Goudsmit & Goldschmidt -- a geneasequel
Goudsmit & Goldschmidt -- a geneasequel
by JG
Introduction
Goudsmit Goldschmidt & related Generations
in 5 centuries: the years from 1400 up to 1900

An extensive chain of Goudsmit and Goldschmidt namesakes and their related families.
Generations linked and followed in time and place — there and back from the nineteenth to the fifteenth century, from the Netherlands to Switzerland.
Over 33.333 descendants and relatives of Moshe bar Joseph segal — usually referred to as Mostel von Schaffhausen — who in 1461 had become a rightful resident of Nürnberg, acquiring the exceptional privilege to practice as a Goldsmith, as well for his sons to learn the craft. Their names are mentioned in the towns’s Council Books of 4 decades — until 1499, when all Jews were expelled from Nürnberg.
It is most amazing how, during ages of an allover guild-ban for jews, several of Moshe’s offspring passed on his skill and kept covertly practicing the trade — so that some 14 generations later, after guild-restrictions were abolished, his descendant Jonas Mozes Goudsmit had his maker’s mark officially registered in 1851 and could freely establish his gold and silver shop at the Highstreet of Rotterdam.

> Follow the generation links:
Start by clicking here below on
Home’ in the left corner of this page —
proceeding to the first
Family Card of forefather Moshe Goldschmidt.
Click on his name and find further detailed info on his
Person Sheet.
Navigate to and fro by clicking on the name of some other family member.

The evicted families from Nürnberg were dispersed, wandering form town to town, while the old Moshe was circa 1520 admitted in Frankfurt-am-Main. He settled in one of the oldest houses of the so called ‘Judengasse” — a street between lockable gates along the outside of the eastern town wall, apartly allocated for the growing jewish population.
This house, named ‘goldener Schwan’, was during the centuries changed and rebuild. And usually lived in by descendants of the Goldschmidt family — while the expanding generations were compelled to move into other houses in the Judengasse, or even to find a home elsewhere, away from Frankfurt.
One of Mostel’s grandchildren Juspa bar Isaak had become a goldsmith of great fame and even achieved the esteem of Emperor Karl V, who by personal intercession in 1547 ordered that, contrary to the increasing guild-rules, he was granted the special permission to build his own house with workshop at the southern end of the Judengasse.

In 1614 the street was plundered and all Jews were expelled from Frankfurt. Within two years the instigator, guild-leader Fettmilch, and his accomplices were removed from the town council and sentenced, while, under direct protection of Emperor Matthias, the Jews were invited to return. Not all families did so, but still the Judengasse got severely overcrowded, within the period of just a few generations.

Later in the 17th century two ‘Goldschmidt’ descendants had settled again in Frankfurt. Meyer son of Benedikt moved in from Kassel and married into the house ‘Buchsbaum’. His nephew Isaak son of Jobst, returning via Hameln, obtained a new right of residence to live in the House ‘Korb und Wanne’. Both these forefathers had numerous offspring. Their branches were usually discerned in the Council Tax Administration with the surnames Goldschmidt-Kassel and Goldschmidt-Hameln.

In 1711 a disastrous fire totally destroyed the Judengasse. All houses were lost. During the rebuilding years the jewish occupants were allowed to reside in the region — mostly temporarily, but some families started wandering once more and did not return. They kept in touch with their families, from far away.

Also during earlier centuries several Goldschmidt branches had already been dispersed in the german area over other regions and towns: Witzenhausen, Stadthagen, Hildesheim, Hannover, Berlin, Hamburg, Oldenburg, Lemgo, …. and some had moved abroad, to neighbouring countries — in that way to the Netherlands, to towns like Amsterdam or Rotterdam, …. as well as many provincial communities — while in the language of the new homeland their surname got altered by translation from Goldschmidt into Goudsmit.


> EXTRA ATTENTION < — since februari 2024:
important adjustments in several early Family Cards and Person Sheets.
Recent archival founds and new sources caused a drastic revision with
adjusted and additional facts in the proposed lineages of the earlier
Goldschmidt generations (before ca 1630)

V 090424
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