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or Papa MY GRATITUDE to my girlfriend Esther, my mother, my family, my friends, my supervisor Ao. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Thomas Albrich, to the Burgauer family members, to Pierre, in particular, and everyone else who accompanied and supported me on my path and in writing this thesis. 1 Fragments from the Burgauer story Foreword by Hanno Loewy, Director of the Jewish Museum Hohenems The Burgauer family first appeared in Hohenems in 1741, when Judith Burgauer, a young widow of twenty one and mother from the Burgau region near Augsburg settled in Hohenems to marry for a second time. Jonathan Maier Uffenheimer from Innsbruck was a wealthy merchant and gave her a chance to begin a new life. At least one child died young. Their son Abraham married 15 year old Sara Brettauer from Hohenems and moved to Venice. Their daughter Brendel married Sara’s brother, Herz Lämle, later the patriarch of the Brettauer family and founder of the first bank in Vorarlberg. Their daughters, Klara and Rebeka also married into successful families, the Viennese Wertheimstein and the Frankfurt Wetzlar family. Another daughter, Judith, married Nathan Elias, the head of the Hohenems community around 1800. This was a successful marriage policy that was rather typical for a Jewish family at the upper end of the social hierarchy. However, most of the Jewish families in that era had a hard time finding marriage partners and places for their children to live. Of interest is what happened to Benjamin, Judith’s first son from Burgau. The sources as to when he definitely settled in Hohenems are scarce. Aron Tänzer mentions the year 1773, so it is possible that he grew up with relatives in the vicinity of Augsburg. In any case, sometime before 1772 Benjamin Burgauer married Jeanette Moos, the daughter of Maier Moos, who for more then 20 years had served as head and representative of the Hohenems Jewish community. These were critical times; the family of the imperial counts of Hohenems died out and the countship fell back into the control of the Hapsburg Empire. Under difficult circumstances, a new letter of protection needed to be settled. The Empress Maria-Theresa was known for her blatant anti-Jewish sentiments. Even though Benjamin’s father –in- law successfully secured the future of the community and even though the dream of building a proudly visible synagogue took place while he was head of the community, the community still had to survive restrictions and hardships. In the year of Maier Moos’ death, a great fire destroyed both 2 half the Christian’s lane and the Jew’s lane. While the Jews were required to contribute financially to the reconstruction of the Christian quarter, support in the other direction was scarce. And the restrictions on settlement and marriage imposed on the Jewish communities, limiting the continuation of a family in Hohenems to one (and mostly the eldest) son and his offspring, continued until the middle of the 19th century. These restrictions forced the vast majority of children to emigrate, if they wanted to marry and create a family. Two of Benjamin’s daughters, Esther and Brendel, found husbands in Lengnau in Switzerland. Brendel married Baruch Guggenheim, one of the many Burgauer- Guggenheim connections that were to come. His son Benjamin Maier stayed in Hohenems, but three of his other children started business in St. Gallen and moved their families to the vibrant hub of textile production. Two other children emigrated in the 1840s and 1850s to the United States of America, particularly to Philadelphia, as did so many other of their fellow Hohenemsers. Family members of subsequent generations continued this migration, even from St. Gallen. And in South America, too, there is a Burgauer line today. Thanks to Stefan Weis’ study „Entirely Unbeknown to His Homeland- The Burgauers. History and Migrations of a Jewish Family from the mid-18th until the mid-20th Century“, written as a diploma thesis in 2013, today we know much more about the origins, migrations, and diversity of the Burgauer family. With a generous grant from the American Friends of the Jewish Museum Hohenems and through the efforts of the Leland Foundation, supported by Jacqueline Burgauer-Leland and Marc Leland, we know are able to offer this English translation of Stefan Weis’ book. We hope it will find many readers, among family members, Hohenems descendants and everybody who is interested in the history of the Hohenems Diaspora. 3 CONTENT 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 6 2 THE ORIGINS OF THE BURGAUERS: MARGRAVATE OF BURGAU .............................. 8 2.1 The territory .............................................................................................................. 8 2.2 Jewish life in Burgau ............................................................................................... 12 2.3 Burgau’s economy .................................................................................................. 15 2.4 Location of the Burgauer family ............................................................................ 17 3 IMMIGRATION TO HOHENEMS ............................................................................... 21 3.1 Early evidence of Jewish life in Vorarlberg ............................................................ 21 3.2 Migration helpers: the Uffenheimer family ............................................................ 29 3.3 The “patriarch”: Benjamin Burgauer…………………………… ........................................ 41 3.4 The second generation: Mayer (Markus, Benjamin) Burgauer .............................. 50 4 EMIGRATION TO ST. GALLEN ................................................................................. 89 4.1 The political and economic situation in St. Gallen ................................................. 89 4.2 Settlement in St. Gallen .......................................................................................... 94 4.3 St. Gallen municipal citizenship ............................................................................ 103 4.4 Further development of Burgauer & Co and the family ....................................... 120 4 5 1930s ANTI-SEMITISM AND PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS .................................... 126 5.1 Anti-Semitism in Switzerland ................................................................................ 126 5.2 Victims of Brown terror ........................................................................................ 132 6 THE BURGAUERS‘ MIGRATION TO AMERICA ........................................................ 142 6.1 Emigration from Hohenems to the USA ............................................................... 142 6.2 From St. Gallen to the USA ................................................................................... 147 6.3 From St. Gallen to Buenos Aires ........................................................................... 150 7 SUMMARY ............................................................................................................. 154 8 PORTRAITS ............................................................................................................ 156 9 GENEALOGICAL TREE ............................................................................................ 163 10 INDEX .................................................................................................................... 175 10.1 Sources .................................................................................................................. 175 10.2 Literature .............................................................................................................. 176 10.3 Internet sources .................................................................................................... 185 5 1 INTRODUCTION “Entirely unbeknown to his homeland….“1 Thus was regarded Adolf Burgauer’s relationship to his original community of Hohenems by the municipal assembly of the City of St. Gallen on November 19, 1876; he became the first Jew to be awarded municipal citizenship. This was just one of numerous migratory movements shaping the history of the Burgauer family: already earlier on, family members had immigrated to today’s Vorarlberg from the Further Austrian Margravate of Burgau; subsequent generations would spent a large portion of their life outside of the small Countship of Hohenems to engage in commerce; many married and relocated, frequently as a result of economic and bureaucratic pressures; there was also emigration to overseas from Austria as well as from St. Gallen, the United States and Argentina became new homelands; love took them from Hohenems and St. Gallen to other Swiss cantons, to France, or else to Germany; not least, it was National Socialism, which alienated many Burgauer descendants from their homeland and attempted to forcibly render them “entirely unbeknown”

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