
Though the wills relate to a Samuel Bruck who filed testaments in the town of Zülz [today: Biała, informally Biała Prudnicka, Poland], this alone was not enough to convince me they related to someone other than my ancestor. As I just mentioned, I’ve found documents on the Bruck’s Hotel in Ratibor in archives other than Racibórz. For geographic reference, Opole is roughly 26 miles north-northeast of Biała. (Figure 7)
Let me briefly digress. Readers cannot fail to notice that the two wills filed with the court in Zülz date from when Samuel Bruck, born in 1808, would respectively have been only 12 and 24 years of age. However unlikely writing wills at such a young age might appear to us, I try and imagine how different things might have been almost 200 years ago. I considered the possibility that Samuel had been extremely precocious and might have felt obligated to write a will as improbable as this seems.
Persuaded both files might relate to my ancestor, I ordered them. (Figures 8-9) Upon their arrival, I asked my fourth cousin Thomas Koch if he could help me make sense of the 39 pages of records I’d been sent; Thomas is the great-great-grandnephew of Samuel Bruck, thus he has an interest in the Bruck’s Hotel and Samuel Bruck.
There were some immediate clues the wills from Zülz related to someone other than my Samuel Bruck. The Samuel Bruck in question was apparently the owner of a local pawnshop and an ironmonger (i.e., a dealer in iron and hardware), as well as a money lender, trades I’ve never heard associated with the Samuel Bruck from Ratibor. The Zülz wills also refer to Samuel as a parish or community elder, terms unlikely to have been applied to a 12 or 24-year old person. For the most part, the files document what court officials said, the actions of Samuel Bruck, and the fees to be paid by Samuel. Something notably absent that would affirmatively have allowed me to determine the testator are named heirs, none of whom are identified.
Convinced the Samuel Bruck from Zülz, though likely related to my Bruck family from Ratibor (Biała and Racibórz are only about 38 miles apart (Figure 10)) in some unknown way, was not the former owner of the Bruck’s Hotel, I investigated other possibilities. I examined the Church of Latter-Day Saints Family Historic Center Microfilm 1271493 for Zülz, and discovered a Samuel Bruck born there on the 10th of September 1761. (Figure 11) It seems likely this Samuel Bruck is the person whose 1820 and 1832 wills were filed locally.
One document, however, that unequivocally relates to the Samuel Bruck from Zülz is a notice about a bankruptcy auction that took place on the 23rd of June 1837 in Zülz (Figures 12a-b), presumably following this Samuel Bruck’s death in 1836 or 1837. The reason for this certainty is that this Samuel Bruck is identified in the notice as a “Eisenhändlert,” an iron trader, just as his wills identify him. According to Peter, while it is unusual for the estate of a deceased person to wind up in bankruptcy, this is possible when there are no heirs and/or no will. We know two testaments existed, so likely there were no heirs.
There is another document in my possession that should have clued me in to the fact that Samuel Bruck from Zülz was not my great-great-grandfather. In connection with his research, my retired lawyer friend from Racibórz, Paul Newerla, who has written extensively about Ratibor and Silesia found a historic publication from 1820 about the grand opening of the Royal Evangelical High School in Ratibor on the 2nd of June 1819. (Figures 13a-c) It lists the names of the enrolled students, including both Samuel Bruck and his younger brother, Jonas Bruck (1813-1883). It is more reasonable to surmise that at the age of 11, Samuel Bruck would have been in school in Ratibor rather than writing wills.
Samuel Bruck is listed in an 1843 merchant member book, entitled “Grosses Adressbuch der Kaufleute, Fabrikanten und handelnden Gewerbsleute von Europa und der hauptplazen der fremden Weltheile: Brandenburg, Preussen, Posen, Pommern, Schlesien,” “Large address book of the merchants, manufacturers, and trading professionals from Europe and the main square of the foreign world salvation: Brandenburg, Prussia, Posen, Pomerania, Silesia.” (Figures 14a-b) Interestingly, 1843 corresponds with the year that a city map of Ratibor shows the location where the Bruck’s Hotel once stood having a building on the lot. (Paul Newerla, personal communication) Samuel Bruck’s listing in the 1843 merchant member guide, however, may or may not have anything to do with his ownership of the Hotel “Prinz von Preußen” at this time. Samuel is known to have been involved in other businesses.
As a related aside, Ratibor was once a walled city. It was not until 1828 that the Oder gate, the tower nearest where the Bruck’s Hotel was eventually built, was demolished; the removal of this gate made it possible to extend Oderstraße, the street on which the Bruck’s Hotel stood (Paul Newerla, personal communication). It’s safe to assume that it was only after 1828 that the Hotel “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel could have been built.
As readers can generally make out from the photo of the hotel (see Figure 3), it was a reasonably large building known to have had 32 guest rooms. How long the hotel took to build, who paid for the construction, and the date of the grand opening are yet unknown. Whether I will be able to work out the answers to these questions is a big unknown.
The famous Austrian composer, Johann Strauss II, is known to have performed twice at the Hotel “Prinz von Preußen” once on the 17th of October 1850, then again, a month later, on the 17th of November 1850. Neither advertisement makes mention of the “Bruck’s Hotel,” only “Prinz von Preußen.” Possibly at the time Samuel Bruck did not yet own the hotel.
By the middle of 1852, Samuel Bruck assuredly owned the establishment because he signed a contract on the 14th of October 1852 permitting the so-called Liedertafel to hold meetings in the hotel’s ballroom beginning in January 1853. (Figures 15a-c) Page 20 (Figure 15c) mentions the “Hotelbesitzer Bruck,” that’s to say, the hotel owner Bruck. This citation occurs in a 1909 publication, entitled “Festschrift zum 75 jährigen Jubelfest der Liedertafel,” “The commemorative publication for the 75th anniversary of the Liedertafel,” in Ratibor. It was released on the 25th and 26th of September 1909 in conjunction with the unveiling of the Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorf monument in Ratibor. (Figure 15d)
The Liedertafel translates literally to “song board.” It was a co-ed musical society or amateur choir, which in the case of the Ratibor group consisted of about 88 members. They met in the large ballroom of the Bruck’s Hotel every Thursday and Friday evening for an à la carte dinner with plenty of alcohol, followed by a sing-along to music played by a pianist, often accompanied by a bassist, cellist, and violinist. Their contract with the hotel suggests Samuel Bruck was a well-regarded and integrated member of the community.
Another mundane document tracked down by Peter Albrecht shows that Samuel Bruck was allowed to operate as an inn keeper by the police after obtaining fire insurance for the hotel through a company in Stettin [today Szczecin, Poland] called “Pommerania.” (Figure 16) Although the announcement published in Oppeln, Prussia [today: Opole, Poland] on the 4th of March 1856 makes no specific mention of fire insurance, to secure police permission to operate the inn, it is implicit that fire insurance was obtained.
An advertisement Samuel Bruck posted in April 1858 indicates that he was involved in more than running an inn and being a lumber wholesaler. According to this ad he also sold lump lime (Figure 17):
Von meinem in Moerau gelegenen Kalkoefen verkaufe ich besten Stueckkalk, den Waggon von 33 Tonnen mit 27 Rthlr. (Reichstahler) frei hier. Gefaellige Auftraege werden prompt und bestens ausgefuehrt.
Ratibor, im April 1858
S. Bruck
im Hotel “Prinz von Preußen”
Translated:
Lime Ad
From my lime kiln located in Moerau I am selling the best lump lime, the wagon of 33 tons with 27 Rthlr. (Reichstahler) free here. Appropriate orders are executed promptly and in the best possible way.
