My ancestors

pp. 1-35

in: Abraham A. Fraenkel, Recollections of a Jewish mathematician in Germany, Basel, Birkhäuser, 2016

Abstract

Most people have eight great-grandparents, namely, the parents of their four grandparents. While that is the case for my parents, wife, children, and grandchildren, my siblings and I have only six great-grandparents. My father's father, Wilhelm Fraenkel, and my mother's mother, Rosa Neuburger, née Fraenkel, were siblings, so their parents, Abraham and Nanette Fraenkel, count twice. Indeed, the oil-painting portraits I have of them [see below] show a remarkable resemblance to two of my own children.