I have never met any of my Braunhart ancestors.  The only person older than my grandmother Celia Heyman Marks who I met, was Celia's father Isidor Heyman, who was married to a "Braunhart" - Ernestine Bernstein. Ernestine died in 1944, two years before I was born. She was the granddaughter of the Braunhart patriarch and matriarch Lewin Braunhart and Wilhelmine Zadek Braunhart. I was too young to make much sense of what Isidor had to say and I didn't see enough of him to develop much of a relationship.

All I know about these ancestors are the stories that have been told and the letters that are nearly a hundred years old that we have had translated.

I have posted often about my great great great uncle Samuel Braunhart, who was beyond feisty, and his convictions coupled with his "loud mouth" often got him in trouble. But he was an honorable man who cared for the "little people." If anyone happened to know both Sam and myself, it would be quite easy to make a connection between our two personalities.  So I am quite drawn to his story and his exploits.

Yet, there is one more Braunhart (of many) that I would loved to have met - and that is Lilly Braunhart.  Lilly was the daughter of Julius Braunhart and his wife Dorka Asch Braunhart. Julius has been identified as brilliant, but also a gambler who deserted his family. Dorka, Lilly, and Lilly's younger brother Lothar, escaped from Germany and were refugees in Shanghai. After ten years, they left Shanghai, then spent part of their time in New York City, but soon moved to San Francisco, the place of my birth.  The unfortunate thing is that I was alive for over 20 years that Lilly and I were both in the San Francisco area.  And we never met, since I didn't know anything about the Braunhart family.

Lilly was a very smart lady.  She left New York City, because her relatives did not understand that she wanted to use her brain in any chosen vocation. I do not know if her brother Lothar and her mother Doris (as she was known) were already in San Francisco when Lilly moved there but they lived together until Lilly married her second husband.

Lilly was married twice - first to a journalist, Alexander Hoorin, who was in Shanghai with her, until Alexander was captured by the Japanese during World War II. Nothing is known about the circumstances of their divorce, but it appears that they were married less than five years. Lilly was also not married for very long to her second husband Jack Rains - it appears that it was less than three years.

Lilly was quite involved with the group of Shanghai survivors who met often. She was educated as a statistician, a rare occupation for a woman in the 1950s. She worked primarily for non-profit and charity organizations, such as the Jewish Relief organization and the United Bay Area Crusade (a precursor to the United Way). From a letter that Lilly wrote in 1984 about her career - "I was able to always make a good living in my field of statistical analysis. That is with the exception of the time after I arrived in New York, when several of my relatives pushed me into jobs which were underpaid. When I started out in San Francisco, my first salary was more than double of the one with which I ended up in New York. Aside from good money, these jobs I held (there were only two over a period of 23 years) offered prestige. Well, the time I lived in New York wasn't one I like to think about. Being an independent person, I hated to be told what to do, but some of the relatives never gave up to do just that."

Lilly was one of the few "Braunharts" that kept in touch with Theodor's widow Lucie Braunhart, who remained in Germany after the war and after her husband died in 1951. From a letter that Lilly wrote in 1983 - "As to Aunt Lucie, I am truly the only one who seems to care about her. Aunt Selma had been the other one. The rest of the family behaved badly and never showed any appreciation for the many sacrifices she made on behalf of the old father and all the Jewish relatives who stayed and later were killed in Germany. She was separated from her husband for 10 years, so that someone stayed behind to look after the old father. When he died, she could no longer leave Germany.  This is quite a story and cannot be told in a letter."

She owned a home quite near the ocean near the Presidio and lived there until she passed in 1997. Lilly was a smart, independent woman, who lived her own life.  Definitely a woman I would have loved to have known.

On this Mother's Day we remember our deceased Braunhart mothers. Some of us knew you and all of us wish we had met you. 

Sara Braunhart Bernstein - Mother of Amalie, Ernestine, Cecelia, Hattie, Max and 2 others unknown 

Helene Baszynska Braunhart - Mother of Moritz, Jakob, Anna, Martha, Theodor, Carl, Selma, Cecelia, Julius, Philipp, Frieda, Caesar, and one unknown 

Anna Braunhart Tulman - Mother of Mildred, Muriel, Stanley, and Helene 

Martha Braunhart Sternbach - Mother of Leo, Harold, and Regina 

Hedwig Bukofzer Braunhart (Wife of Carl) - Mother of Hanna and Heinz 

Ilse Gass Hart (Wife of Jacob) - Mother of Erna, Margaret, and Herbert 

Else Schmalenbach (Wife of Phillip) - Mother of Horst, Gisela, and Bernhard 

Frieda Braunhart Brunn - Mother of Henry and Miriam 

Cecelia Bernstein Markheim - Mother of Arthur, Robert, Minnie, Pauline, Leo, and Edith 

