When
Hamburg's council granted
the city's Jews
permission to acquire the right of citizenship
in 1849, this step
was tied to the obligation to take permanent first and family names or have
existing names recorded. Formulating this decree at a rather late date,
Hamburg
brought up the rear in a development that had been completed in most parts of
Europe
decades earlier. Moreover, it meant that the very development two committed,
reform-minded Jews had sought to prevent a year earlier
had come to pass, namely that such a decree was initiated by the non-Jewish
authorities rather than by the Jews themselves in their fight for gaining civil
rights. In May of the revolutionary year 1848, which welcomed many reforms, congregation
secretary
Moses Martin
Haarbleicher and registrar
Zebi Hirsch May (1801–1878) had presented their suggestions
for reform to the board of the
German-Israelite Congregation.
They complained that a minority among
Hamburg's Jews still
did not use a permanent family name, which caused a lot of “disorder” (p. 1).
Haarbleicher and
May's three-page letter provides insight
into the very complicated and lengthy process of the adoption of permanent
family names among
Hamburg’s Jews.
Letter to the Board of the German-Israelite Congregation in Hamburg Regarding the Adoption of Fixed Family Names, Hamburg, May 4, 1848 (translated by Insa Kummer), edited in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History,
<https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:source-148.en.v1> [November 03, 2024].