Ratibor, April 1858
S. Bruck
in the hotel “Prince of Prussia”
Let me offer a few comments about this ad. The spelling of many place names in Prussia changed between 1890 and 1900, so “Moerau” became known as “Mohrau,” (Figure 18) and is now known as Morów, Poland. It is about 57 miles northwest of Racibórz. (Figure 19)
From 1855 onwards, a Prussian ton was equivalent to 200 kilos or almost 441 pounds. Thirty-three Prussian tons was equivalent to 6,600 kilos, 6.6 metric tons, or 14,551 pounds. Presumably this was the maximum weight an ox cart could handle.
Samuel Bruck passed away in July 1863. In June 1864, an official notice was placed in the Ratibor paper stating that Samuel Bruck’s handelsgesellschaft, holding company, which had been inherited by Samuel’s seven children, was ceded by the co-heirs to Samuel’s oldest child, Oskar Bruck, making him the sole owner of the S. Bruck Handelsgesellschaft. (Figure 20)
Bei der sub Nr. 69 unseres Firmen-Register fūr den Kaufmann Samuel Bruck eingetragen Firma S. Bruck ist zufolge Verfügung vom 2ten Juni 1864 der Vermerk:
Die Firma ist durch Erbgang auf die Geschwister Oskar, Fedor, Jenny, Emilie, Julius, Helene und Wilhelm Bruck übergangen und die Miterben haben dieselbe dem Kaufmann Oskar Bruck abgetreten, und sub Nr. 189 unseres Firmen-Registers der Kaufmann Oskar Bruck hierselbst als Inhaber der hiesigen Firma S. Bruck zufolge Verfügung von dem selben Tage eingetragen worden.
Ratibor, den 2. Juni 1864
Königliches Kreisgericht, 1. Abtheilung
Translation:
Announcement
According to the decree of June 2, 1864, the company S. Bruck, registered under No. 69 of our register of companies for the merchant Samuel Bruck, is marked:
The company has passed by inheritance to the siblings Oskar, Fedor, Jenny, Emilie, Julius, Helene and Wilhelm Bruck and the co-heirs have ceded the same to the merchant Oskar Bruck, and sub No. 189 of our company register the merchant Oskar Bruck has been registered here as the owner of the local company S. Bruck according to the decree of the same day.
Ratibor, June 2, 1864
Royal District Court, 1st Department
We learn a few unexciting things from this announcement. First, Oskar Bruck was a kaufmann, a merchant, which would have required a four-year apprenticeship. Had I not already known the names of Samuel’s children, this announcement would have provided this information. Samuel Bruck’s Handelsgesellschaft was registered as Number 69 in the District Court, while Oskar Bruck’s Handelsgesellschaft is registered as Number 189. As we speak, I’m trying to determine whether these files still exist in the Racibórz archives.
The final document related to Samuel Bruck involves a landmark Prussian case that his eldest son Oskar Bruck got involved in following his father’s death. The case is discussed at length in a book on Prussian case law published in 1867, entitled “Central-Organ fur die deutsche handels- und Wechselrecht,” “Central Organ for German Commercial and Exchange Law.” (Figure 21)
While the following will be of limited interest to most readers, let me briefly outline and summarize the salient points of this very involved case for readers.
In addition to being an inn owner, Samuel Bruck was a lumber wholesaler, and may have made his money here which enabled him to construct and/or purchase the Bruck’s Hotel. Shortly before his death in 1863, Samuel entered into a contract with a Dutch merchant, David Schwedter, agreeing to sell him 260 pieces of 4” x 4” structural lumber, possibly the equivalent of four ox carts of finished product. The Dutchman lived in the vicinity of Berlin, and had requested Samuel deliver the milled lumber there, which he’d agreed to.
Following Samuel’s death, Oskar Bruck acted on an interim basis on behalf of the the S. Bruck Handelsgesselchaft, which the probate court only officially granted him authority to do in his own name on the 2nd of June 1864 (see Figure 20). Regardless, following his father’s death, he notified Schwedter by mail that the transaction would go forward as planned and that he would run the S. Bruck Handelsgesselchaft.
Either Samuel before his death or Oskar contracted with an agent named Atzpodim who had a warehouse in Brieskow (Figure 22), near Frankfurt an der Oder. Schwedter had agree that Atzpodim would be the pickup point for the lumber. Oskar Bruck shipped the lumber to Atzpodim who acknowledged receipt of the materials. Oskar then notified Schwedter the lumber was ready for pickup at Atzpodim’s warehouse, and invoiced him, as agreed upon.
Three or four days later, Schwedter filed for bankruptcy. Atzpodim had not yet shipped the lumber to Stramer for reasons that are not entirely clear, although possibly Atzpodim through word-of-mouth had learned of Schwedter’s financial woes and sought to protect the young Oskar Bruck. I surmise Atzpodim had been one of Samuel’s trusted business associates over the years.
At this point, the trustee for the Bankruptcy Court in Frankfurt an der Oder sued Atzpodim for release of the lumber. Had the lumber already been delivered, the Bankruptcy Court would have carried it on their books and could then have sold it at a bankruptcy auction; Oskar, as creditor, would have been paid pennies on the dollar. Atzpodim, by not delivering the lumber to Stramer, saved Oskar from a steep financial loss.
Prussian law dealt with merchandise in bankruptcy proceedings where the debtor had taken possession of the merchandise three days or less before the debtor filed for bankruptcy and had paid not in cash but with credit.
In the case at hand, Atzpodim didn’t receive instructions from Oskar Bruck until the 26th of November 1863. Schwedter filed for bankruptcy on the 30th of November 1863. The Supreme Court in Berlin upheld the lower court’s ruling that the lumber shipment fell under the 3-day rule. If the lumber had been delivered to Schwedter, which it obviously wasn’t, he would have been required to return it because he hadn’t paid in cash but by credit, with a so-called Wechsel.
Let me say a few brief words about a Wechsel. According to German law, even today, transactions based on Wechsels can only be transacted by full merchants, meaning those who have completed a 4-year apprenticeship and received a kaufmann’s certificate. Upon certification, the kaufmann is registered either as a sole proprietor or as a Handelsgesellschaft, a trading company, like those Samuel and Oskar Bruck had recorded, in the Handelsregister, commercial register, of the city where the business is licensed.
The Wechsel allows the parties to do several things. It can be used as collateral for a bank loan. It can also be used as a futures contract; thus, with a Wechsel in hand, Schwedter could have sold the lumber at a higher price for a profit. Similarly, Samuel or Oskar could have sold his obligation to produce the lumber to a different sawmill (other than the one they originally contracted with) or another lumber merchant for a profit.
In closing, let me say a few things. The specifics of the information contained in some of the primary source documents cited above are less important than the fact they still exist. For researchers seeking comparable information about their ancestors who may have owned or operated businesses, an awareness that such documents may still exist can be useful. Often, it’s a question of knowing where to look and what to ask for. On a personal level, the fact that my family was involved in a legal case that was deemed of sufficient importance to merit inclusion in a book about Prussian commercial and trade law is fascinating.
Cobbling together one’s family history invites a clichéd comparison to the saying that “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Note: In this post, I discuss the fate of the hotel my family owned for three generations in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland]. Largely intact following the cessation of hostilities after WWII, it appears to have been demolished for a combination of reasons, including geopolitical ones and the Soviet Union’s desire to remove historical traces of German connections to Silesia.
Regular readers know I periodically revisit topics or people I’ve talked about to amplify new findings. Since the process of learning rarely follows a linear path, one is often left to reevaluate previous findings or conclusions considering more recently uncovered evidence.
