Our home in Malibu burned down on January 7, 2025. Already that evening I received a photo of the Channel 4 news showing our home as a ball of fire. It was several weeks before I could focus on the question of whether we would rebuild. In February, I asked a friend and neighbor who is a builder, and had lost a home he was building in the Palisades, to start designing and planning the new home.

But first, I needed to know whether we would receive our insurance money. On February 10, I received an email saying our claim was approved. We did not receive any funds until a small partial payment came on March 11. Further funds came on March 19. At that point, I was confident we would have the funds to rebuild, if we wanted to. We decided to pay our builder friend for the work he had done, and on March 21 we hired another friend who is an architect to manage our project.

As of that time, our lot and most of the Palisades and Malibu was still filled with debris. I had gone through weeks of stress getting the paperwork approved so that our lot could be cleared. Our first online submission disappeared. A second submission made in person at the recovery center on Pico also got lost. I sent an email follow-up and someone at LAPW found it and called me. I sent him again all of the paperwork, called him back repeatedly, but still no success. Finally, I submitted online again, and suddenly we got through the process, much later than most of the other victims. Nevertheless, or maybe because of these problems, we were among the very first to have our lot cleared, and on March 25 it was done.

On February 28 I retained a licensed surveyor I had used previously to do a new survey for our property. Getting down to Malibu at that time was not easy, and the surveyor needed the lot cleared. The surveyor didn’t get a preliminary survey done until April 22, and it had some issues that needed correction. Unfortunately, she refused to complete the work and, even though she promised to reverse the charges, I had to get them reversed by American Express. On June 25, we hired another surveyor and he completed the work on July 28. We still need some markers placed on the border (because the lot line is not easy to find and is not perpendicular to PCH), but that hasn’t been completed as of August 24. So, six months after hiring a surveyor we aren’t even finished with that process.

When I first visited the Malibu Rebuild Center on February 19, everyone was very friendly. I had emailed for an appointment and got a very quick invitation to come down. At that time, PCH and Topanga Canyon were both still closed, so the only way to get to Malibu from Brentwood was through the Valley, with a nice, but long, drive through Malibu Canyon. I met with several people, and Lauren Doyel gave me lots of advice, including that we’d have to remove our two septic tanks and replace them with a new advanced onsite wastewater treatment system surrounded by a very expensive new sea wall. The costs would likely be hundreds of thousands of dollars, and this before we even got to the foundation of the new home. At that time, we were still uncertain of our insurance recovery. I was questioning whether the funds would be sufficient to rebuild if we had to spend so much just to replace the septic tanks. Ultimately, I stopped trying to calculate whether it made economic sense to rebuild. There were too many moving parts (including a separate insurance payment we get only if we do in fact rebuild). When we hired our architect, I decided that we should rebuild even if we had to invest even more money in the house. That decision relieved lots of my stress and anxiety. I told people I had gone through various stages of grief and was finally at acceptance.

After Lauren Doyel’s advice that we would not be able to keep our old septic tanks, I decided to make sure. So when the lot was cleared, I immediately hired someone to inspect the tanks. The inspection came back and said the tanks were destroyed and needed to be removed. So I hired another company to remove them, using a recommendation of a local contractor from a neighborhood Whatsapp group I had joined on March 2 after one of our neighbors found me. I also needed this contractor to clear some debris that had fallen from our home onto the neighboring beach operated by the MRCA. On April 17, after finally getting permission from MRCA, the contractor sent people to clean the remaining debris and remove the septic tanks and we discovered that the initial inspector I had paid did not even visit the property before submitting a report saying the tanks were destroyed. The tanks were still buried. They dug them up. One was in good shape, and the other needed repairs. I decided to bite the bullet and have them both removed, following Lauren Doyel’s advice. There had already been discussions in Malibu about installing a sewer line, but I had no confidence that it would ever happen, and was sure that it wouldn’t be completed for many years, likely beyond the six year time frame to rebuild the house without interference from the coastal commission under the governor’s order. The initial time estimate announced at a Malibu town meeting was 65 months, and that did not include the time needed to give the green light on the project (i.e. all of the various council meetings, and presumably an election to approve a bond measure). The septic tanks were removed on April 28.

After a number of meetings with our architect, on June 6 they submitted plans for a preliminary review by Malibu Planning. We had to get notarized signatures on a form authorizing our architect to submit the plans. (Despite this, every official communication from Malibu Planning goes only to us, and not to our architect, so I have to catch the email and forward it to my architect. No idea why that is.) Our coastal pre-screen report from Lauren Doyel came back with comments on July 18 (42 days, if you’re counting). All of the notes were negligible, and there was one glaring error on their part where they for some reason thought we were rebuilding a duplex even though we had done a formal lot merger in 2007-8. We had a zoom meeting with Lauren on August 1. The plans were corrected and resubmitted on August 13. As of today (12 days), we haven’t received a response.

We’ve been proactive as we can be in trying to hire experts. On May 19 we hired a coastal engineer experienced with Malibu to do a wave uprush study, a necessary report for any rebuild on the beach. Our architect has been prodding her to finish, but despite many promises, we didn’t receive the 2-page preliminary wave uprush report until August 22, over three months later. The final report was supposed to be sent this weekend but I haven’t seen it. Our coastal engineer thought we might not need to build an expensive sea wall around our septic tanks if we can rebuild the rock revetment in front of our tract. On Friday she said that the plan for our septic tanks was “too far” back from the coastline and we might still need a sea wall, which makes no sense to me. The issue is that the septic must be as far as possible from the coast and because we now have a double-lot, our tank can be be wider than it was, and not as long, and therefore a few feet closer to PCH and away from the coastline than it was previously. Why we should be penalized for that, I have no idea. But in any case, it’s time to repair the rock revetment protecting our whole tract, with the hope that this will obviate the need for an expensive sea wall. That revetment repair will require coordination among all the neighbors. I have been doing research for some time, even went to the Coastal Commission offices in Ventura to scan old applications and maps from previous repairs of the revetment which took place in the early 2000s before we bought our home. I spoke with the contractor/expeditor who removed our septic tanks, and he wants to work on the project. He said that last time it took a full year to get the repairs done. I am hoping we can do it much faster this time, hopefully without the need to go to the Coastal Commission. Not sure why getting permission to put the big boulders back where they were before they fell down towards the ocean would be such an ordeal, but this is how things work (or don’t work) on the coast.

