Fischer Family Collection

The Fischer Family Collection documents the family history and lives of several children of Felix (Feivel) and Clara (Chaya) Fischer. Prominent are Fanny (Frima or Frime), Laura (Libe) and Max Fischer. The collection includes photographs, notebooks, official documents and a cookbook.

Information on the family in general will be found in the first folder of the collection, which contains copies of scanned photographs of the family, all identified, and a narrative history of the family. Fanny Fischer Skaletzky's papers include official documents such as a passport, Heimatschein (residence certificate), naturalization and marriage certificates and also certificates that document her professional training. Another folder holds similar official documents for her sister Laura; her papers also include a handwritten cookbook, featuring recipes of all sorts, such as for meat dishes, desserts, breads and many cakes, and an autograph books with poetry and greetings by friends and siblings in German, Polish and Hebrew.

Two folders hold texts of then Corporal Max Fischer on the use of telegraphs and telephones in the Austrian infantry. One of these is a bound notebook containing a handwritten manual from a 1907-1908 telegraph course in Tulln, Austria. It covers the use of the telegraph in detail, with mentions of wired telegraphs, radiotelegraphs and the telephone and instructions on usage of the telegraph and telephone in the field in wartime. This manual contains many illustrations, some colored, of the parts, construction and use of the telegraph as well as a listing of Austrian infantry telegraph codes and description of the organization of the telegraph network. Several smaller notebooks contain similar texts a decade later during World War I. Later material on Max Fischer relates to his life in New York, including an identification card, photo, letter from a former colleague at Lazard Frères & Co., naturalization certificate and a certificate relating to cooperation with the U.S. Treasury Department during World War II. Joseph Fischer's papers document his death in 1917 and gravesite.