The Reich Dynasty's Genealogy Jungle
- Mattan Segev-Frank
- Jul 16
- 8 min read
A Research That Restitched a Faded, Unraveled and Scattered Family Tree:
After sharing some of my personal family's stories in recent posts, I would like to start sharing with you some of my research on other dynasties – some that I have done for my own interest and others that I have conducted for clients. Let's dive into a genealogical and historical research on the Reich dynasty, which has revealed intricate and lost historical and social connections. For many years, there was one well-documented and famous rabbinical branch of this family, while all other branches of the family were shrouded in mystery. They were forgotten and lost touch with each other and with their own family history. In-depth research required a thorough review across many fields of knowledge, and finally not only brought forgotten historical figures back to the forefront, but also led to significant discoveries related to the family's descendants and its ties to other interesting dynasties.
In a previous post, Guilty by association: the great value of intertwining family trees, I briefly explained how my connection to the history of the Reich dynasty came about. The Reich family of Trnava, who had been married to my grandfather's family at least four times, knew for sure that they were cousins of the famous rabbinical family of the same name, so I wanted to find the exact connection.
Since the rabbinical part of the Reich dynasty begins with Rabbi Yaakov Koppel Altenkunstadt-Reich, known as Koppel Charif (1766-1835), the head of the Verbau Yeshiva (nowadays Vrbové, Slovakia), who was one of the most important rabbis in Hungary at the time and was eulogized by his friend Rabbi Moses Schreiber, known as 'Chatam Sofer', I set out to decipher the family tree of his descendants, mistakenly assuming that it would be a quick or simple process.
So much time, research work, and unearthing of seemingly non-related sources, characters, and stories have been invested in this process – both stories I have collected as part of the research and stories and experiences that happened in my own life story during these 18 years – have happened thanks to this connection, that it has become almost impossible for me to find how to segment and share specific stories from it. However, I feel that the time has come and I am happy to start sharing these stories with you, Finally.
Anyone who has ever been interested in Koppel Charif as a historical figure, or wanted to trace his family history, quickly comes to the main historical source that has been preserved about him – the book "Toledoth Jacob, Biography of Rabbi Koppel Charif z"l (Rabbi Yaakov Koppel Altenkunstadt), published in London in 1918 by one of his great-grandsons, Dr. Charles (Yaakov Koppel) Duschinsky.
The book was written by Charles Dushinsky as a love offering to mark the 50th anniversary of his father Rabbi Dov Ber (Bernhard) Duschinsky's appointment as Av Beit Din (Head of the Rabbinical Court) in Nameszto (nowadays Námestovo, Slovakia).
The obvious assumption is that the author personally knew many of his great-grandfather's descendants, partially because of the prestigious lineage from which he came, as his father and his mother Rivka Cheila (Katerina) née Reich's four brothers, father and grandfather were among the most important Orthodox rabbis of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Additionally to rabbinical lore, the men in this family were also secularly-educated people, so they had both Hallachic authority and academic degrees. They were familiar to critical thinking, research and analyzation.
Charles Duschinsky, too, was ordained as a rabbi and also completed doctoral studies in Jurisprudence and social Economics at universities throughout the empire – from Cluj-Napoca in present-day Romania to Wroclaw in present-day Poland. Due to all these circumstances, as well as because of the writing in an almost academic style, with footnotes and reference to the many sources on which he relies, Duschinsky immediately gains trust among many readers.
On page 35 of the book, under the heading "His Sons and Descendants", Duschinsky writes:
The wife of his youth, the humble Rebbetzin, Mrs. Reizel, of blessed memory, died in the Jewish year 5559 (1798-1799). Among his surviving manuscripts is also the eulogy that he gave at the erection of a tombstone on her grave, and on the cover of the manuscript, the following words are written: "A sermon of moral rebuke on Tuesday, the eve of Rosh Chodesh Av 5560, on the day of the erection of the tombstone of my sweet, dear Rebbetzin Reizel, may peace be upon her." She bore him two sons and two daughters.
The boys were:
1) Shmuel, known as Zanvil, died when he was still a young boy.
2) Shimon, who was a merchant and pitched his tent in the city of Kecskemét in Hungary, and there his descendants dwell to this day.
The girls were:
3) His daughter Scheindel, wife of Rabbi Eliahu Bustin z"l.
4) And his daughter Pessel wife of Rabbi Avraham Dohan, an outstanding Torah scholar in Neustadtl.
After the death of his wife, Rebbetzin Reizel, he married her sister, Mrs. Leibla. With her, he had three more sons and two daughters.
The girls were:
5) Mrs. Mattel, the wife of Rabbi David Leib Bardach, mentioned above.
6) and Mrs. Yittel, wife of the rabbinical scholar Rabbi Leib Rosenzweig z"l, grandson of the genius Rabbi Bezalel Ronschburg, head of the rabbinical court in Prague.
And his three sons from the second marriage were:
7) Rabbi Zvi Hirsch, who pitched his tent in Neustadtl.
