The Steinhardt FAMILY BOOK
INTRODUCTION
I am writing this book in the intention of
my grandchildren, and your grandchildren, and the grandchildren of their
grandchildren, so that one day, when they will reach the age at which almost
everybody becomes interested in his roots, they will find here at least the
information that I have been able to collect, in small steps, for more than 30
years.
This is not really a research work, but
rather an effort to know better about my ancestors. It is my hope that, by publishing
it here and making it available to others, this might encourage others to
communicate with me and add information.
So my first request from you, dear reader,
is that, after going through those pages, if you find information concerning your
branch of our surname family, if you have more information, if you would
like to write a chapter and have it posted here, please send me a note to Inacio@cheerful.com . Credits will be
given to the respective authors.
I am not sure if we all belong to the same
family tree. As a matter of fact I know we don't.
There are Steinhardt's that have adopted our
surname for practical reasons – avoiding incorporation in the army in
The second point that I want to make here is
that we should not be confused by the different spellings. First of all there
are branches that spell it Steinhardt, others Steinhart, and more rarely
Steinhart. Then, in
From an onomastic (the study of the origin
and forms of names for people and places) our surname is a German toponymic (a
place-name) and it means in the German language "hard as a stone" or
"strong as a stone", not "a hard stone" as some people
think.
It is used as an adjective, but not so
often. I found it in a piece of poetry, in the site of Jerry Valentin, under the title "Steinmeditation".
Here is the example:
"So
wird er ein
Teill von dir: "So
it becomes part of you
den so bist du oft selber – Steinhart because so you are
often – hard as a stone
und kalt,
and cold,
und aalglatt,
and slippery,
und gefühllos, and
feelingless,
und kantig,
and sharp-edged,
scharf und verletzend"
Sharply and hurting"
As for the controversial German spellings of
the word, I have received the testimony of several linguists that all the three
forms are equivalent. As a matter of fact it is entered in "Duden:Familliennamen – Herkunf und Bedeutung", by
Rosa Kohlheim and Vorlker Kohlheim, as "Steinhard, Steinhar(d)t" . So, all three spellings are acceptable
and equivalent.
According to the same book, Steinhardt was
once a given name, that later became a surname. As a surname it was given
probably to a person whose character was "hard as a stone".
It is also a toponymic (a place-name), as I
have mentioned above. There are two places in
STEINHARDT is part of : Sobernheim (GKZ : 07 1 33
501, County : | | * Bad Kreuznach {KH}, RegBez : | *
STEINHART is part of : Hainsfarth, GKZ : 09 7 79
154, County : | | * Donau-Ries, RegBez
: | * Schwaben, Land : * Bayern,
ZIP : 86744, Locat : (Hainsfarth)
48d58m N 10d38m E, 7029 Oettingen.
Let's elaborate now on how far back can we
hope to track down our family history.
The first European surnames seem to have
arisen in northern
In 1563, the Council of Trent decreed that
all Catholic parishes had to keep full records of baptisms. The Protestants
soon joined in this practice, furthering the use of family names thoughtout
European Jews began the use of surnames
relatively late, around the end of the 18th century. Officially,
Jews in what is today
For instance, in 1977, while attending a
meeting in Tel Aviv, of people from Rozwadow I was surprised to be told by
elderly people that the surname did not exist in the town. I was sure that my
grandfather Hersz Steinhardt lived there with his
family until 1915. And my great-grandfather, Kopel
Steinhardt, lived there too. Finally I found an old lady that remembered my
grandfather as the hose painter who had painted her aunt's restaurant "and
painted some pretty birds on the walls too". But his name was not
Steinhardt! He was Hersz Kopels!
The surname Steinhardt was used by German
nobles long before the first Jew adopted it. There are several Von
Steinhardt in the chronicles. I shall refer later to some of them.
I take from a document issued by "The
Historical Research Center" that "Early records of the surname
Steinhardt date back to the twelfth century. One Steinhardus
was living in Wadgassen in 1184, and in 1373 Heinz
Steinhart was a citizen of Weilderstadt. (Please pay
attention to the spelling variants).
