Ludwig Rosenberger Family Collection
Scope and Contents
This collection contains a wide array of documents, correspondence, and clippings, documenting the life of several generations of the Rosenberger family.
The collection is particularly strong on vital and medical records, containing a number of birth and death certificates and immunization records. The collection also contains several reference letters from Rosenberger's employers, and a considerable amount of correspondence with J. von Ahlften in South Africa pertaining to the estate of Moritz Rosenberger. Some documents belonging to relatives two generations older than Ludwig Rosenberger, stretching far into the nineteenth century, are also present. A number of records pertaining to citizenship oaths and fees attest to the assimilated, middle class nature of the family. Several records, receipts, and correspondence document the Rosenbergers' emigration.
The clippings focus on the career of Rosenberger's cousin, the politician Lawrence K. Roos, as well as on Rosenberger's donation of his Judaica collection to the University of Chicago. The collection also contains many obituaries.
Other major subgroups of materials include a number of passports and membership cards, as well as several handsome memorial books for deceased relatives. There is also a stamped ticket, which, according to Rosenberger's account in an accompanying letter, was a pass to access his workplace on the Domplatz in Munich when it was barricaded during the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923.
Dates
- Creation: 1821-1987
- Creation: Majority of material found within 1850-1938
Creator
- Rosenberger, Ludwig, 1904-1987 (Person)
Language of Materials
The collection is in German, English, and Czech.
Access Restrictions
Open to researchers.
Collection is microfilmed; use MF 837.
Access Information
Collection is digitized. Follow the links in the Container List to access the digitized materials.
Readers may access the collection by visiting the Lillian Goldman Reading Room at the Center for Jewish History. We recommend reserving the collection in advance; please visit the LBI Online Catalog and click on the "Request" button.
Use Restrictions
This collection contains several clippings and in-copyright materials. Permission must be granted to reproduce these materials or to use or quote them in publication.
There may be some further restrictions on the use of the collection. For more information, contact:
Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY, 10011
email: lbaeck@lbi.cjh.org
Biographical Note
Ludwig Rosenberger was born in Munich in 1904. His father, Moritz Rosenberger (1867-1934), was a clerk (Prokurist) at J. Einhorn & Comp., and his mother Amalie (née Roos) came from a family of salesmen. Possibly through his mother he is related to Lawrence K. Roos, a prominent politician in the St. Louis, Missouri region during the middle of the twentieth century. Rosenberger apprenticed and later worked as a clerk at the Munich bank H. Aufhäuser in the years 1920-1924, and then spent for years as an accountant in Israel. Sometime after 1928, he emigrated to the United States, where he developed a successful furniture wholesale business in Chicago. Although he never attended university, he became a manuscript scholar and amassed one of the largest collections of Judaica in the world, stretching back several centuries. He donated this collection to the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago.
Extent
0.5 Linear Feet
Abstract
This collection contains a wide array of vital records, documents, correspondence, and clippings, documenting the life of several generations of the Rosenberger family.
Arrangement
This collection is arranged in 3 series. The collection is only partially processed, and the final series, Unprocessed Files, has been arbitrarily divided into folders based not on any intellectual schema but simply based on the order listed in an earlier handwritten inventory. The description under each folder title in this series is an inventory of the folder's contents.
- Series I: Rosenberger Family Documents and Correspondence, 1853-1970
- Subseries 1: Yizkor books, Yahrtzeit materials, and genealogical materials, 1901-1934
- Subseries 2: Documents and Correspondence, 1853-1970
- Series II: Clippings and published materials, 1938-1987
- Series III: Unprocessed files, 1821-1984
Other Finding Aids
A handwritten, item-level inventory is available in the first folder.
Microfilm
Collection has been microfilmed. See MF 837.
Separated Material
Click here to view photographs which have been removed to the LBI Photograph Collection.
The book Jewish cemeteries in Frankfurt by Klaus Meier-Ude and Valentin Senger, Verlag Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main, 1985, has been removed to the LBI Library Collection.
Subject
- Rosenberger, Ludwig, 1904-1987 (Person)
- Roos, Lawrence K. (Person)
- Rosenberger, Moritz, 1867-1934 (Person)
- Rosenberger, Amalie (Person)
- Ahlften, J. von (Person)
- Rosenberger family (Family)
- Roos family (Family)
- Rosenthal family (Family)
- Mayer family (Family)
- Bankhaus H. Aufhäuser (Organization)
- J. Einhorn & Comp., München (Organization)
Genre / Form
- Birth certificates
- Black-and-white photographs
- clippings (information artifacts)
- Correspondence
- Immigration records
- Medical Records
- Membership Cards
- Memorial books
- Passports
- personal correspondence
- Poems
- Vital statistics records
Geographic
- Chicago (Ill.)
- Czechoslovakia
- Czechoslovakia -- Emigration and immigration
- Frankfurt am Main (Germany)
- Germany -- History -- Beer Hall Putsch, 1923
- Munich (Germany)
- Saint Louis (Mo.)
- Transvaal (South Africa)
- United States -- Emigration and immigration
Occupation
- Title
- Rosenberger Family Collection, 1821-1987, (bulk 1850-1938) AR 5824 / MF 837
- Author
- Processed by LBI Staff
- Date
- © 2010
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Language of description note
- Description is in English.
Revision Statements
- February 2011: Links to digital objects added in Container List.
Repository Details
Part of the Leo Baeck Institute Repository
