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Childbed Fever
Childbed Fever
Childbed Fever
I want to write this time about an issue which is connected strongly to our familys
history.
The worst enemy of our families in the Borchardt-family tree was, of course, the
Nazi final solution, but there was another enemy, also very dangerous, and it
belongs also to the past.
The medical term is puerperal infections, a general term for any bacterial
infection of the female reproductive tract following childbirth or miscarriage. From
the 1600s through the mid to late 1800s, the majority of childbed fever cases were
caused by the doctors themselves. Perhaps our women were luckier, because Jewish
doctors of course washed their hands, but hospitals for childbirth became common
in the 17th century in many European cities, and there were non-Jewish doctors and
nurses in these institutions, and they infected many of the women.
Perhaps the most famous case, but not on our tree: Goethe's sister, Cornelia, he did
not want to talk about it. Only in the 19th century the doctors realized that death
after birth is apparently associated with inflammation caused at birth, and therefore
began to pay more attention to hygiene, also and especially of midwives.
In these times, giving birth was not only painful, it was highly dangerous!
The first cases we know about (and there is no doubt at all, there were much more
than what we know), are from the fourth generation (gr-grandchildren of Baruch and
Edel): Gitel Borchardt (born von Glogau), who died in 1780 at age 21-24. We dont
know about children. Than Johanna (Edel) Helfft (born Borchardt), died in 1799 also
in the same age. Two wives of Zanvil Shmuel Lewin Eger (he has more names),
Emma (Esther) Judith Borchardt (born Hellborn), the gr-grandmother of Sascha
Morgenthaler. In the fifth generation we have Julie Burg born Riess, the wife of the
first Jewish major in the Prussian army, Meno Burg, and Aron Borchardts first wife,
Gabriel Munters grandmother. In the sixth generation Zanvils granddaughters
Riekchen Rosenstein (born Feibes) and Johanna Sutheim (born Feibes), Pauline
Salinger (born Borchardt), the sister of the Waldsteins, Simons first wife Seraphine
Borchardt (born Munter).
All these women were married and died in the age of 20-40, but we have no proof
that birthgiving was the reason of their death.
In the seventh generation we have the first cases, where we have evidence of
women who died after giving birth: Samuel Borchardt is the grandfather of the
Quaker author Margaret Hope Bacon, and the only living child of Jeanette Fendig.
After giving birth to a second child, this child and the mother died, and Abraham
Borchardt married Jeanettes younger sister Amalie. The descendants of Abraham
and his two wives are a huge branch on our tree.
Most of these women are the first wives of their husband, and if they had children,
they grew up with his second wife. These children dont have any connection to
their biological mother, and she is forgotten. Rosa Borchardt (born Primo) gave
birth, in her short life, to at least five children who survived, the youngest was
reduce the opening of the uterus. 99 percent of the victims are from developing
countries. Every sixteenth woman in sub-Saharan countries die after birth. In
Western Europe, one of four thousand. My mother almost died in 1958 after giving
birth, in Afula, but she survived. One of the rare cases in the last fifty years
happened in 1996, also here, in Israel. One month after the birth of my son was
born another son on our tree, also in Jerusalem, like my son, and the mother died
the same day.