Jamie Mayerfeld, Seattle, jamiemayerfeld@gmail.com, Alice Josephs, Loughton, genealice@josephsonline.net
CH-542
San Francisco, 22 september 2013
Dear Dr. Mayerfeld, Dear Jamie,
Today I read your workspace at the University of Washington. As a Dutch citizen, lawyer and diplomat I couldn’t agree more with everything you have written. Two months ago I crossed the Atlantic Ocean to become the new Consul General for the Netherlands in San Francisco. After many years of negotiations about climate change and human (water) rights, I thought it better to leave the Old Continent and see what is possible in a bottom-up cooperation.
I am also e-mailing you with another reason. I am tracing my roots in Germany and Sweden. In that context I often encounter the Jewish families Mayerfeld or Meyerfeld that emigrated between 1850 and 1920 from Hessia in Germany to many places in the United States. Are you aware of any family member that is tracing the roots of your family and is willing to communicate with me about it?
Best regards,
Hugo von Meijenfeldt
Seattle, 24 september 2013
This should be of interest!
From: Alice Josephs
Date: Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 12:24 PM
Subject: MAYERFELDs from Crumstadt & Biebesheim am Rhein
Hi Everyone,
I’ve put together some of the MAYERFELD family information I have got and scanned it. I have more information but obviously it takes time to scan. I have also attached a descendant chart – there may be a few errors here and there and feel free to tell me and give me information to add. Hope you’re interested!
I am the great great grand-daughter of Jeanette MAYERFELD of Biebesheim am Rhein who married Feist STERN of Heppenheim an der Bergstrasse.
I’ve hidden the email addresses but if you want to, let me if you want me to share your email with others in the MAYERFELD family by sending an email with your full name and email address in the body of the message and I’ll do another email for those who want to share addresses. Oh, and Happy Holidays! 🙂
Kind regards,
Alice
Seattle, 25 september 2013
Dear Cousin Alice,
I received this nice email message from the Dutch Consul General in San Francisco, who appears to be a cousin of ours!
He is interested in researching the Mayerfeld family. Is it all right if I give him your email address? I took the liberty of sharing some of the research you sent a few years back.
Sending best wishes,
Jamie
Seattle, 26 september 2013
Dear Hugo,
I wrote to Alice Josephs, who said she would write you directly. Have you heard from her? Please let me know either way.
Sincerely, Jamie
San Francisco, 27 september 2013
Thanks for your quick response, Jamie,
Indeed I can trace back your family to “Rheinhessen”, south of Frankfurt. Crumstadt was their place of origin, but two brothers Moses (1779-1840) and Michael (1790-1845) moved to nearby Biebesheim and two generations later most of their descendents escaped from the Nazi terror to the US. Descendants of a younger brother Jakob (1793-1859) live in the Netherlands and Belgium or also left for the US. I got most of my facts from Constant E. Hopkins.
I read two very interesting stories about your father: June 1945 he reclaimed his old family house in Frankfurt during the liberation. And he tried to prevent Frank Snepp and Phillip Agee (living in Amsterdam) to leak CIA-secrets: very interesting up until today. Am I right that your sister and brother are born very close to the Netherlands (Antwerp and Brussels)?
I know there is a Mayerfeld genealogy group, but I thought only Mayerfeld family member could join.
It would be wonderful to come into contact with Alice Josephs.
Many thanks and looking forward to our next contact.
Kind regards, Hugo
San Francisco, 28 september 2013
Dear Jamie,
Until now I did not receive an e-mail from Alice Josephs.
In the mean time I read her three pieces of information. Most of it was already on my website, including the appalling living conditions of the Jews in Germany. New to me was their annual income (between 500 to 1000 guilder). The grandfather of my grandfather earned in the same timed 700 guilder on a ship of the Dutch navy (but had no costs for food, housing and taxes).
When I compare my data to those of Alice I have more data in the older generations and she in the newest generations. I am very hesitant to show living members of your family or my family on the website, at least without a password. What is your opinion?
Did you receive my e-mail to you above? I got a message that it never reached its destination.
Best wishes, Hugo
Loughton, 28 september 2013
Hi Hugo,
My Mayerfeld fourth cousin, Jamie, has forwarded your email. Nice to hear from you!
I have come across the http://www.meijenfeldt.nl/ website. Is that your website? If so, I think you have been in touch with the late Constant Hopkins (born MERGENTHEIMER), my fourth cousin once removed, from which much of my information has come. I believe Jamie has forwarded much of the information I have gathered.