The family establishment in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz Von Preußen” Hotel, was owned for what I estimate are roughly three generations, from the early 1850s to around the mid-1920s. (Figures 1-2) A historic police file found at the “State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz” indicates the business was sold in around 1926, and subsequently went through a series of owners. (Figure 3)
I thought I had previously laid to rest the issue of why the building does not stand today. It would be reasonable to assume the structure was destroyed during World War II, by Allied bombing of the city prior to its capture or in the waning days of the war when the Soviets encircled and seized the city. However, a post-WWII photo given to me by a curator at the Muzeum w Raciborzu proves the structure was largely intact possibly apart from the roof; the photo, while of high resolution, is taken at too great a distance to ascertain how badly the roof was damaged. (Figure 4)
Realizing the Bruck’s “Prinz Von Preußen” Hotel, which oddly retained its name throughout its existence despite its Jewish origins, outlasted the cataclysmic events of WWII, I sought another explanation for why it might not have survived. This was provided, so I thought, by Mr. Paul Newerla (Figure 5), my friend from Racibórz, a retired lawyer who now researches and writes extensively about the history of Silesia and Ratibor. Paul sent me a copy of a letter he found in the Racibórz Archives dated the 27th of March 1950 from the so-called Racibórz Municipal Board to the Municipal National Council in Racibórz (Figure 6); in essence, the letter states that damaged buildings in the town had been evaluated for their “historic character” and found lacking, so that parts of or all a structure could be dismantled to provide 5,000,000 bricks needed for the reconstruction of Warsaw.
Indicative of the method used to clear burned and destroyed houses and buildings in Racibórz, Paul found another letter dated the 12th of January 1948 sent from the Konservator of the Voivodeship, essentially the province, to the Technical Department of Racibórz’s Municipal Department. (Figure 7) The province was reminding the Municipal Board that the use of explosives to clear these damaged structures in the vicinity of historic edifices such as the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Racibórz was prohibited. It is safe to assume that explosives were similarly used to take down the Bruck’s Hotel.
Why the city of Racibórz would have agreed to or recommended the dismantling of perfectly functional structures like the former family hotel probably requiring only minor reconstruction at a time when housing was likely in short supply seems to defy logic. Paul jumped to my assistance to explain broader geopolitical factors that apparently dictated why the former family establishment was torn down. I will attempt to explain this to readers.
The address for the Bruck’s “Prinz Von Preußen” Hotel was Oderstraße 16 (Figure 8); the hotel was located on an east-west street that terminated along the west bank of the Oder River [Polish: Odra]. (Figure 9) The historic walled city of Ratibor lay along the west side of the Oder River, as does much of the current central part of Racibórz. The location of the hotel along the west side of the Oder River is significant, as I will demonstrate. Spoiler alert. The destruction of the Bruck’s Hotel may be partially related to the anticipated location of the German-Polish frontier following the end of WWII.
The subject of Poland’s western frontier was brought up by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin as early as late 1943 at the Tehrān Conference; this was a meeting between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin held in Tehrān between November 28–December 1, 1943. The chief discussion centered on the opening of a “second front” in western Europe. Stalin agreed to an eastern offensive to coincide with the forthcoming Western Front. On the Polish question, the western Allies and the Soviet Union were at sharp odds. While the Americans were not interested in discussing any border changes during the Tehrān Conference, Roosevelt agreed in principle that Poland’s western border should be extended west to the Oder River.
At the Yalta Conference, during the second of the Big Three conferences between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin held in February 1945, American and British officials agreed on the basics of Poland’s future borders. In the east, the British agreed to the Curzon line, the proposed demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and the Soviet Union, two new states emerging after World War I; this line was first proposed in 1919. The British acknowledged that the Americans might push for Lwów, current-day Lviv in western Ukraine, to be included in post-war Poland. It was generally agreed that Poland should receive part of East Prussia, Danzig, the eastern part of Pomerania, and Upper Silesia; for reference Ratibor, present-day Racibórz, was in Upper Silesia.
In terms of this blog post, the following observation in Wikipedia is relevant: “With respect to Poland’s western frontiers, Stalin noted that the Polish Prime Minister in exile, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, had been pleased when Stalin had told him Poland would be granted Stettin/Szczecin and the German territories east of the Western Neisse [River]. Yalta was the first time the Soviets openly declared support for a German-Polish frontier on the Western as opposed to the Eastern Neisse. Churchill objected to the Western Neisse frontier, saying ‘it would be a pity to stuff the Polish goose so full of German food that it got indigestion.’ He added that many Germans would be shocked if such large numbers of Germans were driven out of these areas, to which Stalin responded that ‘many Germans’ had ‘already fled before the Red Army.’” The question of Poland’s western border was ultimately left to be decided at the Potsdam Conference.
Let me digress briefly to give readers a sense of geography regarding the whereabouts of the Western and Eastern Neisse Rivers in relationship to the location of Racibórz. The Neisse River, in Polish Nysa, is two rivers in present-day southwestern Poland. The better-known Nysa Łużycka, or Lusatian Neisse, is the more westerly and longer of the two rivers running 157 miles or 252 km; the Nysa Kłodzka, or Glatzer Leisse or Neisse of the city of Kłodzko (Glatz), is the shorter is 113 miles or 182 km and lies entirely within Poland. Both rivers rise in the Sudeten Mountains, flow northward, and empty into the Oder River. (Figure 10) Near the village of Ratzdorf, the Lusatian Neisse discharges into the Oder River.
Görlitz, located on the more westerly Lusatian Neisse River, is the easternmost town in Germany (easternmost village is Zentendorf), and lies opposite the Polish town of Zgorzelec. Görlitz is slightly less than 200 miles west-northwest of Racibórz (Figure 11), while Kłodzko along the Eastern Neisse is only about 90 miles to the west-northwest of Racibórz. (Figure 12)
As readers can easily discern for themselves, the Soviet proposal to establish Poland’s western frontier along either the Western Neisse or Eastern Neisse would have resulted and did ultimately result in considerably more land being included within Poland. However, at the time of the Yalta Conference, the precise location of Poland’s western border was still an open question. The western Allies accepted in general that the Oder River into which both the eastern and western Neisse rivers emptied would be the western border of Poland in that area. Still in doubt at the time was whether the border would follow the eastern or western Neisse. The western Allies sought to place the border on the eastern Neisse closer to Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland]. Suggestions of a border on the Bóbr River (Bober) were also supposedly rejected by the Soviets.
At the latitude at which Racibórz is located, the eastern and western Neisse are situated much further to the west of the Oder River. In none of the materials I’ve read have I seen any mention that the Allies were seriously considering establishing the border between Germany and Poland along the Oder at this latitude; as mentioned above, the discussion always revolved around establishing the western frontier along the Neisse rivers or conceivably along the Bober River. (see Figure 10) While this may be true, as far as the local authorities in Racibórz may have been concerned, there may have been sufficient uncertainty as to where the final frontier would be established. Thus, to hedge their bets, the Communist authorities may have decided to dismantle the Bruck’s Hotel and salvage the bricks fearing it would remain on the German side of the border.
A recent citation sent to me by Paul Newerla sheds additional light on how the Bruck’s Hotel was destroyed. On page 69 of a book entitled in Polish “Od Joannitow Do Ratownikow–Czyli Dzieje Strazakow Ziemi Raciborskiej,” translated roughly as “From the Joanites to the rescuers or the history of firefighters of the Racibórz Land,” there is an eyewitness account by a former firefighter who worked for the fire brigade in Racibórz. (Figures 13a-c)
“One day (it was 1945, without further date) the fire brigade was alerted and ordered to the fire of the Hotel Bruck on the corner of Oderstraße and Bollwerkstraße (now Reymonta-Straße). The hotel was in unusually good condition after the war. When the firefighters appeared with their firefighting trailer in front of the burning hotel, they met Russian soldiers equipped with weapons. They refused to have the hotel deleted [sic]. The Polish administration was also powerless. So the beautiful hotel burned.”
