What are the origins of the Marx family and who were the first ancestors?
Willkommen!
Long before there was freedom of movement and greater opportunities, the family had to build a life within boundaries set by others. Before the Marx family became one of Bad Cannstatt’s successful industrial families and played an important role in the life of the city, their story began somewhere entirely different.
The earliest documented generations of the family lived in small villages and towns in southern Germany, including Mühlbach, Sinsheim, Göppingen, and Nordstetten. At the time, Jews could not simply choose where they wanted to live. The right to settle in a particular place often depended on permission from the local authorities and on a status known as:
Schutzjude — “protected Jew”
The term may sound as though it meant protection, but the reality was more complicated. A Schutzjude was a Jewish person who had been granted permission by a local ruler to live in a particular place, often in exchange for a fee and an additional tax simply for being Jewish. This permission defined their limited rights: where they were allowed to live, which professions they could pursue, and even whether they were allowed to marry.
The number of Jewish marriages permitted each year in each town was limited, and an additional fee was, of course, required just to obtain permission. These restrictions also affected movement between villages, and in our own family records, several women gave birth to children before the necessary marriage and residency permits had been granted.
Marx
One of the earliest known ancestors in the family to bear the name Marx was Suessel (Jischai) Marx, born in 1735.
But where did the name Marx itself come from?
At a time when surnames did not yet function as we know them today, people could be identified by their given name and their father’s name, their place of origin, their occupation, or a descriptive name based on a personal trait or physical characteristic. It was only in the early 19th century that Jews began to be required to adopt fixed, hereditary surnames.
Marx was a German form of the Latin name Marcus. Among Ashkenazi Jews in Western Europe, Marx was also used as a secular given name corresponding to the Hebrew name Mordechai. Later, Marx became a family name passed down from one generation to the next.
Thinking about the choice or change of a name raises another question: could a name carry the energy of the fear, shame, and hiding that came with the need to survive and integrate into society?
We cannot know for certain whether this is how the name Marx originated in our particular branch of the family - but luckily for us, we inherited it with pride and love!
The Marx family line is only one side of the story
Leopold’s family tree is made up of four families through his parents and grandparents:
Marx, Fleischer, Rothschild, and Gutmann
Remember the names of these four branches, because we’re going to look at each one now.
Fleischer
The earliest records of the Fleischer family go back even further. The first Fleischer we find is Aaron of Mühlbach, born in 1690. At the time, Mühlbach was a small town with a very small Jewish community. During the revolutions of 1848, Jewish families in Mühlbach were attacked, and among the homes whose windows were smashed were the homes of the Fleischer brothers. Over the years, the community grew smaller, and in 1935, the last Jewish resident of Mühlbach passed away.
In the records I found, Aaron is the first Fleischer in the family line. Before that, he appears simply as “Aaron of Mühlbach.” The name Fleischer probably originally referred to his occupation - in German, Fleischer means “butcher.”Like many surnames that developed from occupations, Fleischer eventually became a family name.
One of the earliest records we have of the family is a lithographic portrait of one of Aaron’s grandsons - Leopold Marx (after whom our Grandpa Leopold was named) and his wife, Mina Maria (Michal) Fleischer.
In the same year that Leopold was widowed from his first wife, he married Mina Fleischer, the daughter of the merchant Jakob Fleischer. Leopold and Mina’s parents were brother and sister, and “The first Marx,” Suessel (Jischai) Marx, was their shared grandfather - making Leopold and Mina first cousins.
After their marriage, Leopold and Mina moved to Sinsheim. Leopold was a baker and confectioner, and in March 1849 he became a full member of the local bakers’ guild. The couple later opened an inn, which was passed down to their children, and Leopold also trained apprentices in baking and confectionery.
Leopold Marx and his wife, Mina Maria (Michal) Fleischer.
c. 1850
Rothschild
The Rothschilds, true to their name, are a very interesting family. I recently received a book from a Chicago library that I had been looking for a long time, written by one of the family’s descendants who researched their history.
In the records I found, the earliest known member of the Rothschild branch came from Nordstetten. His first name was Marx, and in the earliest records he appears simply as Marx, without a surname. In 1787, the Jews of Nordstetten were required to adopt fixed surnames, and it appears that Rothschild was the surname adopted by the family. (There is no direct family connection to the famous Rothschild banking family from Frankfurt, but they may have been the inspiration behind the choice of name.)
Later in the Rothschild family branch, we come to Isak Moses Rothschild, who was a “furrier”- a merchant in furs and leather. Because of the limited economic opportunities and the many restrictions placed on Jewish life in Germany, many German Jews began emigrating to the United States from the mid-19th century onward.
