Note: In this Blog post, I discuss how I inadvertently uncovered vital records information for several people in my family tree and talk about leaving open the possibility of discovering evidence of ancestors whose traces appear negligible.
Related Posts:
Post 39: An Imperfect Analogy: Family Trees and Dendrochronology
Post 40: Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger, One of Germany’s Silent Heroes
In the prologue to my family history blog, which I initiated in April 2017, I conceded there are some ancestral searches which are bound to end up unresolved during my lifetime. While I never actually close the book on these forensic investigations, I place them on a back-burner in the unlikely event I discover something new or make a new connection. This Blog post delves into one recent find that opened the door to learning more about several close ancestors whom I’d essentially given up hope of unearthing anything new.
Given my single-minded focus over the last two years on writing stories for my family history blog, I’ve woefully neglected updating my family tree which resides on ancestry.com. An opportunity recently presented itself to piggy-back on a friend’s membership to ancestry and review the hundreds of “leaves” associated with the roughly 500+ people in my tree. Typically, at the top of the list of ancestry clues are links to other family trees that may include the same people as found in one’s own tree. While I systematically review these member trees, I only “import” new ancestral information if source documents are attached to the member trees and I can confirm the reliability of the details; I may occasionally make exceptions if trees or tree managers have been trusted sources of information in the past, and/or I otherwise can confirm the origins of the data. Over the years I’ve seen multiple trees replicate the same erroneous information, and this is a path I choose to avoid.
The family ancestral information I happened upon came from a family tree I discussed in Blog Post 39, entitled “Schlesische Jüdische Familien,” “Silesian Jewish Families.” Regular readers may recall this tree has an astronomical 52,000+ names in it, so it should come as no surprise that it is often the source of overlapping or new information for individuals found in my own modest-sized tree. That said, I still apply the same rigorous principles in assessing the information found in this larger tree. I rarely take anything at face-value when it comes to vital records (e.g., births, baptisms, marriages, deaths) given the multiple reasons, often inadvertent or negligent, why data may be incorrect or divergent (e.g., illegible or unintelligible writing on source documents; transcription errors). With these caveats in mind, however, I came across some vital record information on the Silesian Families tree that seemed credible given the specificity of birth and death dates for a few individuals in my tree. The information related to my great-great-uncle Josef Mockrauer’s first wife, Esther Ernestine Lißner, and their son, Gerhard Mockrauer; while I’d previously found Gerhard’s birth certificate mentioning his parents, I had never found precise birth and death dates for Ernestine or Gerhard, so this was particularly intriguing.
Having previously established contact with the manager of the “Schlesische Jüdische Familien” family tree, a very helpful German lady by the name of Ms. Elke Kehrmann, I again reached out to her. I acknowledged that remembering the source of data for 52,000+ people is unrealistic but thought I should still ask. Initially, Ms. Kehrmann could only recall the information came from a manuscript prepared by an American Holocaust survivor who’d wanted to memorialize his lineage; with numerous computer upgrades over the years, Elke expressed the likelihood the document was digitally irretrievable. Disappointed, but not surprised, I was prepared to accept the vital records information at face-value.
Then, much to my delight, a day later Elke told me she’d located the source document from a larger collection entitled the “Pinkus Family Collection 1500s-1994, (bulk 1725-1994).” (Figure 1) It was too large to email, but she opined I might be able to locate it on the Internet, and, sure enough, I immediately learned the collection is archived at The Leo Baeck Institute—New York/Berlin (LBI) and can be downloaded for free. For readers unfamiliar with this institute, according to their website, “LBI is devoted to the history of German-speaking Jews. Its 80,000-volume library and extensive archival and art collections represent the most significant repository of primary source material and scholarship on the Jewish communities of Central Europe over the past five centuries.”
The Pinkus Family Collection is enormous. From the “Biographical Note” to the collection, I learned the Pinkus family were textile manufacturers. Their factory, located in Neustadt, Upper Silesia [today: Prudnik, Poland], was one of the largest producers of fine linens in the world. Joseph Pinkus became a partner in the firm S. Fränkel when he married Auguste Fränkel, the daughter of the owner. Their son Max Pinkus (1857-1934) was director until 1926. Subsequently, Max Pinkus’s son Hans Pinkus (1891-1977) managed the family company from 1926-1938 until he was forced out after the company’s total aryanization in the wake of Kristallnacht. Both Max and Hans Pinkus were very active in civic and cultural affairs and interested in local history; they amassed a large library of books by Silesian authors. In their spare time, they devoted themselves to genealogical research, the basis of the family collection archived at LBI. Hans Pinkus left Germany at the end of 1938, emigrated to the United Kingdom with his family in 1939, and died in Britain in 1977.
In reviewing the index to the collection, I had no idea where to begin. Fortunately, Elke came to my rescue and pointed me to “Series VII” (Figure 1), described as encompassing not just close Pinkus family relations but the broader array of families in Upper Silesia. Within this series I located pages related to my family, although, unlike other portions of the collection, ancestral information is recorded in longhand, in Sütterlin, no less. Even so, I was able to decipher most of the numerical data, and enlisted one of my German cousins to translate the longhand.
