The advertisement in the “Laupheimer Verkündiger” in 1886 is the oldest evidence for this branch of the family tree and states (from our present day view rather humorously) the establishment of a trading house with “genuine medical natural wines for sick people, people suffering from stomach diseases and convalescents in the form of French red wines...”. Whether the setting up of a trading house was a success could never be traced like many other aspects. The sources are scarce and show only in fragments the lives of the individual family members.

The couple Leopold and Fanny Rieser, born Löwenthal, had eleven children altogether, four of which lived permanently or tempoarily in Laupheim after 1933. Adolf Rieser and his widowed sister Lina Kaufmann were residents in the parental home in Kapellenstraße 22 according to the “Adreß- and Geschäfts-Handbuch für die Oberamtsstadt und die Bezirksgemeinde Laupheim” published in 1925. It has to be assumed that their sister Marie Rieser living as a single was also a resident there. Nothing could be found out about her.

Jette Gottschalk-Sternberg

The oldest sister Jette had moved from Wuppertal-Barmen to Laupheim on April 25, 1885, however possibly not for good. She had married the tradesman Gottschalk-Sternberg in Laupheim and left her home town with him. The removal stated by the National Socialists may only have been a long-stay visit to her brothers and sisters as her traces could not he followed. The “Gedenkbuch jüdischer Opfer der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland (The Memorial Book of the Jewish Victims of Nazi Despotism in Germany)“ hints at her death in KZ Theresienstadt. She does not belong to the group of Jews deported from Laupheim.

Lina Kaufmann

Lina, born Reiser, had married Isaak Kaufmann of Frankfurt on August 19, in 1895 in Laupheim. After the death of ther husband she returned to her parental home in Laupheim. Her son Fritz can be seen on the photo of her schoolmate Julie Steiner, later married Bergmann, on the first day in school in 1903. Because of his age he also might have been enrolled at primary school. Like all the other children he has a brezel in his hand and is dressed in a festive looking sailors suit that stood for the enthusiasm of the Germans for the naval plans of the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. which was very popular then. The European arms race that followed finally ended in the  First World War. Fritz at the age of 18 volunteered as a soldier on August 10, 1914 and died in action in the first year of the war on July 3, 1915 in Galizien.

His mother Lina Kaufmann was active as secretary for years and later as chairwoman in the “Israelitischen Frauenverein Laupheim (Jewish Women’s Club)” which is documented in numerous newspaper articles of the “Laupheimer Verkündiger” (the local newspaper). This Jewish Women’s Club had 98 members in 1933 and was engaged in the interconfessional welfare activies, supplied scholarships for professional training from the Fanny Steiner Fund, ran sewing rooms and organised lectures as for example in 1928 by Mrs Dr. Rosengart on the “German Women’s Movement”, Mrs Dr. Weil on “Dostojewski” and the “Cultural Work in Palestine”. Mrs Blumenthal on “We Women and Alcohol”. Besides the fostering of Jewish festivals that should be passed on to the youth was also an interest of the Jewish Women’s Club. In 1931 they had a Seder evening, a Chanukka celebration, a Sukkoh was erected and so on. Lina Kaufmann continued her activities for the Jewish community in the time of the Nazi rule and she took over the management of the Jewish Old Peoples Home at Judenberg 2. She managed to emigrate to New York USA on February 23, 1940 possibly with the help of her husband’s relatives. In an advertisement in the “Aufbau”, the newspaper of the Jewish emigrants in New York of August 6, 1948 that advertises the death of Rosa Kaufmann, signed by her sister Else Zivy, born Kaufmann and her husband Eugen as well as their sister-in-law Lina Kaufmann. Until her death on March 3, 1955 Lina Kaufmann lived in New York City.