Another expert we hired is our soils engineer. We hired them on May 15, based on their estimate of two weeks for excavations and another six weeks for a report. They did not visit the lot until June 23 (five weeks), and then realized that they could not get their boring drill onto the property because of the telephone lines. All but one of the houses in our tract had been cleared but they needed the last one cleared in order to get to our lot from the other side. That lot was cleared a few days later on June 26, but the drilling company did not return until July 9 when they successfully drilled two holes in the soil down to the bedrock. The full report arrived August 21, over three months from when we hired them.

The wave uprush study and soils report are necessary before our septic engineer can plan the new septic tanks, and the structural engineers can begin working on a plan for the foundation and support of the new home. Now that we finally have those in hand, they can begin work. So that’s where we are at the moment. If we have to wait for the revetment repair before the plans can be finalized this may delay our entire project for a long time. Getting all of the neighbors in our tract to sign off on the revetment repair is going to be a chore. Several of them are working on their rebuild, but another bunch are stuck. Some have land leases, which puts them in a similar position to mobile home residents. The property ownership is divided and so it doesn’t necessarily make economic sense for the home owner/tenant to spend his insurance money on a new home that he won’t end up owning at the end of the lease. The long-term lease is now a liability, not an asset, as they are required to pay rent for an empty lot that cannot be used. So these people are stuck in limbo. But in our tract, we’re tied together with our common walkways and rock revetment. So we need their cooperation. It’s going to be a struggle.

On my initial trips to the rebuild center I tried to get a handle on some of the issues that I could foresee. The people there were always very nice, but often I could not get definitive answers. Basically, each of the six sides of the box that is our lot has an issue. The easiest side is actually the beach side, where there is a string-line rule that says we need to rebuild our deck in exactly the same spot. On the east border with the beach operated by MRCA, beyond the issue of finding the corner and drawing the non-perpendicular line out from PCH, we have to calculate where we can build our stairs, which may have to be different from what we had before because of the new concrete pylons replacing our wood ones and new code rules on staircases. The access onto the beach over some of the boulders is also a bit tricky (there were some steps there on the MRCA side of the property but those see to have been removed during the debris removal, and MRCA isn’t easy to deal with, to say the least — see my old blog about correcting their disastrous beach renovation project). On the north border with PCH there is the fact that the retaining wall for PCH has issues and needs to be repaired. On the west border, we (like all the others in our tract) had a narrow walkway between our garage and our neighbor’s garage, not to current code. I took several trips down to the rebuild center before speaking to the fire department and getting a verbal confirmation that we could build with the same narrow width (4 foot total, 2 on our side and 2 on the neighbor’s side), which is far less than the ordinary 10% setback would be for our lot, now that it is combined and is 43 feet wide. I hope that remains true after we submit plans. Building out the common walkway, with an easement onto our neighbor’s property, will require cooperation with the neighbor. But he has been mostly incommunicado and has said he might not rebuild. How can we build a common walkway and stairs if the neighbor won’t agree? The rebuild center didn’t have an answer for that. I said six sides because we also need to know the top and bottom. We can build up to 110% of the prior height. How tall was our home? No one seems to know and none of our old plans has that dimension. The limit is 24 feet for a flat roof and 28 for a pitched roof in Malibu. Can we build up to 24 feet? Who knows? I asked about whether we could have a roof deck, since one of our neighbors in the tract did have one. No good answers. It’s complicated, even though there are no view issues since there’s a huge mountain hillside going way up to the Big Rock area on the other side of PCH. And then there is the bottom. We need to be above the FEMA limit which is 19 feet elevation in our area. Our house was at 21 feet so we should be good. Then our coastal engineer said she thought we might need to a bit higher than 21 feet because of the wave uprush study. More complicated. If you need to raise the house up because of FEMA you can do that, and not lose height, but they don’t have a rule that allows you to raise the level because of the wave uprush study. Turns out now the coastal engineer thinks we might not need to raise the level after all. But, not easy to build a house on a small lot if every single dimension is uncertain. And did I mention that we didn’t even know how wide our property was? It’s shaped like a parallelogram, but until we had the survey finished we weren’t sure about the angles and couldn’t calculate the width between the east and west boundaries. Fun, fun fun.

One other issue to mention, there’s a new program to refund building fees for Malibu residents. Apparently we don’t qualify because it was our second home. When another person in the same boat asked why, the response was that it was to make sure developers paid fees. But there are a bunch of us who are not developers, just part-time residents. I sympathize with the need for Malibu to collect fees to cover all the expenses of running the rebuild center, so I’m not too upset. But I don’t like being lumped in with speculators and developers when they try to justify the discrimination against non-residents. We never even rented our home, so Malibu’s been getting a pretty good deal from us, lots of taxes paid and very little demand on services.

So those are the issues at the moment, at least the ones I am focused on. How long will the rebuild take? It’s anyone’s guess at this stage. How much will it cost? Again, no idea. This isn’t how you normally build a home. We build our home in Brentwood Glen in 2004-5 and it took about 18 months. This time won’t be as easy.

Last summer I succeeded in gaining Czech citizenship, my fourth one after US, Austrian and German. The process wasn’t easy and so I thought it would be helpful to record it in this blog. One of the reasons I try to get all these citizenships is to find a path that perhaps others can use, so I hope this helps. If nothing else, it’s a good record of all of the issues and the documents I was able to find.

On September 6, 2019 the new Czech Citizenship Law went into effect, allowing descendants of former Czech citizens to obtain Czech citizenship. Similar laws were enacted in Austria and Germany around the same time, directed at descendants of Nazi victims. I had already obtained Austrian citizenship in 2014 under a different law that allowed children of Austrian mothers to obtain citizenship (which had formerly been impossible under an old sexist law).

