The Berg family tree - The top entry, Otto Berg's grandfather, was Jacob Berg whose father was Herz Berg, mentioned in the text below,
Philip's name was originally Feist. He was one of 11 or 12 children, one of which died at the age of 4 months.
Philip's name was originally Feist. He was one of 11 or 12 children, one of which died at the age of 4 months.
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Heinz Berg’s text on the Berg family
This is an attempt to tell my children and grandchildren the story of their ancestors: who they were, how they lived and how conditions have changed from one generation to the next. The first informations available date about 200 years back for the Berg as well as for the Zuntz families.
Both families belonged originally to Jewish communities in different parts of Germany, living as near as possible to their synagogues. They were still subjected to all sorts of restrictions regarding their abode and their professions. During the 19th century conditions for Jews improved gradually. More and more of their children attended German schools, but most of them still adhered to the Jewish faith. Others got married to Germans and became Protestants, Catholics or even Free Thinkers. My grandfather Nathan Zuntz changed over into the Protestant church and his 3 children were educated accordingly and so were my sister Eva and the 3 sons (myself, Wolfgang and Richard). I myself and my brother Wolfgang married non-Jewish partners. The youngest brother Richard reverted to the Jewish community and emigrated to Palestine in 1934 (since 1948 Israel) and changed his name to Rafael Tabor. He was a member of a German-Jewish Youth group called “Werkleute” who started the Kibbutz Hazorea.
The oldest original document of the Berg family is a permit dated May 1826 for Jacob Berg (my great grandfather) to settle in Schwarzenau district Wittgenstein. The last paragraph states that this permit was issued as a continuation of the one issued to his father Herz Berg. I do remember the story told to me by the oldest sister of my father that in the permit of Herz Berg it was stated that he was granted the family name “BERG” because his house was situated on a hill just outside of the village. There was a time when a Jew had to add his father’s name on to his own with the result no family surname was carried on from one generation to the next. When compulsory population registers were introduced by the Prussian governments the Jewish communities were forced to adapt theirs accordingly; but the choice of a family name was made by local civil servants who very frequently selected offensive words.
Jacob Berg was born on the 20th August 1797. He died on the 7th July 1892. His wife Jette, born Stern was born 28th February 1805 and died on the 8th May 1860. They had 12 children of whom one boy died at the age of 3 months. The first, a son, was born on the 3rd December 1826, his name was David. The youngest, Caroline, was born on the 22nd April 1845. I still have not (discovered) the dates of the death of the children except of the second son Levy who died 3 months old and of our great-grandfather Philipp who died in Berlin on the 6th April 1911. I managed to trace the birthday dates of all the 12 children from a register of birth and death of the district in which Schwarzenau was situated. Herz Berg and son Jacob were farmers and at the same time carpenters. Jacob and Jette made a mutual last will in which their eldest son David was named to take over the fame and the carpentry shop. He was supposed to pay the other children 300 Taler each except two brothers who had emigrated to the USA and Philipp who had gone to Berlin as a young man. I should mention that Philipp was not the original name registered in the register mentioned above. There appears the name “Feist” with the same birthday date 4.4.1833 which appears on the records of the Jewish Cemetery in Berlin-Weissensee under the name Philipp. I am not aware when this change of name was made. The names and birthdays of the two brothers who emigrated to the USA were “Meyer” born 22.2.1829 and Salomon born 26.2.1830.
Philipp had gone to Berlin at a very young age because he felt that there was no scope for him in Schwarzenau. He found a job as errand boy in a small factory which produced flexible stays from whale bone for ladies corsets and collars. When Philipp had a free moment he observed the cutters and started to imitate them. The factory owner realized soon that this errand boy could be more usefully occupied as a workman. In due course Philipp advanced to the position of a foreman and made himself so irreplaceable that he was offered a partnership in the business.
When Philipp (born on the 4th April 1833) married Jenny, born Feig (born on the 20th June 1847) on the 10th November 1872 at the age of nearly 39 years he had worked in the firm for approximately 25 years and was then already most likely a partner in the business. I still remember the house in the Chausseestrasse No. 114 in the North of Berlin: The Berg family lived on the first floor and the factory was in a building on the rear yard. My sister Eva and I were “parked” twice in Berlin with the grandparents Zuntz in 1908 and 1910 and were occasionally taken to the house in Chausseestrasse where the other grandparents lived. Altogether the house in the Chausseestrasse has played a big role in the life of my parents and will be mentioned again in the history of the Zuntz family.
