The Grünwald family, Moravian Descendants of the "Panim Meirot". Part 2 of 2.

In the previous post, I described the lineage of the Grünwald family from Rabbi Meir Eisenstadt down to the children of Jakob Grünwald of Bzenec in Moravia. In this post, I will continue the story of this dynasty from Rabbi Moritz (Mordechai), son of Jakob Grünwald, his life story, his family and down to his descendants who scattered all around the world.

Dr. Rabbi Moritz (Mordechai) Grünwald

Moritz was born on 29 March 1853 in Ungarisch Ostroh (nowadays Uherský Ostroh).

In 1877 he studied French at a school in Budweiss (now  Česke Budejevice, Czech Republic). In his book, he didn’t mention where or when did he complete his PhD, but he attended both the University of Vienna and the Leipzig University, attaining degrees in philosophy and theology. According to one source from his birth town, he also studied in Paris. From 1878 to 1881 he studied at the Breslau Rabbinical Seminary (now Wrocław, Poland). After graduating his rabbinical studies he was appointed to the regional rabbi of Bjelovar in Croatia.

On 2 January 1883, in Vag Neustadt, or Vagujhely in Hungary (now Nové Mesto nad Váhom, Slovakia) he married Dorothea (Dobrish) Weisse, daughter of Av Beit Din (head of the rabbinical court) in this town, Rabbi Josef Weisse, and his wife Charlotte Helena née Donat. Their first son, Isidor Grünwald, was probably born in Croatia on an unknown date.

After about three years in Croatia, in 1884 Moritz Grünwald was appointed rabbi of Pisek, in Bohemia. During his time there, their second son, Gottfried Greenwald, was born.

On 16 August 1886, Grünwald was appointed rabbi of Jungbunzlau (nowadays Mlada Bolesław, Czech Republic). According to the ‘Historia Judaica’, around this time he started a decade of editing for Das jüdische Centralblatt auch Archiv für die Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen. A few of his writings are saved in the National Library of Israel.

Their third daughter, Anna, was born on 28 September 1887 in Jungbunzlau. Two and a half years later, on 6 January 1891, their fourth daughter was born. After the birth, the mother suffered from complications, and eventually passed away on 18 January 1891 and was buried in Mlada Bolesław. Their infant daughter was named Dorothea after her deceased mother.

In 1893, Dr. Rabbi Moritz Grünwald was appointed Chief Rabbi of Bulgaria. As you can read on his Wikipedia page, the  appointment was for three years, and he was highly regarded and led enormous changes in Bulgarian Jewry, but was not satisfied with the internal conflicts within the Jewish communities of Bulgaria and finally sought to shorten his tenure there.

After the death of his wife Dorothea, Moritz remarried on 21 July 1891 in Bošáca, Slovakia. His second wife was Gisela Berger, a niece of his first wife Dorothea. On 1 May 1895, Moritz and Gisela had a daughter, Katalin (Katja) / Tova Grünwald, in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Not long afterwards, Moritz received an invitation to be appointed Chief Rabbi of London. He came to England on a visit, to meet the local Jewish community. During his visit, he fell ill and died in London on 10 June 1895, while his infant daughter was only one month old. He was buried at the Edmonton Federation of Synagogues Cemetery in London.

Photo: Moritz Grünwald’s gravestone, uploaded to the Findagrave website on 10 July 2022 by Daniel Winebar

After his death, Gisela returned to Bošáca, where she died on 27 July 1901 and was buried the next day, at the young age of 32.

On the GENI website, which aspires to contain the family tree of all of humanity, I have traced six different family trees for fragments of this family. Some were built by descendants of this family and others by excellent genealogists such as my friend Trude Triebel from Austria and Prof. Thomas Fürth, who heads the Swedish Jewish Genealogical Society. Each tree contained fragments of information about one segment of this lineage, but was unaware of the existence of the parallel trees or how they intertwined.

I merged these parallel trees into one unified tree, which combines all the information that various researchers have traced, to which I added information from the documentation I found.

Moritz Greenwald’s Children from his first wife Dorothea née Weisse:

1. Isidor Grünwald. Was probably born around 1885 in Bjelovar, Croatia. His niece seems to be referring to him when she describes her mother's older brother named “Alfred” and writes that he emigrated to Montevideo in Uruguay. I did track down a burial of a man named Alfredo Grunwald, who died on 13 July 1952, in Montevideo, but I have no way of making sure if it was or wasn’t him. So far I have not been able to confirm whether Isidor and Alfred are, in fact, the same person, or if they are two brothers. However, the internet is full of incorrect information on the matter, added by amateur genealogists. Since this Alfred lived for a period of time in Vienna, and his father’s name was Moritz Grünwald, many confuse him with another Vienna-born Alfred Grünwald, son of Moritz (a hat maker, not a rabbi), a famous libretist who’s mother was from the Donat family. Being that the names Donat and Grünwald occur in both families, the potential for confusion only increases. But certainly – these are two different Alfreds.
   