It would appear, based on this account, that perhaps an evening of drunken debauchery by occupying Russian soldiers “accidentally” led to the Bruck’s Hotel being set on fire and to the establishment’s ultimate destruction; clearly, the soldiers had no interest in seeing the fire extinguished when the firefighters showed up. Depending on the intensity of the fire, it’s likely the bricks would still have been usable and likely salvaged.
Time and again through history, we have seen foreign invaders attempting to destroy traces of earlier history and culture in places they occupy, to rewrite the past, so to speak. The Nazis sought to eradicate Jewish culture. Currently, we are witnessing in the Ukraine Russians plundering museums in places like Kherson and Mariupol, because, above all, according to Putin’s propaganda, “Ukraine as a country doesn’t exist, it’s part of Russia—so they can grab anything they want.” Thus, like today, it’s probable the orders to wipe out evidence of earlier cultures in Racibórz following WWII were coming from someone high in the Kremlin, likely Stalin himself. Later, during the Communist Era, the headstones in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor were removed and sold off because again, after all, Jews were never considered a part of the cultural fabric of the city.
In closing, let me make a few observations about the frontier between Germany and Poland, and the territorial losses that both suffered because of WWII. The Potsdam Agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union concluded on the 2nd of August 1945, in anticipation of a final peace treaty, placed the German territories east of the Oder-Neisse line under Polish administration. All Germans remaining in the old and new Poland, it was decided, should be expelled. The Oder-Neisse line marked the border between the former East Germany and Poland from 1950 to 1990. The then-two Communist governments agreed to the border in 1950, while then-West Germany, after a period of refusal, conceded with reservations in 1970. Notwithstanding West Germany’s misgivings about this frontier, with the reunification of Germany, they eventually agreed to it when the German-Polish Border Treaty was signed on the 14th of November 1990.
Ultimately, Poland for its loss to the Soviet Union of 72,000 sq. miles (187,000 sq. km.) of lands east of the Curzon line was compensated with 43,000 sq. miles (112,000 sq. km.) of former German territory. The final borders resulted in Germany’s loss to Poland of most of Silesia, half of Pomerania, the eastern portion of Brandenburg, a small part of Saxony, and part of East Prussia. The northern part of East Prussia, including Königsberg [today: Kaliningrad, Russia], was annexed by the Soviet Union, while Memelland became part of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, today Lithuania. (Figure 14)
Thus, while we may wish to believe frontiers and borders are immutable, as we’ve seen in just the past nine years since Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, they are ever-changing and much more fluid than we would expect.
REFERENCES
Dafoe, Taylor. “Before Retreating from Kherson, Russian Troops Emptied One of Ukraine’s Top Museum of Nearly 15,000 Objects.” Artnet News, 14 Nov. 2022, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/russian-troops-loot-kherson-museum-2209777
Geanous, Jacob. “Russian art curators have reportedly helped loot dozens of Ukraine museums.” New York Post, 4 Feb. 2023, https://flipboard.com/article/russian-art-curators-have-reportedly-helped-loot-dozens-of-ukraine-museums/f-1f12bf14a5%2Fnypost.com
Grutchot, Katarzyna (ed.) “Od Joannitow Do Ratownikow—Czyli Dzieje Strazakow Ziemi Raciborskiej.” (“From the Joanites to the rescuers or the history of firefighters of the Racibórz Land”). Nowiny Publishing House.
Note: In this brief post, I discuss how while researching the fate of my great-granduncle’s 14 or 15 children I learned about a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, who saved the lives of upwards of 6,000 Polish and Lithuanian Jews following the Nazi invasion of Poland and the beginning of WWII.
My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck (1834-1892) (Figure 1) and his wife Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924) (Figure 2), were the second-generation owners of the family hotel in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. (Figure 3) Fedor Bruck and his eight known siblings, born between 1831 and 1849, were the children of Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 4) and Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861) (Figure 5), seven of them believed to have lived into adulthood.
The oldest child was Oskar Bruck (1831-1892) married to Mathilde Bruck née Preiss (1839-1922) with whom she had, by my last count, 14 or 15 children born between 1859 and 1877. The sources of this information are two family trees (Figure 6); the Jewish birth register listings from the Church of Latter-day Saints Microfilm No. 1184449 for Ratibor, where most of the children are known to have been born; and ancestral information on MyHeritage. (The names of the children, their birth and death dates, and the sources of the data are summarized on a table at the end of this post). Aware that several of their children were born during the Kulturkampf, the conflict from 1872 to 1878 between the government of Prussia and the Roman Catholic Church, I even asked Paul Newerla, my historian friend from Racibórz, to check the civil birth records at the Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz”) for their children born during this period, to no avail.
Realizing that any of Oskar and Mathilde’s surviving great-grandchildren would be my third cousins, I recently tried to determine whether any of their children have living descendants to whom I would be related by blood. Surprisingly, after having conducted a thorough search, I have been unable to find a single living third cousin (i.e., my generation), second cousin once removed (i.e., previous generation), or third cousin once removed (younger generation) descended from any of those 14 or 15 children. I did not include any of Oskar and Mathilde’s children’s spouses where the divorced or surviving spouse remarried and had children who would not be blood relatives. I have tentatively been able to track one of their children, Dr. Erich Bruck (b. 1865) to, of all places, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, and am currently scrounging more information to hopefully bring an intriguing future post to regular readers. The youngest daughter Emma Naumann née Bruck (1877-1942) and her husband Ernst Naumann (1877-1942) were both murdered in Theresienstadt, but otherwise all their other children are believed to have died of natural causes.
What is surprising to me given the enormous collection of family photos I own or that have been shared with me by different branches of my family is that I have not a single photo of my great-granduncle or great-grandaunt nor any of their children. I’m hoping that a reader of this post may recognize an ancestral connection and contact me so I may learn more about this offshoot of my family.
Continuing. As often happens when I embark on searches of remote ancestors is that I make unexpected discoveries, such as the one which forms the basis for this brief Blog post. And truth be told this fortuitous finding is much more significant than unearthing another distant cousin. As an aside, I would never pretend that my ancestors are any more interesting or accomplished than those of readers. In writing about my predecessors, I am more interested in describing the too often tragic social and historic context in which they led their lives to see what lessons and modern-day parallels can be drawn. As Shakespeare wrote in “The Tempest,” “what’s past is prologue.” In other words, history sets the context for the present.
As mentioned above, the table below summarizes the birth and death dates, where known, of Oskar and Mathilde’s children. One of their daughters, Charlotte Bruck (1866-1909) married a man named Rudolf Falk (1857-1912) with whom she had one daughter, Käthe Falk. This is the only one of Oskar and Mathilde’s descendants I’ll directly discuss, one of their granddaughters.
Through the documents I found on ancestry.com, Käthe Falk had already caught my attention. Her first husband was Wilhelm Sinasohn (b. 1880-d. unknown), and her second husband was Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn (1888-1967); I assumed her husbands were related to one another. A January 1925 notation in the upper righthand corner of Käthe and Wilhelm’s 1911 marriage certificate (Figures 7a-c) indicates they were divorced on the 29th of November 1924; Käthe got remarried on the 11th of February 1926 (Figures 8a-c) to Erhard Sinasohn, who I would later learn was her first husband’s cousin. Inasmuch as I can determine, Käthe had two sons, Robert Nast and Werner Rudolf Nast (in America, Warren Roger Nast) with her first husband, and none by her second; Nast was the maiden name of their paternal grandmother.
