Australia

The same roll, in two countries Documented

The Arolsen Archives hold an International Committee for European Migration nominal roll, DocID 81709354, numbered BGO 65/135, carrying the family at lines 85 to 88. The National Archives of Australia hold NAA: A2559, 1965/86/85-88. The same roll number and the same four line numbers, filed on opposite sides of the world by two archives that do not know of one another.

And the Australian title carries what the German one does not: “arrived per ship FLAVIA ex Bremerhaven/Germany 17 September 1965”. They did not fly. The word airplane belongs to the Arolsen folder heading, and this archive read the folder instead of the document — correction 9500902.

The ship changes the story. Bremerhaven is not Berlin: they crossed West Germany to the North Sea coast, and a migrant sailing on that run took about four weeks. They left Germany in August 1965, and the Berlin flat was given up before that.

And one of his files is about property inside Poland Documented

NAA: A1478, EPCP63 — “German property taken over by the Polish Government - Leibholz J P Mr”, 1947. A claim follows at A1458, EPCH18, and German currency bonds at A1444, EPC164 — that last one filed under the spelling LAIBHOLZ.

Our Leibholzes are from Schubin in Posen, which is Szubin in Poland. This is the first document found anywhere that puts a Leibholz, a Berliner and Polish property in one sentence. It is not proof of kinship and it is not treated as any. It is a lane of its own, and the cheap tests are the Victorian death index and the Melbourne Chevra Kadisha, either of which would give his parents.

He stayed, and the death index names his parents New, 21 September 2026

Victoria's historical index is free to search, and it has him: reg. 26252/1971 — “LEIBHOLZ, Joachim Peter · Death · mother Nanette · mother's family name at birth NETTER · father LEIBHOLZ William · place of birth Berlin Germany · place of death TOORAK · age at death 68.”

He landed in 1939, naturalised at South Yarra in 1944 and died thirty-two years later two suburbs away, at sixty-eight — consistent to the year with a birth on 20 August 1903.

And this archive has already met a William Leibholz of Berlin. The 1920 directory has “William Leibholz, Generaldirektor and Stadtrat” — a managing director and city councillor — and the 1913 name section has “William, Kaufm., W15 Kurfürstendamm 169”, the only William on that roll. Strong, and not proof: the Victorian death certificate carries the parents in full and is the thing that would settle it — and since 11 October there is a nearer one, his own Berlin birth entry.

It does not connect him to this family. Ours are Konfektion merchants from Schubin; William is a managing director on the Kurfürstendamm. The Melbourne lane stays a lane.

And his birth is registered, with a number New, 11 October 2026

The scoping cost one page of a directory. The 1903 Berliner Adressbuch gives “WILLIAM, Fabrkbes., CHARLOTTENBURG, JOACHIMSTHALERSTR. 7. 8 II. (Tel. Charl. 1706)” — a factory owner, and the only Leibholz in Charlottenburg in that volume; the other twelve are all in Berlin proper. That scoped the search to Standesamt Charlottenburg I, and the boy was born on 20 August 1903. One office, not seventeen.

That step was right and it was not sourced, so it was re-run at the image on 12 October. The 1903 directory’s Charlottenburg district list, printed page 20, gives under the heading Am Kurfürstendamm: “1. Fasanenstr. 23–29 und 99–104, … Joachimsthalerstr. 5–9, … Knesebeckstr. 66–81, Kurfürstendamm 18–39”. 7 and 8 fall inside 5–9, and the bracket is on the same page: Bezirk 2 immediately below takes Joachimsthalerstr. 10–21. The street is split three ways and the house number decides it, exactly as Lutherstraße 34 was. The OCR renders the range as “5 -’i” and is no use; the numerals were read at the page image.

And the link the 1903 volume cannot supply, said plainly: it does not define its offices by district. The administration pages give “Standesamt 1. Rankestr. 10” and “Standesamt 2. Kirchstr. 10” with their registrars and nothing else — so Charlottenburg had two registry offices in 1903, not the three of 1913, and no 1903 page says which Bezirke either served. Standesamt I is at Rankestraße 10 in both years and in 1913 covers Am Kurfürstendamm 1–6, which is a bridge and is labelled as one. The identification does not rest on it — the entry was found in Charlottenburg I’s own register index, below.

Leibholz · Joachim Peter · 20.8. · 875

Namensverzeichnis zum Geburtenregister, Standesamt Charlottenburg I, 1903 — Landesarchiv Berlin P Rep. 551 Nr. 526, read at the page image under the month-8 heading of the L block.

Standesamt Charlottenburg I, Geburtsregister 1903, Nr. 875. The man who sailed on the Anchises and was naturalised at South Yarra with previous nationality stateless now has a German registration behind an Australian index.

