On the 100^th anniversary of his appointment as the first Jewish Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Jewish Journal devoted four pages to the towering figure in American legal history, Louis D. Brandeis, recounting his unprecedented advocacy for free speech, the right to privacy, worker’s rights, federalism and Zionism. Generally, Brandeis’ biographers tend to credit Brandeis’ progressive views to his upbringing in Kentucky during the Civil War. As we approach the June 1st centennial of the US Senate confirmation of his appointment, we might ask what can more we learn by digging a bit deeper into his roots as the son of immigrants from Bohemia?

Louis Brandeis was born on November 13, 1856 in Louisville, Kentucky, the fourth child of Adolph Brandeis and Fredericka Dembitz. Adolph had been the first to arrive in America. Born May 13, 1822 in Prague as the sixth and youngest child, Adolph helped manage his father Simon’s cotton-print mill. The recession of 1845-47 led him to look for work in Hamburg, but as revolutions led by workers, students and nationalists broke out all over Europe in February 1848, Adolph returned to Prague, where typhoid fever kept him off the barricades.  Disillusioned by the failure of the revolution, Adolph set off for the United States, which so impressed him that he soon convinced his extended family, including his fiancé Fredericka, to follow him. On April 8, 1849, twenty-six members of the extended Brandeis family in Prague (including the Dembitz and Wehle families) set sail from Hamburg for the United States. They settled first in Cincinnati, where Adolph married Fredericka on September 8, 1849, but soon moved down the Ohio river to Madison, Indiana, before finally settling for good in Louisville in 1851.

The numerous family ties in Louis Brandeis’ immediate family can be quite confusing. Louis’ mother Fredericka Dembitz was born November 15, 1826 to Dr. Siegmund Dembitz of Bratislava and Franziska (Fanny) Wehle of Prague. It is perhaps easiest to see some of the relationships from the perspective of Louis’ maternal grandmother Fanny. In 1835, Fanny’s brother Moritz Wehle married Amalie Brandeis, the sister of Louis’ father Adolph Brandeis. In the 1840s, Fanny’s brother Gottlieb Wehle also moved into a building belonging to Louis’ paternal grandparents Simon Brandeis and Sara (Fürth) Brandeis. Fanny and her husband Siegmund lived in Prussia, where Siegmund practiced medicine, but the children returned frequently for extended periods in Prague. Fredericka met and fell in love with Adolph Brandeis on one of these visits, in 1845, when Adolph was working at his father Simon Brandeis’s cotton-stamp mill across the street from the home of Fredericka’s uncle Moritz Wehle.

The family relationships did not end with the marriage of Adolph and Fredericka in Cincinnati. On the same day, Adolph’s brother Dr. Samuel Brandeis married Charlotte Wehle, a first cousin of Fredericka’s who had been orphaned and raised by her uncle Gottlieb Wehle. In 1856, the year Louis was born, Fredericka’s first cousin Regine Wehle, a daughter of her uncle Gottlieb, married Dr. Joseph Goldmark. Goldmark, born 1819 in Krzyż Wielkopolski near Warsaw, studied medicine in Vienna and became a leader of the failed 1848 revolution. Fearing punishment for exercising political and free speech rights in Austria, he fled abroad, eventually coming to America. (Regine’s sister Ida Wehle later married Joseph’s half-brother Adolph Goldmark.)  In 1891, Joseph and Regine’s daughter Alice, born 1866, married Louis Brandeis.  Louis and his wife Alice were therefore second cousins. But they weren’t the only cousins to marry. Louis’ uncle Lewis Dembitz, the most Jewish-oriented member of the family, married his own first cousin Wilhelmine Wehle. Louis’ sister Amy married her mother’s first cousin Otto Wehle.

