{"id":286,"date":"2010-08-30T03:22:09","date_gmt":"2010-08-29T22:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.papaworx.com\/Blog\/?p=286"},"modified":"2010-08-30T15:48:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-30T10:48:00","slug":"did-lazarus-morgenthau-elope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.papaworx.com\/Blog\/2010\/08\/30\/did-lazarus-morgenthau-elope\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Lazarus Morgenthau elope?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Almost ninety years ago, on November 2, 1843, Lazarus Morgenthau married Babette Guggenheim of H\u00fcrben; whom he had known as a child and whom he had watched grow to womanhood.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Thus Louise Heidelberg begins\u00a0a biographic sketch of her grandfather, Lazarus Morgenthau in April of 1933. The sketch was to round out Lazarus’ own autobiography of his early years in Bavarian Swabia. The purpose of this blog is to explore blatant discrepancies between\u00a0various Morgenthau\u00a0biographies and local records.<\/p>\n

Lazarus Morgenthau\u00a0was not just anybody. He is the legendary patriarch of one great Jewish American family, prominent in public service and philantropy over several generations. His journey from rags to riches, from Kleinwaldstadt in Bavaria to New York has been described amply in several biographies and an on-line exhibition, all emanating from the family ((The Diary of Lazarus Morgenthau, N.Y. 1933. LoC CT275.M625 A3)), ((Mostly Morgenthaus. Henry Morgenthau III. New York : Ticknor & Fields, 1991. ISBN: 0899199763)), ((Morgenthau Family: Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Books LLC. ISBN-10: 1156290821)), ((http:\/\/www.mjhnyc.org\/morgenthaus\/<\/a>)).<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there is no trace of the celebrated marriage in the H\u00fcrben records ((jgbs.org)), neither for 1843, nor before or after. Both, the list of Jewish marriages kept by the rabbi, and the official copy maintained by the catholic priest show only two Jewish marriages\u00a0for 1843;\u00a0neither involved Lazarus Morgenthau or Babette Guggenheim(er). Maybe, Lazarus and Babette married somewhere else? There is no record of such a marriage in any Jewish community of Bavarian Swabia.<\/p>\n

Babette Guggenheim or Guggenheimer (the exact\u00a0spelling was somewhat fluid) descended from a prominent\u00a0H\u00fcrben family. Her father, Joachim (Chaim, Hayum) Guggenheim was a merchant. Her uncle Samuel Guggenheimer was the ritual circumciser (mohel) of the community. Babette’s birth name was actually “Seline” according to her birth record. Babette’s great-grandfather Marx Guggenheimb had arrived in H\u00fcrben around 1725 from Endingen, one of two Jewish villages in Switzerland.<\/p>\n

At the time of her presumed marriage in 1843, Babette was 17 years old, five years younger than the average age\u00a0 at marriage of her peers. Her father and mother would have been in their seventies and sixties respectively. Babette was the youngest, possibly second youngest of 12 or 13 children.<\/p>\n

Since Lazarus’ parents had been dead for over 10 years in 1843, a\u00a0traditional wedding outside of H\u00fcrben, the bride’s home,\u00a0would have been unthinkable given the customs of the time.<\/p>\n

But there are other inconsistencies. Although the only published chapter of the autobiography is entitled: “First Period from the Year 1820 to 1826”, it takes us well into 1838 or possibly 1839. Nowhere\u00a0are Babette or Joachim Guggenheim mentioned, even once. There is, however, a prominent mention of one Isaac Hirsch Ottinger ((actually, Oettinger)), a religious scholar who gave Lazarus private lessons.\u00a0Lazarus was very grateful to Mr. Oettinger “.. for other services that he rendered when I settled in H\u00fcrben which I will describe later<\/em>.” He never did! But we do know quite a bit about Lazarus applying and finally receiving a residency permit in H\u00fcrben. There exists in fact a record at the Krumbach district office describing the application for and the granting of a permanent\u00a0residency permit for\u00a0 ‘journeyman tailor Lazarus Morgenthau’ (( 1839-1841; Ans\u00e4ssigmachung des Schneidergesellen Lazarus Morgenthau in H\u00fcrben (Nr.2814.) )). By 1841, therefore, Lazarus was a legal resident of H\u00fcrben. In the mean time, he had also acquired an apartment on Heinrich Sinz St. 6. He sold the apartment again in 1843 and a further chamber\u00a0in 1844. It would have made a perfect home for a young married couple.<\/span><\/p>\n

The version of Lazarus’ autobiography available at the Library of Congress, as mentioned before, ends in 1838 or 1839, and the\u00a0town of\u00a0“Speyer” is not mentioned at all. In the version\u00a0cited by Henry Morgenthau III, Lazarus had lived and worked in Speyer for several years prior to his marriage. Speyer is situated some 250 Km from H\u00fcrben, a world apart before the advent of railways. This was also, where the couple actually made its home.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, we have documentary evidence that Lazarus had settled down\u00a0in H\u00fcrben shortly before his marriage, that a Morgenthau – Guggenheim wedding did not take place in H\u00fcrben,\u00a0 and that he didn’t weigh anchors in H\u00fcrben until 1843\/4. It just raises the\u00a0possibility that the wedding wasn’t the grand affair described in “Mostly Morgenthaus”.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Almost ninety years ago, on November 2, 1843, Lazarus Morgenthau married Babette Guggenheim of H\u00fcrben; whom he had known as a child and whom he had watched grow to womanhood.” Thus Louise Heidelberg begins\u00a0a biographic sketch of her grandfather, Lazarus … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[42,40,41],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.papaworx.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.papaworx.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.papaworx.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.papaworx.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.papaworx.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.papaworx.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313,"href":"https:\/\/www.papaworx.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions\/313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.papaworx.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.papaworx.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.papaworx.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}