A family question, then the record
Rabbi Daniel Dolph Reichenbach began with a letter his grandfather wrote in 1938. Family objects now sit beside civil records, other archives, scholarship and named testimony.
Research update · 16 September 2026
The Magdeburg department of the Landesarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt reports that it has located numerous documents concerning the Reichenbach family. Archivist Antje Herfurth describes records of the department store’s “Aryanization” and sale, property sales, and confiscation of the family’s private assets.
Her reply identifies three groups of records:
These records offer a path toward understanding how the losses were carried out. Dates, parties, valuations and sale terms are questions for the next reading, not findings established by this reply. “Aryanization” is the historical term for the transfer of Jewish-owned property to non-Jewish ownership under Nazi persecution.
Historical context: US Holocaust Memorial Museum
The family archive has inspected the archivist’s email, but has not yet received individual file references or inspected these historical files. This is an institutional report of located material, not a completed reconstruction of the transactions or evidence for a new family relationship.
Land-register papers, commercial-register files and restitution records were not among the material she located. That statement does not establish that such records are absent elsewhere.
Source: Antje Herfurth, Landesarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, email of 16 September 2026, reference 21.1-56513; 571/26. Correspondence preserved privately by the Reichenbach Family Archive. Historical-file lead: Grade B; the original historical records remain uninspected.
Read the existing shop history
Stadtarchiv Leipzig confirms that the two ordered digital reproductions of leaves 14 and 15 have been created. They have not yet been delivered to the family archive. This advances access to an already identified source; it adds no new identification or conclusion about anyone’s fate. The current public access copies remain unchanged.
Source: Anja Bugaiski, Stadtarchiv Leipzig, email of 16 September 2026. Records: StadtAL, 0586 (Israelitische Religionsgemeinde e. V.), Nr. 3, Bl. 14–15. Correspondence preserved privately.
Research update · 10 September 2026
The 1934 Frankfurt address book lists Julius Jacob as Privat. at Savigny-Straße 22 I, with telephone 73695—the number previously recorded at Schubertstraße 13. This extends his documented chronology by one year. His fate after mid-1934 remains unknown; absence from later directories does not establish death or emigration.
Original address-book page · 1934 · part I, p. 304
The Halberstadt register notice for HR A 934 names Moritz Reichenbach as proprietor of M. Reichenbach and gives his wife Mathilde née Löwenthal procuration, a commercial power of attorney. This identifies the Quedlinburg cemetery household with the gut-casings firm. A 1929 entry ends Mathilde’s procuration and grants it to Meta Reichenbach; Meta’s relationship to the household remains unproved.
The later proprietor Kurt is documented as a business successor. No located record names his parents. Neither the succession nor the shared surname establishes a family connection to the Jacob–Adolf–Paul clothing line.
Newly inspected Cologne directories identify an earlier proprietor of the hat business J. Reichenbach at Breitestraße 2 in 1895 and name him alongside Mart. Reichenbach in 1901. His given name is not yet securely read; the archive keeps the firm’s initial J. unexpanded.
A Cologne registration notice dated 29 July 1867 also names a proprietor of J. Reichenbach under register number 1638. No inspected record explicitly connects that number to the later HR A 222. The notice’s date is a registration date, not an established founding date.
Martin’s parents and any family relationship to the Halberstadt–Wernigerode clothing house remain unproved. The archive treats the Cologne business separately and adds no family-tree connection.
Source level: Grade A, original primary pages inspected. Identification and kinship limits are stated separately.
Research update · 8 September 2026
The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel clarified on 7 September that the Halberstadt Chevra Kadisha material dated 1810–1929 is a subseries of five files. Its initial guidance identified the first as restricted to library viewing, with a copy-order route, and the other four as downloadable. A correction received on 9 September changes the status of D-Ha11-946: its catalogue viewer displayed the wrong scan. NLI said the actual file would undergo conservation and be digitized at its expense, with free download expected about a month after that reply. The correct digitization is still awaited; the mismatched scan must not be used as evidence for this file.
A check of the individual catalogue records on 8 September shows that these are rules, society duties and administrative papers, rather than files catalogued as burial registers. Their individual dates extend beyond the subseries date range. They have not supplied verified burial entries for Jacob, Helene, Adolf or Jette Therese Frank; those searches remain open.
