Oral history interview with Caroline Geisberg Funkenstein and Louis Funkenstein, 1997.

ArchivalResource

Rosenblum, Sandra Lee Kahn,. Oral history interview with Caroline Geisberg Funkenstein and Louis Funkenstein, 1997.

Oral history interview with Caroline Geisberg Funkenstein and Louis Funkenstein, 1997.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51864172

Caroline Geisberg Funkenstein and her husband Louis Funkenstein speak on their family histories, their life together and being Jewish in Anderson, South Carolina. Oscar Geisberg of Vienna came to the United States sometimes before the Civil War, in which he served as a Union soldier. Settling in Anderson, S.C., he met and married Carrie Lesser, daughter of the only Jewish family in town. Their son Harry (d. 1936) married Sadie Cohen (b. 1894) of Elberton, Georgia, the daughter of Mary Copeland Cohen and Joe Cohen, the family originating in Poland. Their daughter, interviewee Caroline Geisberg, and her brother grew up in Anderson and attended some Jewish services in Greenville, S.C. She worked for a few years in New York City, where she met Louis Funkenstein who was stationed nearby. They were married in California in 1941. Louis Funkenstein's grandfather, from Europe, had walked across the isthmus of Panama and gone to San Francisco, where he tended bar. After his marriage broke up, he took his son with him to Athens, Georgia, where his grandson, Louis, the interviewee, was born. The couple lived most of their married life in Anderson, where Louis Funkenstein operated a box factory. Both, although not very observant, were "Jewish minded" and fit well in the local community; they note that those who were more orthodox usually did not fit in as well. Jews, they explain, were accepted, but it was not until 1962 that they were taken in as members in the local country club. Louis Funkenstein passes on a story regarding Max Heller, Jewish mayor of nearby Greenville, S.C., stating that he was blackballed by the Poinsettia Club, for being Jewish. Caroline Funkenstein refers to the Patz family, another Jewish family in Elberton, Georgia. The Funkenstein's children married non-Jews, but used Rabbis in their services and are also "Jewish-minded."

Sound recording : 1 sound cassette : analog.Sound recording : 1 sound cassette : digital.Transcript : 38 p. ; 28 cm.

College of Charleston, Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library