É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.
ORMOS, István: The Correspondence of Ignaz Goldziher and Max Herz
ISTVÁN ORMOS Goldziher's wife and Herz both came from the same area, the county of Arad in the Hungarian Great Plain: the father of Goldziher's wife was a doctor in Aradszentmárton, a village in close vicinity to both Ottlaka and Simánd. We read in the Tagebuch that both Goldziher's mother-in-law and brother-in-law were buried in Simánd and the family of Goldziher's wife gathered for a family occasion in the Simánd synagogue. 9 7 Most probably there was no Jewish cemetery nor a synagogue in Aradszentmárton. Herz's parents lived for a while in Simánd before moving to Ottlaka. 9 8 Thus it happened that Goldziher once asked him whether he knew the deceased father of his wife. Herz answered he did not know him but enquired about him from his eldest sister in Temesvár. She informed him in due course that their father had been on friendly terms with Dr. Mittler, Goldziher's father-in-law. He however had died but had a son, who was also a doctor."" In the letters we read of the visits of Herz's sister in Temesvár to the Goldzihers, with whom she remains in touch: "My sister, who wrote to me a lot about your kind meeting, gave me the best pieces of information about you, your esteemed wife and your son. 1 thank your wife most sincerely for the kindness shown to my sister. Please accept my most sincere thanks. (Meine Schwester, die mir viel von Euerer liebenswürdigen Begegnung schrieb, gab mir die besten Nachrichten über Dich, [Deine] sehr geschätzte Frau u. Euern Sohn. Küsse der Frau Doktor sehr ergeben beide Hände fiir die meiner Schwester angedeihene Freundlichkeit. Ich danke recht innig dafür.)" 10 0 In this 9 7 Goldziher, Tagebuch..., 131,251,279. 9 8 Herz always indicated Ottlaka as his birthplace, while the birth register states that the newborn's parents were living at Simánd at the time. (Soon they moved to Ottlaka.) The birth register, which was kept by the Jewish community of three neighbouring villages (Ottlaka, Kisjenő and Simánd), does not indicate the newborn's place of birth as a separate entry. (Probably because the birthplace was normally the same as the location of the religious community in question, and it was only owing to the small number of Jews that three villages constituted one single community in this case, a circumstance the authorities had not envisaged when devising the scheme of birth registers before sending it to the printing press.) If we consider that women bore their children in their homes at the time then Herz must have been born at Simánd. There are the following possibilities to solve this contradiction: 1. The Herzs lived at Simánd but Mrs. Herz gave birth to her son at her sister's home at Ottlaka. The extracts from the birth register at my disposal imply that a sister of Mrs. Herz's lived at Ottlaka. 2. Herz was born at Simánd but his family moved to Ottlaka soon after his birth, so he regarded Ottlaka as his birthplace because he grew up there. 3. There is an error in the birth register. I am indebted to Jenő Glück (Arad) for the photocopies of the birth register, which is kept in the Archives in Arad. The present names of the places in question: Aradszentmárton / Sinmartin, Kisjenő / Chi^ineuCri§, Ottlaka / Gräniceri, Simánd / §imand, all in Romania since 1920. 9 9 Letter dated Cairo, 16 April 1897. Letter dated Cairo, 24 November 1904. 190