The sons of Mayer (Meir) Moses from Crumstadt, Hesse, adopted the surname MAYERFELD, so I have always assumed that the surname MAYERFELD was connected with the Hebrew name Mayer (Meir), which was then merged with the German surname MAYERFELD. However if evidence emerges, I’m willing to be corrected and there may have been other forces at work in the surname adoption. If you feel I can help you, I will be happy to do so and if you have any more information, I would be equally happy to receive it and share it with the MAYERFELD family.
By the way, I actually spent my first two years in The Netherlands as my father worked for Unilever NV and my parents lived in Gouda and then The Hague.
Kind regards, Alice
San Francisco, 28 september 2013
Dear Alice,
Thank you very much for your e-mail.
The Dutch website you discovered is indeed mine. On the bottom of the home page click the British flag and you can read a very short summary in English. For the Jewish families from Hessia please click “3. Namen” and then under “3.5. Joodse naamgenoten” click “Rheinhessen”.
In the last couple of days I included your information in the family from Crumstadt/Biebesheim and added you as my first source of information in footnote 1. I found out that I have quite some information about the older generations, where you have question marks. Together we now have almost the full picture. I asked Jamie the same question: shouldn’t I protect living members by a password?
As you may see I have chapters on three several other Jewish families in Hessia: Busecker Tal, Treysa and Beverungen. In the introduction I do not exclude but neither conclude to a relationship between the 4 families. My first explanation of the family name is exactly the same as yours. But when my father wrote a letter in 1935 to the famous writer/translator Max Meyerfeld in Berlin, he got the answer that his “Urgrossvater” (from the Treysa branch) was given permission to take over the name by his Kur-Hessisches noble landlord Von Meyerfeld. This could be the nobleman from Altenhasslau or from Rösebeck, but according to the Belgian Helen Mayerfeld it was a Swedisch landlord. If the latter is the case, our relationship is explained, because my Swedish ancestors indeed had estates on Pomeranian soil around 1800.
I have a number of pictures of the members of the Jewish families, but my website is not big enough to include them. If you’re interested I could send them over to you.
Kind regards,
Hugo von Meijenfeldt
Seattle, 29 september 2013
Dear Hugo,
Thanks for both these messages. (I did not receive the earlier message, until you appended it to this one, so thank you.)
Yes, the information you have about my father is correct. He did reclaim the family house in Frankfurt after 1945, although my grandfather sold it shortly thereafter. (Which is too bad, selfishly speaking, since it would be worth vastly more money now.) I remember my father’s vivid stories about returning to the house in the spring of 1945 – the only building left standing on the block, and the fright to the new occupants at seeing an American GI knocking at the door, addressing them in fluent German, and telling them it was *his* house. One of many vivid stories about my father’s German childhood, difficult exit, immigrant experience, serving in WWII, and being stationed in Germany after the end of the War.
I’m afraid it’s also true that my father, then working for the CIA, sued Snepp and others in the service of the CIA’s jealous protection of “state secrets.” Not something I’m proud of, but there we are. Sadly relevant to current events, as you observed.
My father was in the US foreign service, which is why my sister Diane and brother Andrew (who died young) were both born near Antwerp. My parents were stationed in Brussels at the time.
If you’d like more recent information on my family:
My father died on February 17, 2001. My mother Marilyn Mayerfeld (née Ehrlich) died on February 24, 2013. My sister Diane and her husband Michael Bell had a second child, Eleanor Mayerfeld, born on November 6, 1997. I was married to Peter Mack on December 10, 2012. He is a professor of piano at Cornish College of the Arts.
Sincerely, Jamie
Seattle, 29 september 2013
Dear Hugo,
Here are more documents about the Mayerfeld family that I have stored on the computer. They may not be useful, but I’m sending them in case they are.
On second thought, let me ask my sister about Internet privacy, and if she’d prefer to have information about living people password-protected.
Best, Jamie
Seattle, 30 september 2013
Dear Hugo and Alice,
Thanks to both of you for your messages. I took a few hours today to explore Hugo’s website and the information Alice had previously sent me – all very interesting, and I’m grateful for the work you both have done. I’m not sure I had read Constant Hopkins’ splendid history before. It is terrific.
In answer to Hugo’s question, perhaps it’s wise to have password protection for information about living persons. But I’m not sure, and I don’t feel strongly about it in any case.
I’d like to think that Alice and I are directly descended from the great Swedish Field Marshal, Count Johan August von Meijerfeldt. I infer from Hugo’s website and email, however, that that isn’t the case and that if there is a connection, it would be that the Field Marshal’s family may have been landlords to Alice and my ancestors, though even that’s not established. Do I understand correctly? Hugo, do you think we might be related, or not really? (We could still consider ourselves related in a more flexible sense.)