I first made an inquiry regarding Czech citizenship in November 2019, inspired by a nice trip to Prague where I was able to research my ancestry back into the 16th century. The local Czech Embassy in Los Angeles responded promptly with a laundry-list of items I needed for my application. These included apostilled birth and marriage certificate for myself, my parents and grandparents, all translated into Czech. An apostille is an official certification from a government office that an official signature on a document is an authentic. In order to get one, you have to first obtain a certified original document, then send that original to the agency that issues the apostille. The Czechs also asked for a “document that certifies the date and the basis on which declarant’s grandparent ceased to be Czech/Czechoslovak citizen (e. g. US Naturalization Certificate).”

Initially I did not rush to apply. But when the pandemic hit in 2020, and my cousins began to be interested in getting another citizenship, I decided to take a closer look and started collecting documents for them and for me. During that first summer of lockdowns, I was able to travel to Vienna with my two sons, using the Austrian passports we obtained in 2014. Without these passports, we couldn’t have entered Austria at that time. We left our son Nathan to study in Vienna and I asked him to help me gather some of the documents we needed.

All of the original documents for my paternal grandparents Arnold Schoenberg and Gertrud Kolisch are kept at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna. The archivists Therese Muxeneder and Eike Fess were able to find most of what we needed for my grandfather in the initial application, but then we needed to make certified copies and then bring them to the authorities to get an apostille for the Czechs. That wasn’t so easy. For my grandfather’s birth certificate, Nathan first had to go to the Vienna Jewish Community, which then directed him to an office at the City of Vienna for the apostille. At first the City official told Nathan he could not issue an apostille for the Jewish documents, but after Nathan called the person at the Jewish community who had sent him, the City official changed his mind and issued the required apostille. An important lesson: don’t take no for an answer.

The archivists also sent me copies of the passports they had found in the archives and so I learned that my grandparents had German passports, as well as Czechoslovakian ones, but not Austrian passports. A scholarly article by Prof. Hartmut Krones from 2017 (Arnold Schönberg als „Kind“ Österreich-Ungarns) examined my grandfather’s citizenship in detail and provided an excellent guide to understanding his rather unusual situation. My grandfather Arnold Schoenberg was born in Vienna, Austria on September 13, 1874. At that time (and today) Austrian citizenship is not determined by the location of birth, but rather on the citizenship rights of the parents (back then just the father counted). Arnold’s father Samuel Schönberg had been born in 1843 in Szécsény, Hungary (then part of the Hapsburg’s Austro-Hungarian Empire), but by 1848, the family was living in Pressburg (now called Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia). Pressburg (in German) or Pozsony (in Hungarian), a city just one hour by train from Vienna, was the Habsburg capital for the entire Hungarian Kingdom, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1856/7, a Hungarian census form registered the family in Pressburg. I had obtained that document in 2004 as part of my genealogical research. When Arnold was born in Vienna in 1874, his birth was registered in the Vienna Jewish community birth record book, but his name was also added to that family census form in Pressburg. As far as Austria was concerned, Arnold Schoenberg’s citizenship was based on his “home right” (Heimatrecht) in Pressburg. Under his father Samuel’s name on his Vienna birth record it states “Preßburg.”

Of course, the location of his home right hardly mattered at the time Arnold was born. But things changed during World War I. Arnold had been registered to a Hungarian military unit based on his home right in Pressburg, and was then called up to a Hungarian battalion. Luckily, he was not sent to the front (he was over 40 years old). When the war ended, Austria-Hungary was broken into pieces by the Allies. Austria itself became a small alpine republic and from the ashes of the old empire a number of different states arose, including of course Hungary, but also Czechoslovakia, Suddenly, Arnold Schoenberg with home right in Bratislava was considered to be Czechoslovakian. Still, in 1920, he was able to obtain an interim passport from Austria. On the top it says his Austrian citizenship application was in process.

Under the treaties that ended the war — the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the 1920 Treaty of Trianon — citizens of certain parts of the old empire were given an opportunity to obtain Austrian citizenship. For whatever reason, Arnold Schoenberg missed the deadline to complete his application. Subsequently, the Austrians required a statement from Czechoslovakia that he had lost his citizenship or would be released from Czechoslovakian citizenship. None was forthcoming. As a result, he was stuck being a Czechoslovakian, and his attempts to rectify the situation and become an Austrian were unsuccessful. Of course, he had never lived in Czechoslovakia and did not speak the Czech or Slovak languages. Nevertheless, he was now a Czechoslovakian. Or so it seems. We have not found any document from that period confirming his new citizenship. Still, that should have been his situation at the time.

Before he could work out any other arrangement, Arnold married my grandmother Gertrud Kolisch in August 1924. (His first wife, Mathilde Zemlinsky had died in 1923.) Under the law at that time, the wife automatically obtained the husband’s citizenship, so after marriage, my grandmother was also presumably Czechoslovakian. However, there is no record confirming her status.

In 1925, my grandfather was appointed to an important teaching position at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. Upon accepting that position and taking an oath, he automatically became a German citizen. And by law, so did my grandmother. This explains why they held German passports, with which they travelled until 1933.

In January 1933, the Nazis rose to power in Germany. Almost immediately, they moved to expel Jewish professors from their positions. Seeing the writing on the wall, my grandparents prepared to leave. They went to a friendly Czechoslovakian consul, Camill Hoffmann (later a victim of the Nazis), who on April 29, 1933 secured for them temporary Czechoslovakian passports, initially valid only for just three months. It was with these passports that they fled at midnight on May 17, 1933 from Berlin to Paris, and then on to the United States in late October 1933. They apparently left some of their original citizenship documents with the Czechoslovakian consul in Berlin, who sent them on to Prague and Bratislava, but the documents were never returned and have not been located.

Two years after arriving in the United States, and a year after moving to Los Angeles, my grandparents decided to apply for U.S. citizenship. In November 1935 they travelled down to Mexicali on the California border to leave and re-enter the country in preparation for their application for citizenship. Arnold’s Declaration of Intention signed February 4, 1936 says his nationality was “Austrian.” But Gertrud’s says Czechoslovakia and both Petitions for Naturalization filed that same date list their present nationality is “Czechoslovakia.” (I especially like that they say they crossed the border “afoot.”)