A continuing search on ancestry.com yielded an astonishing document for both Käthe (Figure 9) and her husband (Figure 10), simply a cover sheet entitled “in the Lithuania, Jews Saved by Passports from the Japanese Diplomat Chiune Sugihara, 1940”; the page showed both were Luxembourgers, and that each had been issued a visa dated the 31st of July 1940 signed by a Japanese consul. Having never heard of Chiune Sugihara, I scurried to learn about him.
Chiune Sugihara (Figure 11), I would find out, was a Japanese diplomat who during WWII helped Jews living in Lithuania leave, including Jews who had made their way there after the war began. Let me provide some brief historic context. WWII began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. This caused hundreds of thousands of Jews and other Polish citizens to flee eastward ahead of the advancing German troops; many displaced persons found at least temporary safety in Lithuania. Once there, however, their options for escape were limited and required diplomatic visas to cross international borders. One route involved traveling through Asia, but it required a combination of permits issued by acquiescent foreign envoys trying to address the refugee crisis. However, it required declaring a final destination, with the Dutch Caribbean Island of Curaçao being suggested.
One diplomat willing to help Jews was the Japanese Imperial Consul Chiune Sugihara, the first Japanese diplomat posted to Lithuania. Absent any clear instructions from his government, Sugihara took it upon himself to issue 10-day transit visas to Japan to hundreds of Jewish refugees supposedly possessing destination visas for Curaçao. By the time he received a reply from his own government, he’d already issued 1800 visas. The Foreign Ministry in Japan told him then that individuals to whom he’d issued these visas were really headed to Canada and the United States but had arrived in Japan without money or final destination visas.
Sugihara acknowledged to his superiors he’d issued visas to people who’d not completed all the necessary arrangements for destination visas but explained that Japan was the only transit country available for people going in the direction of the United States and Canada, and that Japanese visas were required to leave the Soviet Union. Despite orders from his government to desist, Sugihara continued issuing visas, even going so far as to sign his name on blank stamped sheets, hoping the rest could be filled in; he was apparently still passing out the visas as he boarded the train for Berlin where he’d been reassigned. At the end of August 1940, the Soviets shuttered all diplomatic consulates, including the Japanese mission, but by then, Sugihara had managed to save thousands of Jews in just a few weeks. For his humanitarian efforts in 1984 Yad Vashem awarded him the title of “Righteous Among the Nations.”
Many of the Jews who managed to escape through Lithuania were either Jewish residents from there or Jews from Poland. Sugihara is estimated to have helped more than 6,000 Jewish refugees escape to Japanese territory. And among those to whom Sugihara issued visas are the granddaughter of Oskar and Mathilde Bruck and her husband. Among the pertinent documents I found on ancestry.com was a “Manifest of Alien Passengers” for the “SS President Taft” with Käthe and Erhard Sinasohn’s names showing they arrived with one of her sons, Werner Rudolf Nast, in San Francisco from Kobe, Japan on the 8th of February 1941 (Figures 12a-b), slightly more than six months after receiving their visas signed by Chiune Sugihara. Coincidentally, following their escape from Europe and their arrival in the United States, Käthe and Erhard settled in Forest Hills, Queens, the neighborhood adjacent Kew Gardens, Queens, where I was raised.
One final fitting note about this valorous Japanese diplomat. On his tombstone is engraved his first name, “Chiune,” the Japanese word which just so happens to translate into “a thousand new lives.”
VITAL STATISTICS FOR OSKAR & MATHILDE BRUCK AND THEIR CHILDREN
NAME
(relationship)
VITAL EVENT
DATE
PLACE
SOURCE OF DATA
Oskar Bruck (self)
Birth
8 October 1831
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Marriage
29 October 1858
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (marriages)
Death
6 April 1892
Berlin, Germany
Berlin, Germany death certificate
Mathilde Preiss
(wife)
Birth
20 October 1839
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Marriage
29 October 1858
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (marriages)
Death
23 February 1922
Berlin, Germany
Standesamt Berlin XI, Berlin, Germany death certificate
Richard Bruck (son)
Birth
17 August 1859
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Death
Unknown
Georg Bruck (son)
Birth
21 July 1860
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Death
2 April 1937
Berlin, Germany
Berlin, Germany death certificate
Carl Bruck (son)
Birth
10 May 1862
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Death
Unknown
Samuel Bruck (son)
Birth
17 July 1863
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Death
Unknown
Franz Samuel Bruck (son)
Birth
28 September 1864
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Death
19 February 1924
Berlin, Germany
Landesarchiv Berlin, Standesamt Charlottenburg I, Sterberegister, 1921-1931
Erich Bruck (son)
Birth
31 August 1865
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Death
Unknown
Argentina ??
Charlotte Bruck (daughter)
Birth
18 September 1866
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Death
7 December 1909
Berlin, Germany
Charlottenburg I, Berlin, Germany death certificate
Margaretha Bruck (daughter)
Birth
19 October 1868
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Death
18 February 1900
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Frankfurt, Germany death certificate
Gertrud Bruck (daughter)
Birth
9 June 1870
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Death
26 July 1871
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)-notation of death on birth register
Anna Bruck (daughter)
Birth
4 July 1870
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Note: This post is about my great-uncle Robert Samuel Bruck, one of the younger brothers of my grandfather Felix Bruck; he died at sixteen years of age. Not surprisingly, little is known about him, though mention on one family tree suggests he suffered from a mental disability.
My paternal grandfather, Felix Bruck (1864-1927) (Figure 1), whom I never knew, had seven siblings. These were the eight children of my great-grandparents, Fedor Bruck (1834-1892) (Figure 2) and Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924). (Figure 3) Because my father almost never spoke about his family, I was able to figure out all the names only after scrolling through one of the Church of Latter-day Saints (LDS) Jewish Microfilms (LDS Microfilm Roll 1184449) for the town where all were born, Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]. Here I found the birth register listings for my grandfather and only six of his seven siblings. I knew of the seventh because my father used to refer to her somewhat derisively in French as “la Communiste,” because she was a high-ranking member of East Germany’s post-WWII Communist government. In time I came to learn her name was Elisabeth “Elsbeth” Bruck. (Figure 4)
Because of events surrounding what is called the Kulturkampf, vital records such as births, marriages, and deaths, that used to be maintained and recorded by the various religious denominations, came to be registered as civil events. The Kulturkampf was a conflict that took place from 1872 to 1878 (dates vary) between the government of the Kingdom of Prussia led by Otto von Bismarck and the Roman Catholic Church led by Pope Pius IX. The main issues were clerical control of education and ecclesiastical appointments. Because of the Kulturkampf Elsbeth Bruck’s birth which occurred in 1874 was entered into the civil records and found at the Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz”) rather than among the Jewish vital records. (Figure 5)
Regardless, after discovering the names of my grandfather’s siblings, naturally, I became curious what had happened to them. I quickly learned that in addition to my grandfather, five of his siblings had survived to adulthood, and been productive or accomplished members of society. The two siblings whose fate I was initially unable to uncover were Elise Bruck (born 1868) and Robert Samuel Bruck (born 1871). (Figure 6) Then, as I discussed in Post 44, I uncovered a family tree in the “Pinkus Family Collection,” archived and available online through the Leo Baeck Institute, that provided the death dates for these two ancestors. (Figure 7) Elise Bruck died at less than four years of age of unknown causes, while Robert Samuel Bruck died in Braunschweig, Germany, otherwise known as Brunswick, Germany, in 1887, also for untold reasons.
