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She left Germany and built a life in Massachusetts.

Ruth Helene Reichenbach

16 May 1909 — 26 November 1987

Ruth Helene Reichenbach as a young adult. The date of the portrait has not yet been established.RB-PHO-0269-ADJ

Ruth grew up in Halberstadt as Paul and Margarete’s daughter and Dolf’s sister. She left Germany, made a life in Massachusetts and died in Norwood at seventy-eight.

She was already in the United States when Dolf wrote from St. Moritz.FamilyDolfLetter

Ruth grew up in Halberstadt, where Dolf remembered her swimming, dancing, playing tennis and climbing the Brocken. Her birth record names Paul and Margarete as her parents. In 1930 she married Dr. Martin Pützrath; the marriage was dissolved in Berlin in 1932, and she resumed the name Reichenbach in January 1933.

She married Albert Rothschild at Halberstadt on 3 August 1933. Dolf’s surviving wedding booklet and the printed menu preserve an unusually intimate portrait of Ruth, Albert and the two families gathered around them. A 1935 mourning card later places Albert and Ruth among the signatories after Paul’s death.

Ruth and Albert Rothschild were already in the United States before Dolf and Margarete’s American record trail was complete. A family account recalls that Albert’s friend Max wrote a letter in support of Dolf’s move.

A Massachusetts declaration of intention dated 10 November 1936 names Ruth Helene Reichenbach Rothschild, born 16 May 1909 in Halberstadt, and names Albert as her spouse. New York passenger records document arrivals under Ruth Rothschild in 1936 and 1937. Norwood’s 1987 town report records Ruth Spiegel’s death there on 26 November at age seventy-eight. It confirms the Massachusetts death index and supersedes the Social Security index’s 1 November date, but it is not the civil death certificate.

Susan also remembers Ruth as an early Zionist involved in a political group she did not name. No organizational record has been found to confirm it.

Family and household

People connected to this life

Sources

Sources

  • Civil birth record
  • 1930 marriage record and divorce notation
  • Dolf’s printed wedding song and wedding-meal menu, 3 August 1933
  • 1935 mourning card
  • Massachusetts declaration of intention, 10 November 1936
  • 1936 and 1937 New York passenger records
  • Town of Norwood Annual Report, 1987, p. 187
  • Massachusetts Death Index
  • Social Security Death Index, superseded for the day of death
  • Family memorandum
  • Susan Reichenbach Heyman oral history, 5 August 2026
  • Family chronology clarification, August 2026
FamilySearch — Ruth Rothschild, Massachusetts declaration of intention, 10 November 1936 FamilySearch — Ruth Rothschild, New York arrival, 1936 FamilySearch — Ruth Rothschild, New York arrival, 1937 FamilySearch — Ruth R. Spiegel, Massachusetts Death Index FamilySearch — Ruth R. Spiegel, Social Security Death Index Massachusetts State Library — Town of Norwood Annual Report, 1987

What remains uncertain

The Norwood town report establishes Ruth Spiegel’s death there on 26 November 1987 at age seventy-eight, but it does not name her parents, spouse or cause of death. Records of the Spiegel marriage, any later divorce and the Massachusetts civil death certificate have not been located. Dolf’s wedding song identifies Albert’s father as Max Rothschild; this does not establish that he was the Max remembered as writing a later support letter, which has not been found.

All peopleFamily treeRelated documents

Undated family-held photographs

Ruth at the seaside

One photograph shows Ruth alone beside a wicker beach chair; another places her with Margarete and Dolf on Westerland’s promenade.

The beach-chair portrait has no visible place mark or date. Its Westerland association is therefore probable, based on the related seaside group, not stated as certainty.

Ruth Helene Reichenbach as a child beside a wicker beach chair. The place is probably Westerland on Sylt; this photograph carries no visible location mark or date.RB-SCAN-029
Dolf, Margarete and Ruth Reichenbach walking on Westerland’s seaside promenade on Sylt, probably in the early 1920s. The family kept the photograph with the three names and the place. Its date remains approximate.RB-PHO-0167

Halberstadt · 3 August 1933

A wedding remembered in Dolf’s verses

The booklet is affectionate family comedy, but beneath its rhymes it preserves Ruth’s childhood, her athletic life, the courtship in Schierke, Albert’s parents and the full wedding meal.

