September 16, 1868 marked the maiden voyage of the SS Westphalia, a steamship built for the Hamburg America Line. The Westphalia was powered with one screw and two masts, to carry 90 first-class, 126 second-class, 650 third-class Zwischendeck (steerage) passengers and a crew of 103.

 

The Westphalia sailed from Hamburg, Germany, to Southampton, England and finally arrived at the Port of New York on September 28. The entire voyage took 12 days.  One of the steerage passengers on the Westphalia was Leopold Dreifuss, who described himself for the manifest as an 18-year-old laborer. Leopold who was not yet 18, traveled from the town of his birth, Altdorf, which was located in the Grand Duchy of Baden (today in Baden-Württemberg, Germany).  Two years later he would make another voyage on the Westphalia accompanied by a cousin. But in 1868 he traveled alone.

 

When young Leopold arrived in New York, there was no Ellis Island and construction for the Brooklyn Bridge had not yet begun. But Leopold had set his sights more westward than New York to a small Pennsylvania town called Danville.

 

By leaving Altdorf and choosing Pennsylvania as a new home, the young man followed an apparent pattern of many Baden Jews of the period, including several from his mother’s family. Examples were his cousin Isaac Wolf Bernheim and his uncle Henry Bernheim, who happened to live in Danville. For Leopold and his younger siblings, the need was underscored by the tragedies that hit his family four years earlier, when he was just 13. In addition to the genealogical breadcrumbs left by Leopold and others in his immediate family, it is useful to examine how the events of his migration fit against the historical backdrop of his homeland and Jewish heritage.

 

THE BADEN FAMILY HOME

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leopold was born on October 29, 1850 in a small rural village known as Altdorf, in the Southwestern region of what is today the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1850, there was no country known as Germany. It came into existence in 1871. The sovereign state to which Altdorf belonged was known as the Grand Duchy of Baden. Baden was one of thirty-nine largely autocratic independent states that inherited the territory of the former Holy Roman Empire.

 

Today, there are several towns known as Altdorf with the same name. Leopold’s Altdorf was a small village located in the central plain between the Upper Rhine River and the wooded mountainous region known as the Black Forest (Schwarzwald). Jews were first mentioned here in the 1570s, yet their presence was quite rare  until 1716, when Jews were expelled from the larger town of Ettenheim, which was nearby (today Altdorf is considered to be a suburb of Ettenheim). Even in 1752 only 16 Jewish families were recorded in tax records.

 

Jewish Emancipation and Altdorf

 

The number of Jews in Altdorf increased significantly after 1782 when the Austrian Emperor Joseph II issued the Edict of Toleration, which sparked what is often considered the beginning of Jewish Emancipation. It only applied to the Jews of the Hapsburg Empire (Austria), but in the years of the Enlightenment the effects of the Edict spread rapidly to other lands.  Within the next year, Moses Mendelssohn, the renowned German Jewish philosopher of Berlin published the first German translation of the Old Testament, which also brought German Jews in contact with German language and culture. German Jews up to that period spoke Yiddish primarily and were literate only in Hebrew.  By late September 1791, the National Assembly of France proclaimed the nearby Alsatian Jews, who were also Ashkenazim, to be full citizens of France. Baden issued their own version of the Edict of Toleration in 1809. While more restrictive than those liberties granted to Jews in France and the Hapsburg Empire, Baden Jews were permitted for the first time to deal in business with non-Jews, to learn many trades, establish their own schools and attend a University. However, true emancipation at the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century had not taken hold. Baden was one of the most liberal regions among the German nations, and yet the most progressive issues being debated had more to do with the political rights among Christians. In fact, the most progressive state politicians were fervently against Jewish emancipation.  For the Jews, Baden’s Edict of 1809, made the granting of communal and civil rights dependent on the individual Jew’s proving that he was engaged “in an accepted occupation.” For instance, the sedentary merchants, those who purchased agricultural produce, could acquire the right of residence; but the hawker, the cattle dealer, the moneylender or pawnshop owner was refused this privilege.

