Herman Ringel's 1885 birth record
Feigel Kaufler from Krakow
As a single Jewish man, Schija would have needed help to keep house and cook for him. He found what he was looking for in an efficient and personable young woman from Kraków.
Feigel Kaufler was about twenty-five years old when she arrived in Berlin from Kraków, not a blooming rose but still with prospects to find a suitable husband, she hoped. She was the second daughter of of Abraham-Mojzesz and Esther Chaya. In years past, a Jewish girl in the shtetl waited at home for a proper match to be arranged. But this was a new era. Now a single girl with limited means could take herself to the big city with plans first to secure employment and then to land a husband.
Feigel fulfilled both objectives with one man, Schija Ringel, for whom she became a live-in housekeeper. Things got a little messy when she found herself pregnant with Schija’s child without the benefit of marriage. But Schija owned up to his paternity in the 1885 birth record, and he made Feigel an honest woman in 1888, as a record amendment attests.
