Simon Gänsler

To date, the earliest patriarch of the Gänsler family to be located is Simon Gänsler.

From what little can be found to date, he was born in Lemberg in 1833, in what was then part of Galicia and is now part of  Poland. He is said to have died in Snyatin, formerly in Galicia (now part of the Ukraine) at an unknown date.

At present, we know very little about Simon. We do know that he married Matild Reitzer and a newspaper cutting suggests that he somehow managed to enlist in the armies of Pope Pius IX and fought in the Battle of Castelfidardo on 18 September 1860 and was decorated with the medal PRO PETRI SEDE.

Inquiries have been made about this story with Papal authorities.

According a former Papal Pro-nuncio in Canberra, the Pro Petri Sede medal was struck especially to commemorate the battle between the papal armies and the Piedmontese on this date. Unfortunately all of the veterans received this medal.

Letters were sent to the Austrian Military Archives in Vienna seeking more information in the event that they had some information in their archives. Letters have also been sent to the Director of the Archives of the City of Rome where advice suggests some records of his life may also be found.

Dirretore Dell'Archivio di Stato di Roma
Palazzo della Sapienza
Corso Rinascimento, 40
00186 Roma Italia

Alas all of the research to date appears to have come to a dead end - with none of the archives having any record of Simon Gänsler in this period.

There do not appear to be any pictures of either Simon or Matild, so no one knows what they looked like. No one seems to have any information about their lives either. From what little we know, there is some intense speculation about where they came from and how their families managed to get to Poland. How Simon managed to get to fight with the Papal armies in Italy. How and when he wandered to Hungary where his son Jozsef was born and why and how he managed to get to Sniatyn in the Ukraine where he finally died.

Whatever he did in his life, he seems to have been someone who had to learn at least three or four languages. These may have been Italian, German, Russian, and Hungarian. With any luck he may well have also spoken Yiddish a common language among the Jews in Galicia at the time. There is some speculation that he was a small trader as this would tend to explain his wandering from town to town around the area.

The newspaper article from Hungary (regrettably the newspaper name is obliterated) suggests that Simon was one of four Jews who fought in the Papal armies of Pope Pius IX and that he was discharged as an Austrian soldier. The article goes on to say that his details can be located in the old Austro - Hungarian Monarchy's Defence Ministry archives.

This has been followed up and has resulted in no information whatsoever. The director of the Archive has explained that since all of the soldiers who fought in this battle were mercenaries, while there may have been loyal Catholics within the Austrian armed forces who obtained permission to fight with and for the Pope, this was not recorded on their military records in Austria

This article states that he was born in SNIATYN and was decorated with the medal PRO PETRI SEDE and that he was born in 1833.

Correspondence with the Papal Pro-Nuncio in Sydney revealed that if he fought in the battle of CASTELFIDARDO on 18 September 1860 then he would have been awarded that medal as it was stuck to honour the veterans of that battle.

The information from Jozsef Gänsler's birth certificate suggests that he was actually born in Lemberg, (now Lviv or Lvov). This does not provide a high level of assurance that the author of the article was thorough in his documentation of facts.

That said, some more recent investigation from another newspaper clipping has revealed that Antonino Saverio De Luca, (Bronte 1805 -- Rome 1883), cardinal, brother of economist Placido, was apostolic Nuncio of Pope Gregorio XVI and Pius IX to the Court Of Bavaria and then to Vienna then the Apostolic Nuncio to the Court of the Austro Hungarian Empire presented the medal to four Jews, Simon Gänsler, Markus Goldstein, Johann Igl and Jonas Abeles on 16th January 1862 in Vienna.

With this new evidence a fresh inquiry has gone to the Holy see for information confirming what has been found. A letter has been received in response unable to confirm the information in the newspaper article and advising that there do not appear to be any records in the Vatican Archives that can corroborate the story.

There is of course evidence that the Papal Nuncio mentioned in the article was real and that he was at the time referred to the representative of the Holy See in Vienna. Indeed the life of this person is well recorded as he rose to the rank of Cardinal and was almost elected to Pope.

Advice has also been received that while it may well have been a good idea to try and search the data pertaining to pay for the people involved in this battle to ascertain if Simon Gänsler had been among the paid soldiers - this had not resulted in any positive findings.

