In 1861, Gelle Blumenfeld Rothschild gave birth to her eleventh and last child, Meier, as we saw in my earlier post. Two of those eleven children had died before their third birthdays, but the other nine were still living although for one of those children, Isaac, born in 1850, I have no records after his birth record.1 Thus, I can only report on what happened to the remaining eight children. I will tell their stories one at a time, starting with the oldest child of Gelle Blumenfeld and Simon Rothschild, Seligmann Simon Rothschild.
Seligmann Rothschild was 28 when he married Gelle Karoline Rosenberg on November 7, 1871, in Zimmersrode, Germany; she was the daughter of Jacob Rosenberg and Belle Kauffman and was born on September 11, 1850.2
Seligmann and Gelle had two children. Moses (Max) Rothschild was born on January 18, 1874, in Waltersbrueck, Germany, and his brother Emiel (or Emil) Rothschild was born there on April 27, 1875.
Sadly, Gelle Rosenberg Rothschild died less than two years later on August 26, 1876, in Waltersbrueck. She was only 25 years old and left her husband Seligmann with two children under three years old.
Seligmann did not wait too long to remarry. On January 8, 1878, in Waltersbrueck, he married Emma Ernestina Rothschild, the daughter of Moses Rothschild and Caroline Baum. Emma was born on September 2, 1848, in Angenrod, Germany.
One question nagging at me is whether Seligmann Rothschild, son of Simon Rothschild, was related to his new bride Emma Rothschild, daughter of Moses Rothschild. Emma and her family were from Angenrod, which is only 22 miles from Waltersbrueck where Seligmann lived. I have tried to trace back the lineage of Moses Rothschild and Simon Rothschild, but so far have not found any overlap. Yet it seems somehow likely that these two families were related and that when Seligmann’s first wife died, Emma was selected to help him raise his two little boys. But I have no proof so it remains just speculation.
Emma and Seligmann had two children together. Leopold Rothschild was born on March 20, 1880, in Waltersbrueck, and his brother Hugo was born in Waltersbrueck on July 5, 1882.
And then tragedy struck the family again when Seligmann, only forty years old, died on May 25, 1884, leaving Emma alone to raise the four little boys, the first two the children of Seligmann’s first wife Gelle, the other two Emma’s children. When Seligmann died, Moses Max was ten, Emil was nine, Leopold was four, and Hugo was two. It’s hard to imagine how Emma managed to cope with so much loss and with four little heartbroken children.
Seligmann’s mother Gelle Blumenfeld Rothschild lived to see the births of all four of these grandsons, but also had to endure the heartbreak of losing her first-born child, Seligmann, who was the third of her eleven children to predecease her. Gelle died in Waltersbrueck on December 2, 1887, when she was 65 years old.3
Gelle was spared the heartbreak of seeing that Seligmann’s second child, Emil, died when he was only eighteen on December 13, 1893, in Alsfeld, Germany, where he was then living and working as a merchant. I don’t know what his cause of death was, but when I think of all he’d endured—loss of his mother when he was one, the remarriage of his father and births of two half-brothers, the loss of his father when he was nine, and then the loss of his grandmother three years after that—I have to wonder what impact all that had on his physical and mental well-being.
Two years later Seligmann Rothschild’s father Simon Rothschild died on July 21, 1895, in Zimmersrode. He was 82
The futures of the three surviving sons of Seligmann Simon Rothschild will be discussed in the next post.
- There is a notation on Isaak’s birth record that says, “war noch nicht eingetragen, geschieht nachtraeglich,” which translates to “Not yet registered, will happen later.” Someone on Facebook pointed out that Isaak’s birth record is out of chronological order in the register and so was recorded months after his birth. ↩
- Gelle Rosenberg Rothschild death record, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 8453; Laufende Nummer: 920, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Deaths, 1851-1958 ↩
- She also lived to see the births of nine other grandchildren, but we will get to those other grandchildren in later posts. ↩
I one hundred per cent agree with your paragraph about the stress carried by Emil all his life within his family history.
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Thanks, Shirley. It’s hard to imagine what those little boys went through.
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Hi
I have Rebekka Blumenfeld 1856 (daughter of Isaac Blumenfeld 1813 and Gella Strauss),
Married Mendel Rosenberg son of Jacob Rosenberg and Beile Betti Kuschmann(not kaufmann)
Sadly, Gelle Rosenberg Rothschild died less than two years later on August 26, 1976 should be 1876
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I have written about Rebekka Blumenfeld earlier. Not sure why it relates to this post?? And thanks—I will fix the typo. 🙂
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How very sad…those poor children. Hope the surviving three had happier lives after this period (though I fear they might not have)…
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Lots of different stories to come…
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I had a hard time getting past the thought of having eleven children 🙂
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LOL! Two was a lot for me!
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I know it’s sad when little children die, but teen death just breaks my heart.
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I know what you mean. I wish I knew why Emil died so young.
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I am curious too if it was a cousin marriage. Wondering how common the Rothchild last name was. It does seem more likely than not that it was 🙂
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Sometimes I wonder how people kept going when they lost young loved ones so often. I mean that in general loss seemed so much more a part of life.
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I often wonder about that also and wonder whether losing so many children made parents more or less attached to babies when they were born, knowing the risks.
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