Reminiscences of Jacob Greenbaum, Sr.

Notes for
Reminiscences of Jacob Greenebaum

Compiled by John H. Rubel

The Rubels came from Hochspeyer, close to Kaiserslautern. They had moved to the latter town in the early 1830s, and emigrated in 1848, arriving in Chicago in 1848, the same year that Elias and Henry Greenebaum arrived, and two years after their elder brothers, Michael and Jacob, had come (Meites, 47). Both Elias and Henry Greenebaum attended school in Kaiserslautern (Elias in 1837 [p. 11]) when the Rubel family was living there, and since there were only 32 Jewish families and 175 Jews (of which at least a dozen or so were the Rubel family) in town in 1837 (Gerlach, p. 275), the Rubels and Greenebaums, so often associated in Chicago in later years, probably knew each other several years before leaving for America.

About two inches on the map – fifteen miles or so – nearly due north of Nahbollenbach are the towns of Gemunden and Laufersweiler. My maternal great grandfather, Alexander Billstein, emigrated from the former around 1850 and my maternal grandfather, Herman Baum, from the latter a generation later in about 1875. Near the end of the century they, my grandparents, one born in Neenah, Wisconsin, the other the Laufersweiler immigrant established in Chicago, met and married.

Bibliography:

Encylopedia Brittanica, Eleventh Edition, 1910-1911

Encylopedia Brittanica, 15th Edition, 1990

Encyclopedia Judaica, Deter Publishing House, Ltd., 1971

Gerlach, Bernhard H., “Die Lage der jüdischen Bevölkerung im Raum Kaiserlaustern zwischen 1816 und 1840”, Quelle: Jahrbuch zur Geschichte von Stadt und Landkreis, Kaiserslautern, Bd. 18/19, 1980/81. (Translation by Walter Reed; transcription and editing by J. H. Rubel in work, Jan., 1998)

Hertzberg, Arthur, “The Jews in America”, Simon & Schuster, New York 1989

Meites, H. L., ed., 1924, “History of the Jews of Chicago”, Chicago Jewish Historical Society and Wellington Publishing, Inc., Chicago, Illinois; ISBN 0-922984-02). It is a rich source of information about many individuals, families and circumstances of great interest bearing on the Jewish experience in America, especially the German Jews who immigrated to Chicago in the mid-19th century.

“The Jew in the Modern World”, ed. by Paul R. Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, (Oxford University Press, 1980). A documentary history, it contains excerpts from original documents marking signal events in modern Jewish history.
542 pages.

Sachar, Abraham Leon, “A History of the Jew”, (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1967)

Notes:

In the early days of the French Revolution several European powers, often urged on by aristocratic émigrés, many of whom settled in Prussia, attacked France in an abortive attempt to overturn the Revolution and restore the monarchy. French resistance, fortified by attacks on the country and energized by revolutionary fervor, drove the invaders out and occupied considerable territory along the left bank of the Rhine that had formerly belonged to Prussia or other German principalities.

Indeed, Louis X, landgrave (9.e.: the count with hegemony over a particular territory ensemble of territories) of Hesse-Darmstadt, the region which included Eppelsheim, had joined the alliance of powers arrayed against France in 1792, but he and the others lost. In 1799 he was compelled to sign a treaty of neutrality and in 1803 to formally surrender the left-bank territories that had, de facto, been French for a dozen years. (Encycl. Britt. 11th Ed. v. 13, p.412)

He got some territories in exchange at the expense of his neighbors, and in 1806 he joined the Confederacy of the Rhine, an association of German rulers, nominally designed to further German (Prussian) interests, but, in reality, created under Napoleonic influence. From 1805 until 1813, the year after Napoleon's retreat from Russia, Hesse-Darmstadt furnished troops for Napoleon's forces. (Encycl. Britt. op.cit.)

The period from about 1792 to the final fall of Napoleon in 1814-1815 was marked by succession of treaties and episodes of war between France and, later, Napoleonic forces on the one side and the forces of Austria and its two chief, albeit not always reliable, allies, Prussia and Russia, on the other. As early as the spring of 1795 the Treat6y (or the "Peace") of Basel adjudicated matters between France and Prussia, Spain, Holland and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. It had the effect of consolidating most of the left bank of the Rhine in French hands, which paved the way for further conquests in subsequent years. In 1799 Austria tried again to defeat French arms, but lost, whereupon France took over all of the left bank. In 1805 Austria took up arms again, but now Bavaria, Wurttemburg and Baden opposed Austria, and another defeat ensued. In 1806 Frederick William III, Emperor of Prussia, lost to Napoleon at the Battle of Jena. Less than a year later, in June, 1807, Napoleon triumphed at Friedland, whereupon the Czar (Prussia's ally) mad a deal (the Treaty of Tilsit) which (July, 1807) coast Prussia half it's subjects and its best dominions. In 1809 Austria is again defeated, this time at Wagram. (Encycl. Britt. 11th Edition v.10, p. 858; v.11, pp. 862-863)

The French under Napoleon dispensed with the greater part of the conventional supply trains that encumbered large armies. Instead, they often lived off the lands through which they passed, a policy that left destruction and destitution in the wake of those armies, but which required them to keep moving in order to remain supplied. So hardship swept across many territories at intervals for years. For some, of course, it was also a time of great opportunity. The ROTHSCHILDS rose to unparalleled wealth and subsequent influence through the Napoleonic wars, and many others profited, albeit on a much smaller scale. For the Jews, emancipation, the sweeping away of ancient barriers to residence and occupation, the ideas of republicanism, of equality, enticing on the one hand and threatening the very foundations of Jewish communal existence on the other came on the same flood, and were often swept out on the receding tide after Waterloo.

But to return: where was Jacob GREENEBAUM's father when the two Austrian Redcoats shot at him several years before he died? Most likely somewhere around his little village of Reipolskirchen, perhaps a dozen years before his death in 1804, when the allied powers, including Austria, were driving toward or fleeing from the direction of France in the years before Napoleon's rise to power.

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Notes for Reminiscences of Jacob Greenebaum

Compiled by John H. Rubel

Bibliography:

Notes:

Notes for
Reminiscences of Jacob Greenebaum