My cousin, Melissa Rosenthal Lintner, asked if our Blumenfeld family was related to the Blumenfeld Circus family. How exciting it would be to have famous circus artists in our family tree!
However, this is most likely not the case. The circus was founded in 1811 by Hirsch Levy (1783-1867), who was also known as Moritz/Maurice or Cerf Levy/Levi. He was from a French-Alsatian family and owned a menagerie featuring birds and apes.1
In the spring of 1846 Moritz Levy and his wife, Jetta, née Jonas, as well as their sons Emanuel und Meyer and their families adopted the family name “Blumenfeld” in accordance with a decree of the Royal Government:2
On the basis of the Supreme Cabinet Order of October 31st of last year, which stipulates that Jews shall also bear fixed and hereditary family names in those parts of the monarchy where legal regulations on family names do not yet exist, the independent residents of the Jewish faith living in the part of our administrative district on the right bank of the Rhine have adopted hereditary family names for themselves and their relatives.
After having received our approval, we are publishing the list of these residents and the family names they have chosen in the attached supplement for general information.
Cologne, June 5, 1846.
Without further information, the choice of the name “Blumenfeld” appears to be arbitrary. However, the name probably comes from Jetta Jonas’s stepfather, Isaac Lazarus/Blumenfeld (1762-1843), who had “given up” his patronymic name “Lazarus” in 1819 and taken the name “Blumenfeld.”3 Jetta’s mother, Esther, née Abraham, had married Isaac Lazarus after her husband Abraham (1762-1786) died.4
Isaac Lazarus/Blumenfeld was born in Creglingen, Baden-Württemberg, where he also died. I can find no connection between his family and “our” Blumenfeld family from Hessen. Several family trees in MyHeritage indicate that this Blumenfeld family had lived in Baden-Württemberg for generations. A look at the Familienbücher for Creglingen in the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg confirm this information.5
- Circus Blennow and Blumenfeld Genealogy, Circus Blumenfeld: Overview and General History, https://blennowgenealogy.wordpress.com/circus-blumenfeld-overview-general-history/. ↩︎
- Amtsblatt der Königlichen Regierung zu Köln, Stück 27, Dienstag, den 7. Juli 1846. ↩︎
- Creglingen: Familienbuch der israelitischen Gemeinde 1759-1864, p. 33, https://www2.landesarchiv-bw.de/ofs21/bild_zoom/zoom.php?bestand=5632&id=1171836&gewaehlteSeite=01_0000442331_0033_1-442331-33.jpg&ausgangspunkt=thumbnails&groesseThumbnails=400&thumbnailsProSeite=10&screenbreite=1920&screenhoehe=1032 ↩︎
- Circus Blennow and Blumenfeld Genealogy, Circus Blumenfeld: Overview and General History, https://blennowgenealogy.wordpress.com/circus-blumenfeld-overview-general-history/. ↩︎
- https://data.matricula-online.eu/de/deutschland/baden_wuerttemberg/bw-3700/ ↩︎
Blumenfeld Family Stories 
I often get questions like this. Are you related to THE Rothschild family? Is that the same Brotman family that started Costco? And so on. Usually I spend hours digging before realizing that there is no likely connection. (And you can imagine how many times I am asked—are you related to soandso Cohen?)
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