Dr. Michael Morgenstern

Dr. Michael Morgenstern was important in founding the Jewish hospital in Kalisz; this is noted in the Book of Kalisz, a memorial book to the victims of World War II. Historical detail from so far in the past is unusual in such a work. According to family tradition, his bust stood in front of the Jewish hospital in Kalisz until after World War I. His place of birth is not recorded in his death record [ July 1849, Kalisz at the age of 69]. His children were born in Sieradz, also according to family tradition; the Jewish records from Sieradz have not survived.

His gravestone apparently survives in the Kalisz Jewish cemetery: 900 of them have been photographed, and one of them, with the first name broken off, has Morgenstern as the surname and the correct date of death. (Thanks to Yale Reisner for sending me the information on the Kalisz tombstones). Morgenstern is a rare name in Kalisz; in the records (on LDS microfilm) from 184x to 1857 that I have examined, there are only 2 records with that name: Dr. Morgenstern's death and the marriage of his daughter Henriette to Samuel Arzt in 1846. Arzt was a bookseller from Lodz; his father a doctor; possibly the two families met through the medical connection..

Mrs. Morgenstern was Johanna Enoch. At her daughter's wedding, one of the witnesses was Heinrich Enoch, formerly of Breslau, living in Kalisz. Probably it was through business contacts of Mr. Enoch, most likely a relative, that son Teodor was placed in Breslau about this time..

It is extremely fortunate that all his children are listed in Dr. Morgenstern's death record: Bernhard, Julius, Henriette, Teodor and Philipine. This is quite unusual in the death records I've studied!

There is another Morgenstern burial in the Kalisz cemetery: ... Henich from Breslau, son of Tzwi, the doctor from Wierwszow. The stone says he was "of the family of Dr. Michael Morgenstern ASIA"; where the meaning of 'ASIA' is unknown. I could find no corresponding entry in the microfilmed death records; he died 30 Kislev 5609 = 25 Dec. 1848.

In the 1840s, one of the Morgenstern sons was studying medicine in Vilnius. There a group of students participated in an anti-tsarist plot, were discovered and arrested. Since no one broke and disclosed the details, even after the entire group had been in jail for two years, they were summarily exiled to Siberia without trial. The Morgenstern family only found out what had happened to their student when, several years later, they chanced to meet a man who had encountered the group en route to Siberia, helped them & remembered the incident. Many years later, the exile was amnestied from Siberia, but only at the price of conversion to the Russian Orthodox religion. According to family tradition, he did pioneering work in public health and sanitation in Warsaw and was given a state funeral on his death.

On learning of the student's fate, Dr. Morgenstern feared something similar for Teodor, so smuggled him across the border to Breslau, then in Prussia [now Wroclaw, Poland]. So as not be guilty of assisting the emigration of a man of draftable age, he bought forged papers that made Teo out to much older than he was. Teo was placed with a businessman, who was supposed to teach him the business, for which Teo had little inclination. Instead, he exploited Teo's artistic talents to do his displays and advertising. Teo met his future wife, Lina Bauer, at a dancing class organized by friends of friends. The Bauer family were affluent Breslau merchants and disapproved, so the couple was engaged seven years before the parents relented in 1854. The young couple moved to Berlin, where Lina eventually became an author and famous philanthropist. For more information on this family and their descendants, see Paul Honigmann's site.

Also according to family tradition, the other brother became an actor, converted to Roman Catholicism for love of a Polish landowner's daughter, and married her. Their descendants were said to be living in Breslau during the Nazi era, but managed to avoid being tagged as having Jewish ancestry by not showing any documents older than the marriage certificate of the actor and the landowner's daughter, in which he was identified as Roman Catholic. Contact had to be broken off at that point, and the rest of us have no clue to the whereabouts and identity of this branch of the family.

There is no family tradition concerning Philipine; perhaps she died young.