Following publication of Post 44, my friend Peter Hanke (Figure 8) offered to help me learn more about Robert Samuel Bruck. I affectionately dub Peter the “Wizard of Wolfsburg” because of his genealogical prowess and the fact he once worked at the VW headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany. In reading Post 44, Peter noticed that Robert had passed away in Braunschweig (Brunswick), which just so happens to be only 20 miles southwest of Wolfsburg near where he lives. (Figure 9) By contrast, Braunschweig is 444 miles west-northwest of Ratibor, (Figure 10) where Robert was born. It is a persistent mystery why Robert died so far from home. Naturally, I accepted Peter’s gracious offer to learn what might have happened to Robert; given that he was a teenager when he prematurely died, I thought he might have suffered an accident while serving as an apprentice in some unknown specialty.
Peter submitted an inquiry to the Staatsarchiv Wolfenbüttel, the State Archive in Wolfenbüttel, eight miles south of Braunschweig (Brunswick), which forwarded the request to the Stadtarchiv Braunschweig, the City Archive in Braunschweig. Ultimately, despite Peter’s efforts, the archive was unable to uncover any evidence that Robert either lived or died in Braunschweig. Thus, without Robert’s death certificate his cause of death remains a mystery.
Naturally, I assumed this would be the last I would learn of my distant ancestor. And this is mostly true. However, among the personal papers from my esteemed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), given to me by Dr, Tilo Wahl, which I discussed in Post 99, is another family tree. Amazingly, in capitalized letters is written “ROBERT IDIOT.” (Figure 11) Setting aside the obviously inappropriately crass and vulgar reference to a person with a disability, it strongly implies Robert suffered a mental or possibly physical impairment that dramatically shortened his life. What this may have been remains unknown. Also, why he wound up in Braunschweig can only be guessed at, but possibly he was sent to a sanatorium there for medical treatment of a chronic illness.
Given the many accomplished and interesting characters that populate my family tree, I feel compelled at times to remember the less fortunate ones who were unable to lead normal lives or achieve greatness. Which naturally gives rise to questions of one’s mortality or the reason we’re born. So perhaps this post says more about me than it does about Robert Samuel Bruck?
BIRTH & DEATH DATES FOR FEDOR & FRIEDERIKE BRUCK’S EIGHT CHILDREN
Note: This post tiers off the previous one where I discussed a Hermann Berliner with links to Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], like my identically named great-grandfather; Ratibor is where my father was born and where many of my Jewish Silesian ancestors hail from. In trying to initially determine whether I was dealing with the same person, I accessed the Mormon Church’s online Jewish microfilm records found at familysearch.org to work out the solution. This post, thus, allows me to provide readers with a brief guide on how to access these records, as well as point out that even among primary source documents, which for me are the “gold standard,” errors can be found.
Genealogists today have the advantage of being able to access online from the comfort of home many microfilm records from towns across the globe that once could only be ordered, paid for, and have mailed to a local Mormon Family History Library. These microfilms can be accessed for free by registering and creating a personal account at “familysearch.org.” (Figure 1)
I will walk readers through the simple steps for retrieving these digital records, using Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] as an example, the town in Upper Silesia where my father and many of his relatives were born and/or lived. After readers have created their free ancestry account, they should go to the portal page for “familysearch.org.” On the pulldown menu under “Search,” readers should select “Catalog” (Figure 2) which will take them to a page entitled “FamilySearch Catalog.” (Figure 3) Under “Place,” readers should type the name of the town they are seeking records from. In my case, I typed in Ratibor, although if I type in the current Polish name of the town, “Racibórz,” the results on the next screen will be slightly different. My suggestion, at least when researching towns formerly in Germany, is to type the former German town name as well as the current Polish town name; a simple Google search will give you the name of towns over time.
The “Catalog Print List” enumerates the records available for the town you have selected. For Ratibor, I was interested in “Jewish Records,” which yields “Matrikel, 1814-1940,” birth, marriage, and death registers for Ratibor from between 1814 and 1940. (Figure 4) A few things should be noted. First, the “Matrikel” are simply registers maintained by the Jewish synagogues. Second, they do not give you access to the underlying birth, marriage, and death certificates, assuming these still exist. Third, the “Matrikel” are not a complete register of all Jewish births, marriage, and deaths between 1814 and 1940. Because of the “Kulturkampf,” discussed in Post 12, after the early 1870’s, most birth, marriages, and deaths were no longer registered by religious denominations in Germany but were recorded as civil events. Oddly, the names of Jews who died following the “Kulturkampf” and were interred in the former Jewish cemetery in Ratibor or elsewhere in Germany are registered both in the Jewish microfilm records as well as in the civil ledgers.
Selecting “Matrikel, 1814-1940” yields a list of available digital films, in the case of Ratibor, LDS microfilms 1184447, 1184448, and 1184449. (Figure 5) On the far right, readers should see a camera icon on which they should click to be taken to the digital film. If a microfilm reel icon or key shows up above the camera icon, the microfilm is not generally available online and can only be viewed at the Mormon Family History Library in Salt Lake City.
I first accessed the microfilms for Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] almost 40 years ago on a visit to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Years later, I would order and pay for these films to be sent to a local Mormon Family History Library, so I could leisurely examine and take notes on them. I created a table summarizing what I had found on births, deaths, and marriages for members of my extended family. However, given that the registers were handwritten in German and often indecipherable, my log was incomplete. Only more recently have I made the effort to have a German relative or friend translate previously unreadable words or phrases. This is considerably easier since individual microfilm pages can now easily be downloaded from the Mormon Church’s website for closer study. (Figure 6) Thus, I am constantly refining and learning new things from these microfilm, as I will illustrate below.
My maternal great-grandfather Hermann Berliner (1840-1910) is known to me through a single picture I have of him. (Figure 7) He was married to Olga Berliner née Braun (1852-1920), and the two were interred together in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor. Together they had three children, my grandmother Else Bruck née Berliner (1873-1957), her older sister Margareth Braun née Berliner (1872-1942), who was murdered in the Holocaust, and a younger brother Alfred Max Berliner (1875-1921), who died young in Ratibor.
The Hermann Berliner who was the subject of Post 92 had a son, Ernst Berliner, born in 1878, which initially confused me into thinking my great-grandfather sired another child with a different woman, Sara Riesenfeld, although I eventually concluded they were two different Hermann Berliners. My great-grandfather was a “brauereimeister,” a master brewer (Figure 8), and likely inherited the brewery business from his father-in-law, Markus Braun, while the “other” Hermann Berliner was a Bank Director.
The birth register for Ratibor records the occupation or profession of the father. Even though I consider these registers primary source documents, my “gold standard” so to speak, they are not error-free. Consider the birth register listing for my grandmother Else Berliner. Her father is misidentified as a “maurermeister,” a master mason (Figure 9), when I know him to have been a master brewer. My German friend offered a possible explanation for this error. Upon my grandmother’s birth, her father’s profession may have been conveyed verbally, and the recorder may have misunderstood or incorrectly recorded what was said.
I discussed in Post 92 the process I followed in determining I was dealing with two different Hermann Berliners. Throughout the remainder of this post, I will focus on my great-grandfather, and how I figured out who his parents were. While this information was always in hand, it was only recently that a German friend translated a few key words that enabled me to understand what I had in hand.
Ratibor LDS microfilm roll 1184448 contains the death register for my great-grandfather Hermann Berliner, his wife and son, and his parents. The column headers and titles from the death register are italicized in German and translated in the table below; included is the information for Hermann (Figure 10) and his wife, Olga Berliner (Figure 11); Hermann’s father, Abraham Berliner (Figure 12); Hermann’s mother, Philippine Berliner (Figure 13); and Hermann’s son, Alfred Berliner (Figure 14):
A few comments on the table above. Part of my difficulty in recognizing Hermann Berliner’s parents is that his forename was not recorded in the death register. Instead, he was identified as “Stadtrath Berliner,” City Councilor Berliner, clearly a prominent citizen of Ratibor. “Frau Bruck,” that is to say “Else Bruck,” was my grandmother. Finally, because the relationship of the witnesses to the deceased was identified in the last column, I was eventually able to work out all their names and, in the case of wives, figure out their maiden names.