Here is where I discovered the source of the birth and death dates for my great-great-uncle Josef Mockrauer’s first wife, Esther Ernestine Lißner, and their son, Gerhard Mockrauer. A summary of vital information for Josef Mockrauer, his two wives, and their children follows:
| NAME | EVENT | DATE | PLACE |
| Josef Mockrauer
(Figures 2, 3a-b, 4a-b) |
Birth | 18 June 1845 | Leschnitz, Oberschlesien, Germany [today: Leśnica, Poland] |
| Death | 9 February 1895 | Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany | |
| Esther Ernestine Mockrauer, née Lißner (Josef’s first wife) | Birth | 30 October 1854 | Dresden, Saxony, Germany |
| Death | 24 May 1934 | Berlin, Germany | |
| Marriage | Unknown | Unknown | |
| Elly Landsberg, née Mockrauer
(Figure 5) |
Birth | 14 August 1873 | Berlin, Germany |
| Death | 15 May 1944 | Auschwitz, Poland | |
| Gerhard Mockrauer
(Figure 6) |
Birth | 25 January 1875 | Berlin, Germany |
| Death | 21 September 1886 | Freienwalde, Märkisch-Oderland district, Brandenburg, Germany | |
| George Mockrauer (Ernestine’s out-of-wedlock child)
(Figure 7) |
Birth | 16 April 1884 | Dresden, Saxony, Germany |
| Death | Unknown | Unknown | |
| Charlotte Mockrauer, née Bruck (Josef’s second wife)
(Figure 8) |
Birth | 8 December 1865 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] |
| Death | 1965 | Stockholm, Sweden | |
| Marriage | 18 March 1888 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | |
| Franz Josef Mockrauer
(Figure 9) |
Birth | 10 August 1889 | Berlin, Germany |
| Death | 7 July 1962 | Stockholm, Sweden |
I made other surprising discoveries in the Pinkus Collection. Briefly, some context. The second-generation owners of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preussen” Hotel in Ratibor were my great-grandparents, Fedor Bruck (Figure 10) and Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer. (Figure 11) As the table below shows, Fedor and Friederike Bruck had eight children, only six of whom I’d previously been able to track from birth to death; Elise and Robert remained wraiths whose existence I knew about but assumed had died at birth, a not uncommon fate in the 19th century. This was not, in fact, what happened. Elise lived to almost age 4, and Robert to age 16. While Elise expectedly died in Ratibor, mystifyingly, Robert died on December 30, 1887 in Braunschweig, Germany, more than 450 miles from Ratibor. Why here is unclear. Their causes of death are a mystery, though childhood diseases a real possibility.
| NAME | EVENT | DATE | PLACE |
| Felix Bruck
(Figure 12) |
Birth | 28 March 1864 | Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland) |
| Death | 23 June 1927 | Berlin, Germany | |
| Charlotte Mockrauer, née Bruck
(Figure 8) |
Birth | 8 December 1865 | Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland) |
| Death | 1965 | Stockholm, Sweden | |
| Franziska Bruck
(Figure 13) |
Birth | 29 December 1866 | Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland) |
| Death | 2 January 1942 | Berlin, Germany | |
| Elise Bruck | Birth | 20 August 1868 | Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland) |
| Death | 19 June 1872 | Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland) | |
| Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck
(Figure 14) |
Birth | 22 March 1870
|
Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland) |
| Death | 15 January 1949 | Nice, France | |
| Robert Bruck | Birth | 1 December 1871 | Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland) |
| Death | 30 December 1887 | Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, Germany | |
| Wilhelm Bruck
(Figure 15) |
Birth | 24 October 1872 | Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland) |
| Death | 29 April 1952 | Barcelona, Spain | |
| Elsbeth Bruck
(Figure 16) |
Birth | 17 November 1874 | Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland) |
| Death | 20 February 1970 | Berlin, Germany |
With respect to the tables above, I don’t expect readers to do anything more than glance at them; for me, they’re a quick reference as to what I know and where it came from, a form of metadata, if you will. The italicized information in the tables was new to me and originated from the Pinkus Collection.
As a related aside, Friederike Mockrauer and Josef Mockrauer were siblings. Interestingly, Josef Mockrauer would go on to eventually marry one of his sister’s daughters, his niece, my great-aunt Charlotte Bruck. Incestuous, I would agree.
Remarkably, on the very same page where I discovered Elise and Robert’s dates and places of death, I found my father and his three siblings listed! (Figure 17) Inasmuch as I can tell, the detailed family information was recorded by either Max (Max died in 1934) or Hans Pinkus around the early- to mid-1930’s, at which time my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, would have been a dentist in Tiegenhof in the Free State of Danzig, and this is precisely what is noted: “Zahnarzt im Tiegenhof (Freistaat Danzig)”; “Freistaat Danzig” was the official name of this former part of the Deutsches Reich after World War I.
Tracking down the Pinkus Collection with its relevant family history is admittedly noteworthy, but the real service was rendered by Max and Hans Pinkus. Their detailed compilation of ancestral data from related Silesian families was gathered while running a full-time business and in the days before genealogical information was digitized, when most of the painstaking work had to be undertaken manually through time-consuming letter-writing, and perhaps occasional phone calls and family gatherings. So, while I take obvious pleasure in having discovered the Pinkus Collection, I acknowledge the true forensic genealogists for amassing this valuable trove of family history.
Let me conclude by emphasizing that well-done family trees to which ancestry.com leads genealogists can often be the source of valuable forensic clues but should be closely scrutinized and delved into to before accepting the data prima facie. And, finally, I have no idea how many “cold cases” I can eventually solve but the challenge is what motivates me.
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