Of my four
founding families, I expected the genealogical researching of the Gánsl side to
bring in the richest results, and the Rosenbaums to be impossible to sort out.
Never have expectations: they are apt to be confounded. Great-grandmother,
Julie Rosenbaum, has produced a vast mass of Rosenbaums, not only sideways,
thanks to all her brothers and sisters, but even backwards. I little thought
that I would end up with the great-grandfather of my great-grandmother.
But I
did. Julie’s father, Adam, was the son of Napthali Rosenbaum, son of Salomon
Rosenbaum ... which takes us back into the Bohemian mists of the eighteenth
century and the towns of Königsberg an der Eger (NOT the Königsberg now
Kaliningrad, which is miles away) and Katzengrün -- now Kynsperk nad Ohri and
Kacerov, Czechoslovakia, respectively -- where I am sure a forefather or two of
ours lies in the old Jewish Cemetery which is currently under restoration (see:
http://www.bbkult.net/kulturdatenbank/adressen:sehenswuerdigkeit:alle:o:3/13285290711385.html
But Adolph has
already entered the story, for up in the Bohemian Spa Town of Franzenbad on the
4 February of that year, Adolph had wed the eldest Miss Rosenbaum. So did he
try to become a businessman before, or after, he got mixed up with the very
businessmanly Rosenbaum family? He wasn’t, alas, very good at it.
1874 (15 February)
sees the firm of Gansl and Rosenbaum (Heinrich, eldest brother) fancy-goods-merchants,
starting up, in the wake of the Bazar, at the Europa. By 1877 they were
announced as ‘Falliments’, alongside an unfortunate manufacturer of an early
type of Esky. ‘Das Firma Gansl und Rosenbaum wurde über Gesellschaftaufgebund
gelöscht’. Heinrich went on to join his brothers in their printing firm, Adolph
doesn’t seem to have had any more such ventures with the family.
His family life
had seemingly gone sadly too. Julie gave birth to three daughters, Ida (4 June
1876), Gisela (26 July 1877) and Rosa (21 December): all three failed to
survive. However, things looked up when their first son, Josef (‘Pepi’), was
born (3 June 1881) at Buchfeldgasse 7, and two others followed … Max (30
December 1883) and Fritz (30 May 1886) after they moved to Währing’s Schulgasse
8.
Life as a ‘general
merchant’ in Währing wasn’t, evidently, very productive. The latest
shop-business was in Julie’s name, so she took the flak when things got tough …
but then life struck again. Or, rather, death. Julie died, at the age of 45 (5
June 1888). Usually the Viennese papers got the city’s deaths from officialdom,
and the cause of death (‘tuberculosis, heart-attack, lung complications’) was
printed in the lists. Not so for Julie. I wonder why.
It was said, in my
family, that Adolph died ‘of a broken heart’ within the year (8 April 1889). He
was also in a total mess. His bankruptcy proceedings didn’t come up until after
his death and they were, well, messy. And, again, the papers printed no cause
of death.
So, the three little
boys were orphaned. My father always said, the two little ones went into an
orphanage, and the slightly older Pepi was brought up by one of the ‘Tante
Rosenbaum’s. I’m not sure how to trace this … but I’ll try. Anyway, that’s the
next chapter. Which starts with teenaged Pepi listed amongst the commercial
clerks of Brüder Rosenbaum … and the three brothers getting ready to face the 20th century,
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