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Jewish Heritage Collection: Oral history interview with Caroline Geisberg Funkenstein and Louis Funkenstein
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Item Information
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| Title | Jewish Heritage Collection: Oral history interview with Caroline Geisberg Funkenstein and Louis Funkenstein
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| Interviewee | Funkenstein, Caroline Geisberg, 1920-2005, and Funkenstein, Louis, 1913-2000
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| Interviewer | Rosengarten, Dale, 1948- (interviewer)
Rosenblum, Sandra Lee Kahn (interviewer)
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| Date Recorded | 1997-02-25 |
| Source | Jewish Heritage Collection Oral Histories
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| Subject | Funkenstein, Caroline Geisberg, 1920-2005 -- Interviews
Funkenstein, Louis, 1913-2000 -- Interviews
Jews -- South Carolina -- Interviews
Jews -- South Carolina -- Anderson -- History
Jews -- South Carolina -- Greenville -- History
Jews -- Georgia -- Elberton -- History
Jews -- Georgia -- Athens -- History
Heller, Max M. (Max Moses), 1919-Geisberg family
Patz family
Antisemitism -- South Carolina -- History
Jews -- South Carolina -- Cultural assimilation
Jewish merchants -- South Carolina -- Anderson -- History
Lesser family
Funkenstein family
Cohen family
Rosenblum family
Temple B'nai Israel (Anderson, S.C.)
Temple of Israel (Greenville, S.C.)
Jews -- California -- San Francisco -- Charities
World War, 1939-1945 -- Jews
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
School integration -- South Carolina -- Anderson -- History
Judaism -- Relations -- Christianity
Conservative Judaism -- South Carolina -- Anderson -- History
Orthodox Judaism -- South Carolina -- Anderson -- History
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| Description | Louis Funkenstein of Athens, Georgia, married Caroline Geisberg, a native of Anderson, South Carolina, and the couple settled in Caroline's hometown where Louis established a paper box company. The Funkensteins describe their family histories and discuss a variety of topics including religious practices and Jewish-gentile relations in Anderson. |
| Holding Instution | College of Charleston Libraries
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| Rights | Digital resource copyright 2011, The College of Charleston. All rights reserved. For more information contact The College of Charleston Library, Charleston, SC 29424. |
| SC County | Charleston County (S.C.)
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| SC Region | Lowcountry
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| Language | English
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| Date Digital | 2011-8 |
| Type | text
sound
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| Format | application/pdf; audio/mpeg |
| Resource Identifier | Funkenstein_Caroline_Louis_124 |
| Media Type | Audio |
| Digitization Specifications | Mp3 derivative audio created with Audacity software. Archival masters are wav files. |
| Abstract | Caroline Geisberg and Louis Funkenstein met in New York, where Caroline was working for the Shell Oil Company, and married in San Francisco during World War II. After the war, they settled in Caroline's hometown, Anderson, South Carolina. At the urging of the Kaplans, who were shirt manufacturers, Louis opened a paper box company, which he ran until 1973, when he sold the business to a competitor in nearby Greenville. The Funkensteins raised two children in Anderson and, in general, thought that Jewish-gentile relations in Anderson were good. While Jews could not be members of the Anderson Country Club until 1962, the Funkensteins were well received by the city's gentiles in other settings and felt assimilated to the small-town culture. Louis, a member of the Orthodox synagogue in Anderson, B'nai Israel, advocated relaxing the congregation's practices. In the 1950s, he was instrumental in reaching a compromise with Orthodox members of the congregation, in which Sabbath services would follow Conservative practices and High Holy Days adhere to Orthodox rituals. A Reform rabbi named Goldberg from Augusta, Georgia, served the congregation for several years. Both interviewees talk about their family histories. Caroline's grandfather, Oscar Geisberg, was an Austrian immigrant who served in the Union Army during the Civil War. According to family lore, the Lessers, the only Jewish family in Anderson, took him in when he was injured and he married their daughter, Carrie. The Lessers and the Geisbergs were dry goods merchants. Oscar, an observant Jew, in a letter to his daughter Dora, (read during the interview by Caroline) bemoaned the Lesser family's lax observance of Jewish customs. Caroline discusses her mother's family, the Cohens of Elberton, Georgia, and mentions the Patzes, Elberton's only other Jewish family at the time. Caroline's mother, Sadie Cohen Geisberg, ran The Vogue Shop in Anderson. The family was minimally observant, celebrating Passover at home and the High Holy Days at the Reform Temple of Israel in Greenville, South Carolina. Caroline talks about her family's non-kosher diet, the schools she and her brother attended, the African-American woman who worked for them, the effects of the Great Depression, and the rabbis who came for funerals, including Rabbi Shillman of Sumter. Louis's grandfather was a German immigrant, who traveled to San Francisco during the Gold Rush, and later moved to Athens, Georgia, where Louis was born. After attending the Georgia Institute of Technology, Louis served in World War II as a naval officer in the South Pacific. During the interview, he exhibited a cane with an engraved gold handle given to his grandfather, Peter Funkenstein, by the members of Chachim Rachmonin of San Francisco in 1870 as a "token of esteem." Other topics the interviewees touch upon include the Holocaust, the Rosenblum family of Anderson, the Old Silver Brook Cemetery in Anderson, and the blackballing of Max Heller, former mayor of Greenville, by members of the Poinsettia Club. |
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Filename
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710.pdf
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audio available