| Notes |
- BIOGRAPHY:
1. 28 Jul 2007 Http://www.herzenberg.net/leo/htmlrh/Content.html copyrighted by Leo Herzenberg:
"An meinen Sohn (To my son) Leonhard Herzenberg von (from) Robert Herzenberg. Memoirs written during the 1940's." Translated during the 1990's by Leonardo (Leonhard) Herzenberg. The entire memoir is quite lengthy and included in its entirety in my notes with Joseph Herzenberg, the original known ancestor, in this database. The following is only the portion dealing with this part of the family:
"MY PARENTS
"FANNY GERSON, Leonhard Herzenberg, SARA HALPERT
...When my mother died I was one and a half years old; I have no memory of her. When I was a child one did not speak of her; when I was older and got a second mother it had been agreed that one especially did not speak of my mother. So I know almost nothing of my mother. According to stories and the few photos, she was of short stature, blond, and very beautiful [116]. She was also very clever [klug] and calm in her bearing. I have several letters of hers, that through some kind of shyness I have been unable to read, and a few handicrafts, among them my father's prayer shawl [tales] bag.
There was great sorrow in the family over the deaths of my mother and aunt Sophie. Aunt Fanny, who later married Nathan Lowenstein, came into the house to care for me and run my widowed father's household. She knew nothing of child rearing or housekeeping, she was herself only a big child. In contrast to that, she vas very pretty, and let the students of the upper grades in our neighborhood court her much and often. Apparently the situation was not good either for me or my father. So it was natural that he would have to marry again. My father went on most of our holiday trips to the relatives, of which I wrote already, [msp 117] to find himself a wife and me a mother. It did not seem to work, because it lasted very long. Perhaps the candidates shied away from taking such a wild spoiled brat as me under their care. Finally my father made a match outside the country. He went to Konigsberg in private [i.Pr.] (without taking me along), got engaged to Sara Halpert, the daughter of Hirsch Halpert, Rabbi [Gabbe] in the polish schul (Synagogue), and the wedding took place on my father's birthday in 1893. I was already almost eight when the new mother, whom I always called Mamachen, came into the house in Libau. The marriage was happy, though not smooth. The percentage of happy unions was not smaller, perhaps larger, among the arranged ones than among the accidental ones (so-called love matches). When I met her at the railway station, Mamachen was a very pretty [bildhubshe], gentle [sanfte] woman, somewhat buxom [vollschlank] wearing a camel colored plush jacket, into which I liked to cuddle. [118] She was usually serious, an outstanding housewife [hausfrau], and cooked and baked wonderfully; your mother is the only one I've met so far who can do it still better in every respect. Mamachen was no longer young, did not make herself younger, but would give her age as ten years younger.
Unfortunately neither she nor anyone else thought of it that smallpox immunization disappears at around age 30. She was vaccinated as a child, and in Germany smallpox was a rare, almost unknown, illness. But in Russia, and in God's little land of Kurland, it was all too common. Perhaps she got infected in an employment agency for servants, and became seriously ill with smallpox. She lay in the city [stadtlichen] hospital, and I would visit her with my father. She was in mortal danger for a long time; when she came out of it the once beautiful, smooth, white, face was a single red scar. [msp 119] She remained pockmarked the rest of her life. (In Russia pockmarked is called ..... (rjaboi); it is such a common sight that a special [urtumlich] word was coined [gepragt] for it. The bodily manifestation of her disease disturbed Mamachen's spirit for the rest of her life. [gab Mamachen ein knacks]. Papachen could surround her with the greatest love, concern, and attention, but she would convince herself that he did not love her, that he cared more for other women; I am sure she was mistaken, but she suffered in spite of it, and Papachen suffered along with her. But they lived quietly and withdrawn. In 1895 uncle Erich was born, at the end of 1896 uncle George. We three grew up, Erich and I left the parental home and moved away [fremde], George stayed home, he was Mamachen's darling. Mamachen fulfilled her step-motherly duty in an exemplary way; before going to Libau she had to swear to her father that she would not touch the orphan [waise], and she never did. [120] I never got a slap from her, though I must have driven her to desperation with my mischief, stubbornness, and back-talk. In later years we understood each other very well, and I would get her annoyed only in jest, for example when I would say I was going to marry a Christian she became speechless just as in my Childhood when I did not want to be subdued.
