The Opplers were an ethnically Jewish and German family from the disputed region of Lorraine. After the first World War, Alsace-Lorraine was returned to French control and the Opplers were forced to leave, moving to Berlin. There, family member Alfred C. Oppler (1893-1982) became a jurist and civil servant. Although he had been raised as a Protestant, after the Nazi party took power Oppler was demoted due to his Jewish heritage and expelled from the civil service. In 1939, he and his wife, Charlotte Preuss Oppler, immigrated to the United States. Their daughter, Ellen C. Oppler, attended Columbia University and became a professor of art history at Syracuse University.
From the guide to the Oppler Family Photographs, 1896, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)