Three of Louis’ grandparents came from Jewish families that had lived in Prague for centuries. Their surnames were toponyms, reflecting the towns in Bohemia and Germany from which their ancestors came to Prague, since the Middle Ages a distinguished center for Jewish learning and culture, and the economic and political capital of Bohemia. The Jews of Prague had been forced to reside in a cramped and overcrowded ghetto across the river from the splendid Prague castle, today the largest and best preserved ancient castle in the world. Beginning with Emperor Joseph II’s Tolerance Edict of 1782, Jews were required to learn German and some (such as the three doctors in Louis’ family) were even able to attend university.  But special taxes and terrible marital and economic restrictions remained. From 1726, the Habsburgs had maintained a strict quota on the number of permitted Jewish families in Bohemia and Moravia. In practice this meant that often only the oldest son in the family could obtain permission to marry, and then only after the father had died. Other sons could marry only if they could afford to purchase a permit from a family with no male descendants. Jews were not permitted to change their residence and many professions were off limits. These restrictive laws were not lifted until after December 1848, when the 18-year-old Franz Joseph I succeeded his uncle Emperor Ferdinand.  By then, Louis’ father Adolph, with little hope of ever being able to marry his fiancé Friederike, or find a successful career, had left for America. He succeeded in convincing his family to follow him because even after 1848, many economic barriers remained. Jews did not obtain full civil rights in Bohemia until 1867.

Louis’ paternal grandfather Simon Brandeis (1785-1856) was the son of Solomon Brandeis (1758-1829) and Judith (daughter of Simon) Lowositz (1762-1832). Solomon was the son of Herschmann Brandeis (-1792) and Sara (daughter of Löb and Schöndel) Pribram (-1803). Herschmann was the son of Salkind Brandeis (-1758) and Sulamith (daughter of Hirsch) Harfner. Salkind was one of over 100 Jews named Brandeis who returned to Prague in 1749, after being expelled from the city by the extremely bigoted Austrian Empress Marie Theresa. The family had been living in Prague at least since the time of the Maharal of Prague, Rabbi Yehuda ben Betzalel Löw (-1609), whose daughter Gitel (-1635) married Rabbi Simon Brandeis (-1622).

Louis’ paternal grandmother Sara Fürth (1784-1867) was the daughter of Jonas Fürth (1764-1836) and Maria (daughter of Zacharias Mandelbum and Demuth (Fürth) Mandelbaum. Jonas was the son of Michael (1741-1791) and Rebekka (1733-1793) (daughter of Salomon Turnau) Fürth.

Louis’ maternal grandmother Fanny Wehle (1798-1840) was the daughter of Aron Beer Wehle (1750-1825) and Esther Fränkel (1772-1838). Aron Beer’s father Hersch (1723-1791) was the son of Rabbi Aron Beer Wehle (1675-1741), whose father Rabbi Meir Hersch Horschwitz (-1729) was the leader of Bohemian Jewry and died in of Volyně (Wehle). Esther’s parents were Issachar Bärman (1745-) and Esther (1747-) (daughter of Israel) Fränkel. Issachar’s father was Simon Aron Fränkel (1723-), son of Benjamin Wolf  Frankel and Rebekka (Spiro) Fränkel (-1762), each stemming from illustrious families tracing back to the 1500s in Prague, Vienna, Fürth, Eisenstadt, Frankfurt and Worms.

Louis’ family had one further distinguishing characteristic and that is that many of them had been followers of the false messiah Jacob Frank (1726-1791), a Polish religious leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of an earlier self-proclaimed messiah from Smyrna Sabbatai Zevi (1626-1676). Frank and his adherents adopted certain Christian customs and ultimately were baptized en masse, but Frank was nevertheless convicted by the Church of heresy and imprisoned for thirteen years, which only increased his fame as a martyr. Louis’ great-grandfather Aron Beer Wehle and his brother Jonas Beer Wehle were apparently the leaders of the Frankist movement in Prague, even though their grandfather Rabbi Aron Beer Wehle had been one of the signers of the cherem (censure) against Sabbatai Zevi. While the family remained ostensibly Jewish through the following generations, no doubt the lingering attachment to the Frankist movement and the feeling of alienation from the mainstream Jewish community contributed to the family’s decision to leave for America.

Although Louis Brandeis was born in Louisville, Kentucky, his jurisprudential interests were likely influenced by his family history in Europe. If one were to look for plausible familial sources for Louis Brandeis’ greatest achievements, then we might suspect that his interest in free speech, worker’s rights and federalism was guided by the revolutionary activities of his father-in-law Joseph Goldmark, as well as the sympathies of his father Adolph Brandeis. His interest in Zionism was apparently influenced by the Dembitz family, especially his uncle, the attorney Lewis Dembitz. Lastly, the concern for privacy might stem from the Frankist family secrets of the Wehle family.  The European Jewish seeds planted in American soil gave rise to this towering figure in modern legal history.