Dolf dedicated this humorous song to his sister Ruth and Albert Rothschild for their Halberstadt wedding on 3 August 1933. The booklet lets us hear a brother address the couple at their wedding. It is a family performance, not a neutral account of Ruth’s earlier life.RB-PHO-0189
Couple
Ruth Reichenbach and Albert Rothschild
Date and place
3 August 1933 · Halberstadt
Writer and tune
Dolf Reichenbach · sung to “Das gibt’s nur einmal”
Albert’s parents
Father named as Max Rothschild; mother praised but not named
Wedding meal
Eight courses, with Henkell Trocken, Zeller Schwarze Katz and Oppenheimer Krötenbrunnen

The booklet is a primary family source written for an audience that knew its jokes. Its descriptions of character, courtship and kinship are contemporary testimony, not independent civil documentation. “Uncle Georg” is therefore presented as a probable identification, not a settled one.

Four comic verses move from Ruth’s childhood and athletic life to the courtship in Schierke and Albert’s arrival in Halberstadt. Dolf wrote the song for a family celebration. Its jokes preserve family knowledge, but they do not establish every date or place they mention.RB-PHO-0190
A closer overlapping view preserves the booklet’s account of Ruth’s childhood, sport and travel. The overlap helps read damaged or faint lines in the same booklet. It is another view of the same pages, not a separate version of the song.RB-PHO-0191
The sixth verse welcomes Albert’s parents into the comic family portrait and jokes about Max Rothschild’s fishing. Dolf wrote the joke for the wedding gathering. The verse tells us how the family spoke to one another, not whether every comic detail was literal.RB-PHO-0192
The wedding booklet preserves this photograph of Ruth and Albert together. The booklet names them as the couple being celebrated. The small print does not identify its photographer or date.RB-PHO-0193
The printed menu from Ruth Reichenbach and Albert Rothschild’s wedding meal in Halberstadt on 3 August 1933: appetizer, mock-turtle soup, turbot with caviar sauce, roast goose, compotes, Swedish bombe, cheese and mocha. The menu lets us reconstruct what the guests were served. It does not name the cook, caterer or venue.RB-PHO-0194

Dolf calls Ruth a joy to her parents and a favorite of her aunts. He remembers a childhood mishap while she climbed through a fence on Lindenweg, watched by “Uncle Georg” and tended afterward by Fräulein Mieze. Julius is also named as someone who loved Ruth dearly, but the booklet does not explain who he was.

The next verse makes Ruth vivid as a young woman rather than only a name in civil records: diligent at school, loyal in friendship, a winner of tennis prizes, and enthusiastic about swimming, dancing and sport. It remembers repeated stays in Schierke, climbs on the Brocken and visits to Norderney on the North Sea.

The courtship verse places Ruth and Albert together again in Schierke during the preceding winter. Around New Year, Albert seeks a private conversation in the hotel reading room, while Paul interrupts with a joke about the mountain air being almost like Davos. Another verse remembers Albert’s visit to Halberstadt and Dolf being instructed to keep quiet about the visitor.

The sixth verse brings Albert’s parents into the family portrait. His mother is warmly included but left unnamed; his father is called Max and teased as a celebrated fisherman who could supply enormous trout. This is enough to add Max Rothschild to the family tree as Albert’s father, but not enough to identify him with the different Max remembered in the later emigration story.

The menu records a formal celebration: a fine appetizer with Henkell Trocken, mock-turtle soup, turbot with caviar sauce and Zeller Schwarze Katz, roast goose with mixed salads and Oppenheimer Krötenbrunnen, compotes, Swedish bombe, a cheese platter and mocha. The abundance matters historically. The family held this full Jewish wedding celebration in August 1933, four months after the Nazi regime’s nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses had announced the narrowing world around them.

“Uncle Georg” is most plausibly Georg Wollenberg, not Salomon Gustav Reichenbach. Georg Wollenberg married Paula Reichenbach, joined the family business, was described by Paul as a cousin by marriage and later registered Paul’s death. The identification remains provisional because the poem gives only the familiar name “Uncle Georg.”