From the death register, I know that Hermann and Olga Berliner, and their son Alfred Berliner all died and were interred in Ratibor. In the case of Hermann’s parents, however, I learned his father Abraham Berliner was buried in Neisse (Figure 12), Germany [today: Nysa, Poland] and his mother Philippine Berliner was interred in Leobschütz, Germany [today: Głubczyce, Poland]. (Figure 13) Consequently, I next turned my attention to the LDS microfilm rolls, respectively, for Neisse and Leobschütz to see if I could learn anything more about Hermann’s parents.
LDS microfilm 1184444 includes the Jewish deaths in Neisse, Germany for the period when Abraham Berliner died. Given that Abraham died in Ratibor, supposedly in 1868, I had no reason to think his death was also registered in Neisse, yet it was. The only Abraham Berliner listed in the Neisse index of deaths died on the 21st of June 1858 (Figure 15), NOT in 1868 as LDS Microfilm Roll 1184448 indicates. Given the precise death date in the Neisse register, I am inclined to believe 1858 is the correct year of Abraham’s death and this is in fact Hermann Berliner’s father. Readers may wonder why the Neisse death register is typed rather than handwritten. Occasionally, original registers are degraded so that for the data to be preserved, the original information must be transcribed.
In 2018, when I visited the archives in Ratibor for the third time, where the civil birth, marriage, and death records are stored from the time of the “Kulturkampf,” I found Hermann Berliner’s death certificate. (Figure 16) This not only confirmed his death date, but also showed where he was born in 1840, the town of Zülz, Germany [today: Biała Prudnicka, Poland]. So, along with Neisse and Leobschütz, this provided yet a third venue to search for microfilms. (Figure 17)
Hermann’s death certificate also gives his mother’s maiden name, Philippine Glogauer. As previously noted, she was buried in Leobschütz, Germany [today: Głubczyce, Poland]. Like her husband, Abraham Berliner, whose death was recorded in both Ratibor and Neisse, Philippine Berliner’s death was registered in both Ratibor and Leobschütz. Unlike vital records from Ratibor, some from Leobschütz have been digitized and are available on ancestry.com; I was able to find Philippine Berliner’s death certificate here. (Figure 17) Suffice it to say, her death certificate “pushes” Hermann Berliner’s lineage back yet another generation, naming his father-in-law as Isaac Glogauer. Philippine’s death certificate shows that like her husband and son she too was born in Zülz, Germany [today: Biała Prudnicka, Poland]. Family History Library Zülz Microfilm 1271493 registers births for all three of them, as well as the birth of one of Hermann Berliner’s younger siblings Julchen Berliner in 1842; Hermann Berliner had additional younger siblings, but they were born elsewhere in Silesia.
In closing, I would urge readers to focus not on the names of my family members whom I discuss but rather on the process of how I recovered data on their vital events, Readers may be able to follow a similar path to extract comparable information for their ancestors. As you do so, you too may discover that primary source documents are not without errors but that they may still be an improvement over vital data found in family trees developed by genealogists who copy and perpetuate inaccurate information.
VITAL STATISTICS FOR HERMANN BERLINER & HIS IMMEDIATE RELATIVES
NAME
(relationship)
VITAL EVENT
DATE
PLACE
SOURCE OF DATA
Hermann Berliner (self)
Birth
28 May 1840
Zülz, Germany [today: Biała Prudnicka, Poland]
Family History Library (FHL) Zülz Microfilm 1271493 (births)
(FIGURE 19)
Death
3 September 1910
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz death certificate (FIGURE 16); FHL Ratibor Microfilms 1184447 (burials) (FIGURE 20) & 1184448 (deaths) (FIGURE 10); tombstone from former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor
Olga Braun (wife)
Birth
23 July 1852
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Death
23 August 1920
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
FHL Ratibor Microfilms 1184447 (burials) (FIGURE 20) & 1184448 (deaths) (FIGURE 11); tombstone from former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor
Margareth Berliner (daughter)
Birth
19 March 1872
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Marriage (to Siegfried Brauer)
14 July 1891
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz marriage certificate
Death
24 November 1942
Theresienstadt Ghetto, Czechoslovakia
Yad Vashem Victims’ Database
Else Berliner (daughter)
Birth
3 March 1873
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births) (FIGURE 9)
Marriage (to Felix Bruck)
11 February 1894
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz marriage certificate
Death
18 February 1957
Manhattan, New York
New York, Hebrew Burial Records (HFBA), Silver Lake and Mount Richmond Cemeteries, 1899-1991
Alfred Max Berliner (son)
Birth
6 November 1875
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz marriage certificate; tombstone from former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor
Marriage (to Charlotte Rothe)
17 January 1909
Meseritz, Germany [today:
Międzyrzecz, Poland]
Meseritz, Germany marriage certificate from ancestry.com
Death
19 February 1921
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184448 (deaths); Ratibor death notice (FIGURE 21); tombstone from former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor
Note: In this post, I discuss a man named Ernst Berliner born in 1878 in Ratibor, Germany to a Hermann Berliner, coincidentally the same name as my great-grandfather. Initially I thought Ernst might be a previously unknown great-uncle, a younger brother of my grandmother, Else Brucknée Berliner.
This story started simply when I queried ancestry.com for the surname “Berliner.” This was my grandmother Else Bruck’s maiden name, who was born on the 3rd of March 1873 in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]. I knew her as a child growing up in New York City, although she died when I was only six years old. (Figure 1) Not surprisingly, she never spoke to me about her siblings and ancestors. Had she done so, I would not in any case have remembered since none of my relatives ever reinforced this knowledge.
My search yielded an intriguing result, the name “Ernst Berliner.” This was an unexpected discovery because according to ancestry.com he was born on the 7th of March 1878 in Ratibor, where many of my father’s family were born. Given my familiarity with Berliners living there at around this time, I was uncertain whether or how he might be related to my grandmother. While Ernst Berliner’s birth certificate was not available online, from the records I could locate, it showed he had lived in Frankfurt am Main before WWII; had been a Bank Director there prior to the war; emigrated to England; had his German nationality annulled following his departure from Germany (Figure 2) and was registered in England as a World War II Alien Internee upon his arrival there (Figure 3); was registered as a “German Persecutee” in 1950 (Figure 4); died in Willesden, Middlesex, England on the 15th of February 1956; and according to the “Index of Wills and Administration” from the National Probate Calendar had his estate administered on the 29th of May 1956. (Figure 5) He left his personal effects to a married woman named Barbara Friedlaender, a domestic helper. The England Death Register only shows that Ernst died in the first quarter of 1956 but provides specific information in which English register his death certificate can be found. (Figure 6)
With this data in hand, I turned to the United Kingdom’s (UK) General Register Office online database and ordered Ernst Berliner’s death record in April 2020. Previous UK death certificates I have ordered sometimes name the father, and I was hoping this would again be the case. During these Covid-19 times, it took more than three months for the official document to arrive. But, when it arrived, I realized it included negligible new information and named neither his father nor any next-of-kin. (Figure 7) The person who caused Ernst Berliner’s body to be cremated, identified as Erica Weiss, I later learned was someone who probably worked in his household as a domestic helper.
