Fotoeins Fotografie

Featured: Alter Markt, facing southwest to the former Schloss Blieskastel at upper-centre: Blieskastel, Saarland, Germany (X70).

David Oppenheimer: ✵ 1 January 1834 – 31 December 1897 ✟

As a child of the city, I learned the name of Vancouver’s 2nd mayor, David Oppenheimer, who served in the top post from 1887 to 1891. Escaping the violent revolutions spreading through Europe, David Oppenheimer and his brothers had long been immigrants from Germany, and after time in New Orleans and California, they arrived in what is now southwestern British Columbia and developed business success with their supply stores during the Gold Rush, and with wholesale trade and real estate in the newly incorporated city of Vancouver, where the national railway established its western terminus one year later in 1887. The Oppenheimers stamped their civic legacy not only with the location of the railway terminus, but also with an expansive infrastructure program including a new grand city park, fire department, extensive roadworks, a city-wide electricity grid, streetcar public transport network, and a city cemetery. On 11 April 2008, the Government of Canada’s Historic Sites and Monuments Board designated David Oppenheimer as a National Historic Person.

There’s little doubt the Oppenheimers spent plenty of time in what are now Vancouver’s Chinatown and Strathcona with their business interests and connections to the city’s Jewish community. These are neighbourhoods, respectively, where my parents sought closer ties with the Chinese-Canadian community, and where they bought a new house to raise their family. Decades later, I’ve flown out from Vancouver, and I’ve been on the train from Frankfurt to southwest Germany’s Saarbrücken for its proximity to the Völklingen Ironworks world heritage site. I also recently learned David Oppenheimer was from the area and born in the city of Blieskastel. I arrange to meet with a representative of Stadtarchiv Blieskastel (city archive), and I make my way to Blieskastel to see what I can learn about the Oppenheimer family.

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Bahnhof Blieskastel-Lautzkirchen

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Kardinal-Wendel-Strasse 58, 60

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Around Town

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Stadtarchiv Blieskastel

German text provided by Stadtarchiv Blieskastel:
“Im Jahr ein tausend acht hundert vier und dreißig, den zweiten des Monats Januar um neun Uhr des Morgens sind vor uns Peter Hoffmann Bürgermeister zu Blieskastel Civilstands-Beamten der Gemeinde Bliescastel, Kantons Blieskastel, Bezirksgericht Zweibrücken im Rheinkreise des Königreichs Baiern, erschienen Salomon Oppenheimer der Dritte Handelsmann, vier und dreißig Jahre alt, in Blieskastel wohnhaft, welcher erklärte, daß gestern Nachmittag um ein Uhr, ein Kind männlichen Geschlechts von seiner Ehefrau Johannetta Kahn ein und dreißig Jahre alt, aselbst geboren und von ihm Deklaranten erzeugt worden, und welchem Kind der Vornamen David gegeben werden soll.”

Google Translate:
“In the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty-four, on the second of the month of January at nine o’clock in the morning, Peter Hoffmann, mayor of Blieskastel, civil registry officer of the municipality of Bliescastel, canton of Blieskastel, district court of Zweibrücken in the Rhine district of the kingdom of Bavaria, appeared before us Salomon Oppenheimer the Third, merchant, thirty-four years old, resident of Blieskastel, who declared that yesterday afternoon at one o’clock, a male child was born to his wife Johannetta Kahn, aged thirty-one, himself and fathered by him, and that the child should be given the first name David.”

The Database of Jewish Epigraphy at the Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute of German-Jewish Studies provides Hebrew inscriptions and their German translations for graves in Jewish cemeteries throughout various European countries. The database includes graves within Blieskastel’s Jewish cemetery:

•   Johannetta Oppenheimer (née Kahn/Cahn), David’s mother: died 9 September 1838.
•   Alia Oppenheimer (née Jacob), David’s paternal grandmother: died 19 November 1827.
•   Jacob/Jaakow Oppenheimer, David’s paternal grandfather: died 20 December 1824.
•   Reitz/Regina Oppenheimer (née Gensberger), David’s paternal great-grandmother: died 5 June 1776.
•   Moises/Moses Oppenheimer, David’s paternal great-grandfather: died 16 February 1803.

The graves for David and David’s father, Salomon III, are in Brooklyn (New York) and New Orleans (Louisiana), respectively, in the United States.

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I received neither pre-visit monetary support nor post-visit compensation for the content presented here. I’m grateful for help and information provided by Frau Raffaela Berger at Stadtarchiv Blieskastel. I made all photos above on 15 May 2024 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime (X70) and an iPhone15 (P15); alle Fotoaufnahmen sind mit Wasserzeichen versehen worden. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-uDd.