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New Edition April 2017
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Rebekka Wedell Eberhard George Wedell The Samuel Meyer of Hanover Connection Edited by Erhard Roy Wiehn 1st Edition 2017. 206
pages. € 24.90. ISBN
978-3-86628-560-6 |
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Foreword by Rebekka Wedell
This book is about family connections, to the past, in the present and
into the future. At the centre of this family are Landrabbiner Samuel Meyer and his wife Lina,
nee Sieskind, who are the great-grandparents of my
father, Eberhard George Wedell. They lived in Hanover
in the mid-nineteenth century and had fifteen children whose descendants are,
today, spread across the globe – living in Europe, North and South America and
Israel.
At the same time, the significance of this book extends beyond the
framework of one particular family and its history. It has a role to play in
re-connecting the Meyer family with the city of Hanover, which has, in turn,
made an important contribution to the book – giving access to the city's
archive material, the Erinnerungsschrift of
1919, as well as having commissioned historical research into particular areas
relevant to the Meyer family e.g. the Landrabbinat
of Hanover, and Judenzählung from the
University of Hanover.
One interesting piece of preparing this book has been to work the
different kinds of source material into one meaningful whole. We hope that we
have been more or less successful in this.
My father tells me that he first had the idea for this book at the 90th birthday celebration
of his cousin, Klaus Meyer, in 2003, which took place on a Thames riverboat in
London.
Klaus was both a Wedell and a Meyer. His
mother was Lily Wedell, my father's aunt, who married
her uncle, Jacob Meyer, the brother of their grandmother, Ida Wedell, nee Meyer. Marriage between family relations was
not uncommon in that era. As such Klaus straddled two generations – both a
grandson, and, like Eberhard, a great-grandson, of Samuel and Lina. It meant
that he had connections with branches of the Meyer family that were unknown to
my father.
Standing on the deck of that boat on a sunny July day in 2003, there was
an assortment of relatives across several generations, all descended from
Samuel and Lina. It was here that Eberhard George met,
for the first time, other Meyer descendants whose families had settled in
England, as well as relatives whose families had emigrated to Brazil, the USA
and Israel.
Many of the younger relatives probably knew little if anything about the
origins of their shared family connection. It presented itself as an
interesting project to find out what became of Samuel and Lina's descendants,
to see how widely this web of relatives might extend, and in doing so the
intention was to offer present and future generations the possibility for
exploring their connections, should they wish to do so.
In this book, we have the opportunity to listen to the voices of our
ancestors speaking directly to us, through their sermons, diary entries,
polemic writing, and family anecdotes. The material collated here derives from
a range of different sources:
Chapters 1 and 2 draw on existing genealogical research and family
documentation that set the Meyer and Sieskind
families within a historical context as well-established families of
German-Jewry, that can be traced back at least to the early 18th century; and present
a picture of Samuel Meyer's work as Landrabbiner,
living through times of political change, both for Germans and for his
Jewish communities.
We are much indebted to Klaus Oliven, a
great-grandson of Samuel's brother, Louis, for giving us access to his book My
Family History published in 2001; it gives a fascinating account of the
Meyer family, and documents its extensive historical connections.
Chapters 3 and 5 consist of family reminiscences and accounts of the
children of Lina and Samuel, thirteen of whom survived into adulthood. In
Chapter 3, the memories of "Life in Escherstrasse,"
by "Tante Becca" conjure up the warm and
vibrant home life of Samuel and Lina. Other contributions have come from
relatives who still knew that generation, but, inevitably, the accounts that we
have vary both in the extent and kind of information; and we would be delighted
to hear from anyone who can add to them.
In Chapters 4 and 6, we have brought together family documents, archive
material and academic research connected to two important historical events,
particularly relevant to Samuel Meyer and his family. These events draw an arc
between two significant points in German-Jewish history: the first being the
abolition of the Dual Tithe in 1850, one of the important stepping-stones
towards Jewish emancipation; the second concerning the politically
controversial 'Jewish Census' (Judenzählung)
of 1916, during the First World War, which reflected an upsurge in anti-Semitic
rhetoric.
The original documents are in German, and written in Gothic script. We
wanted to ensure that they should be accessible to as many readers as possible,
and so we have had them translated. The specific legalese of the 'Dual Tithe'
document has been a challenge
to translate, but we believe it has been worthwhile. We include
both language versions reflecting our bilingual heritage and to open up the
material to as a wide a family membership as possible.
The appendix of this book contains a genealogy.
To the contents of the edition Shoáh & Judaica / Jewish
Studies edited by Erhard Roy Wiehn
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