I have a Jewish great-great grandmother born in Hungary (exact location unknown–odds say Budapest). Her name was Hesseberg (not sure of spelling), so she was a “German” Jew of Hungarian nationality. According to the U.S. census note on her from 1860, both of her parents were also born in Hungary, so the family had been there for at least one generation. They were Halachical (religiously affirmed) Jews.
My question:
What languages is she likely to have spoken when she arrived in the United States?
I assume German, since she grew up in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (She married a Prussian-born Jew). I wonder about Hungarian. One would think she would speak the common language of Hungary, particulary when her family had been there for at least a generation. If so, I wonder how well she would have spoken both of these languages–at the level of a native speaker, having grown up in Hungary?
I also wonder if Yiddish was a language commonly used by Hungarian Jews?
I assume there are “Dopers” who have some similar ancestral roots and can offer some answer based on their own family experience. Alternatively, there may be someone with special knowledge of a language issue like this.
I’d think that Yiddish would be a good guess, but I’m not Eastern European Jewish or even Jewish for that matter. Yiddish was spoken as far east as Russia - Isaac Asimov’s first language was Yiddish, then he moved to the US and learned English.
Remember that Yiddish and German are very close (they descend from the same medieval? source), and some claim that Yiddish is actually a dialect of German and not a separate language.
Also remember that many Jewish communities lived in separate and tightly-knit neighborhoods in many areas, so it would have been possible to have a Yiddish speaking neighborhood in a sea of another language and have the language be preserved over many generations without much need to learn the other language. Compare this with non-English speaking communities in the US where the language may be decently preserved but most people have to learn English to function in the greater community, and the language may be in the process of death (e.g. Francophone Louisiana).
My mom’s parents also came from what was then Austro-Hungary but in an area that is now Western Ukraine. They spoke Yiddish, German and Polish (and later English.)
I had a good friend growing up whose parents were Jewish and from Hungary. They left right before WWII. They spoke Yiddish and Hungarian (and later English.)
I knew a girl in college who was sort of a Hungarian Jew (she was born in Australia; her parents escaped Hungary in the 1956 uprising).
They were from Budapest and their first language was Hungarian. In fact, the girl I knew - her first language was Hungarian, spoken in the home. I realize the time difference, and that what I offer is anecdotal. But there you go.
The Hungarians tried to stamp out Yiddish, going so far as to banning written Yiddish at one point. They weren’t terribly successful; ethnic groups tended to keep using whatever language they knew.
Budapest was the center of Hungarian Judaism, so it’s likely Yiddish held on stubbornly there. But with few opportunities to use it, it’s likely your great-great-grandmother would only know a bit of conversational Yiddish.
My grandparents (not Jewish) came from Hungary, and they knew a smattering of German. Something like an Anglo might pick up in Los Angeles. But Hungarian was their primary language.
I don’t know anything about demographics of that time period. But for large parts of Hungary, from the 19th c. on, in areas claimed and reclaimed by Hungary and Romania, a religious Jew would certainly know (Biblical) Hebrew, Yiddish (as the primary language at home), Hungarian, and Romanian.
I am close with a scholar of Hungarian history, and will post a message correcting this message…(post first, ask questions later ).
I suspect that unless they were a rabbi or very religious, they would only know a enough Hebrew to get through their religious training. A woman might not know any Hebrew at all.
I have a Jewish great-grandmother who was from Budapest. My mom said she spoke Yiddish and Hungarian initially. She learned English when she came here in her teens. According to my mom she sounded a lot like Zsa Zsa Gabor. She died a year before I was born so I never met her.
Not necessarily - the range of conversation topics in most homes isn’t so exhaustive. Someone who spoke a language only at home and has no education in that language may not be literate in that language, or able to discuss, say, math or science or history, let alone function on a professional level in that language. Thus the phrase “kitchen [LANGUAGE].”
Hungary had a large number of highly educated Jewish families-many of whom were high level physicists (Leo Szilard, Wolfgand Pauli, Max Born, etc.)
I think they were aliens.
I’m at the library. I’ll go home and get what information I have on her from the census. Her first child, my great-grandfather, was born in Boston, in 1847, and fought in the American Civil War (underage–at 17) in the U.S. Navy. That’s a starting point for guessing her age, prior to my getting the census documents I have, which have more solid information.