The Course of the Rhine River, showing the Black Forest to the East of the Upper Rhine.

 

In the years following the Edict of Toleration, even though Jewish poverty continued unabated, the number of Jews in Altdorf began to increase during these years.  There appeared however to be sufficient stability for Jews in the small village of Altdorf that they began to seek refuge there. For example, in a 1752 Heimburgerrechnung (an official accounting of community records) in Altdorf, which is printed in the Altdorf Ortssippenbuch only the following 16 Altdorf Jews are mentioned: Abraham Bickert, Schmaule Levi, Jacob Levi, Moisi Jeckle, Santel Israel, Laib Casen, Marx Weil, Moisis Elenbogen, Jacob Jeckle, Getz Israel, Wolf Israel, Meyer Israel, Schihi Laser, Lazarus Bluem‚ Meyer Gundelfinger and a “Jud in Gruningers Haus”. This lists appears only to contain men and perhaps male children. So an estimated population of Altdorf Jews might be from 20 to 40 in 1752. The number of Altdorf Jews attained a population of 313 in 1855. In 1861 the Jews of Altdorf opened their own Jewish school.

 

In this small rural community, they were able to make a living as traders, especially in livestock or as craftsmen. To prove that they were engaged in “an accepted occupation”, Jews were required to pay handsomely to become protected citizens or Schutzjuden (literally protected Jews), which granted them the freedom to reside in the town and conduct business trading livestock. The privilege was not always granted to the children of a Schutzjude.

 

There were several other rural villages with significant Jewish populations, which lied to the west of the black forest near Leopold’s village of Altdorf. Together they could share resources that Jews might lack in a single small rural town. Although all the towns had their own synagogue, they shared kosher butcher, a Jewish baker, a cemetery and a grammar school (Gymnasium). Within walking distance of Altdorf was the village of Schmieheim, where Leopold’s mother, Rosa Bernheim was born.   Schmieheim was the farthest to the east of all of the Jewish villages in the area with its back to the Black Forest mountains. The first documentation of Jews in Schmieheim was in 1624. Jews numbered 80 by 1747.  In 1812, a new synagogue was built in Schmieheim and it became the seat of the district rabbinate in 1827.  A Jewish elementary school was opened in the 1830s, numbering 120 students in 1855.

 

One of the largest towns near Altdorf and the town with which it was associated with in Leopold’s lifetime and today is Ettenheim. The Jewish community of Ettenheim dates back to the Middle Ages.  It was one of the few towns to the west of the Rhine that was under the control of the Bishopric of Strasbourg, a body of the Holy Roman Empire until 1803.  This is important because it demonstrates the influence from an area considered the capital of Alsace. 34 years before they were expelled, the Jewish community of Ettenheim created the cemetery in Schmieheim in 1682. The oldest gravestone dates from September 29, 1701. Since then, the Schmieheim cemetery became the resting place for the Jews of Altdorf, Ettenheim, Friesenheim, Kippenheim, Lahr, Nonnenweier, Orschweir and Rust. Today it still exists and is the largest such cemetery in southern Baden with an area of over 140.04 acres. …

 

LEOPOLD’S LIFE IN ALTDORF

 

It’s not easy to glean too much about Leopold’s life without making some assumptions from the history of the time. We know the date of his birth, the names of his siblings and his half siblings and something about his education.

 

JEWISH EMANCIPATION AND EMIGRATION

 

The history of prejudice against Jews in Europe began to lose some of its traction during the period of the Enlightenment in 18th century Europe. Yet there was a long, treacherous path ahead for the Jews before citizenship and equality were granted.  Even one of the founding philosophers of the Enlightenment, Voltaire wrote, “From (a) short summary of their history it results that the Hebrews have always been vagrants or robbers, or slaves, or seditious. They are still vagabonds upon the earth, abhorred by men….”

