Guest list at the wedding of Herbert Ellissen and Florence Lucas

The wedding of Herbert Ellissen and Florence Lucas took place in London on 31 March 1906. A news clipping of the event, shown below courtesy of Rick Lucas via Cathy Bruneau, is notable for what it adds to our knowledge of the relatives of bride and groom.

The full document as a pdf can be seen here.

Rather than a list of guests, the wedding notice presents a list of the weddings gifts and their givers. However, perhaps we can assume that most if not all the givers were in fact the weddding guests. They occur in this order:

Mr and Mrs F.H. Lucas, parents of the bride

Mr and Mrs R.A. Lucas. R.A. Lucas was Florence’s uncle and the great grandfather of our correspondent, Rick Lucas.

Gustav and Mrs (Annie) Ellissen, parents of the groom.

“Mr Frank Ellissen” – Frank Ellissen was the groom’s first cousin but he appears to have died in 1900. I think this is a misprint for “Mrs Frank Ellissen”, nee Elizabeth Burton (Betty) Kennedy, 1866-1961.

Myles and Frank Ellissen, the two sons of Frank Ellissen, aged 10 and 8 in 1906.

Mr Victor Ellissen, the groom’s first cousin.

Mr August Ellissen. The only candidate known at present was Gustav’s eldest brother, of we know nothing except that he was the eldest in the family. He would have been about 77 years old in 1906. The back of the Moritz Oppenheim portrait of Betty May, Gustav’s mother, has “August, Frankfort” shown as her first child. Since he fails to appear in any UK census he probably never left Frankfurt (and may not have left Frankfurt to attend the wedding).

Marie and George Burton, the groom’s sister and brother-in-law.

Frank and Fanny Burton, George Burton’s eldest brother and his wife.

Percy and Annie Burton, George Burton’s middle brother and his wife.

Edgar Stern, the son of Johanna, Gustav Ellissen’s sister. A first Johanna Ellissen, Gustav’s aunt born in 1804, married into the Weisweiller family in Paris. Her great-great-granddaughter, Carole Weisweiller, is the biographer of Jean Cocteau, who was a frequent guest at her mother’s villa on the Cote D’Azur, Santo Sospir. The second Johanna Ellissen is previously documented in only two places: (i) as the wife of the Frankfurt banker Salomon Stern in Alexander Dietz’s Stammbuch and (ii) on the back of the Moritz Oppenheim portrait of Betty May as one of three sisters, “Joanna, Marine, Paula”. By inference she was about two years older than Gustav Ellissen and she may have been dead by 1906. The appearance of Edgar Stern, the founder of a dynasty of French bankers, in the guest list is the first new indication that the Johanna Ellissen that married Salomon Stern was indeed the “Joanna” from the back of the portrait.

“Joanna, Marine, Paula” (with the eye of faith)

Mabel and John Foster Hall, the groom’s first cousin and her husband.

A sequence of over 50 names follows, for which the identity is not so easy to discern, e.g. “Mr, Mrs and Miss White”. Some stand out, though, if you know what you are looking for.

“Mr J. Reinack” and “Mr W. Reinack” both gave Dresden china dishes.

It is a bit odd that they should both give the same things – unless they sent them and didn’t actually attend the wedding, as Dresden china would have been standard gift items rather like store vouchers. Actually, there is no-one in their circle of acquaintances by the name “Reinack” – what is meant is “Reinach”. It is very likely that “Mr. W. Reinack” was in fact Wilhelm Markus Reinach, 1849-1931, a factory owner from Mainz (about 25km west of Frankfurt) and the father of the German philosopher Adolf Reinach, 1883-1917.

The link is as follows. The sister before Johanna Ellissen was Mariane Ellissen, b. 1833 (“Marine” on the back of the picture). An entry in the International Genealogical Index shows her husband to have been Hermann Reinach, 1825-1906, a wine merchant and city elder (‘Ehrenbürger’) of Mainz. It appears that she was a second wife, her predecessor having died when her son, Wilhelm Markus Reinach, was aged 7.

The identity of “Mr J. Reinack” is a little harder. There were a number of J. Reinachs among a second extended family of Reinachs, for example, the Frankfurt-born French financier Jacques de Reinach, b. 1840, who was implicated in a bond issue scandal relating to the Panama canal and was found dead, possibly poisoned, in a Paris hotel in 1892. However, only one was extant in 1906: the Paris-born Joseph Reinach, 1856-1921. Joseph Reinach was one of three famous brothers, cousins of Jacques de Reinach, the other two being classical archaeologists. Joseph Reinach was a well known public figure in France, and is most notable for having been the champion of Afred Dreyfus. In 1906 he was the deputy for Digne in southern France and his gift – as opposed to the non-gifts of his brothers – may have been the gesture of a public figure who had a great many social obligations to fulfil.

The bizarre thing about Wilhelm’s son, the philosopher Adolf Reinach, was that he had a French namesake, Adolphe Reinach, ?1889-1914. Adolf was carried away by patriotic fervour in 1914, somehow linking his phenomenology to the future of Germany, and volunteered for the front, from where he continued to write papers on philosophy until he was killed in Flanders in 1917. Details are not to hand for Adolphe, but he was killed in 1914 fighting for the other side.

We can see the connection of one branch of the Reinachs to the Ellissens; the fact that the other is also represented here by a gift giver is strongly suggestive that the two branches were directly related. We just don’t know how at the moment.

Among the remainder, some can be identified, others not:

Mr and Mrs Friedlander – a common enough name.

Mr Gaston Foa – unusual.

Mr and Mrs Dechsner – could be a misprint for Oechsner.

Mrs H. Shuker – ?

Mr and Mrs Hoersheim – ?

Mr and Mrs Cecil Hoersheim – could be a misprint for Cecil Floersheim, 1871-1936, described as a “minor British poet”.

Mr and Mrs Cecil Raleigh – easy enough, Mrs CR was Isabel Ellissen, the groom’s first cousin.

Mr F. Spielman – ?.

Mr Ludwig – ?

Mr and Mrs Simpson – George Burton’s eldest sister Katie and Henry Simpson.

All in all, a very informative guest list.