Leseprobe

13 The Salzburg Family Kaskel Mendel had become a widower in 1866 and died in 1870. In March 1875 the Salzburg family, now with four children, moved to the villa at Tier- gartenstrasse 3. Today this house—which was renumbered in 1895, becoming Tiergartenstrasse 8—is known locally as the ‘Villa Salzburg’ after the man who ordered its construction. Designed in the Renaissance Revival style, it was the first detached, upper-bourgeois residence to be erect- ed in what was then a new quarter of the city. By the early 1900s the area was entirely covered with villas, but the Villa Salzburg is now the only one to survive. Adolph and Thekla Salzburg had six children in all, born between 1868 and 1881. Siegmund Simon was born in 1868, Ernst Israel in 1870, Bertha Breindel in 1872, and Friedrich Jecheskel in 1874.5 The two youngest daughters, Emma and Marga- rethe, were born in 1875 and 1881 respectively.6 In their second names, Siegmund and Ernst both took traditional biblical names (‘synagogal names’) in honour of their grandfather, Israel Si- mon Salzburg. Bertha and Friedrich took the Jew- ish names of their Mendel grandparents. As the Jewish population became more and more out- wardly assimilated to their Christian environment, these synagogal names ceased to be used in public life. Outside the family, they were found only in synagogue records of births, marriages, and deaths, where they appeared after the secular forenames, and on gravestones, where they ap- peared in Hebrew script as the real, Jewish names of the deceased. In the early 1890s, two of Adolph Salzburg’s three sons became the first members of the family to acquire an academic education, something of which Adolph was immensely proud, as one of his granddaughters later recalled. Having qualified respectively in medicine and law, Dr Siegmund Salzburg and Dr Friedrich Salzburg settled in Dresden, set up their own practices, and acquired homes for themselves and their families; Sieg- mund purchased a villa, while Friedrich had one built. Dr Siegmund Salzburg specialized as an ear, nose, and throat doctor, a path which allowed him to combine his professional career with his private passion: opera. As a highly regarded voice expert, he numbered many of Dresden’s opera singers among his clients. On 27 November 1903 he mar- ried Elsa Clara Glückmann. Elsa’s parents, Carl and Felicia Glückmann, purchased the villa at Tiergartenstrasse 8 after Adolph Salzburg’s death in 1909. They made it their home and altered it to suit their own domestic requirements. Siegmund and Elsa Salzburg’s marriage produced three Siegmund Salzburg (1868–1932). Date unknown. Adolph Salzburg around 1908 with his children Friedrich Salzburg and Margarethe Heine, née Salzburg.