For a time she became very fat, she went to Marienbad several times, she visited me in Freiberg, in Kiel and in Hamburg. She complained [krankelte] about various things. In 1922 she was in Kissingen with Papachen. The diagnoses of the physicians did not sound good, and at the end of 1922 she suffered a stroke which robbed her of speech and movement. So she suffered until the 15 Kislev (November 1923). When she died I was in Hamburg, I went to Libau for the funeral, but arrived too late. Uncle Erich was not allowed to return to [121] Latvia at that time, so uncle George and I were there alone to console Papachen. During Mamachen's illness an electric heating pad set the covers on fire. Since she could not call or move, she would have been seriously burned had not cousin Fanny (now in Prescott, AZ) happened to come in the room and torn the burning cover away. During her illness a very strange thing became evident. Some time before she had set a room aside and locked it with keys from which she would not be separated. Then she declared that the business staff were dishonest, that when Papachen and George went to lunch she herself sat in the cashiers place. She used this daily period to cut off pieces of cloth and hoard them in her locked room. Papachen found this collected hoard when he acquired the key during Mamachen's illness. This hoarding did not make sense, because the cut pieces were not useful for either [122] a suit or a dress. Perhaps this all happened in a state of craziness that later culminated in the stroke. To accomplish it she won the complicity of one of the clerks, who took the opportunity to cut coupons of cloth for himself, but with more sense, with which he supplied his girlfriend's [geliebten] shop in New Libau, who ran an active [schwunghaften] business with the stolen goods.
...Soon after his second marriage Papachen with his brother Joseph founded the firm Gebruder Herzenberg. The shop was located in the Knopf building, on the corner of Korn and Julian streets. After a few years the whole [126] block of buildings up to the market burned down. The shop changed locations several times until the Knopf's rebuilding was complete. The shop again moved back to the old corner, and is still there. However, I don't know what it is called now, since the Bolsheviks who took back Latvia after France collapsed in June 1940 "nationalized" the business, that is took it over without compensation, and your uncle George, the owner, was set out on the street.
The business went well, but it was no true happiness. Papachen did not get along with uncle Joseph, and Mamachen even less so with aunt Frieda, uncle Joseph's wife. Both had equal rights, and when Papachen hired somebody, and uncle Joseph did not like them, the latter would fire them. But they both withstood it. Shortly before the world war uncle Joseph died, and Papachen became sole owner. Then the war came, almost all Jews in Libau left the city and moved to inner Russia, partly to save what one could take along, partly to flee to the capital invested in Russian [127] banks and enterprises, partly due to forced evacuation of Jews from the border areas. Uncle Leopold moved to Riga, but Papachen stayed; the Germans came, and were greeted as liberators from the Russian domination, since they came a day before the forced evacuation of the Jews, and instead of them the Russian administration fled to the north. The Germans soon showed themselves in all their ostentation. Life was difficult during the occupation time. Papachen remained a Russian patriot and invested his earnings in czarist rubles. When these then dropped down to nothing, he invested in Reichsmark, and so he also lost this portion.