Yes, I see this site is interested in gathering history of Jews as a historical database. I’ll talk to them a bit.
Here’s the “straight dope” on that: Johanna Hesseberg had 5 children. All were male, all raised as Jews (My great grandfather was halachically correct, so to speak). At least three of her sons abandoned Judaism, two became actors (my great-grandfather–who married an actress and Methodist/Episcopal minister’s daughter–and his youngest brother who remained single all of his life), and another brother whose history I don’t know well, but whose son was an Episcopalian in the 1930’s (my grandmother was in touch by mail with this cousin). At least one, possibly two, of the brothers remained practicing Jews. They still were 2 generations hence when they sent a gift to my mother on the event of her high school graduation, in the mid 1930’s. They were jewelers in Providence, Rhode Island.
My point is that I suspect this part of the family has preserved all of the information on the family’s Jewish history in proper Jewish archives. That’s a guess. I’ve been to Yad Vashem many years ago, and I wondered at the time if any of my ancestors had been left in Hungary during WW II. I will give the people at the website you quoted what little I have.
You may be quite pleasantly surprised if you post your family tree there, even if you don’t know much. I posted mine a few years ago, and have gotten e-mail from all sorts of people with family connections: people who went to high school with my grandparents, a distant cousin who I managed to help find his late uncle’s burial place in South Africa (and with whom I later met up in Amsterdam and have kept in touch now and again)…on and on. The best was when someone who had ordered a microfilm for my own research e-mailed me, because one of the names I listed that I was researching also showed up on the microfilm. It turned out to be the record of my great-grandfather purchasing the ticket to bring my great-grandmother and their first 5 daughters (my grandmother was the only one born in the U.S.) to the U.S. It included a sister my grandmother hadn’t known about because she died as a toddler.
You do also know Yad Vashem has a ton of stuff online now, right?
Mid-1840s is extraordinarily early for immigration from eastern Europe. Your great-great grandmother’s backstory may turn out to be something interesting and unusual.
I agree with previous posters that her likely languages are the German of her ethnic background, the Hungarian of the country in which she grew up in, the Yiddish common to all Ashkenaz (central and east European Jewish) communities, and enough Hebrew to get through Sabbath and Pesach observances (which are held at home).
In a city, girls likely will have learned to read; in a rural area, it would depend on the family – a reading mother would teach her daughters.
Also in a city – Yiddish theater! Come to think of it, she could well have learned Yiddish AFTER coming to America.
Are you thinking of what in Yiddish is “Mamaloschen” – Mommylanguage, the “real” Jewish-in the-home-language (or inter-Jewish), as opposed to the one for prayer, and one for the outside world?
Recall that Yiddish, with the rise of secularism, remained–and essentially was transormed–as a vehicle for a written language for artistic use.
All I have indicates she was born probably about 1824. I don’t know where. Both of her parents were born in Hungary. She died in Rhode Island (Providence, I think) in February of 1876, at 52.
She married Adolph Fink, of Gakel, Prussia, born in 1819 (both of his parents born in Prussia). He died on Christmas Day in 1891 at age 72 in Rhode Island.
In 1860, they lived in Boston. Their first son was born on Seneca street in July of 1847.
Sons listed in 1860 census were James (my great-grandfather), David (age6), Henry (age 3), Daniel (age 1). Joseph wasn’t born yet (This was “Uncle Joe” in my family, with whom he lived for many years).
In 1860, he was a “pedlar,” in 1880 he owed an “r. made clothing store” in Providence, R.I. (My guess is he was a tailor, going door to door in Boston.)
That’s about all I have. I have to get offline; we’re in the midst of a HUGE thunderstorm and the computers went down once already.
I’m speaking generally about **any **language spoken primarily in the home but not outside the home (and particularly in which children aren’t educated as the primary language of instruction). I’m not just discussing Yiddish specifically. For example, my grandmother’s native language was Yiddish, but she’s not literate in Yiddish, and couldn’t converse on, say, politics or literature in Yiddish. But the analogue is true of my U.S.-born friend with the Croatian/Bosnian parents (or at least it was until he studied Croatian as an adult; now he just speaks it kind of half-assed, but on a wider variety of topics).
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