Even after applying for U.S. citizenship, my grandfather attempted to clarify his Czechoslovakian citizenship. The Czechoslovakian consulates in New York and Chicago stubbornly requested further information, including “how much time you spent in Czechoslovakia since the end of 1918 and where you were living.” My grandfather tried to explain his situation, but was unsuccessful in convincing the Czechoslovakians to confirm his citizenship. In March 1939, Czechoslovakia was invaded by Nazi Germany and so from then on the issue was moot.

On April 11, 1941 my grandparents became U.S. citizens. They were fortunate to have applied in 1936 as Czechoslovakians, since at that time there was not yet a large number of immigrants from Czechoslovakia, and so they easily fit into the national quotas that the United States had imposed in the very racist Immigration Act of 1924.

With that background I set out to apply for Czech citizenship under the new provision allowing the descendants of Czech citizens to obtain citizenship. I decided that my grandmother Gertrud Schoenberg would be the best ancestor to use for my application because she was actually born in Karlsbad, or Karlovy Vary in today’s Czech Republic. I figured that a grandparent born in the country who came to the United States with a Czechoslovakian passport would be a sure thing. Boy was I wrong.

The first thing I needed to do was get my grandmother’s birth certificate. Since her father had converted from Judaism and her mother had a non-Jewish mother, my grandmother was not born Jewish and her birth is recorded in a Catholic record book. Even though you can now view her record for her birth on July 11, 1898 online, I was required to submit a notarized application requesting a certified copy of her birth certificate. The Karlsbad birth record very clearly lists her parents and their parents. Her father was Dr. Rudolf Kolisch born in Koritschan, or Korycany in today’s Czech Republic. Anyone who understands how things worked in the old Austro-Hungarian monarchy would immediately understand from this that my grandmother, although born in Karlsbad in Bohemia, was almost certainly registered for citizenship purposes as having home right (Heimatrecht) in Koritschan, Moravia. Of course, not everyone in today’s Czech Republic understands how things worked back then. Many aren’t even old enough to remember the fall of Communism in 1989. And so, unbeknownst to me, the Czech authorities spent the first year after my application searching fruitlessly for confirmation of my grandmother’s citizenship in Karlsbad. Frustrated, I turned to the Facebook group “Applying for Czech Citizenship.” They were very supportive and sympathetic, and helped me understand what the authorities were requesting.

Before I describe the numerous indignities suffered during my Czech application, I have to explain one additional issue I needed to resolve. Unlike many other countries, Austria does not ordinarily permit dual citizenship. Or more accurately, they have a rule that if you are an Austrian citizen and you obtain another citizenship, you automatically lose your Austrian citizenship. Not wanting this to happen when I applied for German and Czech citizenship, I made a special application for “Beibehaltung,” literally permission to keep my Austrian citizenship in the event I received another citizenship. I was told by various experts, including an Austrian lawyer I paid to help me prepare a petition, that this was impossible and that I would not succeed. In the end, with the help of a friend’s father who translated my accompanying letter into perfect German, and some pressure from some other friends, including an Austrian ambassador, I received my permission. I am not sure which factor was the clincher, but I did argue that my collecting of citizenships was an act of restitution as a result of Nazi persecution. Notwithstanding my well-known efforts to remove Klimt paintings from Austria, I also travel there frequently as a board member of the Arnold Schönberg Center. So I did have at least some justification for maintaining my citizenship. In any case, after applying in January 2021, I received permission in April 2021 to obtain German and Czech citizenship within two years. The German citizenship was a bit easier, although not without some pushback — the German authorities wanted to confirm when my grandparents lost their German citizenship, apparently stumped by the fact that my grandparents fled before their citizenship could be officially stripped away — and success came relatively quickly in October 2021. The Czech application was more difficult as it required lots of expensive certified translations into Czech, but I filed it with the local Czech consulate (which is very close to where I live) in August 2021.

In January 2022, the Czechs asked me for “proof of loss of Czech citizenship of your grandmother” and her death certificate (certified with apostille and then translated into Czech, of course). They said I needed to apply for the proof of loss of citizenship and sent me a form, which I filled out and filed in their office after obtaining all the requested documentation. In July I finally received a response, a request for further information about my grandmother’s citizenships, whether she was ever an Austrian citizen and her German citizenship. More complications.

My grandmother’s citizenship history turned out to be as complicated as my grandfather’s. Although it was clear that her father Dr. Rudolf Kolisch (1867-1922) was from Koritschan, Moravia (a town currently in the Czech Republic) where his father Adolf was the postmaster, the records for that town prior to 1918 are scarce. I made numerous requests to the municipal and regional archives in that area (including not only Korycany, but also Kyjov and Hodonin) but they found nothing. There is an 1857 census with the family, but not Rudolf who was born in 1867. Another census in 1869 lists Rudolf (with the birth year 1868, but he was born 1867).

After his father Adolf died in 1878, Rudolf moved to Vienna as a boy to go to school and may have lived with an older sibling. In 1880 Rudolf is listed in Vienna as a student at the Franz Joseph Gymnasium. He went on to study medicine, also in Heidelberg, Germany and then returned to Vienna where he treated patients with diabetes. He wrote several important articles and a book on diabetes before dying in April 1922, shortly before the announcement of the discovery of insulin. Rudolf married my great-grandmother Henriette Hoffmann in 1894 in the small resort town of Maria Schutz am Semmering in the hills outside Vienna. During the summer months, Rudolf moved the family to Karlsbad in Bohemia, where he treated wealthy patients and earned money to pay for his research in Vienna. My grandmother Gertrud was born there in July 1898.

I asked the Vienna municipal citizenship office (MA35) to search for information about the Kolisch family to determine whether they had become Austrian citizens. The answer came back that according to their records, my grandmother, her parents and siblings all became Austrian citizens on February 18, 1915. This is almost certainly incorrect, but I have yet to figure out what explains it.

