Josephine (Jozsafa) FRITZ was born
in Körmend, Hungary in 1836 or 1837, and married Jacob JELLINEK
soon after Jacob's wife, Katharine (Kati) ADLER died in 1865 aged
56. According to family folklore, Josefine was employed in the
JELLINEK family household.
Jacob was born in the village of Casta in
Slovakia in 1793 and died in 1879 at the age of 86 in Bratislava where
he is buried in the Jewish cemetery. The village of Casta is
located about 35 km from Bratislava and records show six or seven
JELLINEK families living in the village towards the mid 1800s.
Overlooking the village of Casta is the medieval Red Stone (Rock)
Castle (Cerveny Kamen) maintained at different times by wealthy
families. The history of the Jewish families in this area was
closely connected to the trading activities of the castle
inhabitants. A synagogue and two Jewish cemeteries existed in
Casta towards the end of the 1800s.
It appears that Josefine married Jacob
JELLINEK between 1865 and 1867 (location unknown) and eight children
were born in Bratislava between 1868 and 1879. Three children
died in infancy. Sometime after the death of Jacob in 1879,
Josephine moved (date unknown) to Vienna with her five surviving
children--Regina, Leonore, Israel (Isidor), Heinrich and Jacob.
Israel (Isidor) was killed in a train accident as a young man.
The remaining children married and had their own families.
Josefine died in Vienna in 1910 aged 73 and is buried at the
Zentralfriedhof.
Regina gave birth to a daughter, Frieda, in
1905. Frieda is shown standing beside her grandmother in the
photograph below.
Today, descendants of Leonore live in the UK
and Israel, and descendants of Jacob live in the USA and Australia.
Josephine
JELLINEK nee FRITZ with her granddaughter Frieda, ca. 1908
Note: The FRITZ family was a very large family
in Körmend with several branches. Körmend vital records
filmed by the FHL do not reveal to which branch Josephine is
related. Anyone with information about the FRITZ family in
Körmend is invited to share it with J. Jellins
<jjellins@ibus.org> and/or H. Sinai <hmsinai@gmail.com>