According to the same source a blazon of
Arms has been granted to Alexander Ludwig Steinhardt, an economist at Radebeul in 1923!
"BLAZON OF ARMS: Chequy
gules and argent; a lion rampant sable, on a chief sable a balance or.
CREST: Between a vol
argent and gules a spear couped, arrow point upwards
or."
I have not found any evidence of a Jewish
community in Steinhardt (Sobernheim), but probably the
first Von Steinhardt and the Steinhardt, were from there and they were not
Jews. There are several families with this surname that are not Jews, probably
more than there are Jews.
There are also several branches of
Steinhardt that were Jews and converted to other religions. A typical such case
is the famous Romanian Orthodox Priest and philosopher Father Nicolai Steinhardt, about whom I will also write later. The
late Father Steinhardt has relatives in
A quite different story is Steinhart (Hainsfarth) which had a Jewish Community as early as the 16th
century. In 1560, count Georg Daniel of Gundolzheim has expelled the six Jewish families that lived
in Steinhart, under his protection. In 1625 there were already in Steinhart 23
Jewish homes (98 individuals). This number had fallen in 1660 to 12
families. Jews from Steinhart are
mentioned among those who took part in the Nördlingen
market until 1754.
In 1883, the Jewish community of Steinhart
was liquidated and its members joined the community of Oetttingen.
The first Jewish person that used the
surname STEINHARDT (later simplified to Steinhart) was Joseph Ben Menahem-Mendel, a famous rabbi, born in Steinhart, about
1700 (this information is indicated by Eliane Ross-Schuhl, in her article "De Joseph Steinhart, grand rabbin d'Alsace, aux Levy, père et fils, Banquiers",
in "Cercle de Généalogie
Juiveª N.º 52 –Tome 13 – Winter 1997). I shall return
to the biography of rabbi Joseph Ben Menahem Steinhart, in a later article. Here I would like to
explain how he acquired his surname.
In 1773, while
serving as chief-rabbi of Fürth, rabbi Joseph Steinhart
published a collection of his Responsa (questions and
answers type of rabbinical literature) and signed his name as author with the
name "Yossef Ben Menahem
me-Steinhart. "Me" means "from" in
Hebrew. So he called himself Joseph son of Menahem, from
Steinhart. This toponymic was adopted by his children and also by his
nephew, rabbi Menahem Mendel
Ben Shimeon, as the family surname.
They both spelled
the surname in Hebrew with the ending "t" and not "dt". However their names have been spelt in books and encyclopedias,
in Latin characters, with the "dt" ending.
One possible explanation is that, according to what I have been told once, it
is forbidden to use in Hebrew letter combinations that are not found in the
Biblical text.
I have found this other explanation in "Commentaries
on Sefer Commentary Yetzirah , by Saadia ben Joseph al-Fayyumi (Saadia Gaon))[931 C.E.]:"Two letters which belong to the same letter grouping are very rarely
combined with one another. Thus Zayin and Shin
never appear next to each other in the Hebraic tongue; nor do Samech and Shin; nor Kaf
and Gimel; nor are Dalet
and Tet coupled in the same word. I have
already explained this in the first of the grammatical books. ..."
There was a chocolate factory in Tel Aviv
owned by a very nice Steinhardt family, from
Just as a curiosity, before closing this
introductory part, I would mention a web game, by the name of "The
Chronicler of Ostermark" – which I found at http://tjpearce.com/thelastgriffon/MordheimRules.doc
, which has an hero by the name of Count Steinhardt.
Here is a short quote from their site:
"The
City of the Damned
During the year of madness before Mordheim's destruction, Ostermark
fell
into ever
greater ruin as all matters of governance were neglected.
Farmlands were abandoned as people
flocked to the city, smiths deserted
their forges,
and even merchants and money lenders gave up all attempt at
commerce. Thus
even before the devastation, the
fallen into
anarchy and its ruler, Count Steinhardt, had long since
embraced the
unhealthy pleasures so prevalent in those final days. He,
together with
most of the nobility of the land, perished in the cleansing
fires of Sigmar and sorrowfully there were few who mourned the
passing of
the ancient and honourable line of Steinhardt "
Inácio Steinhardt - © 2003