...So, after Mamachen's death he lived in company with uncle George in the beautiful home [wohnung] at Gymnasiumstrasse-4. I was there in November 1918 when Germany surrendered in the first world war, in 1923, after Mamachen's death, in 1925 before emigrating to Bolivia [129], and last in 1930 during my European vacation. Papachen lived quietly and withdrawn; he was not a misanthrope, but was disinclined toward any turbulent gathering. He lived esteemed and loved by the congregation, the city, and with few friends from the old guard of his youth. He lived as he wanted and as he believed was right. Unfortunately he lacked Mamachen's nurture. He had already suffered from a kidney ailment earlier, which kept getting worse over the years. He rarely traveled to the German baths, about once every ten years. Shortly after my last visit in 1930 he became severely ill from kidney stones. Once in a while he had some relief, and then he worked resolutely in the business and the congregation. Finally the crisis came in July 1932. He was transferred to a clinic, but there was no help. He suffered with horrible pain, and succumbed to Uremia on the 12 Tamuz (15 July 1932). With him were uncles Erich and George. [130]...
...ERICH [284] In the summer of 1912 your uncle Erich graduated, and came to visit Hamburg as a reward. Erich was rather sickly as a child and was very spoiled, and that left a trace in his life. He is more egotistical than the rest of the family, has no sense of family, and when he can achieve a goal by a straight or crooked path he will always pick the crooked one for the sporting excitement. In business and dealing with people he is also hard, harder than we are in our way. Erich was born on 25 march 1895 in Libau, in the [Schwederskicschen Hause ?],at Seestrasse 32. He went to kindergarten, then at age 10 entered Commerce School [Kommerzschule]. Your uncle George and I attended the Libau Realschule. The Kommerzschulen were newly founded in Russia. They reported to the Finance ministry, rather than the mass education [volksaufklarung] ministry. [285] The uniform was just like that of the Realschule, but the trim was green rather than yellow, and on the cap and belt the staff of Mercury, color and symbol of the finance ministry. These schools were relatively good, and in many respects freer than the bureaucratically led schools of the education ministry. The program was similar to that of the Realschulen; no classical languages were taught, and they were the first schools in Russia to consciously reject French, and instead required English. As tribute to the Finance ministry subjects such as accounting, national economics, business geography, and so on were included.
The schools were well endowed and could attract the best teachers from other schools. This was the kind of school your uncle Erich attended and completed uneventfully in summer 1912. He intended to follow in my footsteps, and go the mining school at Freiberg. He was not especially talented, but outdid the brightest around him by extraordinary diligence, [286], stubborn endurance, and absolute conscienciousness. So Erich came to Hamburg. He had broken his bridges behind him. As a child he had successfully learned to play the cello, but wanted nothing to do with it. Before he left home he took apart his cello and hid the parts in various places in the house, hoping to be rid of it. Then he came to me and everything was supposed to change. I tried to talk him out of going to Freiberg. Only thanks to my love and aptitude for the odd subject of Mineralogy had I found shelter in science. Otherwise I have no idea what I would have done with my engineer diploma, so what did he want with Freiberg. Eventually I persuaded him to go into business [kaufmann verden]. The look of the royal merchants in Hamburg had really impressed him. I would have had no objection to Erich studying further if he had shown any special interest, or inclination, or aptitude, [287] but without any of those it would have been nonsense to become a mining engineer, with no rights in Russia, and no prospects in Germany.
So Erich began his business track. There was a chance of getting a job with M. M. Warburg, but the goods [waren] trade appealed to him more than the banking trade, so he started and apprenticeship with the firm of Schoenfeld and Wolfers on the Rodingsmarkt, with 100 mark the first training year, 200 the second, and 900 the third. The senior partner of the firm, Eduard Wolfers, was an old friend of my father and helped Erich however he could. The firm had a history of hiring apprentices, training them quickly, and giving them responsible work during their first year if they were suited for it - there was no way to get cheaper workers. The firm purchased silk fabrics from China and Japan, along with other textiles, and sold them all over Europe and Russia. Trained apprentices could be travelling buyers or sellers, the usual career path for a Hamburg merchant. Erich soon was reluctant to work, [msp 288] did not like either the work or Hamburg, claimed that the single swan on the Libau swan pond was more beautiful than the hundreds on the Alster. He got used to it soon, but apparently never forgave me for tearing him out of the academic career he had set his sights on. On his first visit to Sakom he was asked to play the cello. Sakom found him very suited for the instrument, and offered to get him instruction at no cost. Letters went to Libau, the cello pieces were searched for and sent to Hamburg, and instruction started.
