And Now for Something Completely Different, Aurelie

This is the blog entry I was going to write when circumstances, briefly, intervened and led to the previous entry (care of daughters named “Aurelie”).


Actually, this will not be the blog entry I intended to write when those previously intervening circumstances arose.


Instead, this very brief note will further intervene.


One of the tantalizing genealogy / family history stories I have heard from my mother is about a silver cup of some sort that she recalls from her childhood.  It was in her home on the Vogelweide in Breslau.  It had a family tree engraved on it, and it may have had silver leaves with names on them attached to the outer surface of the “cup”, and possibly even extending above the rim (if it had a rim).

Presumably, it came from her father‘s family; probably his mother’s mother’s family (Walther FREUND -> Clara IMMERWAHR  –> Lina SILBERSTEIN); and maybe even from Lina’s mother’s family (Lina SILBERSTEIN –> Amalie LEUBUSCHER).  I think she may have recalled the surname LEUBUSCHER being on the cup.

The only given name that I can ever recall my mother recalling from that three-dimensional family tree, was the name “Aurelie”.  But in 35 years of genealogy research, I have never found an Aurelie anywhere in my mother’s family tree.


I have wondered whether the lost family tree cup may have looked like this example, the photograph of which I received from a cousin in Australia 3 years ago:

This one was prepared in 1846 on the occasion of the the 25th wedding anniversary of Marcus WITKOWSKI and Henriette (Gute) ZIPPERT.  Marcus’ mother Henriette (Gitel) LATZ was my great great great great aunt.  Maybe the one my mother remembers also came from her LATZ family (Walther FREUND –> Wilhelm Salomon FREUND -> Rosalie ZÜLZ -> Brainchen LATZ –> Salomon Benjamin LATZ)…

For now, it’s a mystery, and one of those losses from pre-War to post-War that has fueled my desire to put all the pieces back together.