Rhineland-Palatinate (Germany)

This collection consists of letters to Betty and Morris (Moritz) Moser and their daughter Lore in New York from friends and family in Germany. The primary topic is the search for emigration opportunities.

The Forst and Levy Family Collection holds the papers of members of the Forst and Levy families, ancestors of Susan Schomer. A large portion of the collection is made up of the World War I correspondence of the Forst family. In addition the collection includes later correspondence of Joseph Levy, paper money, genealogical notes, affidavits of support, restitution correspondence and other materials.

The Frederick Brunner Collection incorporates the research of the banker and LBI board chairman Frederick Brunner. Prominent subjects encompassed in this research include the Rothschild family and the history of Jews in Landau in der Pfalz. Some research on banking history and Jews as bankers may also be found here. The collection contains extensive newspaper clippings, articles, correspondence, notes, genealogical tables and family trees, and a few photographs.

Correspondence, note books, vital and educational records, as well as published materials pertaining to several generations of the Gümbel family, originally from Albisheim in Germany.

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.