Leipzig is one of the oldest trading cities in the world and its Trade Fair (Germ. Leipziger Messe) is one of the oldest Trade Fairs in the world. Leipzig was at the crossroads of two important trade routes: Via Regia […]
Case Study: Tracing a German Refugee, Rosa Katz Adler
In February 1939, Rosa Katz Adler wrote to to Mrs. Herbert H. Lehman, wife of the New York Governor. She was desperate for assistance in bringing her young daughter Lotte to the United States. Rosa’s letter is one of hundreds […]
Tracing German-Jewish Ancestry to the 17th Century — And Much Earlier, by Arthur Obermayer [AB-057]
With the help of Y-DNA analysis, fortuitous acquaintanceship with an extraordinary researcher and the use of some relatively unknown sources, I have traced my Obermayer family history unequivocally to 1655 and, with less certainty, even earlier than that — a […]
The Obermayers: A History of a Jewish Family in Germany and America, 1618—2009, by Kenneth Libo and Michael Feldberg
The Obermayers: A History of a Jewish Family in Germany and America, 1618—2009, by Kenneth Libo and Michael Feldberg. The book contains histories and genealogies of the Obermayer, Lehmann, Sinsheimer, and Oberndoerfer families from Creglingen, Augsburg, Furth, and other towns […]
Genealogical Research and the Virtual Jewish Community in Germany Today
This article is adapted from a presentation at the IAJGS conference in Los Angeles, July 2010—Ed. Two Jewish communities are flourishing in Germany today, a real community and a virtual community. The real Jewish community consists of about 200,000 individuals, […]
Leading Genealogical Resource for Frankfurt am Main Jewry Now Online
Personal data about virtually every Jew buried in the once-important Jewish community of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, circa 1240 to 1900, is recorded in the German-language publication Ele Toldot (These are the generations) by the late Shlomo Ettlinger, a post-World […]
Resources to Find Any Location in the Austro-Hungarian Empire; Similar Resources for Imperial Russia and Imperial Germany
The three large 19th-century European empires—Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia—all collapsed either during, or as a result of, World War I. New countries and altered boundaries emerged, often with different names or different spellings of geographical locations. Fortunately, finding aids for […]
Nineteenth-Century Jewish Civil Records In Southern Germany
This article is adapted from a presentation at the IAJGS conference in Los Angeles, July 2010—Ed. Most Jewish genealogists researching their European ancestry eventually confront 19th-century civil records, but the variety of types and forms of such documents may be […]
Book Review: The Life of Glückel of Hameln, Written by Herself. Translated and edited by Beth-Zion Abrahams.
The Life of Glückel of Hameln, Written by Herself. Translated from the original Yiddish and edited by Beth-Zion Abrahams. New edition published in hardcover by the Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 2010. <www.jewishpub.org> If, as historian Jacob Shatzky once observed, catastrophe […]
Directories
This section will discuss four categories of directories whose contents can be useful for genealogical research: city directories, telephone directories, biographical directories, and professional directories. All of these valuable reference sources can be found in the United States and internationally. […]
Personal Journeys: The Isenberg Family Comes Alive
The year was 1970. One morning that summer, I was exiting, quite unexpectedly, the railway station in Hamburg, Germany. It was the last place I wanted to be. I had misread the train schedule, leading me to believe I could […]
Genealogical Sources for the Jews of Southern Germany During the Pre-Emancipation Period
Before 1806, southern Germany consisted of hundreds of independent territories of varying sizes. Some were owned and ruled by noble and princely families, others by bishops (and called bishoprics). The largest realms with a Jewish population were the Electoral Palatinate […]
Book Review: Posen Place Name Indexes: Identifying Place Names Using Alphabetical and Reverse Alphabetical Indexes, by Roger P. Minert
Posen Place Name Indexes: Identifying Place Names Using Alphabetical and Reverse Alphabetical Indexes, by Roger P. Minert, (Provo, UT: GRT Publications, 2004), 101 pp., soft-cover, ISBN 0-9716906-6-9. $9.95 from <www.grtpublications.com>. Note: Roger Meinert published a series of 23 books (and […]
Coming to America through Hamburg and Liverpool Part II: Crossing the Atlantic
In Part I of the saga, “Coming to America Through Hamburg and Liverpool,” in AVOTAYNU, Vol. XXII, No. 4, (Winter 2006), pp. 15–22, we tracked the six Boonin children across Europe to Hamburg, their crossing of the North Sea, their […]
German Passports Found in Shanghai
This article appeared initially in The Kosher Koala, newsletter of the Australian Jewish Genealogical Society, Inc., Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2008. It is reproduced with the permission of the author— Ed. Sitting at the computer, my wife, Rieke, knew […]
Book Review: Germanic Genealogy: A Guide to Worldwide Sources and Migration Patterns
Germanic Genealogy: A Guide to Worldwide Sources and Migration Patterns, by Edward R. Brandt, PhD, Mary Sutter Bellingham, Kent Cutkomp, et al. 3rd edition, St. Paul, MN: Germanic Genealogy Society, 2006, 658 pp., $49 plus shipping and handling. Brandt and […]
Book Review: History of the Jewish Community of Schneidemühl 1641 to the Holocaust
History of the Jewish Community of Schneidemühl 1641 to the Holocaust, by Peter Simonstein Cullman. Hardcover, 390 pages + x. Bergenfield, New Jersey: Avotaynu, 2007. The title of the book really says it all. Peter Cullman has meticulously studied five […]
Book Review: Bibliographie zur deutsch-jüdischen Familienforschung und zur neueren Regional- und Lokalgeschichte der Juden, by Angelika Ellmann-Krüger and Dietrich Ellmann
Bibliographie zur deutsch-jüdischen Familienforschung und zur neueren Regional- und Lokalgeschichte der Juden (Bibliography on German-Jewish family research and on the recent regional and local history of the Jews) by Angelika Ellmann-Krüger and Dietrich Ellmann, (Berlin: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006), ISBN 978-3-05447-8. […]
Posen Province Archival Holdings at the Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw
Edward David Luff describes his 2003 visit to the Archives and describes it holdings of genealogical interest.
The Feuchtwanger Stammbaum, by Susan Edels
The Feuchtwanger Stammbaum, by Susan Edels, is the family tree of the Feuchtwanger family from Fuerth, Bavaria, Germany, of Seligmann and Fanny Feuchtwanger and their 18 children. It includes information on the family from 1769 to 2009, plus some articles […]