After reading Willi Schmitt’s “Momberg, a Chronicle”, I wrote to the municipal government of Neustadt (Hesse) and asked whether the material collected by the late author was being kept in an archive. The city authorities forwarded my email to Kunibert Schmitt (no relation to Willi), who then got in touch with me. He had taken on Willi’s role of village chronicler. When I told him which family I was researching, he sent me, among other things, this photo of the house where my great-great-great-grandmother Frommet Blumenfeld-Isenberg died, built in 1818.1
The death register indicates that, at the time of my great-great-great-grandmother’s death, the house at number 105 belonged to her son Abraham.2 The house’s dimensions at that time are listed in the fire insurance register, which was likely compiled between 1855 and 1865. The house was 8.7 m long and 6.9 m wide.3 Later, an addition was built onto the house, as shown in the photo below.
The Momberg artist chose this group of buildings—the church, the old schoolhouse, and house number 105—as the subject for the image on the little hurricane lamp produced to mark the village’s 800th anniversary. Cousin Jim Bloomfield and I each received one as a welcome gift from Frank Nühs upon our arrival in Momberg. We were still looking at the gift when our “village guide” pointed to house number 105: “And this is what it looks liketoday.”
Blumenfeld Family Stories 