The index does not name the parents. It gives the child, the day and month and the register number, and the confession column is blank for everyone on the page. The entry itself would give the mother with her maiden name, and that is the document that decides whether she was Nanette née Netter. It is a certificate order.

Because the marriage indexes say she was not. Charlottenburg I 1898–1903, both volumes’ L blocks read at the image, hold exactly one Leibholz: “LEIBHOLZ | FRIEDLAENDER | 42”, Heiratsregister 1902 Nr. 42. Charlottenburg II 1900–1903 holds none. A 1902 marriage and an August 1903 birth in the same office is the right shape, and William is the only Leibholz in the borough — but the index gives surnames only, with no forenames and no indication of which party is the groom. The same page carries “Leistikow geb. Marschalk | Heimann”, a woman indexed under L with her husband opposite, so a Miss Leibholz marrying a Mr Friedlaender would look identical. Nothing is claimed.

Three readings stand and this archive picks none: the Friedlaender marriage is William’s and the Australian index’s “Netter” is wrong; or he married Nanette Netter elsewhere or earlier; or the marriage is in an office not read. The weakest document in that chain is the Victorian index, which records what an informant said about a man’s parents decades later in another country and another language. The cheap next step is the birth entry, not more index volumes.

One thing the 1916 volume adds to William while it is open: “William, Kaufm., W 15, Kurfürstendamm 169 u. 170 E.” — the E is Eigentümer, so he owned both houses. This archive held only 169, and no ownership. Factory owner in Charlottenburg in 1903, owner of two Kurfürstendamm houses in 1916, Generaldirektor and Stadtrat in 1920.

The sweep was done properly — the index takes a wildcard, so L*HOLZ was run across births, deaths and marriages from 1900 to 1995 and returns exactly this one record. With the honest limit: Victorian birth indexes close around 1922 and marriages around 1942, so the child who came off the Anchises in 1939 could not appear whatever became of them.

Trove opened, and the Canberra Times runs to 1995 27 September 2026

David obtained a Trove API key on 27 September, valid to December 2026. Australian newspaper digitisation normally stops at 1954 for copyright, which is why Trove has been useless to an archive whose Australians arrived in 1965. There are two exceptions and both are ours: the Canberra Times is digitised 1926–1995, and the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette 1901–1973. The family landed in Canberra. It is the first free instrument this archive has had that reaches them after the emigration.

It found Joachim Peter Leibholz in a gazette. Commonwealth of Australia Gazette No. 193, Thursday 28 September 1944, page 2212, under Certificates of Naturalization: “Leibholz, Joachim Peter, [6]7 Walsh-street, South Yarra, Victoria.” The house number is OCR’d badly and is not read here.

And then his own words turned up, which beat the gazette. The Argus of 18 February 1944 carries the notice of intention the Act required him to place himself:

I, Joachim Peter Leibholz, of German nationality, born at Berlin, Germany, and resident 4 years 8 months in Australia, now residing at 67 Walsh street, South Yarra, Victoria, intend to Apply for Naturalisation under the Nationality Act 1920-1936. — The Argus (Melbourne), 18 February 1944

It does two things. It fixes the house number the gazette OCR lost — 67, where the gazette reads “07” and this archive declined to guess. And “resident 4 years 8 months” in February 1944 puts his arrival in June 1939, which matches the Anchises on 12 June 1939 to within days — a man counting his own months in a paid advertisement, and a shipping list compiled by somebody else, agreeing. That is the real corroboration the first draft of this panel tried and failed to get out of a residence rule.

One discrepancy, and it is not a conflict. The NAA card gives his previous nationality as stateless; his own notice calls him “of German nationality”. Both are true of the same man in the same year. The Eleventh Decree of November 1941 stripped the citizenship of Jews outside the Reich, and a man may write down the nationality he was born to while an official writes down the one the law left him.

He went by Peter

The Age, 2 October 1954, among guests entertained at a Toorak home before a ball: “Mr. and Mrs. Peter Leibholz”, in a paragraph that also carries Nelken, Horowitz, Abry and Reschid Bey. He is Joachim Peter on every official document and Peter in Melbourne. Fifteen years from stateless to the social column, among other émigré names.

And the archive has had a small problem with his wife — Tilde on one file, Hilde on another. The Australian Jewish News of 8 August 1969 welcomes “Mrs. H. Leibholz” to a Melbourne WIZO group. An initial of H supports one reading and not the other. It is not proof: H is an initial, and nothing here ties that woman to this household beyond surname, city and community. It is the only third voice the question has.

