|
Sub-clan Y3 – matriarchal anchor: Bertha Kohn née Porges
("Privatière"), d. Thursday 6 January, in her 61st year of life.
The obituary bears no year — only "Thursday the 6th of January" with funeral on Sunday.
Calendrical candidates: 1916 ✓, 1921 ✓, 1927 ✓, 1938 ✓. The most plausible date
is 1916, given the obituary's stylistic profile and the fact that her son
Adolf Kühns is settled in Berlin (which became progressively impossible for Jewish
residents under Nazi rule, ruling out 1938).
If Bertha died in January 1916 in her 61st year, she was b. ca. 1855-1856.
Buried at the Israelite Cemetery on Sunday at 10:45 a.m. (cemetery name not stated).
Husband: a Mr. Kohn, predeceased before her death. The maiden name Porges
makes her of-Porges-birth, with Sub-clan Y3 proposed as systematic designation.
Children:
• Adolf Kühns (settled in Berlin) – married Helene Kühns née Schindler.
The surname Kühns is itself a variant of Kohn, suggesting either a name change
following naturalisation in Germany or sibling Adolf actually retained an alternative
form of the family surname.
• Anna Kohn
• Fritz Kohn (Prague) – married Adolf Kohn née Kleinrot
(reading: Adolf's wife was named Kleinrot, with surname order inverted in the
faire-part composition).
Grandchildren: Julie, Richard, Otto, Leo (last names not specified;
likely Kohn or Kühns).
Cross-corpus integration with Sub-clan M
The 1937 obituary of Amalie Kohn née Porges (Sub-clan M) names her sons:
Otto, Karl, Josef, Camil, Rudolf Kohn. The recurrence of:
- The Kohn surname for the husband family
- The given name Otto in both grandson cohorts
- Both matriarchs being Porges-born
strongly suggests Bertha and Amalie Kohn née Porges are sisters or first cousins.
A Porges sibship producing two daughters who married into the Kohn family is the
most parsimonious explanation, with Amalie marrying a Kohn ca. 1865-1875 and
Bertha marrying a different Kohn ca. 1875-1880.
⚠️ Reservation: The sister/cousin hypothesis is structural rather than
documentary. No surviving obituary explicitly names both women as relatives.
Confirmation would require either (a) a parental Porges obituary naming both as daughters,
or (b) a future-generation obituary explicitly cross-referencing them.
Holocaust trajectory
If b. ca. 1855-1856, Bertha would have been 82-83 in 1938 — within the
Theresienstadt deportation age. However, she had already died in 1916, so was spared.
Children's status:
- Adolf Kühns, Berlin – at extreme risk after 1933, search holocaust databases for both "Kühns" and "Kohn" Berlin transports
- Anna Kohn – status unknown
- Fritz Kohn, Prague – at extreme risk after March 1939
Source: obituaries published in Prager Tagblatt (Prague, 1878–1938) and Neue Freie Presse (Vienna, 1864–1939).
|