2. Gottfried Greenwald, was borb on 1 April 1886 in Písek, Czech Republic. He emigrated to New York. On December 19, 1915, he married New York-born Lillian Seiden, the daughter of Simon Seiden and Rebecca née Rosenblatt, and on October 23, 1916, their daughter, Dorothy Charlotte, was born. They later divorced, and on June 11, 1933, Gottfried married his second wife, Fride Marx, daughter of Jacob Marx and Lena Andorn. In the federal censuses of 1940 and 1950, they appear childless. Gottfried passed away in Pine Hill, New York, on August 8, 1950. His daughter Dorothy Charlotte married Erwin Nelson Durchlag on April 5, 1940. I do not know of any children born to them, but she died in Palm Beach, Florida on April 17, 1994.
   

3. Anna (Cherna) Greenwald was born on September 28, 1887, in Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic. On July 6, 1930, in Vienna, she got married to Ernst (Aryeh) Molnar [born June 7, 1887 in Söpte, Hungary, to Alexander (Shmuel) Meyersberg and Netty née Gutmann and had moved to Vienna in 1907]. They lived at Cothmannstraße 11 in Vienna's 12th district. On May 16, 1838, after the Anschluss, Ernst and Anna submitted an official application to emigrate from Austria to British mandate Palestine, where Anna's second cousin – Victor Günwald (son of Yosef Zvi, son of Shalom Yehuda, who was the brother of her grandfather Jacob Greenwald) was waiting for them. On March 20, 1939, they filled out a request in the Jewish community of Vienna to obtain permission to emigrate to Subotice, Yugoslavia (now Serbia). From there they immigrated to Israel and lived in Haifa, and they had no children. Anna died on April 4, 1966 and Ernest died on May 3, 1975, and they are buried in the Tzur Shalom cemetery in Haifa.
   

4. Dorothea Greenwald was born on 6 January 1891 in Jungbunzlau. In one of the trees in GENI, in her profile, an email written by one of her grandchildren, Elizabeth Gamlin, was inserted by Dr. Amikam Zur on November 17, 2021, containing the story of her grandmother Dorothea, as she remembered her. In her words:

   “After Moritz's passing, Dora was sent to live in Olomouc, Czech Republic, with a relative named Theo Graus). She used to visit the Archbishop's kitchen, where she learned to cook and became an excellent cook. My mother remembered visits to Uncle Theo from her childhood. Dora left Olomouc in her late teens or early twenties, and moved to Vienna.” On November 4, 1913, in Vienna, Dorothea married Arthur Sternfeld, who was born in Vienna on June 16, 1884 to Jacob Sternfeld and Mathilde née Fürst. Their only son, Friedrich Wilhelm Sternfeld, was born on September 25, 1914, and on November 3, 1919, they officially divorced in Vienna.On 18 February 1923 she remarried Moritz "Manek" Rosenhauch, who was born on 2 September 1898 to Todres Rosenhauch and his wife Rosa (née Rosenohl). On 20 September 1923, their daughter Lucie was born. [...]

   My mother, Lucie, left Vienna towards the end of 1939 with her parents Dora and Manek. They came to England and lived in Tewkesbury and later in Cheltenham. My mum, Lucie, studied Medicine at Bristol University and stayed in the city. She married my father, Basil Gamlin, in 1950 and I was born 23 January, 1951. When I was little, I often went to stay with my grandparents, Dora and Mank, in Cheltenham. I admired them both." Lucie Gamlim-Keene told her daughter that all of their relatives (except her parents Manek and Dorothea and her half-brother Fred) had perished in the Holocaust, and refused to talk about their relatives. When her daughter began researching her genealogy, she discovered that not all of their relatives perished. More from Elizabeth Gamlin: “Alfred, my mum’s uncle, went to South America, to Montevideo. He occasionally returned to Vienna. Katia moved to Budapest and had two children, my mum’s cousins... A branch of Dora’s family [I think her sister Isadore’s child] went to France and then to Spain. There are relatives living in Ibiza but I have been unable to make contact.”

Elizabeth wasn’t able to solve these two branches, and neither was I. I challenge those who can help and solve this mystery, which begins in Croatia, continues in Vienna, and spread from there to Uruguay, France and Spain.

Rabbi Moritz Grünwald's second marriage to Gisella née Berger took place on July 21, 1891 in Bošáca, Slovakia, during his tenure as Chief Rabbi of Bulgaria. On May 1, 1895, their only daughter, Katalin (Tova) “Katja”, was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. On October 11, 1917, Katalin married Frigyes (Isaac) Lukács, in Terézváros, the 6th district of Budapest. They had two children. One of the two, their daughter Shoshana, was born In 1926. Katalin and Frigyes were murdered in the Holocaust in 1944, according to pages of testimony filled by their daughter Shoshana.

Shoshana arrived in Israel, and on December 30, 1949, married Avraham Carmi [son of Yosef and Ilana Carmi] in Afula. They had two daughters, and at some point their marriage ended in divorce. Later, Shoshana Carmi married her second husband, Horst Efraim Goldschmid. Shoshana passed away in 2016 and Efraim in 2018, and both are buried in Rishon LeZion, Israel.

The Grünwald family described in this post, a branch of the descendants of rabbi Meir Eisenstadt, the “Panim Meirot”, spread across at least four continents. Parts of it survived the Holocaust and are still living in different countries. Sadly, many of the living descendants are not even aware of their glorious pedigree or its significance. 

I hope this post will help them discover the vast family to which they belong.