The contrary evidence is overwhelming. When my great-grandfather Rudolf died on April 7, 1922, his death record lists his citizenship (Zuständigkeit) as Czechslovakian (although with a question mark). Shortly before that he had written a letter to his department complaining of their failure to make him a full professor, allegedly because he was a foreigner. When my grandmother’s older sister Mitzi married in 1920, her documents say she was a citizen of Koritschan. I contacted the Harvard University archives of my grandmother’s brother the violinist Rudi Kolisch and they found his Czechoslovakian citizenship papers issued in 1919. His Austrian citizenship document is dated June 27, 1923. My great-grandmother Henriette Kolisch’s Austrian citizenship document is dated August 21, 1922. My guess is that after Dr. Rudolf’s death in 1922, the Austrian citizenship was recorded for the entire family, perhaps retroactively to 1915.

In any case — whether my grandmother became an Austrian in 1915 or 1922 or never — when she married my grandfather in 1924 she automatically obtained his citizenship, which should have been Czechoslovakian, since he was not Austrian. Upon his appointment to the position in Berlin in 1926, she would have followed him and become automatically a Prussian German citizen. As demonstrated above, she obtained a temporary Czechoslovakian passport in April 1933 and fled with that to France and then to the United States, where she applied for U.S. citizenship in February 1936 and became a U.S citizen in April 1941.

The 2019 Czech citizenship law allowed me to obtain Czech citizenship if my parent or grandparent was a former Czechoslovak citizen. If I had a Czechoslovak citizenship document for my grandmother, as I did for her older brother Rudi, I think the task would have been easier. But without that document, the Czech authorities wanted to find something else to rely on, and that could not be found.

I tried to obtain documents in Bratislava from the Slovak government since my grandfather and grandmother should have been registered there. The Slovak consulate in Washington DC was terrifically responsive, very friendly, helped me apply for a document confirming my grandmother’s Czechoslovakian citizenship. But despite the friendliness of the consular office, the folks back in Bratislava were less obliging. The problem, I believe, is that for Czechoslovakia the 1921 and 1930 population censuses are their key sources. But my grandparents were not included in those censuses because in 1921 they were in Vienna and in 1930 they were in Berlin.

I obtained a statement from the authorities in Vienna confirming that my grandmother lost her Austrian citizenship when she married my grandfather Arnold Schoenberg, a Czechoslovakian citizen, in 1924. I also obtained a statement from the German consulate confirming that my grandmother obtained German citizenship in 1926 with my grandfather, who also would have lost his citizenship when he became a U.S. Citizen in April 1941. As a result, my father, born in Los Angeles in 1937 would have been born both a German and US citizen, but would have lost his German citizenship as a result of the decree expatriating all German citizens with Jewish background on November 25, 1941.

But the real solution to the problem was retaining the assistance of a young Czech lawer, Jonatan Müller, the son of my good genealogy friend Julius Müller. Jonatan viewed the file on my application in Prague and spoke with the authorities involved. They were unmovable in their insistence that we provide some official Czech document showing that my grandmother had lost her Czechoslovakian citizenship. Jonathan decided that the key bureau would be in Zlín in Moravia. That office was authorized to create citizenship documents where the originals were missing in Koritschan. Jonatan went to Zlín to explain the situation, presented all the evidence we had assembled, and ultimately prevailed on the authorities to issue the necessary document, a statement declaring that my grandmother had lost her Czechoslovakian citizenship because she became an American citizen on April 11, 1941.

That document did the trick. It says that my grandmother acquired her citizenship under an Austro-Hungarian law of 1811 through birth. She lost her Czech citizenship no later than May 8, 1957, as a result of her US naturalization on April 11, 1941. (In 1941, Czechoslovakia was in a state of war, having been occupied by Germany, and so she could not have lost her citizenship at that point, but only later pursuant to a treaty with the United States.) The office in Prague relied on the new document and issued me my Czech citizenship. Whether or not the date of her loss of citizenship is correct, and it may not be, there is no doubt in my mind that my grandmother was born with home right in Koritschan, Moravia and that she most likely was a Czechoslovakian citizen after World War I. At some point, probably 1922 or 1923, she probably became Austrian, and then became Czechoslovakian again when she married my grandfather in 1924. She may have lost her Czechoslovakian citizenship in 1926 when she became a German citizen, and she may also have been entitled to be a Czechoslovakian citizen again when my grandparents obtained the temporary Czechoslovakian passport in April 1933. In that case, she would have lost the Czechoslovakian citizenship again (for a third time?) at some time after 1941 when she became a U.S. citizen.

The officials who handle these citizenship requests would like things to be simple, but when dealing with citizenship in the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the Nazi era, things are often not so simple. I am fortunate to have the time and resources to make a successful application for citizenship. I fear others might not be so lucky. Nevertheless, I feel good knowing that I have shown how it is possible to obtain Czech citizenship, even when some of the key documents are missing.

Solomon Molcho (originally Diogo Pires) was a Portugese Jewish mystic. As a young man he held the position of secretary to the High Court of Appeals in Portugal. When the Jewish adventurer David Reubeni arrived in 1525 in an attempt to persuade the king to align with Jews to force the Ottomans from Israel, Molcho fell under his spell and converted to Judaism, forcing him to flee or face the Inquisition as an apostate. Molcho studied Talmud and Kabbalah with Rabbi Joseph Taitazak in Salonika, where he befriended and greatly inspired Rabbis Joseph Caro and Shlomo Alkabetz. Molcho began preaching the coming of the Messiah in 1535 or 1540, travelled to Italy where he gained an audience with Pope Clement VII. A flood in Rome and an earthquake in Portugal seemed to confirm some of Molcho’s predictions and warnings, and increased his support from both Christians and Jews.

in 1532 Molcho likely stayed in Venice with Dr. Eliyahu and Fioretta Chalfan, who supported him against his opponent Jacob Mantino (who had also opposed Chalfan in the divorce case of Henry VIII). In a letter to Rabbi Taitazak Molcho gave Chalfan’s address in Venice as a way to contact him. At the end of 1532, Molcho went to Ratisbon (Regensburg) with Reubeni to meet with Emperor Charles V, where they proposed a Jewish-Christian army to reconquer the Holy Land from the Ottomans. The Emperor’s counselors opposed the idea, and the Emperor had Reubeni and Molcho arrested and sent back to Italy to face the Inquisition. In Mantua, Molcho was sentenced to death by an ecclesiastical court for being an apostate and was burned at the stake. Legend is that Molcho refused the offer of a pardon if he returned to Christianity.