Hedwig (Hattie) Bernstein Fried - Mother of Leo 

Ernestine Bernstein Heyman - Mother of Celia, Martha, Arthur, Robert, Leo, and Mynette 

Dorka Asch Braunhart (Wife of Julius) - Mother of Lothar and Lilly  

Unfortunately we do not have photos of the following Braunhart mothers: 

Rosa Levison Braunhart – Mother of Harry

Amalie Bernstein Brock - Mother of Teresa, Regina, and Eric

Thanks to the persistence of my newfound 2nd and 3rd cousins - Martha Zucker, Miriam Matranga, and Laraine Sweberg, we have now connected all the Braunhart "stragglers" that I referenced in a couple of earlier posts regarding the Braunhart family.

We knew that Bernhard Braunhart, Sara Braunhart Bernstein, and Samuel Braunhart were siblings. As I stated, there were several "stragglers" who were named Braunhart and who immigrated from Germany, some from the family "town" of Schubin.

As Paul Harvey would say - "Now we know the rest of the story!"

There is indeed another sibling who ties it all together - Alexander Benedict Braunhart is the fourth sibling. He was the youngest (born in 1853) and married Helene Baschinsky. They had count em' - 13 children who are summarized below:

• Jacob Braunhart immigrated in 1904, settled in San Francisco and was there when Samuel died shortly after the San Francisco earthquake and fire. He joined the US Army prior to World War 1, traveled to Alaska, was investigated by the FBI as a German sympathizer, got married and divorced, stayed in the Army, changed his name to Walter Hart and married a woman Ilse, with whom he had three children, settling ultimately in Wilmington, Delaware.
• Martha Braunhart immigrated with her older brother Jacob in 1904. She married Bernard Sternbach, and had three children, Leo, Harold, and Regina. She stayed in New York after her immigration to America.
• Julius Braunhart married Dorka Asch and had two children, Lothar and Lilly. Lothar and Lilly changed their last name to Hart. Lothar changed his first name also, becoming Leslie B Hart. Doris and the two children, now adults, immigrated to America in the 1950s, passing through New York and ultimately residing in San Francisco. Julius' fate was not so positive, He was captured and murdered by the Nazis in 1943 in the Theresienstadt Comcentration Camp. It is unknown as to how Doris, Lothar and Lilly survived the war.
• Carl Braunhart married Hedwig and had two children, Hanna and Heinz. Carl and Hedwig immigrated in 1939 and 1940 respectively. Hedwig stayed behind because of a broken leg and her daughter Hanna tended to her. Money was left for Hanna to travel to America, but she was turned in to the Nazis by an ex-boyfriend. She was killed in Auschwitz in 1943. Carl changed his name to Carl Hart and opened a bicycle shop in Brooklyn, New York. The bicycle shop still exists today as "Carl Hart Bicycles" in Long Island, New York, although no longer owned by the family.
• Cecelia Braunhart, nicknamed Cilly, married a German WW1 POW veteran Horst Eilenberg. It appears that they stayed in Berlin during the war and died there in the late 1950s and 1960s respectively. They had no children.
• Anna Braunhart immigrated in 1909. She married Harry Tulman in 1915 and had four children - Mildred and Muriel, and the twins Stanley and Helene. She was a successful business woman - she owned several apartment buildings in Brooklyn as well as a hardware store and taught herself the English language by reading 3 newspapers daily. Ultimately she lived a very full life of 96 years.
• Philipp Braunhart stayed in Europe and married a non-Jew and had three children - one named Horst Braunhart. He met the same fate as his brother Julius and niece Hanna though, killed by the Nazis at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in 1942.
• Sara Selma Braunhart immigrated in 1946 from England. She married George Gandel and had no children.
• Theodore Braunhart married Lucie with no children. He escaped to Shanghai, China and was transported to Israel because of the Japanese blockade. Sadly he suffered from TB and malnutrition while in Israel. He then traveled to Berlin to find his wife but succumbed there to his illnesses. Lucie traveled to America in 1956.
• Frieda Braunhart was the youngest child of Alexander and Helene. She married Salo Brunn in Berlin in 1926. Later in 1926 they immigrated to America, staying in New York the rest of their lives.  They had two children, Henry and Miriam.
• Moritz Braunhart lived to adulthood yet little is known of his history.
• Ceasar Braunhart died as a young child and the 13th child was stillborn.

So it appears that the Braunhart family is now complete - except - there may be Braunhart relatives still in Germany who descended from some of Alexander and Helene's grandchildren who survived and stayed there. Here's hoping we will find them some day.