Losing Georg LUNGE (sort of)

This blog posting is about discovering that Georg LUNGE’s grandfather was seemingly married twice, first to Georg’s grandmother and then to Rosa FRIEDLAENDER, my great great great great aunt.  If that is correct, it makes Georg LUNGE a “step-cousin”, though presumably his mother and her siblings and step-siblings were close enough that a family bond persisted.

The Dear Reader will recall, if only because it was in the immediately preceding blog posting (!), that the family connection between Philipp IMMERWAHR (and his siblings, such as my great grandmother Clara FREUND geb. IMMERWAHR) and Prof. Georg LUNGE was through their common FRIEDLAENDER family.   The grandmother of Philipp and Clara, Babette SILBERSTEIN geb. FRIEDLAENDER was a sister of Rosa FISCHHOF geb. FRIEDLAENDER, grandmother of Georg LUNGE.  Babette and Rosa were daughters of Joseph FRIEDLAENDER.


The name of Rosa FISCHHOF’s husband was not mentioned in the Will of her aunt Rosalie GOTTHEINER geb. FRIEDLAENDER.   He had already died by 1828 when Rosalie decided to leave some money to Rosa’s daughters Amalie, Friederike and Pauline of Brünn.   These FISCHHOF girls were not just identified as daughters of Rosa, they were referred to as Enkeltöchter (granddaughters) of Rosalie’s brother Joseph FRIEDLAENDER.


In May 2007, from an 1840 Breslau marriage entry for Friederike FISCHHOF and Joseph WIESENBERG, I learned that Friederike’s father was Joseph FISCHHOF.


In May 2009, at the archive of the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin, I found a copy of the Todesanzeige (death report) for Amalie LUNGE geb. FISCHHOF.  The main piece of new information was that she was born in the town of Butschowitz, near Brünn in Moravia.


Looking online at that time for information on FISCHHOFs with a connection to Butschowitz, led to information about a musician Josef Fischhof (4 Apr 1804, Butschowitz – 28 Jun 1857, Wien) who is mentioned in Hugo GOLD’s “Die Juden und Judengemeinden Mährens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwalt”, at p. 176:
“Zu Fischhof vgl. Wurzbach, Biogr. Lex. d. Kaisert. Österreich IV., S. 254-256 (Nach dieser Quelle hat J. Fischhof gleichnamiger [?] {2)} Vater, 1768 in Butschowitz geboren, eine Broschüre verfaßt, in der er seine Mitbürger zur Leistung des Militärdienstes auffordert.)
2)  Vielleicht mit dem im MB erwähnten “Morenu ha-Rabbi R. Josaia Fischhof b. Jehuda” identisch?” [MB = Butschowitzer Memorbuch]


It seemed likely that Joseph was a brother of Amalie, Friederike and Pauline, based on dates and place, and their father being Joseph FISCHHOFF, but there was no direct evidence to show they were from the same FISCHHOF family from Butschowitz (but how many could there be).


Two weeks ago, a great granddaughter of Prof. Georg LUNGE reconnected with me by e-mail to catch up and to ask about the LUNGE family history.  In particular, she wondered whether I could identify a photograph of a family portrait – the man identified as “Georg Fischhof LUNGE”.

I was not able to help identify the man in the family portrait (other than to question the accuracy of the name written on the photograph), but the question caused me to look again at my FISCHHOF information and to return to the internet for clues.

This time, a similar search led to information in a Geni.com posting that identified about 10 children of Joseph FISCHHOFF and Rosa Blühdorn FRIEDLAENDER.  The information in that tree came mainly from Butschowitz Jewish community records (available online at www. badatelna.cz), from Vienna records searchable online (though www.genteam.at), and from the 2011 book “Wie Einmal War”, by Georg GAUGUSCH of Vienna, whom Don and I met in the Lohestrasse Jewish cemetery in Breslau (Wroclaw) in October 2011.

The Breslau Jewish community birth records that included the birth of Georg (Josef) LUNGE, identified his mother as Amalie (Cheile) LUNGE geb. FISCHHOF.   In the Butschowitz records, the birth of Cheile FISCHHOFF was recorded in May 1806 (4 years earlier than would be expected based on her listed in age in her Heirats-Anzeige in 1834 (24) and her Todesanzeige in 1874 (64)).

The Butschowitz records also record the births of Friederike (1812) and Pauline (1814).  These three FISCHOFF sisters line up perfectly with the girls mentioned in the will of Rosalie GOTTHEINER geb. FRIEDLAENDER.

The catch is that their mother was listed as Rosa geb. BLÜHDORN, not Rosa geb.  FRIEDLAENDER.   Rosa FRIEDLAENDER does appear in the records for the births of Joseph FISCHHOFF’s later children (Emma, August and Julius), born in 1818, 1821 and 1823.  The earlier children from Josef in 1804 to David in 1816 all appear to be the children of Rosa BLÜHDORN.

So, it is my conclusion that the two Rosa’s are two wives of Joseph FISCHHOFF and that Amalie was a daughter of the first wife Rosa BLÜHDORN, not my great great great great aunt Rosa FRIEDLAENDER.   If that is correct then Amalie LUNGE geb. FISCHHOFF was a “step” first cousin of Lina IMMERWAHR geb. SILBERSTEIN, and Prof. Georg LUNGE was a “step” second cousin of Philipp IMMERWAHR.

With that in mind, it is interesting that Rosalie GOTTHEINER’s will referred to the FISCHHOF girls as granddaughter of Rosalie’s brother Joseph FRIEDLAENDER.  This suggests to me that the stepmother Rosa FISCHHOF geb. FRIEDLAENDER considered her step-daughters to be hers, and presumably she raised them to feel that way.

(A copy of “Wer Einmal War” is en route from England; maybe it will provide some more details to support this conclusion.)