Following Molcho’s martyrdom, Eliyahu Chalfan created an enormous kabbalsitic chart recording many of Molcho’s teachings. The chart was obtained by the Medici Library in Florence in 1570. Molcho’s tallit, robe and flag were brought to Prague, perhaps by the Chalfan family. In the early17th century by Rabbi Yomtov Lipman Heller wrote that he saw the small silk tallit of Molcho in the Pinkas synagogue. In 1666 during the time of the messianic claimant Shabbtai Zvi, the robe and flag of Molcho were displayed and Molcho was considered a precursor and predictor of Shabbtai Zvi.

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Solomon Molcho (Wikipedia)

Eliezer Ashkenazi was a peripatetic rabbi, physician and prolific scholar who seems likely — despite his different surname — to have been a son of Dr. Eliyahu and Fioretta Chalfan. Eliezer’s epitaph says he is son of Dr. Elia. Both Eliezer (Provençal Responsa 96) and Dr. Eliyahu Chalfan (Isserles Responsa 56) say they are descendants of Rabbi Joseph ben Solomon Colon, MaHaRIK. So either Rabbi Eliezer is the son of Dr. Eliyahu Menachem Chalfan or he is the son of a different Dr. Elia who is either a grandson of Josef Colon or married to a granddaughter of Josef Colon. The different surname can be explained by his long presence in Egypt early in his career, where all Jews who were not originally from Egypt or the Levant were referred to as “Ashkenazi.”

The Jewish Encylopedia describes him as follows:

Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi received his Talmudic education under Joseph Taitazak in Salonica. Ashkenazi first became rabbi in Egypt 1538-60, probably at Fostat (now Cairo), where, by his learning and wealth, he became widely known. Compelled by circumstances—doubtless of a political nature—to leave Egypt, he went to Cyprus, remaining there for two years as rabbi at Famagusta.

A desire to visit foreign lands and to observe foreign peoples impelled him to give up this position and to travel. He went first to Venice; but a disagreement with the rabbis, Meïr Padua and his son Judah Katzenellenbogen, caused him to leave the city and in the same year to take up his residence at Prague (1561). Here—either because he was a rabbi, or, at all events, because he was a leading authority—his was the first signature appended to the 1564 constitution of the burial society of the congregation. After leaving Bohemia and proceeding eastward as far as the Crimea [?], Ashkenazi returned to Italy, not before 1570. While rabbi of Cremona he published there (1576) his work, “Yosef Leka?” (Increases Learning; compare Prov. i. 5), dedicated to Joseph Nasi, duke of Naxos, which was several times reprinted. Four years later he was again in eastern Europe, as rabbi of Posen. In 1584 he left that city to take up his abode in Cracow, where he died in 1585.

Ashkenazi’s printed works, besides the “Yosef Leka?,” are the following: (1) A commentary on the Book of Esther; (2) “Ma’ase ha-Shem” (The Works of God; Venice, 1583; several other editions), a commentary on the historical portions of the Pentateuch, written for the instruction of his son Elijah, and containing also a complete commentary on the Passover Haggadah, which has frequently been published separately; (3) eight “seli?ot” (penitential prayers), included in the Bohemian liturgy; (4) a “toka?ah” (homily), published by his son. His supercommentary to Na?manides, and his critical marginal notes—said to number one thousand—on Joseph Caro’s “Bet Yosef,” have not been preserved.

Though Ashkenazi can scarcely be said to have exercised an influence either on his own or on later times, his personality was an extraordinary one for that age. He may be called the last survivor of a most brilliant epoch in the history of the Sephardim. During a period when, in Germany and Poland, the hair-splitting dialectics of Jacob Polak could achieve a triumph, and, in Egypt and Palestine, the mysticism of Isaac Luria could confuse the clearest intellects, Ashkenazi preserved an impressive independence of thought. Although educated by a fanciful cabalist, and a fellow-pupil of Moses Alshech, yet he was a student—if not a deep one—of philosophy and physics. As a Talmudist, such men as Joseph Caro, Moses Isserles, and Solomon Luria considered him of equal authority with themselves; but when the rabbinical decisions of the old rabbis ran counter to sound judgment, he never sought a sophistical justification for them, as was then the custom, especially in Poland.

Valuable material for a correct estimate of Ashkenazi may be found in several of his decisions preserved in the responsa literature of the time. In Venice he decided that a man could be forced to a divorce, if, by immoral conduct, he had incurred his wife’s aversion (Isserles, Responsa, No. 96). It was probably this decision which brought upon him the opposition of the above-mentioned Venetian rabbis, though he was connected with them; for Ashkenazi’s son was Katzenellenbogen’s son-in-law. From the standpoint of strict Talmudic interpretation, Ashkenazi’s opponents were in the right; since his sentence contravened that of the Tosafists, who for the German-Italian Jews constituted, as it were, a court of last resort.

The Jews of Poland were still less capable of comprehending such a personality than were those of Italy. The following occurrence affords a striking instance of this fact: The “roshe yeshibot” (heads of academies) had forbidden their pupils to establish a rival academy in close proximity to their own. Ashkenazi declined to assent to this resolution, when requested. At the same time, he complained in a letter to Joseph b. Gershon ha-Kohen, the “rosh yeshibah” at Cracow, that, although the decision of the Polish rabbis was based upon the authority of Maimonides, yet he considered it irreconcilable with freedom of instruction among Jewish rabbis. How little he was understood by his Polish colleagues is fully displayed in the reply of the rabbi of Cracow, who at great length vindicates Maimonides’ standpoint by erudite and astute references to the Talmud (Joseph b. Mordecai Gershon, “She’erit Yosef,” No. 19). Consequently, J. S. del Medigo is justified in his remark that Ashkenazi remained unknown to the Poles, and he applies to him wittily, if somewhat audaciously, the verses: “Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it,” etc. (Ps. lxxx. 9 [A. V. 8] to 13 [14]). Ashkenazi had come from Egypt and had to live among the uncultivated Poles.

