Once upon a time -- a little more than a year ago -- I believed I had far more friends than I had family members. My parents are both long gone, and I thought my sister and my nieces were my only blood relatives. No paternal or maternal cousins were on my radar. I regretted that a bit, but never thought much about it. I figured that's how it is when you're from a family that
Kornmehl family
The Doktors Kornmehl & Professor Freud
One of the few stories my mother told about her life in Vienna was that her cousin Stella had been sent to see Sigmund Freud in the hope that her limp, resistant to traditional treatments or diagnoses, would prove to be psychosomatic (it didn't). The more I read about Freud, the more I think he was a regular guy, brilliant, but a schmoozer rather than a snob. Nevertheless, I
In Praise of Meandering
I spent yesterday morning in a research haze. It often happens when I work on posts about my family. I start with one bit of information that needs clarification and follow it as my interests take me until I realize I've gone far from my original search and that I'd better get back to work, either on the blog post or on the writing that pays the bills. Usually I just close
2013 Goals for Writing My Family History, I
New Year's resolutions can set you up to fail if they're too numerous and too vague. I've learned to go for simple and specific. One year my only resolution was to floss every day. I could -- and did -- stick to that. This year, I'm working on a large, unwieldy project that doesn't have any structure except the one I decide to impose on it: writing my family history. Since
Seeking Dating & Fashion Advice
No, not that kind. At least not here. It's genealogy I'm cozying up to. One of my research goals in 2013 is to learn when, where, and on what occasion the formal portrait of my grandparents and great aunts and uncles featured in the header of this blog was taken. My mother identified all the participants on the back of the picture and, on a separate family tree, noted their
Shtetl Snobbery: Unearthing My Jewish Roots, 1
Exactly one year ago, on December 27, 2011, I learned that the butcher shop of my great uncle Siegmund Kornmehl was now an art gallery in Vienna's Freud Museum. This discovery spurred me to look into the history of my mother's family. It has been a year filled with surprises. The greatest one, unquestionably, was finding out that I had living relatives all over the
The Butcher Shop in Freud’s Building: Kosher or Not?
My inspiration for starting this blog was the discovery that my great uncle's butcher shop occupied a storefront in 19 Berggasse, the same building where Sigmund Freud lived and practiced. According to my mother, Freud's wife had bought kosher meat from one of my great uncles. I never knew which one, however, until I saw the announcement on the Freud Museum website that a
The Bride Ate Chocolate: A Genealogical Mystery
A couple of weeks ago I alluded to the fact that one of my great uncles had a cafe in Vienna, which will give me an excuse to add Viennese pastry to this blog's meat-oriented menu. I also promised to reveal the family link to Barton's chocolate. A Bit of Background My interest was piqued by an email from one of my new-found relatives, the indefatigable family historian
The Far-Flung Kornmehl Family
I've alluded to the fact that I've gone from thinking I had no living relatives on my mother's side besides my immediate family to the realization that I have a very large -- and, as it turns out, far flung -- family. Not all of them have the name Kornmehl, of course. And there are probably still more Kornmehl relatives to be tracked down. But Jill Leibman, an avid family
What’s in a Name? Kornmehl
As I mentioned last week, one of the ten genealogical questions I want answers to -- #2 to be precise -- was researched by a good friend, who became very interested in the history of my mother's family, the Kornmehls. The result was this wonderfully rich guest post. Blame -- or thank -- me for the illustrations. I came across this classic ad as I was searching for a picture
10 Things I Want to Know About My Family & Freud
Focus, focus, focus. That's been my mantra ever since I realized my genealogical research was meandering in all directions. So I came up with a couple of goals: To flesh out the lives of my mother's immediate family members -- both to understand my mother better and to make the acquaintance of relatives I never met -- and to figure out the family's place in history. The
The Last of the Kornmehl Butchers (Maybe)
I’m excited to welcome as my first guest poster one of my newly discovered relatives. Jill Leibman Kornmehl is the daughter-in-law of Nathan Kornmehl, at 96 years old the patriarch of the Kornmehl family. At least as far as I know. New branches of the family keep cropping up. I'm not ready to say anything definitive -- thus the title I gave this post. The more genealogical
A Family Goat Farm
I recently discovered a slew of relatives I didn't know I had, members of the extended -- and far-flung -- Kornmehl clan. That my newfound family includes doctors, bankers and even a retired butcher is no huge surprise. But the goat farmers in Israel... them, I didn't expect. According to the Kornmehl Goat Farm website:* Anat and Daniel Kornmehl, both graduates of the
Genealogy: I See Live People
I'm new to genealogy. I'd always thought it was a discipline that dealt strictly with dead people, with the goal of bringing them back to life. I knew that my particular quest, exploring the lives of the members of a Jewish family in pre-World World II Vienna, would be filled with emotional land mines: the unnatural (to put it mildly) disruption of those lives that would be