Realizing there was little to be learned from the “backend” of Ernst’s life, I turned my attention to obtaining his birth certificate. Given Ernst’s year of birth in 1878, I knew the record would be among the civil records found at “Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu,” State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz. I asked my historian friend from Racibórz, Poland, Mr. Paul Newerla, whether he could obtain a copy of Ernst Berliner’s birth certificate. Even though the State Archives is currently shuttered to the public on account of the Covid pandemic, Paul was able to contact their office and quickly obtain a copy of the document in question. (Figures 8a-b) The record identified Ernst’s father as Hermann Berliner, and, initially, I was stunned and excited by the discovery, thinking I had uncovered a previously unknown sibling of my grandmother. This would not have been unprecedented. In Post 34 and the postscripts, I discussed my grandmother’s older sister, Margareth “Grete” Brauer née Berliner, who I learned about from a single picture of her found among my cousin’s collection of family photographs (Figure 9); my great-aunt Grete Brauer was murdered in the Theresienstadt Ghetto on the 24th of November 1942 and was never mentioned to me growing up so I naturally assumed the same might have been true of a previously unknown great-uncle.
My grandmother was born in 1873, her older sister Grete in 1872, and her younger brother Alfred Max Berliner in 1875; the timing of Ernst’s birth in 1878 would not have been illogical. However, upon obtaining a translation of Ernst Berliner’s birth certificate, I discovered that his mother had not been my great-grandmother Olga Berliner née Braun but had instead been a Sara Riesenfeld.
I was next left to contemplate whether my great-grandfather Hermann Berliner (Figure 10) might have divorced his first wife and remarried this Sara. I swiftly concluded based on two pieces of evidence this was unlikely to have occurred. The Hermann Berliner who was married to Sara Riesenfeld was identified on their child’s birth certificate as a “hausierer,” an old-fashioned professional title meaning “street vendor,” or “door-to-door salesman.” I know that my great-grandfather was a “brauereimeister,” a master brewer, although I considered the possibility he might have changed professions after 1878. The more compelling evidence that I was looking at two different Hermann Berliners is that my great-grandparents Hermann and Olga were once interred together in the now destroyed Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor; I have a picture of their former headstone. (Figure 11)
Not entirely satisfied with the evidence I had mustered, I continued to look for further proof I was dealing with two different people by the same name. An 1889 Ratibor Address Book lists only one Hermann Berliner (Figure 12), so this was inconclusive.
I returned my attention to Ernst Berlin, and ultimately found in MyHeritage a “1939 Register of England and Wales,” with his name and the members of his household then residing in London. (Figure 13) His wife “Grete” (i.e., misidentified as “?Rete”) and her date of birth, 6th of June 1880 (i.e., she was actually born in July), were listed. I quickly discovered she was born in Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] as Grete Moskowicz. Like her husband and many other Jews, she had her German nationality annulled following her departure from Germany (Figure 14) and was registered in the United Kingdom as a World War II Alien Internee upon her arrival there. She died in London on the 7th of April 1940, and her probate hearing was held on the 25th of July 1940 (Figure 15); Ernst, shown to be a retired bank director, inherited. I have found no evidence that Ernst and Grete had any children.
I next turned my attention to family trees on ancestry.com and MyHeritage. With respect to these, I have often expressed my deep-seated concern that because these are not typically based on primary source documents, the data contained within them is often wrong. Compounding the problem is that genealogists developing their own trees often replicate errors from earlier trees. Still, I have begun to apply a principle I have learned from listening to an investment service to which I am subscribed that maintains the statistical data cited for stocks and companies may be “directionally correct but precisely wrong.” Applied to ancestral data, this means that while vital data of people included in trees may not always be precisely accurate, the relationship among the people may be correct.
Having had limited success finding additional information on Hermann Berliner, I turned my attention to his wife Sara Riesenfeld. Indirectly, I found a surprising amount of information on both in one family tree developed by a “Peter Lax,” confirming Ernst’s father was indeed a different Hermann Berliner than my great-grandfather (Figure 16); this tree identifies another of Hermann and Sara’s sons named Hans born on the 17th of February 1891 in Breslau. I also found the 1913 marriage certificate for a third son, Arthur Berliner, born on the 8th of September 1880, also in Breslau. (Figure 17a-b) According to Yad Vashem, both Arthur and Hans were murdered in the Shoah. There is quite a time span between the birth of Hermann and Sara Berliner’s three sons, 1878 to 1891, so the possibility of additional children exists. Still, based on the information in hand, it seems only Ernst survived the Holocaust.
Peter Lax’s tree, with more than 100,000 names in it, allows me to illustrate the point I was alluding to above that even the seemingly best documented trees contain errors. Case in point, Mr. Lax’s tree indicates Sara Riesenfeld was born on the 12th of January 1849 in Biała, Opolskie, Poland [formerly: Zülz, Germany], and identifies her father as “Israel Jacob Riesenfled (181601860).” (Figure 16) Consulting the Family History Library Microfilm Roll No. 1271493, found online at familysearch.org, with Jewish birth records from Zülz, Germany (Figure 18) for January of 1849, I could not initially locate Sara’s birth register listing. However, I eventually found her birth register listing under December of 1849. (Figure 19) Inadvertently, Peter Lax transposed “1/12/1849” (i.e., European designated date of 1st of December 1849) as “12/1/1849” (i.e., English designated date of the 12th of January 1849). This is another cautionary tale of consulting primary source documents where they exist to verify vital data.
One specific piece of information included in Peter Lax’s family tree was the purported place and date of birth of Ernst Berliner’s father, Hermann, on the 1st of June 1852 in Beuthen, Silesia [today: Bytom, Poland]. (Figure 20) I again turned to the Family History Library online microfilms to confirm this, and successfully found and had transcribed and translated Hermann Berliner’s birth register listing. (Figures 21a-b) Hermann’s birth register listing includes the names of his parents, Hirschel Berliner and Jalünder Rohel née Silbermann, both of whom I later found in the “Jewish Records Indexing-Poland” and “JewishGen Worldwide Burial Registry,” “JOWBR.” This allowed me to “push back” their ancestral tree another generation.
Having confirmed that Hermann Berliner, father of Ernst Berliner born on the 7th of March 1878 in Ratibor, was not my grandmother’s father prompted me to trace my great-grandfather’s lineage with reference to primary source documents. In the ensuing post, I will present this information. Regular readers know that without primary source documents in hand, I am most hesitant to accept ancestral and vital data found on other trees. Regarding my ancestral tree, I am much more interested in having well-sourced data and pictures on fewer people than unproven information going back multiple generations. While I assume there exists an ancestral connection between my grandmother Else Bruck née Berliner and Ernst Berliner and his ancestors, I have not yet ferreted out this relationship.
VITAL STATISTICS FOR ERNST BERLINER & HIS IMMEDIATE RELATIVES
NAME
(relationship)
VITAL EVENT
DATE
PLACE
SOURCE OF DATA
Ernst Berliner (self)
Birth
7 March 1878
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Ancestry.com;
State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz birth certificate
Death
25 February 1956
Willesden, Middlesex, England
UK “Index of Wills and Administration, National Probate Calendar”;
UK General Register Office death certificate
Grete Moskowicz (wife)
Birth
6 July 1880
Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland]
Multiple ancestry.com documents
Death
7 April 1940
Willesden, Middlesex, England
UK “Index of Wills and Administration, National Probate Calendar”
Hermann Berliner (father)
Birth
1 June 1852
Beuthen, Germany [today: Bytom, Poland]
Family History Library Microfilm Roll 1335074 (Beuthen, Germany)
Death
Kattowitz, Germany [today: Katowice, Poland]
Peter Lax Family Tree
Sara Riesenfeld (mother)
Birth
1 December 1849
Zülz, Germany [today: Biała, Poland]
Family History Library Microfilm Roll 1271493 (Zülz, Germany)