The 1907 duties booklet, printed page 16, refers to a grave marker bearing a name or number corresponding to the society’s books. This gives the search a more specific target; it does not establish that those books survive or contain an entry for this family.
The reply also identifies cemetery files D-Ha11-828–830. The index supplied on 8 September lists sixteen photograph records, D-Ph-410–425, dated 1979–1980. No description in that index explicitly names Reichenbach. No Reichenbach entry in the burial-society files has yet been verified by this archive.
The five viewed pages of the Hartmann–Cohen correspondence, D-Ph-425.1, yielded no Reichenbach identification. The proposed Marion Cohn P325 lead is closed for Halberstadt: the archive confirmed that the search hit concerned a place name, not this family.
Sources: CAHJP correspondence, 7–9 September 2026, the supplied D-Ph index, and the five linked NLI catalogue records, checked 8 September. These are research paths, not new family identifications. File images and private correspondence are not reproduced here.
In her account of a 2019 meeting of former Jewish Halberstadt residents, Jutta Dick writes that Willy Friedländer, Ernest Fried’s father, worked first for Messing-Kupfer Hirsch and later for the Reichenbach clothing house. This supplies an attributed account of employment; it does not establish a family relationship, a precise employment period or which Reichenbach business employed him.
Jutta Dick, “Jüdische Halberstädter in New York City,” DIALOG 84 (3/2019), p. 5
Open questions
Visitors can open documents, read translations, follow source links and share corrections or identifications. The public record changes when stronger evidence changes what we know.
Publication method
When a family memory and a document point in different directions, the archive keeps both in view and says which is which. Private details about living relatives stay private, edited and AI-assisted material is identified, and the public record changes when stronger evidence changes what we know.
Research record last reviewed 16 September 2026.
Named places · bounded records
A separate reading room follows the camp or ghetto only in the period a named family record reaches it. Arolsen documents remain at Arolsen, prisoner numbers appear only where named records give them, and Warsaw remains the stop for Kurt, Paula and Hans.
Reading the family record
The family story stays beside the material that supports it.
Select an image for its source, date, translation, credit and reuse terms. Institutional links lead back to the collections that hold the originals.
Contact the archiveA correction, name, photograph or family memory may change the record. Contact information and the correction route appear on the Rights and Reuse page.
Contact the archiveDocuments read in August 2026
Each entry names the person first, then the date and document. Links lead to the holding institution or the public object page.
The notice identifies Anna’s husband Julius, their son Adolf, the Frankfurt home at Schubertstraße 13 and burial at the new Israelite cemetery. It names Paul Reichenbach and wife, Oberbaurat Max Reichenbach and wife, Else Sernau née Reichenbach and Ernst Reichenbach among the mourners. The relationships are stated collectively, placing Anna in this close family generation without naming her parents.
Hallesche Zeitung · 17 January 1909 · PDF page 11The newspaper publishes marriage banns for merchant Siegfried Sernau of Halle and Else Reichenbach of Halberstadt. Else’s married surname in the 1931 notice makes it very likely that the marriage followed. Her parents and possible identification with the remembered Liesl remain unknown.
FamilySearch index · Halberstadt civil register no. 912The entry records Jacob Paul Reichenbach’s birth in Halberstadt on 20 October 1876, naming Adolf Reichenbach and Goldine Marcuse as his parents. The archive already publishes a full English reading from the family research copy; FamilySearch supplies an independently accessible viewing path to the same civil-register evidence.
FamilySearch index · Halberstadt civil register no. 655The indexed civil entry records Max Reichenbach’s birth in Halberstadt on 15 July 1882, naming Adolf Reichenbach and Goldine Marcuse as his parents. This establishes him as a documented sibling of Jacob Paul.
Bundesarchiv Gedenkbuch · de1138559The record matches Max by exact name, birth date and Halberstadt birthplace. It records Berlin-Zehlendorf residence, imprisonment in Sachsenhausen until 15 December 1938, death in Berlin on 18 January 1940 and the fate note Freitod.
Online-OFB Juden im Deutschen Reich · ID I192474This entry records a Moritz Reichenbach born about 1828, a Posamentier in Ballenstedt, who married Minna Helft in Halberstadt in 1857. The different wife, daughter, occupation and dates point to a household other than that of the Quedlinburg merchant Moritz/Moshe HaLevi.
