Jon D'Souza-Eva wrote: ↑Sun Jan 07, 2024 4:13 pm
Alfred and his siblings (two sisters and a brother) all changed their surname to Milner around the time of the Great War but their parents seem to have stuck to Mielziner. (see family tree I linked to above).
A very common thing to do at the time, of course, from the Royal family on down. When I was doing historical research on one of the national scientific learned societies a few years ago, there were multiple instances of well-known UK-based members seemingly 'vanishing' from the scientific literature because they'd anglicized their German names at the outset of WW1. Given that people were kicking dachshunds in the street, and smashing in the windows of (perceived) German shops in British cities, you can see why they did it.
Christopher Kreuzer wrote: ↑Wed Jan 10, 2024 8:27 pm
Great find. And what on earth was the "Schiller Verein"?
http://bradfordjewish.org.uk/the-schiller-verein/
Many German Jews clearest affiliation was with the general German community and its culture. The German community up and down this country largely organised themselves around a series of German institutes known as Vereinen.
In Bradford there was the Schiller-Verein, on Rawson Square off Manor Row. Here the German elite met and socialised.
I'm sure there would have been significant German communities (and 'Schiller Clubs') in all the major Northern industrial cities - there was a notable German 'haute bourgeoisie' / middle class in many British cities in the latter half of the 19th century, mostly people who'd come to work in import /export, industry & engineering and education, or their children. Indeed, it's generally accepted that until c 1890 German-speakers were the largest 'non British population' living in the UK.
There was a famous Schiller Club (called the 'Schiller Anstalt') in Manchester, founded in 1860 and enduring until 1911 - Friedrich Engels hung out there. Though I've never heard of them running a chess team - per the one article I found on the Manchester Schiller Anstalt, they seem to have been keener on rhythmic gymnastics and Alpinism (Alpine climbing). Of course, Manchester had plenty of chess clubs then (see Alan Smith's writings for details), so the chess-inclined among Manchester's German and German Jewish community could have gone to e.g. the Manchester Chess Club or to the Manchester Athenaeum.
