Baruch / Benedict Daniel Samuel Goldschmidt Stuckert Levy (1575 – 1642) == Röschen Goldschmidt >> Joseph Goldschmidt-Hameln (Joseph bar Baruch Daniel Shmuel HaLevi) (1597 – 1677) == Freude Spanier (ca. 1600 – 1681) >> Jenté Sara Miriam Goldschmidt-Hameln (ca. 1633 – 1695) == Leffmann Behrens-Cohen (1630 – 1714) >> Gnendel Behrens-Cohen (ca. 1658 – 1712) == Rabbi David Oppenheim (1664 – 1736) >> Sara Oppenheim[er] (ca. 1695 – 1713) == Chaim Jonah Frankel-Teomim >> Magdelene Genendel Frankel-Teomim (1713 – 1778) == Simon Isaac Bondi (1711 – 1773) >> Jonas Bondi (1732 – 1765) == Bella / Belle Schifra >> Clara / Caroline Bondi (1760-1829) == Koppel Loeb of Bamberg Moises Loeb >> Moritz Reis (1782 – 1855) == Émilie Bickartt (1784 ) >> Jonas Reis (1809 – 1877) == Marian Samuel (1825 – 1900) >> REIS FAMILY.
JOSEPH HAMELN married Freude / Freudchen who was a daughter of the head of Schaumburg province, Nathan Spanier, who had obtained the right of settlement for the Jews in Altona.
This family is best known from the accounts of of Joseph’s daughter- in-law Glückei von Hameln. She describes Joseph as an unusually lovable, considerate and pious Jew who possessed great wit and common sense. He lived in Hameln, a small village not far from Hanover when Glückei married his youngest son Chajim. Glückei who came from the larger town of Hamburg writes:
“After my wedding my parents returned home and left me, a child not yet fourteen, in a strange town, among strangers. I was not unhappy but even had much joy because my parents-in-law were respectable, devout people and looked after me better than I deserved. How shall I write of the righteousness of my father-in- law? He was an honourable man. He was like one of God’s angels!
Everyone knows the difference between Hameln and Hamburg. I, a young child brought up in luxury, was taken from parents, friends, and everyone I knew, from a town like Hamburg to a village where only two Jewish families lived. And Hameln is a dull, shabby place. But this did not make me unhappy because of my joy in my father-in-law’s piety. Every morning he rose at three and, wrapped in talit (prayer shawl), he sat in the room next to my chamber studying and chanting Talmud in the usual sing-song. Then I forgot Hamburg. What a holy man he was! May his merits benefit us! And may he persuade God to send no further ills; and that we may not sin, or come to shame.”
Glückei records the following information about Joseph Hameln’s children:
1. The eldest son, Moses, died after having been attacked by robbers on a journey.
2. The second son, Abraham, was “as full of Torah as a pomegranate of seeds”. He had studied Judaism in Poland and married a daughter, Sulke, of the highly esteemed Chajim Boas of Posen. He continued his studies after his marriage, was a great scholar of the Talmud and an exceedingly clever man. He “spoke very little, though when he did speak every breath was full of wisdom”.
3. The third child was a daughter named Jente. When she was twelve years old her father betrothed her to the rich Sussmann Gans’ son Salomon. This is said to have taken place over some glasses of wine and Sussmann is also said to have regretted it when he became sober, but Joseph Hameln was such a highly esteemed man that it was not possible to go back on one’s word. Salomon Gans had even before the wedding become less well off. His father-in-law, Joseph Hameln, took him away from Minden where he had his home and placed him in Hanover where he earned himself a fortune. He died young. After having been a widow for some years Jente married Leffmann Behrens. From this marriage is descended the REIS FAMILY.
4. Joseph Hameln’s fourth child, the son Samuel, became a Rabbi in Hildesheim and married Reb. Scholem’s (Meschullam’s) daughter Lena from Lemberg. He died in 1687.
5. The fifth child was the learned Reb. Isak who lived in Frankfurt a. M. He married Löb Oppenheimer’s daughter Henderle and died wealthy and esteemed barely 50 years old.
6. The daughter Esther married Löb Hannover (Levin Goldschmidt) and is mentioned as a paragon of gentleness and all womanly virtues.