Emancipation of the Jews in Baden finally saw the light of day in February of 1849, when they were granted citizenship and later in 1862 when they were granted complete equality, including the basic right to freely move from one town to another.  Things were looking increasingly promising for the Jews of Germany in the early 1860s. History tells us that freedom was a promise that would not be fulfilled for another 85 years and only when most of the Jews were eliminated in Germany. However in 1862 it did open the gates for many Jews who choose to leave their ancestral villages and communities to seek opportunities in bigger towns and cities.

 

In 1910 Isaac Wolfe Bernheim reflected back on this period in his 1910 memoir6:

“All this happened in the years up to 1861, that memorable year in which the Jews in the Grand Duchy of Baden received their full civil liberties…My Co-religionists, for centuries half slave and half freeman, stepped quickly forth into the sunshine of freedom and wider activities.  They were now allowed to vote and hold office in their respective communities.  Cities and villages which had never extended the privilege of permanent residence to Jews opened wide their gates.  Schmieheim, which was congested with Jews, felt itself relieved of its surplus population as if by magic.  Many moved to the neighboring cities of Lahr, Offenburg, Haslach and Karlsruhe… It was in the fall of 1861 that we went to live in Freiburg.”

 

A Tale of Two Cousins

 

Isaac Bernheim, whose father was the oldest brother of Leopold’s mother, Rosa, grew up in nearby Schmieheim. Isaac moved with his family in Freiburg (also in Baden) in 1861. Two years older than his cousin Leopold, he was able to enjoy some of the new liberties afforded to him and took desk jobs first in Mannheim and then in Frankfurt beginning at age 16. Through these experiences he learned that even in the financial capital of Germany (Frankfurt) he would never have the opportunities that were available in America and immigrated there in 1867.

 

Isaac’s experiences paralleled those of several other of Leopold’s relatives, who chose to leave Altdorf after 1860 for other towns such as Karlsruhe and Kenzingen and even the United States. I. W. Bernheim’s life will become somewhat legendary in the U.S. and will be examined more later.

 

Leopold immigrated to the United States late in 1868 and was followed in the years to come by two brothers and a sister. But it appears to be for entirely different reasons that they came. Neither Leopold, his siblings nor his half-siblings relocated in the early 1860s. When he and he siblings immigrated there were other events that had touched their lives that probably had much more to do with it. To understand these events it would be important to first look at what is known of the Dreifuss family history and a little on where these early German records come from.

 

BADEN RECORDS, FAMILY HISTORY AND RECORD KEEPING

 

The age of the oldest surviving record limits just how far back in time we can search for our family records. And although the Nazis destroyed Jewish records, many vital records for the Jews of great historical value were not destroyed. The Nazis did destroy the records maintained for the Schmieheim cemetery and yet the cemetery stones are still standing along with the corresponding primary and secondary vital records, which can be compared with records preserved on the stones themselves.  In addition there are a variety of census and census-like lists that can be found for the Jews in Baden.

 

The Internet continually offers improved access to German records including those of Baden as available records are digitized, shared and indexed. One source of original German records from Baden are located at the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg.

There are also two books containing extremely valuable secondary data that are discussed here:

 

• Ortssippenbuch Altdorf Stadt Ettenheim, Ortenaukreis/Baden

• Memor-Buch Der jüdischen Friedhof in Schmieheim ,

 

Unfortunately neither of these is still published. The Ortsippenbuch (OSB) Altdorf contains secondary vital records of all Altdorf families compiled from several primary sources of archived records. For this reason, it is an extremely valuable resource. Although written in German, it is relatively easy to extract the most important information. There is a separate section for records of the Jewish population that were extracted from primary records of vital information recorded in Altdorf beginning in 1810 by a representative of the Jewish community, by a parish Priest after 1840, and later by a secular civil registration system. Since the Altdorf OSB was compiled from several primary sources of information, we therefore designate it as a secondary record. Most of the primary records can be found if necessary from the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg.