The same searches turn up a daughter — a 1968 wedding announcement in The Australian Women’s Weekly names Dr Jane Leibholz, lecturer in animal husbandry at Sydney, as the daughter of Mr and Mrs Peter Leibholz. She may well be living, and this lane is not kin and has never been claimed as kin. It is recorded because it is a public announcement in a national magazine and because it shows the household had children. It is not followed further and nobody is approached.

And it is a smaller find than it first looked, which is worth saying. The first draft of this panel called him “a name in a death index until now” and dated his arrival from the five-year residence rule. The section above this one has carried the naturalisation since 21 September — granted at South Yarra on 27 July 1944, previous nationality stateless — and his arrival to the day, from the Anchises on 12 June 1939. Inferring an arrival that is already documented adds nothing. What is genuinely new is two things and not more: the street, where this archive had only the suburb, and a second, public, independently produced attestation of a fact that rested on one NAA card. Note also that the card says 27 July and the gazette says 28 September: a certificate is granted and then gazetted, so they do not conflict — but a reader holding one date will not find it in the other document.

The sponsor at Hackett now has a street

The 1965 nominal roll forwards the family c/o Mr H. Marquardt at Hackett, ACT, and the work list says flatly that what decides the sponsor question is an address. The Commonwealth Gazette of 9 March 1967 has one: “Marquardt, Anne Marie, 2 Kenny Place, Hackett, 28.9.66” — a Marquardt household at Hackett with a street and a number.

H. Marquardt himself is not in these lists, and that was checked rather than assumed. Five further gazette naturalisation lists were read for the surname — February, February and April 1968, January 1971, December 1973 — and every Marquardt in them is somewhere else: North Ryde and West Hoxton in New South Wales, Longreach in Queensland, Montrose in Victoria. None in the ACT. If he came out on the Anna Salen in March 1955, as the best candidate did, he would have been eligible to naturalise around 1960, before these lists begin. The absence is explained, and is not evidence against him.

What it found and this archive will not print

A search on the surname returns nine articles and eight of them are the Canberra Times between 1970 and 1987 — technical college results, weekend sporting round-ups, family notices, advertising, a court list. That is precisely where the 1965 nominal roll and the Marquardt sponsorship at Hackett said the family would be, so the instrument has found them. It has also found their children, who are living.

So the finding is recorded and the detail is not. What can be said in public is that the family were settled in Canberra by 1972, that a Commonwealth Gazette citizenship series documents them there, and that a Canberra Times family notice of January 1973 attests that Manfred and Helga were both alive and in Canberra at that date. The addresses, the citizenship date and the rest sit in a file that is not in this repository, and they stay there.

One warning about the instrument, because it cuts against this archive’s own method. Luwinski and Luwinsky return the identical nine articles: Trove stems and fuzzes, and is not matching the string you typed. This archive has spent a fortnight on the principle that different spellings are different slots, and Trove quietly refuses to honour it. To know which spelling is on the page, open the page.

Manfred himself returns zero. He died at Brisbane in 2012, seventeen years past the Canberra Times’s cut-off, and Queensland papers of that date are not digitised at all — so the Ryerson Index remains the only free instrument that reaches his death, and it is still answering “Server Overloaded”.

One spelling is not a search — and it paid twice in one sitting Method

Eight wildcards were run: LUWINSK* · LOWINSK* · LUWENSK* · JUWINSK* · LUWWINSK* · LEIBHOL* · LAIBHOL* · LEIBBHOL*.

LAIBHOL* found a file that LEIBHOL* does not: the Australian government spelled its own claimant’s name differently on a different form. And LOWINSK* found a family that has to be kept out — Marcus William Lowinsky, who patented a cartwheel in 1892, and Helga Lowinsky, born 14 April 1931, who sailed to Australia from Britain in 1964 and married a Grant. The right forename, the wrong year, the wrong country. A careless search would have taken her for Manfred’s wife.

And the same line rules out the obvious reading Inference

Helga Erna was born 1 May 1934. Harry Walter was born 22 March 1934 — forty days earlier. They cannot be children of the same mother. Brother and sister is the one relationship this pair of dates forbids. Cousins, half-siblings by different mothers, or no relation at all are all still open, and a shared surname with a shared birth year is a coincidence this archive has been caught by before.

What decides it is an address. The A2478 selection document carries the sponsor's; so would the electoral rolls, if they were not behind a subscription.

Two other Helga Marquardts, both in Australia first Kept apart

D400, SA1960/1158 — “MARQUARDT HELGA - [Application for Naturalisation]”, South Australia, 1960, five years before ours landed. And D4881, MARQUARDT HELGA E H — Lithuanian, arrived Melbourne on the General Stuart Heintzelman on 26 April 1949, the ship that carried the first Baltic displaced persons to Australia. Neither is ours. The initials E H against our Helga's Erna are exactly the near-match that swallows an afternoon, which is why both are written down rather than passed over.