Oster(tag) Report by Susan Weinberg
The Ostertags included Bert and Louis who immigrated in the 1880s and settled in Ohio after some years in Washington DC. It also included their younger brother Ernst and his wife Elsa Schwartzchild and their children Hans (Harry) and Bernard. Harry Oster is the client’s grandfather. It was believed that the parents of Bert, Louis and Ernst were Bernard and Pauline (nee Rosenthaler) Ostertag.
Local Newspaper Provides a Gateway to History
I began with a newspaper search and uncovered significant documentation on the family in the local Piqua, Ohio daily paper, where Bert and Louis lived. Local papers of that time often carried news on visits to other friends and families. In this case it also resulted in a far more international sweep, discussing their visits to Germany and visits of family to them along with communications between family members on their arrivals and departures. An entry for a Louis Ostertag first shows up in Piqua in 1897. In 1900 there was an entry in the DC paper on the marriage between Louis and Rose with the note that they would live in Piqua. There were a number of trips to and from Germany so we know family ties were actively maintained. The paper reports of travels by Bert back to Germany in 1902, 1917 and 1935, and for Louis in 1904 and 1914. Additionally there were reports of greetings from brothers Joseph and Alfred in Germany and visits from Julius and Ernst. It was with these records that I first began to build the family out to include Joseph, Alfred and Julius who remained in Germany although Julius traveled in the United States on several occasions and may have lived here for a time.
A Surprise Half-Brother
What was interesting was that many of these reports ended up in the paper 25 years after the event in a lookback column and did not surface during their original time period. In fact the most surprising item related to 1912 but occurred in 1937. It was a small item that noted that Louis left the night of 2/09/1912 for the funeral of his half-brother A. Rosenheim in New York. This was an unexpected surprise as we were unaware of half-brothers. I began to search for more information on this individual, particularly in relationship to Pauline Rosenthal, presumably his parent.
I searched in the NY records for a death record for an A. Rosenheim and didn’t come up with anything. Then I searched just for Rosenheim and came up with Daniel Rosenheim who died 2/9/1912 and was buried 2/11/1912, dates that synced with the departure of Louis for New York. According to his obituary, Daniel was born around 1855 and lived in Brooklyn from 1872 until his death. I found some conflicting data on his parents. His marriage record indicated his parents were in fact Pauline Rosenthal and his father Ulrich Rosenheim. Pauline’s father was Aaron Daniel so her first son was named after him. Presumably the A. in the newspaper report was related to this naming pattern. She had two sons with her first husband. Five years after Daniel’s birth she was married to Bernhard Ostertag and gave birth to her first Ostertag son, Joseph.
But yet another surprise arose as yet not resolved. In the actual death record there is a different couple cited as parents, Max Rosenheim and Jennie Levy. While puzzled by this seeming contradiction, I decided to explore one step further in the probate records. I found the probate record for Daniel Rosenheim in which it names each of his Ostertag half-siblings as family. From this I learned of one more half-sibling, a sister Anna who remained in Germany.
I also was able to verify most of the children with birth records from Germany. I was able to locate records for Louis, Benjamin/Bernhard, Ernst, Julius and Alfred. Additionally in 1925 Julius cited his brother Joseph as his nearest relative in Europe.
The Impact of the Holocaust
The death record for Bert indicated his survivors as Louis, Ernst and Alfred. That was in 1941. Those Ostertags who remained in Stuttgart were often either victims or survivors of the Shoah. We found that Alfred died in the Shoah as did Anna’s husband and daughter. A son and daughter of Anna Ostertag came to the United States prewar and a granddaughter arrived with her family as a survivor. We also have a Holocaust record for a name that corresponds to Elsa’s brother who is cited as her next of kin in her immigration record. When Bernard Ostertag, Harry’s brother, came to the US in 1939 his manifest indicated that he had been most recently in France with a cousin, Rose Kaufmann, in Vincennes. With some curiosity, I did a search on Yad Vashem and found the disturbing news that she did not make it out in time. She was the daughter of Herman Einstein and Sophie Ostertag, indeed a cousin. She and her son Gabriel were sent to Drancy and Auschwitz.
When I turned to Find-a-grave for one of the family members, I discovered that multiple family graves were linked in the system along with detailed notes on the family going back several generations. It provided the married name for the sister and the names of her children. While she died in 1936, her husband and two children died in the Holocaust according to Yad Vashem. Testimony from children supported the relationship and provided information on survivors who had come to the United States after the war. It is likely that children of other siblings who remained in Germany may have survived as well.
Assessment and Next Steps: So our trail thus far was from newspaper reports on visits and visitors, to birth record documentation, to a mystery half-brother supported by a marriage record and a probate record, but a puzzling death record which named an alternate set of parents than that of the marriage record. Searches of Holocaust records surfaced additional histories and Findagrave.com built out the family several generations back.
We are back to the fourth great-grandparents on the Ostertag side with Pesach Ostertag with an estimated birth date in the mid 1700s. We began with knowledge of Louis, Bert and Ernst and then learned of four other full siblings and spouses and two half siblings from a prior marriage of Paulina Rosenthal. We identified 33 Ostertags in total and 13 Picks and Kahns descended from the one sister. We found a number of family members who were either victims or survivors of the Shoah.
We have explored the Ostertags quite extensively and identified those who remained in Germany, all siblings, those who were victims or survivors of the Holocaust (probably more under other names), built back to 4th great grandparents.
A possible resource that requires a trip to the Family History Center Library (when open) is to look up extracts of the 1939 German census concerning non-Germanic minorities living in Stuttgart, Württemberg, Germany. Emphasis is on the Jews.