I know practically nothing about the role of Philipp in the life of his wife and their 6 children. He was very generous with financial aid for his three sons. When two of the 3 daughters got married each received a dowry of 100.000,- Goldmark which was a big sum at the beginning of the 20th century before the first world war. But while regular allowances for the 3 sons were considered to be current expenses the dowry for the daughters was considered as advances on their share of the future inheritance. But the payments for the sons were to be continued as long as the mother was still alive. The big inflation after the First World War brought the loss of most of the fortune of approximately three million mark.
I have so far omitted to mention that Philipp became the sole owner of the factory when his partner retired. I do not know when this happened and also not the name of this man[i]. Philipp himself sold the business in the year 1910, and moved to Berlin Charlottenburg, Berliner Strasse. He died a short time after his retirement on the 6th April 1911 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery Berlin-Weissensee. His wife survived him over 15 years; she died on the 20th October 1927 and was buried next to her late husband.
The six children of grandfather Philipp were:
Margarete (Tante Grete) was born 16th October 1873 and died 22nd June 1940. She remained a spinster and stayed with her parents as long as they lived. She had a good relationship with my father and was a frequent visitor to his family. Her hobby was painting and there exists a good one of her father which shows a striking similarity with my nephew Peter Berg. After the death of her mother she became a typical spinster who kept on living in Berlin. Fortunately she died before the deportation of the Jewish people had started in 1942.
The next was my father Otto Hermann, born 23 November 1874, died 1939 in England. During his school time he was a close friend of my mother’s brother Leo and a frequent visitor in the Zuntz family. After successfully having studied Physics in Freiburg he married my mother Julie on the 10th March 1900. They started their married life in Freiburg and moved from there to Greifswald where he was teaching at the University. My sister Eva (7th May 1901) and myself (17th June 1903) were born there. Around 1907 they moved to Göttingen and he worked again at the university. Brother Wolfgang was born there on the 30th March 1908. After sad experiences of anti-Semitism at both these universities he decided to change to a profession where he could work freelance. The family moved to Darmstadt and father studied Architecture, passing the final exam with the highest possible distinctions. He then designed a private house for friends in Jugenheim and supervised the construction. During the school holidays the whole family lived in Jugenheim, at that time 1 hour away from Darmstadt, and Eva and I had a wonderful time in the woods.
The fourth child, Richard, was born on the 8th January 1911 in the clinic of mother’s brother in Berlin. I can still remember the life in Darmstadt where I still did not go to school. Mother who had qualified as a teacher has never worked as a school teacher because she got married already at the age of 23 years. The next move around the middle of the year 1913 brought us to Berlin. The parents rented a house in the suburb Schlachtensee. Eva went to a high school in Berlin while I was sent to a humanistic Gymnasium in a nearby suburb Zehlendorf, a good half hour away from home. When the first world war broke out in August 1914 all the younger teachers were drafted to the army and the old retired men were called back to resume teaching. The wild patriotism of the first few months did not last very long. -------------
I went really too far ahead and will now first complete the story of the remaining brothers and sisters and our father. I have no dates for the remaining two brothers and two sisters and do not even know the sequence when they were born.
Walter studied medicine, married a girl from the Zuntz family at a very early age. But they did not stay together for a long time before they were divorced again. She later married the well known artist Lionel Feininger and they had 3 sons. She kept some contact with my mother but that was at a time where I did not care for any family relations. During the First World War Walter worked mostly in front-line hospitals. Around the year 1923 he married Marlene du Bois Reymond and they had two sons. She was the oldest of 5 children and a good friend of my sister Eva. Her family was not Jewish so that their two sons were classified as half-Jewish. In the year 1938 they sent the sons to an English school and they themselves moved to Berlin and took over the house of my parents who went to England to stay with my brother. After the outbreak of the Second World War a lot of children were evacuated either to Canada or to Australia. The two boys were on a very overcrowded ship to Australia. The older one collapsed under the strain and was on arrival immediately transferred to a mental home where he was kept until after the end of the war. He was then transferred to a German mental home. His mother Marlene visited him every year until she became too weak to travel. The younger son first returned to England where he married and later on went to Canada where they settled. He changed his name to Bourke, they had several children and wish to have nothing to do with Germany any more. I must still add that Walter was drafter later in the war to help clearing the rubble of bombed houses although he was not fit for any manual work. He died shortly after the end of the war in 1945. --- I better don’t say much about father’s youngest brother Erich and the two married sisters. All three were married with people whom I disliked on first sight. Erich and his wife Bettina were in England during the 2nd world war and went to the USA where the daughter Bettina’s first marriage lived. After Bettina had died Erich went to live in an old age home in Basle. One of the aforementioned sisters – both had lost their husband already – was killed in a concentration camp together with her only daughter. The other one I met in South Africa once, her two sons lived in Johannesburg and had managed to get their mother out on time. However, since they were not, better to say they had never been on good terms with the rest of the family I have seen no reason to establish a permanent connection with them.
