Families

This collection contains various material about the Pretzfelder Family and the Kristallglasfabrik Spiegelau. The emphasis of the collection lies on the loss, restitution and postwar development of the glass factory in Bavaria and the rise of Fritz Pretzfelder (later Frederick Preston) as a successful industrial businessman. The collection also documents the family's immigration to Great Britain in 1938 and other family events. The collection includes many family photographs.

This collection contains material by and about the family of German-Jewish physician Richard Koch, collected by his daughter Naomi Laqueur. In the 1930s Richard and Maria Koch and their five children left Germany for the Soviet Union, Israel, England, and the United States. The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence sent to Laqueur from her parents and her siblings. Spanning the 1930s to the 1970s, the letters paint a rich portrait of the differences in mid 20th-century life in the Soviet Union, Israel, England, and the United States. Additional correspondence includes letters from Laqueur’s friends and extended family, and correspondence between other family members. The collection also documents Richard Koch’s professional activities as a physician, and additionally contains some of his poems and portions of a memoir. It also has materials about friends and relatives, a collection of Alfred Koch’s love poems from the 1910s, and photographs.

The Robert Lowy Family Collection details the immigration of the Lowy family to the United States via Belgium. It also features the restitution of the family for its losses and the education of Robert (Ralph) Lowy. Many family members are remembered through the collection's numerous photographs. Aside from photographs and photo albums, the collection includes much correspondence, official documentation, notes and notebooks and some educational certificates of Robert Lowy.

The Rudolf and Victoria Pordes Collection primarily comprises material on the life and work of the furrier and artist Rudolf Pordes. Included is documentation of his immigration from Vienna through Belgium and France to the United States. Material on his professional work is also prevalent. This collection contains correspondence, official papers and certificates, notes, publications, photographs and legal documents.

Series II provides detailed genealogical information collected by Louis S. Wolf about the Eckhaus and Wolf families and their ancestors in the form of printed and handwritten family trees and drafts as well as biographical notes about individual family members. The collected genealogical information goes back to as far as 1601. The most complete family trees derive from Louis' paternal ancestor Abraham Wolf and his maternal ancestor Joseph Eckhaus. The genealogical information is supplemented with copies of various vital documents.

The series contains a brief summary about the life of the Wolf family in Kaiserslautern, Germany written by Louis S. Wolf in folder 1/11. He describes their dairy business and properties, and how more and more members of the extended family emigrated to Argentina and the United States due to Nazi persecution. Shortly after the sudden death of Louis' father Willi at the age of 29 in 1936, Louis, his mother Alice, his sister Doris and his uncle Albert were the only members of the family still living in Kaiserslautern. After selling some of their properties to a Nazi officer, Albert managed to organize their escape. At the end of his report, Louis mentions that during a trip to Kaiserslautern in 1994 he learned that the former property of his family between Hühnerstraße and Eierstraße had become part of a shopping mall.

This introduction to the family's history is followed by various computerized and handwritten family trees and drafts in folder 1/11. The genealogical information goes back to as far as 1601. However, the most complete family trees derive from Louis' paternal ancestor Abraham Wolf and his maternal ancestor Joseph Eckhaus, who were both born in 1774. The family trees are complemented by brief genealogical profiles about various members of the Wolf and Eckhaus families in folder 2/2 and numerous documents of Louis Wolf's genealogical research and its results in folders 1/8 to 1/10 and 1/12. Folder 1/10 holds correspondence between several municipal authorities in Rhineland-Palatinate and Louis S. Wolf, his mother Alice Wertheimer and his sister Doris Loeb. The letters contain information about the Wolf family and the Strauss branch of the Eckhaus family. The letters to Louis from 1994 contain information about the Wolf family. Documents such as copies of vital records that were originally attached to these letters can be found among additional similar records in folder 1/8. Further correspondence in folder 1/10 pertains to Louis' visit of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany in the summer of 1994. Included are copies of his letters announcing his trip to the mayor of Kindenheim and further requests as well as thank you notes and correspondence between Louis and the family of his former neighbor whom he met by chance in Kindenheim. During this trip, Louis also visited the graves of many of his ancestors. Photographs showing Louis and various tombstones can be found in folder 1/15. Folder 1/10 also holds a summary about the history of the Jewish Community in Kaiserslautern from 1242 to 1965 by the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora (today Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot) in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Folders 1/8 and 1/9 comprise copies of vital documents about members of the Eckhaus and Wolf families and their ancestors. The records in folder 1/8 are copies of birth, marriage and death certificates from the years 1830 to 1907. Most of the copies are dated, and some of them officially certified by the municipalities in Germany that issued them.

In 1995 Louis Wolf engaged Wolfgang Heiss, a genealogist in Germany, to conduct research in local archives about the Eckhaus family and their ancestors such as the Decker, Straus (Strauss, Strauß) and Trifus families. The results of this research can be found in folder 1/9. It holds vital records of various family members from the years 1803 to 1867. The photocopies of these documents are accompanied by informational overview pages created by Wolfgang Heiss. Furthermore, correspondence between Louis S. Wolf and the researcher is included.

This series also presents an original Jewish marriage contract – a ketubah – from 1840. The document is in fragmentary condition and presumably pertains to the marriage of Aron Ben Joseph and Hadas Bat Aharon. However, it remains unclear whether or how the mentioned persons are related to the Wolf and Eckhaus families.

Finally, folder 1/7 holds printouts of information and documents retrieved via ancestry.com by LBI staff members in 2019. Contained is information about Alice Wertheimer's (formerly Wolf, née Eckhaus) application for United States citizenship and the passenger list of the ship S.S. Volendam on which Louis S. Wolf and his family arrived in the United States in 1938.

This collection contains the papers of members of the Siegfried Jacoby family, depicting the family's private lives as well as their literary work. Most prominent among the papers here are many unpublished manuscripts, family correspondence, and Siegfried Jacoby's herbarium. There is also personal correspondence with others, some professional correspondence, official and personal papers, newspaper clippings, and a few notebooks and family photographs.

The Thea Hoffman Engelberg Collection is composed of the documents of Thea Hoffman Engelberg and her relatives. Most of the papers are related to the wedding of Bernhard and Ernestine Schön (Engelberg's grandparents) and her mother Leanora's death. The collection also contains many photos of the family, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century.

The Trude Kersten Family Collection documents the family history of the Brinizters', who lived in the Altona district of Hamburg, Germany from the late 1920s until 1938. When the situation for Jews in Germany became increasingly threatening they decided to emigrate to India, Great Britain and to the U.S. Jenny Brinitzer worked as a female doctor, Eugen Brinitzer as a dermatologist, their oldest son Carl Brinitzer became famous as an author and correspondent and Ewald Kersten established an international shipping agency. Theír diverse paths of life are illustrated in several photo albums, memoirs, letters and official documents.

This collection documents the lives of Vera Meyer's family members, especially her parents, Alfred and Eva Meyer, but also involving her grandparents and uncles. Prominent in the collection are the many family photographs and copies of family correspondence, including immigration and wartime letters. Other material consists of some biographical essays and a family tree.