Salomon Paechter branch leads to notable emigre physiologist Ernst Simonson

Salomon Paechter branch leads to notable emigre physiologist Ernst Simonson

• Nov 16, 2023
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There is so much new Paechter research that I hardly know where to begin. I've been reading Henry Pachter's book Weimar Etudes, which includes a good deal of autobiographical content. I'll get back to writing about that and also his daughter Renee after I process some of the other Paechter branches. 

So to reset the family context, let's go back to the steamship river town of Tiegenhof (Kreis Marienburg) in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Julius Paechter owns and operates the general store on the town square. He and wife Rachel have five children between 1838 and the early 1850s.

Our ancestor Freidericke Paechter Wohlgemuth, whom I'll call Freida, was the eldest. Then came Salomon (1841), Meyer or Meier (1845), Rosa or Rosalie (1850) and lastly Isaak (birth date unknown). 

I have been writing recently about descendants of Meyer—Emil Paechter and Henry Pachter who were active in Berlin left-wing politics in the 1920s. Some years back, I wrote about Rosa Paechter Kleeman and her large family in Danzig, leading to Peter Nash the Australian who descends from that branch.

We have also briefly mentioned Isaak's family and will be returning to that soon. Finally we have Salomon, whom I will dig into here. 

He was born and raised in his prosperous Tiegenhof family. He married Emilie Gotthilf from nearby Elbing. He possibly entered the family mercantile business or some other merchant activity. He and Emilie had two daughters born in Tiegenhof in 1876 and 1883.

At some point after that the family relocated to Berlin. You may recall that we learned that Isaak took over the management of the family store in 1891, after Meyer died. This leads me to believe that Salomon and his family was no longer in Tiegenhof by that time. 

They may gone to an interim city like Danzig or Stettin before moving on to Berlin, as our Wohlgemuths did. We have three records that place Salomon in Berlin and none is earlier than 1913. That's when his second daughter Lisbeth married Leonard Weissberg, and the family was recorded at an address in Charlottenburg. 

Then there is a 1915 phone directory listing for S. Paechter, privatier, at Hektorstrasse 2 in Hallensee. I know this is him because that is the same address on his death record from that same year. He died August 13, 1915 at age 74. 

Thereafter, his widow Emilie Paechter shows up in several directories at Nestorstrasse 4 in Hallensee, two blocks up the Kurfürfstendamm from the other address.

Salomon and Emilie had two daughters, Lisbeth already mentioned and the older Käthe. I don't have Kaethe's marriage record but her husband was Max Simonsohn of Berlin, from a village near Tiegenhof. 

Kaethe and Max Simonsohn had three children born in Tiegenhof, Ernst (1898), Charlotte (1902) and Walter (unknown). They later moved to Berlin and Max's death at age 54 was recorded at that same address on Hektorstrasse.

This post was supposed to go on from here to the family's fortunes under National Socialism but it has gone on too long. Now that I have at least mentioned Ernst Simonsohn, who was going to be the focus of the post, I will wait till tomorrow for the second part.

For now, the images are a tease for what became of Ernst after the war.