[i] The name was probably Isaac Mann (cf. Berlin address book 1901)
This is an attempt to tell my children and grandchildren the story of their ancestors: who they were, how they lived and how conditions have changed from one generation to the next. The first informations available date about 200 years back for the Berg as well as for the Zuntz families.
Both families belonged originally to Jewish communities in different parts of Germany, living as near as possible to their synagogues. They were still subjected to all sorts of restrictions regarding their abode and their professions. During the 19th century conditions for Jews improved gradually. More and more of their children attended German schools, but most of them still adhered to the Jewish faith. Others got married to Germans and became Protestants, Catholics or even Free Thinkers. My grandfather Nathan Zuntz changed over into the Protestant church and his 3 children were educated accordingly and so were my sister Eva and the 3 sons (myself, Wolfgang and Richard). I myself and my brother Wolfgang married non-Jewish partners. The youngest brother Richard reverted to the Jewish community and emigrated to Palestine in 1934 (since 1948 Israel) and changed his name to Rafael Tabor. He was a member of a German-Jewish Youth group called “Werkleute” who started the Kibbutz Hazorea.
The oldest original document of the Berg family is a permit dated May 1826 for Jacob Berg (my great grandfather) to settle in Schwarzenau district Wittgenstein. The last paragraph states that this permit was issued as a continuation of the one issued to his father Herz Berg. I do remember the story told to me by the oldest sister of my father that in the permit of Herz Berg it was stated that he was granted the family name “BERG” because his house was situated on a hill just outside of the village. There was a time when a Jew had to add his father’s name on to his own with the result no family surname was carried on from one generation to the next. When compulsory population registers were introduced by the Prussian governments the Jewish communities were forced to adapt theirs accordingly; but the choice of a family name was made by local civil servants who very frequently selected offensive words.
Jacob Berg was born on the 20th August 1797. He died on the 7th July 1892. His wife Jette, born Stern was born 28th February 1805 and died on the 8th May 1860. They had 12 children of whom one boy died at the age of 3 months. The first, a son, was born on the 3rd December 1826, his name was David. The youngest, Caroline, was born on the 22nd April 1845. I still have not (discovered) the dates of the death of the children except of the second son Levy who died 3 months old and of our great-grandfather Philipp who died in Berlin on the 6th April 1911. I managed to trace the birthday dates of all the 12 children from a register of birth and death of the district in which Schwarzenau was situated. Herz Berg and son Jacob were farmers and at the same time carpenters. Jacob and Jette made a mutual last will in which their eldest son David was named to take over the fame and the carpentry shop. He was supposed to pay the other children 300 Taler each except two brothers who had emigrated to the USA and Philipp who had gone to Berlin as a young man. I should mention that Philipp was not the original name registered in the register mentioned above. There appears the name “Feist” with the same birthday date 4.4.1833 which appears on the records of the Jewish Cemetery in Berlin-Weissensee under the name Philipp. I am not aware when this change of name was made. The names and birthdays of the two brothers who emigrated to the USA were “Meyer” born 22.2.1829 and Salomon born 26.2.1830.
Philipp had gone to Berlin at a very young age because he felt that there was no scope for him in Schwarzenau. He found a job as errand boy in a small factory which produced flexible stays from whale bone for ladies corsets and collars. When Philipp had a free moment he observed the cutters and started to imitate them. The factory owner realized soon that this errand boy could be more usefully occupied as a workman. In due course Philipp advanced to the position of a foreman and made himself so irreplaceable that he was offered a partnership in the business.
When Philipp (born on the 4th April 1833) married Jenny, born Feig (born on the 20th June 1847) on the 10th November 1872 at the age of nearly 39 years he had worked in the firm for approximately 25 years and was then already most likely a partner in the business. I still remember the house in the Chausseestrasse No. 114 in the North of Berlin: The Berg family lived on the first floor and the factory was in a building on the rear yard. My sister Eva and I were “parked” twice in Berlin with the grandparents Zuntz in 1908 and 1910 and were occasionally taken to the house in Chausseestrasse where the other grandparents lived. Altogether the house in the Chausseestrasse has played a big role in the life of my parents and will be mentioned again in the history of the Zuntz family.
I know practically nothing about the role of Philipp in the life of his wife and their 6 children. He was very generous with financial aid for his three sons. When two of the 3 daughters got married each received a dowry of 100.000,- Goldmark which was a big sum at the beginning of the 20th century before the first world war. But while regular allowances for the 3 sons were considered to be current expenses the dowry for the daughters was considered as advances on their share of the future inheritance. But the payments for the sons were to be continued as long as the mother was still alive. The big inflation after the First World War brought the loss of most of the fortune of approximately three million mark.