7. The son Löb (Bonn) was President of the Cologne district Communities and died wealthy and honoured at an early age.
8. The daughter, Hanne, who married Jacob Speyer, also died young.
9. The youngest of Joseph Hameln’s children was Chajim Hameln married Glückei Pinkerle and they had thirteen children. He was a pious and modest Jew, an honourable and industrious business
man who traded in jewellery, gold and pearls and who died at a relatively early age (forty-seven) in Hamburg in 1689. They had eleven children.
One of the thirteen children, Zanvil Samuel, was born in 1680 in Hamburg. In her diaries, his mother Glückel relates that she sent him to Frankfurt with his brother Moses to learn the mercantile trade. Meanwhile, a match was arranged for him with a daughter of the rabbi Moses Bamberg. In preparation for the marriage, Zanvil was sent to stay in the home of the rabbi Samson Wertheimer in Vienna, who was Bamberg’s brother-in-law. However, according to Glückel, the rabbi did not “look after him carefully” and Zanvil became a spendthrift. Zanvil Samuel died at the age of about 22 in 1702 in Bamberg.
The father of the above nine children, Joseph Hameln, (and grandfather of Zanvil), had lived for some years in Hildesheim when the rumour about Zabbatai Z’wi made Jews all over the world lose their senses. It was really believed that the new Messiah had arrived. Joseph Hameln was amongst those seized by the frenzy and from Hildesheim he sent two barrels containing linen and non-perishable foods such as peas, beans, smoked meat and dried fruits to his son Chajim so that everything should be prepared for the journey to the Holy Land. After about a year he ordered the food to be unpacked for fear that it should not keep any longer, but the linen remained packed for another couple of years until Zabbatai Z’wi’s deception was disclosed.
In 1668 Joseph Hameln was one of the founders in Hildesheim of the association “the pious fraternity” where he is found among the signatories to the rules. Glückei says that at this time Joseph Hameln was worth 20,000 Taler, that all his children had been married and that he remained five years in Hildesheim which is said to have cost him 10,000 Taler even though he did not keep a large establishment. However, as he saw that there was nothing for him to do in Hildesheim he moved with his wife to Hanover where they lived in the house of his son-in-law Leffmann Behrens. They spent the rest of their days there.
He died on 30th January 1677 at the age of 80 years and had sent for his youngest son, Chajim, in order to see him before he died. He thought that he would die when he had seen him, but when the son
had been there for three weeks the father said to him: “My son, I called you to me that you should be here at my end. You are doing big business and have already been here three weeks. You have done
your duty. I put my trust in the Lord. Return in His Name to your house.” The son wanted to stay, but the father insisted that he should return home.
Glückei says of Joseph Hameln’s testament that it was wonderful to see how wisely and piously it was made. His widow, who had been encouraged to live with her sons and Glückei in Hameln, refused and stayed in Hanover until she died in 1682 at the age of 82.
The Goldschmidt-Hameln family was a branch of the Goldschmidt family which fled to the Westphalian town of Hamlin in 1614 following the Fettmilch uprising and its expulsion of the Jews from Frankfurt.
They later returned to Frankfurt, where they had to reapply for right of residence like foreigners. They were then named after their former town of residence. Their family house after 1648 was the double house Korb und Wanne. Isaac von Hameln founded a money-changing and jewellery shop there in the 17th century, and under the management of his son Juda Löb Goldschmidt around 1700 it became the finest in the Judengasse. The family had close business links with the famous imperial court factor, Samuel Oppenheimer, in Vienna, as well as with Christian banking houses such as the imperial banker Johann von Moor. Like others of its period, the Goldschmidt-Hameln bank was involved in moneylending and money changing, and also in trade, for example in jewellery and armaments.
Following bankruptcies among its business associates and the Judengasse fire in 1711, when the Goldschmidt business house lost all its commercial records, the bank suffered serious losses. Nevertheless, many members of the family continued to be wealthy moneychangers, linked by marriage to the important Frankfurt banking families. In 1783 the banker Salomon Daniel, living at the Schiff, married Gütle Rothschild, the daughter of Amschel Rothschild and sister of Mayer Amschel Rothschild.