I can bring Hugo up to date on new developments in my branch of the family. Alice, are you still interested in receiving this information or not?
Best wishes from Seattle,
Jamie
Loughton, 6 oktober 2013
Hi Jamie and Hugo,
Apologies for not having written sooner but I wanted to read through the MAYERFELD history again as it concerns naming and haven’t had time until now.
I make a point of not putting living folks publicly on my family tree online. I find that the safest way for me of doing things, as people can always ask me for the full family tree.
I have looked at the internet and think I’ve found an email address for Dr Margit Goettert who originally compiled the history. http://www.gffz.de/1_2_3_5.html. Looking at what she has written, I think it is very much deduced from circumstantial evidence rather than confirmed that the Mayer came from Mayer/Mayer and the feld from the original garden which the Mayerfelds purchased. If it can be shown that the Von Meijerfeldt were landlords and lent their names, it would make sense.
It is true that another (and probably connected) side of my family, the Hochschild family, are said to have taken their name from a local miller. Of course, life was so different then, only boys were often registered at birth, so unless the girls married formally within the Jewish families, we normally have no record of them. And of course the eldest son in both Jewish and Christian families had a special status.
There is a tale within my Herz family of some sort of Danish connection which I’ve never been able to verify. Certainly my mother and grandfather have, what I would call, a Rhineland “look”.
I am interested in receiving any information, photos etc and bring my tree up to date. I don’t know if any of this gets us any further, but I hope it does!
Kind regards, Alice
Loughton, 22 oktober 2013
Hi Hugo and Jamie,
I thought the attached from the Anglo German Family History Society Magazine might be of interest. It’s in JPEG form.
Kind regards, Alice
San Francisco, 25 oktober 2013
Dear Alice,
Thank you very much for your attachment about the origins of the name Me/ai/yer. I thank both you and Jamie to keep in contact.
I have dedicated a full page (in Dutch) on this issue on my website. Apart from the Hebrew origin there is a Keltic one: magina of maghia, which relates to water. The old city of Mayenfeld in Switzerland and the farmers village Meyenfeld near Hannover are connected to that explanation. Meier has indeed a Latin origin: maior (superior). The Burgomaster of a city is still called mayor in English. There is the Old-Saxon meier (maior domus) en de Lower-German meier (maior villau). The first one governed a county (gau/gouw) in name of the king from his estate (huf/hof). The Hofmeiers are the old aristocratic vassals of the sovereign. One of them became so important that he was inaugurated as king: Pepijn II, father of Charlemagne, who brought Western Europe under his reign. Around the change of the millennium the Lower-German meier grew and finally crushed the central royal power. The meier was the head of a family that during hundreds of years lived in the oldest and biggest farm in a village. He governed many farmers and took part of their harvest in grain, cattle, eggs, honey to his depot. The meier had to bring part of this to the landlord and had to give other services like 24 days per year military assistance. Later he succeeded to only pay an annual landlease. Finally the meier position went from father to son. Indeed they started to use Meier in their family names. When they made a relation to their farmwork the name Feldmeyer is well known, but Meyerfeld is much more related to the military aspect of his job (feld means battlefield here). I found this explanation in the letter of the Swedish king to my ancestor Anders Meijer in Riga, Latvia in 1674, when was given the noble name Meijerfeldt.
One other remark about the choice between Mayerfeld and Meyerfeld. In most of the original documents of the Jewish families in Hessen the spelling is Meyerfeld, but the German pronunciation was Mayerfeld. That explains why most American immigrants changed the spelling to Mayerfeld.
Kind regards,
Hugo von Meijenfeldt
Loughton, 25 oktober 2013
Hi Hugo,
Thanks for this. It’s not quite so cut and dry as regards women is it? As you say it went from father to son. As I think I’ve said before, my grandfather’s family looks like other families in the region, not Jewish or of Jewish descent. There’s a lot of blond, wavy hair and blue/green eyes in my mother’s Herz family and I think I’ve noticed with the Mayerfelds that there are fair amount of blonds as well. Probably the usual cross section for those who come from that region plus of course the influence of other families who have married into the family – but earlier on a lot of those were from German Jewish families in the same region with the native features. In my Stern family for instance there’s sometimes a distinctive lower jaw underbite which isn’t unusual in Hesse. Which all does beg a question. I guess there are number of possible explanations but perhaps (I say this tentatively) a dna group would throw up interesting results.
Kind regards,
Alice