Ashkenazi’s wife, Rachel, died at Cracow April 3, 1593. Her epitaph, still extant, bears witness to her piety and benevolence (“Monatsschrift,” xliv. 360). His son Elijah published the liturgic collection, “Zib?e Shelamim,” and wrote a short elegy on his father, which was used as the latter’s epitaph.

Encycopedia.com has another biography

ASHKENAZI, ELIEZER BEN ELIJAH THE PHYSICIAN (1513–1586), rabbi and exegete. Eliezer’s activities covered many of the Jewish centers of the 16th century. The influential position he held in widely scattered communities indicates the basic unity of Jewish society and culture in the period. A pupil of Joseph b. Solomon Taita?ak in Salonika, Eliezer went to Egypt when he was 26, and officiated as rabbi. Elijah of Pesaro said he “judged all the community of Egypt for 22 years.” While there, Eliezer was in contact with the *Safed communit and its sages, including Joseph *Caro, who respected and consulted him. In 1561 Eliezer was compelled to leave Egypt, and settled at Famagusta in Cyprus. Elijah of Pesaro, who met him there in 1563, describes him as “well-versed in 12 languages… a sage in many general sciences and in the Talmud… he is wealthy.” Azariah dei Rossi called Eliezer “the greatest of the generation.” In 1563 Eliezer was in *Venice; the following year he traveled to Prague, returned for a few years to Famagusta, and again went to Venice. From there he went to Cremona where in 1576 he published his commentary Yosef Leka? on the book of Esther, dedicated to Joseph Nasi. The same year he was invited to Poland as rabbi of Poznan; he was subsequently called to Gniezno, and thence to Cracow, where he died. In Poland his answers to legal queries were accepted as authoritative. Impartial in his decisions, he denied his support to the brother-in-law of Moses Isserles, Joseph Katz, who had referred to Eliezer in a discussion with his own pupils. Eliezer’s main work, Ma’aseh Adonai, a commentary on the Torah, was completed in Gniezno in 1580 and printed in Venice in 1583. It follows the rationalist trend in rabbinical scholarship, calling for freedom in exegesis of the Scriptures: “Each and every one of us, our descendants too, to the end of all generations… is obliged to search for the meaning of the words of the Torah… to accept the truth from whoever says it, after we have understood it. Let us not permit the opinion of someone else – even if of an earlier generation – to hinder us from research… Research and choose: for that you have been created and reason has been given you from heaven” (Ma’aseh Adonai, 169). Eliezer suggests that irrational elements in Jewish tradition had accrued through copyists’ errors, misunderstandings, and misreadings, or had been precipitated in times of trouble and expulsions, or even inserted by ill-disposed persons. In Joseph Solomon Delmedigo’s estimation “the Ma’aseh Adonai should be read in its entirety.” He also records that Eliezer wrote a supercommentary on Na?manides’ commentary on the Torah and “a thousand refutations of the Beit Yosef” of Joseph Caro. Eliezer also wrote seli?ot and piyyutim printed at Cracow and in Lublin (1618). His glosses on the code of Mordecai b. Hillel are included in Gedulat Mordekhai (Hanau, 1593).

If Eliezer Ashkenazi is in fact the son of Dr. Eliyahu and Fioretta, then his grandfathers were both astronomers and he could be the same as a man known as Eliezer the Astronomer in the Jewish Encyclopedia

ELIEZER THE ASTRONOMER:
By: Richard Gottheil, Isaac Broydé
German scholar of the sixteenth century; author of “Ge ?izzayon,” an astrological compilation fromHebrew, Arabic, and Latin sources (Neubauer, “Cat. Bodl. Hebr. MSS.” No. 2066). He quotes Abraham bar ?iyya ha-Nasi, Ibn Ezra, Andruzagar, Albumazar, ‘Ali ibn Ri?wan, ‘Ali ibn Rajil, Leopold of Austria, Johannes, Guido Bonatti, and, according to Dukes, Copernicus. In the introduction Eliezer says he began a great work on astrology, a chapter of which, entitled “Reshit ?okmah” (quoted by Neubauer, l.c.), is devoted to Ibn Ezra. Whether the “Sefer ha-Goralot” (Vatican MS. No. 216), bearing the name “Eliezer,” is by the same author is not known. The same uncertainty prevails regarding Vatican MS. No. 477, which contains a commentary on Ptolemy’s “Centiloquium,” and which also bears the name “Eliezer.”

Also note that the grave in Krakow may be a duplicate of another grave that was found nearby in Stabnitz (Stopnica?). See Sefaria.org “There is also a remarkable thing in this matter, it has become known to us that in the community of Stabnitz (Stopnica?) about 20 miles from here there is found a grave with the name of Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi, son of the Rabbi Eliyahu the doctor, author of Maaseh Hashem from the same time.”

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Eliezer Ashkenazi (Geni)

Eliezer Ashkenazi (Wikipedia)

Kalman Chalfan was possibly a son or grandson of Eliyahu and Fioretta Chalfan. He lived in Jersualem and Safed, and was given permission to go to Lemberg in Poland in 1570.

The story of Kalman Chalfan begins with Joseph Nasi (1524-1579), an extraordinary figure in Jewish history. Nasi was a converso born 1524 in Portugal who moved to Antwerp in 1546 to escape the Inquisition, and then soon fled to France and on to Venice where he became openly Jewish. In 1554 he again moved to Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire, where he became a high-ranking diplomat serving Sultan Selim II, ultimately attaining the rank of Duke of Naxos. Among his accomplishments was negotiating peace between Poland and the Ottomans in 1564, which gave him entrée into various business opportunities in Poland. In 1567, King Sigismund II of Poland allowed Nasi to send two Jewish representatives, Chaim Cohen and Abraham Mosso, to come to Lemberg, Poland to negotiate on Nasi’s behalf. They conducted their business importing wine for several years, much to the dismay of the Christian competitors as well as the local Polish Jews.