Isak’s brother, Leopold Rothschild, was one of them. He emigrated to the United States, where the family business grew into an empire of textile and clothing stores, and later into a large department store in Chicago, which his sons and grandsons continued to run.
Later generations married into established and influential Jewish families - from families involved in the meat industry to diplomats and art collectors, and even into the Guggenheim family (now associated with the famous Guggenheim Museum in New York). The American branch of the family achieved great financial success and also became known for its generosity. To this day, institutions bearing their name can be found in Chicago and other cities, including a hospital and even a synagogue.
The Rothschild family in the United States did not forget their relatives who remained in Germany. During the difficult years, they continued to support them, including providing financial assistance and helping secure visas for those they could.
The first Rothschild - from the book: The Rothschilds of Nordstetten
Gutmann
Isak Moses Rothschild applied for permission to marry Therese Gutmann from Göppingen. As part of the application, he was required to provide certificates confirming the family’s good reputation, as well as a list of Therese’s property, and requested permission for her to move to Nordstetten.
Four generations before Therese, Jakob Gutmann, born in 1709, is the first Gutmann I found in our family branch. The name Gutmann has a simple meaning in German: Gut means “good” and Mann means “man” - in other words, “good man.” Gutmann probably began as a descriptive name and eventually became a family name passed down through the generations.
Jakob’s son, Elias Gutmann, born in 1735, appears in many historical records and played an important role in the establishment of the Jewish community in Jebenhausen.
Side note: Today, Jebenhausen is a district of Göppingen, and the two are administered together.
In 1777, Elias approached Baron Philipp Friedrich von Liebenstein to request permission to settle in Jebenhausen. The Baron then granted a letter of protection allowing 20 Jewish families to settle there. Elias became the first leader of the new Jewish community. As part of his role, he was responsible, among other things, for collecting protection fees and taxes from members of the community and passing them on to the authorities.
In a document issued by the Baron in 1793, Elias is described as “one of the oldest and first protected Jews in the town, who is trusted.” The document reflects the trust and status he had gained both within the community and with the local authorities. In return, he was granted an exemption from protection fees for the rest of his life, an exemption that was also intended to pass to his widow after his death.
An entire book was written about the early Jewish communities of Jebenhausen and Göppingen. The Gutmann family first became prominent in the leadership of the community and later in trade and industry. In the generations after Elias, many members of the family became merchants and manufacturers in the textile industry and were involved in establishing weaving mills, cotton-dyeing businesses, and corset factories. The book even describes one of his grandsons, who showed an exceptional talent for weaving and worked on handlooms, a skill that earned him recognition and awards for his craftsmanship. Over the years, the family businesses changed- splitting into different companies, merging, and taking on different business partners.
Members of the Fleischer family from Mühlbach also came to Göppingen. Samuel Fleischer began working in his uncle’s corset factory at the age of 15 and later became one of the leading figures in the textile industry. He and his brothers continued the family’s corset-manufacturing tradition.
Another uncle, from the Gutmann family, later moved to Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt and joined his business with Eduard Marx, creating the family company B. Gutmann & Marx.
To this day, Villa Gutmann, the historic home of the Gutmann manufacturing family, has been preserved by the city of Göppingen. Today, it is home to a café that carries the family name.
And so, the Marx, Fleischer, Rothschild, and Gutmann families crossed paths through marriages, but also through business and industry.
We inherit not only possessions from previous generations, but also their values, choices, and decisions.
Sometimes we go through entire lives caught up in the everyday, without stopping to think: What will we pass on? And which choices we make today will still affect the generations that come after us? Perhaps that is the question at the heart of The Marx Effect.
Over the coming months, we’ll go deeper into the lives of these people- the businesses and factories they built, the families they created, and what ultimately became of them.
We’ll also discover our family’s personal connections to the founders of Bosch and Mercedes-Benz, how Albert Einstein is related to our family by blood, and who built the family’s large house in Bad Cannstatt - the inspiration behind the logo of this project - where dreams and plans for the future were harshly taken away from them. And, surprisingly, we’ll discover the story of a former Nazi officer who returned decades later to ask the family for forgiveness.
In their stories, each of us will recognize patterns that still have an effect on our lives today - helping us better understand the generations that came before us.
That is The Marx Effect.
In the next blog, we’ll meet Leopold Marx. We’ll discover who his first great love was and how she changed his life, the responsibilities he had to take on as a teenager, his bravery, and his incredible story of spiritual survival.