 

The Memor-Buch Der jüdischen Friedhof in Schmieheim is a compendium of all the graves in the Schmieheim cemetery with a photograph of each grave, their locations, information carved into the grave stones and combined with other records available to the author, such as the OSB from all the local towns.

 

So how old are the oldest surviving records of the Dreifuss family from Altdorf and other towns from Baden? Can they be traced back to an area before they settled in Altdorf? One of the most important parameters that limits answers to these questions and all Jewish Genealogical research for the majority of the Ashkenazi Jews is the adoption of surnames, which did not occur until the late 18th or early 19th century. So it is first useful to examine briefly Baden’s history so far as it affects keeping vital records of the Jews.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A map of the Southwestern Baden Plain West of the Rhine River with Altdorf (Ettenheim) and other towns with Jewish communities East of the Black Forest (Green region to the right).

 

It’s difficult to predict where Leopold’s ancestors came from before living in Altdorf. They may not have come very far since it’s generally believed that Jews had settled in the Rhine area of Germany since the fourth century, C.E. Generally historians and genealogists can deduce this information from vital records attributed to the name of the person of interest. However to be specific enough, the given name clearly does not have enough information associated with it.  One generally needs a surname at a minimum.

 

Historians of Jewish surnames10,11,12 tell us that most Christian citizens throughout Europe had adopted surnames in the 12th or 13th centuries. The early surnames (often referred to as inheritable or family names) were often not permanent since they were derived from a name of the person’s characteristics such as their occupation, their origin, or their father’s given name (patronymic). The names became more permanent by the 17th century.

 

Very few Jews in villages and towns with small Jewish populations adopted surnames until they were required to register family names, which occurred in the late 18th or early 19th centuries.   Adoption of Jewish surnames was directly connected to the beginning of the Emancipation of European Jews. The Central and Northern European Jews (Ashkenazim) were required to adopt permanent surnames according to the requirement of the European state in which they resided.  For the Jews of Altdorf and surrounding towns in the Grand Duchy of Baden this happened on January 13,1809.

 

The German word associated with the registration of these new names is Namengebung (literally, the act of giving a name). Many of these Baden records survived the period of National Socialism because a German Jewish historian, Berthold Rosenthal, copied many of them, and published them in his 1927 book, Heimatgeschichte der badischen Juden.

 

The name Dreifuss and its spelling variations (Trevis, Trefus, Trivash and Tribas) are most often associated with the town known as Treves (Trier in German and French). The name Dreifuss and its variants were widely adopted in Southern Baden. Dreyfus and Dreyfuss are also common Jewish names of the same origin and appear to be more commonly associated with French-speaking territories. They have been in use as Jewish names since the 15th century. Treves, first known as a Roman settlement in recorded history, was among the earliest known Jewish settlements in present day Germany and France along the Rhine River. Today the city of Treves lies in Germany along the Middle Rhine River near the border with Luxembourg.

 

A recopied page of the original Namengebung for Altdorf copied by Berthold Rosenthal appears below showing seven Jewish families with the surnames they adopted. Two families adopted the name Dreyfus: the families of 62 year old Abraham Dreyfus and 53 year old Jakob Dreyfus, who we believe to be brothers. The second family entry combined with other sources of information is the household of Leopold’s grandparents.

 

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Page from the Altdorf Namengebung of 1809 showing adopted family names (Courtesy Leo Baeck Institute, New York).

 

The older German style script of entry number two, yields the following family

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The earliest records available to us indicate that Leopold’s grandfather was Abraham Dreyfuss, a Viehmakler (cattle broker), who was born around 1775.

Abraham like many of his contemporaries in Altdorf and the nearby villages does not appear to be born there although he was born prior to the period for which we have reliable records and for which he had adopted the name Dreyfuss.