Among the documents related to Joseph Nasi and his agents is confirmation that in 1570 King Sigismund II of Poland granted permission for a number of Jewish merchants to come to Poland from the Levant and Venice. One of these was “Calman Alphan a Hierusalem de Schafet” (Kalman Chalfan in Jerusalem from Safed). We do not yet know anything more about Kalman Chalfan, but it seems very likely that he is a son or grandson of Eliyahu Chalfan and Fioretta Kalonymos, as his name is combination of the given name of Fioretta’s father and the surname of Eliyahu.

If our theory is correct, it means that a member of Eliyahu and Fioretta’s family moved to Safed and Jerusalem in Israel, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. In the 16th century, Safed, a small city in the hills of the Upper Galilee, became an important center of Jewish learning, especially in the development of Jewish mysticism and kabbalah. Safed had been a small Jewish settlement since at least the 13th century, but received an influx of Jews fleeing the Inquisition in Spain and Southern Italy after 1492. The most significant of the new residents was Rabbi Joseph Caro (1488-1575), author of the great codification of Jewish law knows as the Shulchan Arukh. Caro likely met Solomon Molcho in Salonika, perhaps while Molcho studied with the kabbalist Rabbi Joseph Taitazak, who also taught another of Caro’s friends, Solomon Alkabez (who became the brother-in-law of another important resident of Safed, Moses Cordovero). Caro references both Molcho, Alkabez and Taitazak as strong influences in his writings. It is certainly possible that Kalman Chalfan also studied with Taitazak and then journeyed on to Jerusalem and Safed. When Molcho wrote to Taitazak before his death in 1532, he told Taitazak to send letters to him care of Eliyahu Chalfan in Venice.

Joseph Nasi is credited with spurring settlement in Safed, which means he may have been responsible for Kalman Chalfan moving there around 1560. Note also that Eliezer Ashkenazi, who is possibly a son of Eliyahu and Fioretta Chalfan, dedicated his book Yosef Lekah, published while he was in Cremona in 1576, to Joseph Nasi.

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Joseph Ausch, haLevi, the Rosh Medina (literally, “head of the land”), was a signatory of the statutes governing Bohemian Jewry (outside Prague) from 1659. In 1665 Jewish dealers in woolen goods were barred from entering the town of Litomerice, but Joseph Ausch petitioned to be allowed to enter the city so that he could pay off his debts. Joseph Ausch died in Auscha (Úštek) Bohemia (near Terezin and Litomerice) on August 24, 1674. His grave still exists in the cemetery in Ustek.

Joseph’s father was Matityahu. There was a Jew Matityahu from nearby in Leitmeritz in 1546, who could be an ancestor.

Joseph Ausch was married to Jentl Ausch Chalfan, who died around 1700. Her father came from Vienna and her mother came from Prague.

Joseph Ausch

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Italian astronomer of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In 1490-2 he was in Lucca where he wrote an elegy on the death of Jehiel of Pisa. In 1492 Chalfan was in Naples, where he studied astronomy. Chalfan was the author (in 1494) of “?a’ame Mi?wot,” containing explanatory notes on the Alfonsine Tables, still extant in manuscripts in Naples and Parma. These notes by Chalfan were translated by historian David Gans when he visited and participated in the astronomical research conducted by Tycho Brahe and his assistant Johannes Kepler at the imperial observatory in the Benátky summer palace of Rudolf II in 1600. Gans named one of his sons Abba Mari, making it very likely that Gans was married to a descendant of Chalfan.

https://www.geni.com/people/Rabbi-Abba-Chalfan-the-astronomer/6000000000348850434

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Rabbi Josef Colon, the son of Rabbi Solomon Trabbotto, known as the Maharik, was the foremost talmudic rabbi of his era in Northern Italy. His family came from Chambéry in Savoy to Piedmont in the early 15th century. Rabbi Josef Colon served as rabbi in Pieve de Sacco in 1469 and thereafter in Mestre near Venice. He later served in Bologna and Mantua, but was banished by the authorities and moved to Pavia, where he established a center of talmudic learning. His opinion was sought on religious matters in Italy and Germany. The collection of his opinions, known as responsa, published after his death was widely influential.

Rabbi Colon declared that a person could not be compelled to appear in a foreign rabbinic court when there was a local court available. When false accusations against the Jewish community of Regensburg lead to a heavy fine and the need to raise funds, Rabbi Colon held that the surrounding communities were required to contribute, as they could also soon find themselves facing similar accusations and fines.

Rabbi Colon was famous for his ability to establish broad principles that would apply not only to the case at hand, but to future disputes. He ruled that a parent’s objection should not prevent a child’s marriage to an appropriate spouse, because a child was not obligated to suffer the pain of marrying an undesired spouse in order to honor his parents. Colon had “an inflexible regard for right and justice,” and was not swayed by bias toward or against any individual person. He chastised a respected German rabbi for adjudicating a dispute in which he himself was a party. Driven by false rumors to attack Rabbi Capsali in Turkey for laxity in matters of divorce law, Colon later recanted and on his deathbed sent his son Perez to deliver an apology to Capsali.

Josef ben Solomon Colon Trabotto (Maharik)

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David Kalonymos was an Italian Jewish court physician, astrologer/astronomer in Naples. Jewish astronomers of the time were expected to write horoscopes and make astrological predictions based on astronomical calculations. Astrology was widely considered to be a form of wisdom, akin to the mysticism of Kabbalah and the teachings of the Talmud. In 1564, David wrote two astrological treatises, one of which is on the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. He dedicated the work to King Ferdinand I of Naples in the hope of obtaining religious liberty for Jews in southern Italy. A horoscope for David’s son born on March 28, 1458 has been preserved in a book in the library of Parma.

In 1466 David translated from Latin into Hebrew an astronomical work of John of Gmünd describing an astronomical instrument invented in Vienna in 1417. He also wrote a philosophical treatise on the Destructio Destructiones of Averroes.

Both of David’s sons, Calo and Chaim, followed their father in the practice of astrology and other philosophical activities.

David Kalonymos

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