We were both living in crowded quarters at the Ratzmann family, but it did not go well, since they had grown children in the house, and space was tight. So we persuaded Miss Charlotte Mess (msp 261) to give up the pension she was running in Kiel and to move to Hamburg. We rented an [msp 289] apartment at Grundalle 80, and move in with Miss Mess, where we settled ourselves comfortably and had it as good as at home, since Miss Mess mothered us. In the morning we left for work together, met around 5 after work to eat at Miss Mess, then Erich practiced cello for 3 hours that went by with all of us in the pension hearing and seeing it if he did not have a lesson. under the guidance of Sakom, in just two years Erich was the best cello dilettante in Hamburg, played in many concerts, and was a popular guest for house music; soon he had more invitations than I did. That is how the year 1913 went by.
In the meantime I experienced the death of a Freiberg fellow student, Hoffmeister. He had finished Freiberg in 1909 and had gone to the Belgian Congo with professor Stutzer ([Lagerstattender nicht erze]) on a geological research trip. While there he caught sleeping sickness and returned to Hamburg to the tropical disease institute to be cured [290]. The specific remedy Bayer-205 had not yet been discovered. Actually, the sleeping sickness patients in the tropic disease hospital at that time were really guinea pigs [versuchskaninchen] and after a longer or shorter period of illness they all succumbed. However, during the course of the disease, that sometimes lasted 2 years, there would be some months where the patient would feel almost totally healthy. During these periods Hoffmeister worked in the mineralogical institute and made a trip to Petersburg to visit his parents and siblings. During the remissions he lived at Miss Mess. He died in the tropic disease hospital. He was a very dear person, and we all mourned him greatly.
Hamburg did not have a university; the lower house [burger-schaft] did not approve one, and in the meantime the upper house [senat] built a similar institution that called itself "General Lecture and Colonial Institute" from which Hamburg University sprang forth. [291] Thus there were no fixed admission requirements. Anyone who wanted to study or work there was admitted, so the audience was very colorful. Aside from Hoffmeister several younger and older Folkschool teachers, and some middle school women teachers [mittelschullehrerinnen], a daughter of Eduard Woehrmann, an old South Africa settler-fighter, Melchior, who told many stories of the Herero battles, who we nick-named "Piek van der Westerhus" after the main character of his poetically tinged reports. Also there was a Bremen merchant Otto Labahn, who would later play a large role in my life, but for the time being diligently pursued determinative mineralogy and owned a tantalum mine in English South Africa, and students spending their vacations in the institute being tutored.
So we came into 1914, splashing around in world history without anticipating anything awful. [ 292] In the summer of 1914 your uncle Erich and I went to Kiel to enjoy the colorful festival of "Kiel week." We left Hamburg on the early morning of Sunday, 28 June, and returned in the evening. One could bustle about the Kiel firth all day, and get ones fill of sailing activity. The entire German fleet was assembled in Kiel, and many foreign yachts were participating in races. There also was a whole row of English warships, whose dark gray paint contrasted uncomfortably with the light fog gray of the German ships. We rode on Firth steamers around the whole firth, in the wonderful sunny weather, and there is hardly a more lively sight than hundreds of ships decorated in full flag regalia. As we rode around we noticed movement in the flags. All warships lowered their stern flags to half mast. Then a flag with horizontal red and white stripes was raised on their fore masts. [293] Erich and I, coming from Libau, were familiar with sailing flags, even though we had not seen this flag in our home port. It was the Austrian flag, and what could its combination with mourning mean? It could only be the death of Kaiser Franz Joseph. He was already old, and had gone through a lot; may he rest in peace.