8) Rabbi Meshullam, who was based in the Trencsén community. He was bright and had a wonderful tongue, and copied most of his father's innovations in writing. Some volumes remained in his hand and after his death were passed to his son, Rabbi Yeshaya Reich z"l, who also lived in Trencsén. And after the death of Rabbi Yeshaya, about twenty years ago, the manuscripts were handed over to my uncle, my teacher, Rabbi Moshe, may his candle shine brightly, Av Beit Din of the holy community in Banowitz.
9) The youngest of his sons was the Genius Rabbi, the Chassid and the humble, Rabbi Avraham Yechezkel Reich* z"l. He was the youngest son of his father, because he was born in the year 1813. While he was still a boy, his pure intellect had already appeared, and his father was his educator in Torah and in fear of god. And the boy grew up to the joy of his parents. He was a help and supporter to them in their old age, and especially to his father, he was a good friend and would help him in matters of the community and the yeshiva. [...]
* The members of Rabbi Koppel Charif's family were known by the name "Reich" for the German saying "Aus dem Reich", and they did not use their father's last name "Altenkunstadt". The names of the families in the German language were accepted by the Jews during the reign of Emperor Joseph II (1780-1790) according to his decree, and it is not known whether Rabbi Koppel Charif himself signed this in the German language with the name Reich.
Many family researchers before me, amateurs and professionals alike, tried to trace the descendants of Kopel Charif and discovered, each in turn, that something was not adding up. As for the branch of his grandfather, Avraham Yechezkel Reich, Duschinsky's information is accurate, and indeed this is a well-known and well-documented rabbinical family, which left behind a number of rabbinical books with introductions detailing the authors' genealogy and with dedications of descendants who contributed to the elevation of the souls of their relatives and provided additional information, and therefore it was easy for the writer to complete the information about the close relatives he knew personally.
As for all of Koppel Charif's other children, the information Duschinsky provides conflicts with genealogical sources and leads to brick walls, repeatedly. It is important to remember that at that time archival sources were inaccessible, and even mail correspondence he conducted from London with his relatives in Hungary became problematic during World War I. As a citizen of an enemy state in England, despite being married to a London-born citizen, Dr. Charles Duschinsky went through many difficulties, which certainly made the research leading up to the publication of the book difficult if not impossible.
Correspondence I conducted with genealogists and with descendants of the Reich family who were still trying to find out if they had a connection to Koppel Charif could not find points of contact between the "official" information in the book and the documents they found, and did not understand why. The situation frustrated me and them, and over time, together with a beloved relative who is a Reich descendant, and a friend whose wife is also blood-related to the Reich dynasty – we began to try to decipher the information in all the dynasty's branches and "put the information in order". If it turns out that there are errors.
After years of in-depth research and unearthing of sources and information that spread across different countries and over centuries, we were able to rewrite the story, uncover information that eluded Duschinsky, correct errors in the information as he understood and documented it, and remap the complex genealogical jungle that we discovered.
Make no mistake - this is not an attempt to dismiss the importance of Duschinsky or his book, who did the best he could at the time he worked in and given the sources available to him, but on the contrary – a desire to complete and improve the research he began and to perpetuate the fascinating dynasty of which he is a part of.
The amount of information gathered is enormous and I do not want to exhaust the readers, so I will publish separate posts regarding different branches of the family's descendants, in an attempt to make sure that the stories provide interest and maintain curiosity, among other posts that will come up in between about other families.
Koppel Charif passed away on 12 December 1835 in Vrbové, the place he devoted his time to teaching numerous rabbinical candidates, and is buried in the first row at the local Jewish cemetery with the community's rabbis.
Within a few years after his death, the world has changed entirely, with the changes introduced by the Idustrial Revolution, the urbanization process of the cities in Europe, and with the new opportunities made available for Jews in Hungary. These changes affected every family and caused people to change their locations, professions, religious affiliations and more.
And since nothing is ever really coincidental – five minutes after I sat down and started writing this post, I was sent a happy post published by the municipality of Vrbové, which managed to receive funding in the amount of €582,000 from the EU funds for the partial renovation of the synagogue where Koppel Charif operated. The municipality will add €100,000 to finance the project, in which the towers will be renovated on the perimeter of the building; The windows and doors will be replaced; the interior spaces will be partially renovated; electrical wiring will be installed; a parking lot will be built for the building, a handrail and a ramp will be installed for the disabled, and more.
I would like to hope that this is a conservation for the purpose of documenting and commemorating the Jewish history of the place, but since the local community was mostly murdered in the Holocaust and not a single Jew has lived there for decades, it is more likely that the renovation will be for the purpose of converting the building into a communal structure.
Moments like these make me sad, and remind me why it is so important to research, commemorate, and preserve the memory of Jewish communities that were perished in the Holocaust – both in the form of comprehensive historical studies and in individual documentation of the members of the communities who lived and worked there.
I'm starting to prepare the next post, about Koppel Charif's eldest daughter, who will return to first place in the chronological order of his children, and let's get into one of the most complicated and interesting jungles.
If you are also curious to discover your family's roots and need an expert to guide you through your Genealogy Jungle – contact me.
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