I have so far omitted to mention that Philipp became the sole owner of the factory when his partner retired. I do not know when this happened and also not the name of this man[i]. Philipp himself sold the business in the year 1910, and moved to Berlin Charlottenburg, Berliner Strasse. He died a short time after his retirement on the 6th April 1911 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery Berlin-Weissensee. His wife survived him over 15 years; she died on the 20th October 1927 and was buried next to her late husband.
The six children of grandfather Philipp were:
Margarete (Tante Grete) was born 16th October 1873 and died 22nd June 1940. She remained a spinster and stayed with her parents as long as they lived. She had a good relationship with my father and was a frequent visitor to his family. Her hobby was painting and there exists a good one of her father which shows a striking similarity with my nephew Peter Berg. After the death of her mother she became a typical spinster who kept on living in Berlin. Fortunately she died before the deportation of the Jewish people had started in 1942.
The next was my father Otto Hermann, born 23 November 1874, died 1939 in England. During his school time he was a close friend of my mother’s brother Leo and a frequent visitor in the Zuntz family. After successfully having studied Physics in Freiburg he married my mother Julie on the 10th March 1900. They started their married life in Freiburg and moved from there to Greifswald where he was teaching at the University. My sister Eva (7th May 1901) and myself (17th June 1903) were born there. Around 1907 they moved to Göttingen and he worked again at the university. Brother Wolfgang was born there on the 30th March 1908. After sad experiences of anti-Semitism at both these universities he decided to change to a profession where he could work freelance. The family moved to Darmstadt and father studied Architecture, passing the final exam with the highest possible distinctions. He then designed a private house for friends in Jugenheim and supervised the construction. During the school holidays the whole family lived in Jugenheim, at that time 1 hour away from Darmstadt, and Eva and I had a wonderful time in the woods.
The fourth child, Richard, was born on the 8th January 1911 in the clinic of mother’s brother in Berlin. I can still remember the life in Darmstadt where I still did not go to school. Mother who had qualified as a teacher has never worked as a school teacher because she got married already at the age of 23 years. The next move around the middle of the year 1913 brought us to Berlin. The parents rented a house in the suburb Schlachtensee. Eva went to a high school in Berlin while I was sent to a humanistic Gymnasium in a nearby suburb Zehlendorf, a good half hour away from home. When the first world war broke out in August 1914 all the younger teachers were drafted to the army and the old retired men were called back to resume teaching. The wild patriotism of the first few months did not last very long. -------------
I went really too far ahead and will now first complete the story of the remaining brothers and sisters and our father. I have no dates for the remaining two brothers and two sisters and do not even know the sequence when they were born.
Walter studied medicine, married a girl from the Zuntz family at a very early age. But they did not stay together for a long time before they were divorced again. She later married the well known artist Lionel Feininger and they had 3 sons. She kept some contact with my mother but that was at a time where I did not care for any family relations. During the First World War Walter worked mostly in front-line hospitals. Around the year 1923 he married Marlene du Bois Reymond and they had two sons. She was the oldest of 5 children and a good friend of my sister Eva. Her family was not Jewish so that their two sons were classified as half-Jewish. In the year 1938 they sent the sons to an English school and they themselves moved to Berlin and took over the house of my parents who went to England to stay with my brother. After the outbreak of the Second World War a lot of children were evacuated either to Canada or to Australia. The two boys were on a very overcrowded ship to Australia. The older one collapsed under the strain and was on arrival immediately transferred to a mental home where he was kept until after the end of the war. He was then transferred to a German mental home. His mother Marlene visited him every year until she became too weak to travel. The younger son first returned to England where he married and later on went to Canada where they settled. He changed his name to Bourke, they had several children and wish to have nothing to do with Germany any more. I must still add that Walter was drafter later in the war to help clearing the rubble of bombed houses although he was not fit for any manual work. He died shortly after the end of the war in 1945. --- I better don’t say much about father’s youngest brother Erich and the two married sisters. All three were married with people whom I disliked on first sight. Erich and his wife Bettina were in England during the 2nd world war and went to the USA where the daughter Bettina’s first marriage lived. After Bettina had died Erich went to live in an old age home in Basle. One of the aforementioned sisters – both had lost their husband already – was killed in a concentration camp together with her only daughter. The other one I met in South Africa once, her two sons lived in Johannesburg and had managed to get their mother out on time. However, since they were not, better to say they had never been on good terms with the rest of the family I have seen no reason to establish a permanent connection with them.
[i] The name was probably Isaac Mann (cf. Berlin address book 1901)