The pleasant mood in Kiel collapsed. All festivities were called off, the foreign ships did not need to weigh anchor, and cast off from their buoys and slipped through the Kaiser Wilhelm canal, and Erich and I returned to Hamburg. We came to the rail station, and in spite of our 3rd class tickets, the conductor put us in 1st class compartments of an extra train; we had no idea why. We arrived in Hamburg at night, and there were extra telegrams that Franz Ferdinand, the crown prince of Austria-Hungary [294] and his wife had been victims of a plot [attentat]. Now we were greatly saddened that the old Kaiser Franz still had to experience this tragedy. Some people spoke of danger of war, but these voices quieted soon. It was such a nice summer, and what did the average person of the time (or of today) know of what played out behind the wings of world politics. Since then my interest in, and reading about, world politics has increased so that there rarely is an event that I am not prepared for.
So, it was July 1914, I had received the equipment with which I wanted to uncover nature's ways of making diamonds. Professor Gurich was on a research trip in South Africa; I received a request to go to southern Norway, [ 295] and examine some feldspar veins around Stavanger for a Mr. Spandow, who made canned sardines, and wanted to export the minerals for porcelain glazing. I left Hamburg for Stavanger on 11 July, and spent two weeks in Flekkfjord, Egersund and Hittero collecting two crates of feldspar chunks. When I went back along the Danish coast we met the "Hohenzollern" with part of the German war fleet. The Kaiser was bound for the north land on his annual trip. The weather was so beautiful, and in us, the unsuspecting human Children, there was no trace of a thought that we were living in the last days of a world epoch, that everything, everything, would change. The ancient empires would be shattered; tradition, well being, security, life itself, would become shaky concepts and that the whole earth would for decades be plunged into blood and tears.
Your uncle Erich yelled "war, war," but for me it did not look good. Austria had [296] given Serbia an ultimatum, Germany sided with Austria; Russia, France and England took the Serbian side, and the first world war began. Uncle Erich and I were cut off from home. We were Russians, therefore enemy aliens. Our home town. Libau was attacked by German warships on the first day. But our sympathies were totally on the German side. As a foreigner I enjoyed more rights in Germany than as a Russian at home. In czarist Russia I could never have the position that I occupied in Hamburg in spite of being a foreigner...
...MY BROTHERS ERICH and George DURING and AFTER WW I
At the outbreak of the war your uncle Erich was with me in Hamburg. He continued learning at the firm of Schonfeld and Wolfers on the Rodingsmarkt. I enlisted in the army and went to war, Erich also wanted to enlist in the Navy, but I managed to dissuade him from it. He actually was photographed in the uniform of our unit, including spiked helmet and rifle, but that was just a spoof. At first he stayed in Hamburg, then went home to Libau, where he did not over-work and led a good life. When Germany surrendered Erich befriended the Baltikumern, German partisans who, under the pretext of freeing Latvia from the Bolsheviks, wanted to created their own state along with the Baltik barons. [msp 345] The adventurer Bermondt, called Duke Avalon-Bermondt, a Czarist Russian general, led the partisans against the Bolsheviks, and Erich joined this army as a commissary official. All white troops hoped to easily defeat the reds. Army suppliers got great profits, but the dream came apart. The Bolsheviks were driven out of Latvia, but then the Latvians drove out the Balticum partisans, and your uncle Erich was happy to again get out of the witches cauldron.
He came to me in Hamburg, where he worked for a scrap metal firm for a while. Then he went to Berlin, into the firm "Holuri," founded by my old friend Jona Lurie and the brothers Hoff. They dealt in tea and Baltic linen yarn. After a few years Jonny Lurie drove Erich out of the firm in a disagreeable way. Then with the help of Hoffs, he opened his own yarn factory in Berlin, Nowawes, but remained [msp 346] a representative of the brothers Hoff and processed their yarns. Erich swore by Germany, had connections to military circles since he supplied yarn for tent manufacture. On 15 October 1936 the factory burned down. It was rebuilt and put back in operation on 15 December 1936; on 30 June 1938 the Nazis took the factory from him. He lived in Riga, married in December 1939, and in the spring of 1941 had gotten a visa to the USA, where he had been transferring money. But since he could not break off from the Hoffs in time he never got out. Since June 1941 I have heard nothing from him or his young, pretty wife Abigail, born Abkin. Maybe he got stuck in Latvia by the German advance. God only knows what became of all of them..."