FamilySearch index · Halberstadt civil death register no. 359The entry records Ludwig’s death on 7 May 1920 and names Jakob Reichenbach and Helene Heinemann as his parents, independently establishing his place in the documented sibling line.
FamilySearch index · Massachusetts declaration and linked federal recordsPassenger records document their 1937 and 1938 New York arrivals; Dolf’s 1938 declaration and 1940 Alien Registration Form trace the process toward citizenship. His family-held Certificate of Naturalization now documents its completion in Boston on 15 May 1944.
FamilySearch index · Massachusetts declaration and passenger recordsRuth’s 1936 declaration and 1936–37 passenger records document her American record trail. Later death and Social Security indexes match Ruth R. Spiegel to Ruth Rothschild by an exact birth-date agreement and report a death on 26 November 1987; the Spiegel marriage and civil death certificate remain unfound.
Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora · Totenbuch person 511The official register records Fritz Reichenbach, born 14 March 1884 in Wernigerode, as dead at Buchenwald on 22 November 1938. It does not display a prisoner number or establish a medical cause of death.
Original list · 14 April 1942The list supplies their birth details and last Halberstadt addresses. It corrects Hans Wollenberg’s birth date to 3 June 1907 and identifies Eisenach as his birthplace.
Yad Vashem · item 6719646 · frame 2This second list places Kurt at Dominikanerstraße 23 and Paula and Hans together at Westendorf 15. It confirms their birth dates and forced addresses but says nothing about what happened to them after Warsaw.
Arolsen Archives · DocID 12669406The card records his last address at Normannenstraße 2 in Nikolassee and his death on 27 November 1942, without stating cause or custody.
Berend Lehmann MuseumThe former Jewish school and community building became forced collective housing. Paula and Hans were registered there when they were forced from Halberstadt.
Stolpersteine in BerlinThe house history places Ernst and Rosalie, Jeanette and Martha Reichenbach at one persecuted Berlin address; its conflicting 1940 date for Ernst remains recorded as a source error or unresolved discrepancy.
Research still open
These leads remain separate from the documented family account until stronger records establish the connection.
A 1931 death notice names Anna Jacob, née Reichenbach, her husband Julius, their son Adolf and their Frankfurt address. It also names Paul, Max, Else Sernau née Reichenbach and Ernst among the mourners. A 1909 notice pairs Else with Siegfried Sernau in marriage banns; her married surname in 1931 makes it very likely that they married. Anna and Paul each named a son Adolf, which family memory understands as a tribute to their much-loved father. Else may be the “Liesl” remembered by the family, but no record confirms it. It also remains uncertain whether the 1931 Adolf was the later Adolph who raised Herbert and Vernon with Marga in New York.
Contact the archivePaul wrote in 1935 that the family had lived in Gröbzig at the beginning of the eighteenth century. That sentence remains the source for the origin claim. Samples from LASA files Nr. 100, 101a and 106 produced no Reichenbach entry, so they neither prove nor disprove what Paul remembered.
Civil records name Helene Heinemann as the mother of documented Reichenbach children. No record yet found proves her own parents, and the archive does not fill that line from an unsourced tree.
Stadtarchiv Halberstadt file 944/35 has not yet been read. Its title or placement may make it relevant, but no claim on this site rests on contents the archive has not seen.
Read beyond this website
The archive links outward so visitors can inspect the historical context, institutional records and original publications rather than relying on this narrative alone.
A near-contemporary overview of the community’s history, institutions and population through 1903.
Website use authorized · DAV · PDFThe complete section report contains Paul’s tour entry and formal membership record.
No restrictions on access or use · USHMMRG-50.030.0510: a Halberstadt-born witness describes family and religious life, persecution, Kindertransport and survival.
Open access · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0Scholarship on Jewish Halberstadt and its contested memory in the postwar city.
Reusable images · licenses by fileThe open photographic collection containing the four Reichenbach memorial stones.
Public catalog · image rights by itemSearchable records for photographs, address history and Werner Hartmann’s research dossiers.
Oral history in context
A dedicated reading path places Lillyan Rosenberg’s testimony beside the city and its commercial life without claiming an undocumented relationship to the Reichenbach family.