Ettinger Family Collection

This collection contains records of the Ettinger and Bick families as well as other relatives ranging from the late 19th century to 2006. The bulk of the materials relate to Jean-Claude (alternatively John or Julius) Ettinger, his wife Rita née Bick, his half-brother John Louis (alternatively Ludwig or Jean-Louis) Weisenbach, and his mother Betty Ettinger née Stern widowed Weisenbach. Also included are materials on relatives from the Schulz, Maler, and Rosenthal families. Other family names mentioned in the collection include Aschkenasy, Doehl, Meyer, Nemeczek, and Willdorf.

As a whole, the collection consists of vital records (birth, marriage, and death certificates), personal identification documents, internment papers, emigration papers, correspondence and forms related to restitution claims, photographs, programs and guest lists from reunions of Holocaust survivors, some legal documents related to inheritance claims, some education records, a few pieces of personal correspondence, some poems, and a few ticket stubs from Jewish cultural events in Berlin.

Most folders relate to a specific person or family and contain a mixture of personal and official papers such as those listed above. Where materials could not be related to a single person or family, they were placed together by document type. These materials include reunion programs, invitations to Berlin, and a memoir from Gurs. It is not clear who wrote the Gurs memoir in this collection, but the text suggests that the author is Swiss.

The autograph or friendship albums (Poesiealben) belonging to Gertrude Bick née Rosenthal are small, hardcover books in which friends and teachers wrote short poems and dedications and signed their names. There seem to have been decorative papers glued on pages of these albums that have since fallen out.

The oversized 50th wedding anniversary celebration certificate (Jubiläums-Urkunde) was given to Oscar Rosenthal in 1917 by the Benevolent Society (Wolhtätigkeitsverein) Semilus Chassodim of Berlin.

The official invitations and correspondence from Berlin relates to the construction of the New Synagogue and events for the Jewish community. The ticket stubs are from events in February 1938 exclusively for the members of the Jewish community (Jüdische Gemeinschaft) of Berlin. The poems include a wedding poem (Tafel-Lied) from 1896 and a poem about Camp de Gurs from 1943.

The photographs found throughout the collection include both formal portraits and casual photographs of family and friends mainly from the late 19th century through the 1930s with a few from later decades of the 20th century. Photographs that were held together in an envelope or band or were otherwise clearly related to one another have been kept together. If photographs were not clearly meant to be kept together with a specific individual or family’s papers, they have been placed in box 2, folder 6.

Notes with contextual or biographical information from the collection’s donor, Rita Ettinger née Bick, can be found in many parts of the collection.