...In the summer of 1922 father and mother came to Kissingen, where I and Erich visited them. That was the last time I saw mother. The doctors gave worrisome diagnoses. At the end of 1922 she had a stroke which crippled her and took her speech, and in 1923 she was freed by death. During this time, when she was cared for by our cousin Fanny, who now lives in Prescott, AZ, she was almost burned alive. Mother lay in bed with an electric heating pad, which apparently burned out and set the blankets on fire. Mother could neither scream or move in the bed; fortunately the nurse [schwester] noticed the smoke in time and was able to save her...
...Mother died in November 1923 (on the 15th of Kislev). When I got the telegram I wanted to got to Libau immediately, and could have gotten there in time for the funeral, but I lost so much time that I did not arrive till the evening after the burial. I got the passport relatively easily, but that was not enough. I had to have a visa from the polish consul because I would travel through the Polish corridor, a Lithuanian one to pass through Lithuania, and then I needed a Latvian one. Each consulate was in a different part of town, and the gentlemen were all so arrogant that one had to wait and beg to get the visa, and the fees for permission to spend a few hours over the holy Lithuanian or other foreign soil were sky-high. Your uncle Erich was not allowed into Latvia at that time, since he was still on their blacklist which included those involved with Bermondt-Analow. I spent the whole mourning period in Libau. [msp 361] However I was not ritually tied to the mourning, was not allowed to say Kadish, and could leave the house at any time, that is I did not have to sit Schiva. The household continued operating the way mother had led it, Anna carded it on. Then it was back to Hamburg. I did not have much work, but enough to live on. I had already long ago started to take foreign currency for instruction or professional reports. At the start of 1924, when the deflation started to be fully effective all my income stopped. From March 1924 on I had no students, no more reports, no longer earned a penny. My only activity was that in the lodge; I read a lot at home. What I needed to live on father sent me, since there was enough for that. I sold the greater part of my equipment, the better large microscope, the complete blowpipe apparatus, and much else. You can imagine, dear Nardi, that I felt plenty bad. I saw no way out. In spite of [msp 362] being lodge president, and having many good connections, it was not possible for me to get the most minor position. I lived and waited, as long as father could afford it he would never have left me in need. Uncle Erich, who was doing well in Berlin at the time, failed me in every respect [versagte in jeder beziehung]. Uncle George was in the business with father and did not have much to say, he was mostly concerned about himself. He was a great fan of water sport, one day it was a new Yacht, another a motorboat. Water sports were popular with Jewish youth in Latvia. They were united in the KYK (Kurland-ischer Yacht Klub), jokingly called the Kurlandischer Juden Klub by the German and Latvian clubs. But the KYK paid them back by winning most of the regattas...
BIRTH:
1. Leo has conflicting birth dates. On his family pedigree he notes:
Erich, b. 25 Mar 1885 with mother as Fanny Gerson.
George, b. 19 Nov 1887 with mother as Fanny Gerson.
His father's memoirs have these two boys born to the second wife, Sara Halpert, in 1895 and late 1896 respectively. The memoirs speak of Robert as the stepchild to Sara, but not Erich and George.
I use the latter.
SOURCES_MISC:
1. Leonardo Herzenberg http://www.herzenberg.net/
2. Website of Peter Bruce Herzenberg of London, England (since relocated to South Africa). Website is no longer functioning as of 7 Aug 2007. Copies of much of his data from the website in my possession.
|
Chris & Julie Petersen's Genealogy
1895 - Aft 1941 (> 47 years)