Another version of this story suggests that Simon may well have used an assumed name and fought on behalf of a landlord from his home town who would have paid someone to take up his obligations to the pope.

Since there is no confirmation of the story either way it will have to remain exactly that - a story, albeit an interesting one.

BIRTH: Lemberg - History - Jewish

BIRTH: Zivilstandregister 1814 - 1837 Jüdische Gemeinde Lemberg Galizien - Geburten 1814 - 1837

(this is for the location of my father's grandparents) if any records exist

BIRTH: FHL INTL (Film) 905274

An inquiry was sent to a group in New York which is interested in maintaining records from Galicia and the following information was obtained

Dear Peter,

I looked through the early Birth Records for the 1830s, but did not find your ancestor. This doesn't mean he wasn't born at this time, just he wasn't on the list which only has about ten names or so per year.

I did find the following names in the 1870 Tax List for Sniatyn:

#664 Mendel Gensler

#668 Simon Gensler

#960 Wolf Gensler

#1714 Schmel Abraham Gensler

For Simon it lists his occupation as "handel zboxem." This was written in German script and the "z" might not be a "z." Handel I believe means merchant. I don't know what the next word means. The number in front of their name indicates their position on the list according to how much tax they paid. Number one paid the most Tax and hence made the most money. The last person on the list paid the least amount of tax. I do not know how they are related.

I hope this information is helpful to you.

If I can be of further assistance, please let me know.

Yours,

Ben J

This information is not at all conclusive about anything especially as the spelling of the name is very different. My own personal studies of records of the time ensure that I am not at all perturbed by the different spelling as I have seen with my own eyes a variety of spelling in official records that would make it clear that when a name was spelt correctly is was more good luck than good management.

Thus it is very possible that the Simon Gensler who is mentioned as living and working in Snyatin could have been the ancestor in question. The fact that he did appear to move from location to location would correspond with a Jewish person who was involved in trade and who moved from location to location to pursue whatever business he could manage. The fact that his son Jozsef was born in Serbia is further evidence that the family did move about the region.

What is even more interesting is to speculate on whether the other Gensler names mentioned in the letter were relatives and if so whether it would be possible to trace his ancestry still further back in time.

A little information about the town in which Simon is said to have died.

Sniatyn was and is a border town nestled on the banks of the Prut River--close to the Romanian border, and was a trade crossing to Romania. It is about 170 miles SSE of Lvov-- between Kolomyja in the West and Chernovits in the East.

Sniatyn is currently located in the Ukraine. However, from 1772-1918 the Austro-Hungarian Empire ruled and the official language was German. After WWI, it reverted back to Poland--with a corresponding change in the language of all official documents. Next, the Rumanians invaded at the start of WWII, followed by the Hungarians and then the Germans again. After WWII, the town fell under the influence of the Soviets. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the town is now deemed part of the Ukraine.

Because of its location, Sniatyn was a hub of trading and commerce, and thus, its residents spoke a little of many East European tongues. For the past few hundred years before WWII, Sniatyn had maintained a steady population of Jewish families --peaking to about 400 families out of a population of about 11,000.

Starting in the 1870's, and accelerating with the turn of the century, the first large group of Sniatyner immigrants packed up and left. Pogroms and economic necessity motivated these immigrants. Most went to Israel, Canada, and the United States, though others did wind up in places as far- flung as Vladivostok, and Bombay. Perhaps the biggest Jewish exodus occurred in response to the front-line fighting that took place in the area during WWI. Jews in the town continued to leave, though in smaller numbers, until the late 1930¹s.

At some point during World War II, all the Jews who were still left in Sniatyn were grouped together, taken to the nearby forest, and shot by Nazis' and local Nazi sympathizers. There have been no more Jews in the town since then. The synagogue was pillaged and burned. In the Jewish cemetery--the stones, some leaning crazily askew, now lie untended, covered by weeds and dirt. (Some of the stones were pulled out by the Nazi¹s to pave the street in front of the former Jewish home that was appropriated as the Nazi headquarters.) The river Prut, however, still meanders along its quiet way, bringing a river-town¹s ambience to the town.

As more and more records are found and/or digitized more and more information becomes available on the Internet it is hoped that some further clarification and information can be found.

Date of Last Update

20/07/2007