Albert and Fanny Bauer

The Bauers were the earliest ancestors my maternal grandmother recalled enough about to mention in her autobiography.  Albert was an industrialist in Breslau, Silesia [now Wroclaw, Poland].  He and his brother Wilhelm owned a furniture factory and retail store.  They rose to become purveyors of furniture, by appointment, to the Crown Prince of Prussia, and retained that position when he became Kaiser on Germany's unification.  So they had a branch in Berlin, too.  Albert's father was the scion of an old Hamburg family, whose family tree was done by Rabbi Duckesz, who producd many genealogical studies on Hamburg's old Jewish families.  Albert's mother was a Goldschmidt/Hameln, yet another very old Hamburg Jewish family.  Her branch had moved to Berlin; some of her nephews and grand-nephews were the chemist-owners of Fabrik Th. Goldschmidt.  There are almost too many famous Goldschmidt/Hameln descendants to count:  among the most brilliant were Heinrich Heine and Felix Mendelssohn. The most closely related to my family was the Nobelist physicist Max Born.

Fanny Adler was born in Krakow.  Her father Jacob was a "Senator" of Krakow:  after the defeat of Napoleon and to 1833, Krakow was an independent city, ruled by a city council that called itself the Senate.  One of the senate seats was reserved for a member of the Jewish Community; he was elected, probably by only the most affluent members.  In Breslau, Fanny was very active in philanthropic activities, and trained her four daughters to do the same.

The Bauers had five daughters, of whom Clara died in her teens, of tuberculosis.  Since then, there have been many Claras in our family, in her memory.  They also had one son, Wilhelm (1826-1885).  Wilhelm moved to Berlin.  His sisters didn't care for his wife, and their two children died childless.  Thus we now have no pictures of Wilhelm.

for genealogical details, see my cousin Paul's web site

pictures of old Breslau

Bauer sisters page