Open questions
Ten things this archive cannot answer yet, in the order they are worth attacking
An archive is worth what its unanswered questions are worth. These are written so that anyone — a cousin, a stranger, an archivist — can pick one up and work it without asking permission.
1 What were Ivone's parents' given names?
- What is known
- Their surnames are known — the 1948 divorce file has her born MOTA FIGUEIREDO — but the given names are still blank, and every paper route has been blocked. A surname sweep on 14 September 2026 seemed to open a new front door — 27 Figueiredo matches, 13 Mota — and it was withdrawn the same evening: the Figueiredo tag pairs her with a woman born before 1713, and MyHeritage states that the Mota matches share no ancestral surname with Derrick at all.
- What would settle it
- Her Porto death record, which names both parents outright, and the 1924 Lourenço Marques registration. On the DNA side the useful matches remain the two already worked — 108.7 cM at second cousin's son, and 133.2 cM — whose families carry the surnames Jorge, Silvestre, Conde, Gaspar and Matos.
2 Who was Derrick's biological father?
- What is known
- ANSWERED SO FAR AS RECORDS CAN: LEONARD AUBREY ROBERT WEAR, born Hitchin, Hertfordshire, 1917. The DNA excludes Kurt Israel Luwinski twice over - 0.0% Ashkenazi where a quarter is required, and a Y-DNA haplogroup, R-S11477 of R1b branch U106/Z381, that is North Sea rather than Ashkenazi. The chain to a name: the 1952 Johannesburg register gives the birthplaces of the closest match's grandparents, Mervin Halsey CAPE PROVINCE and Cynthia Wear ENGLAND, so the English link is the grandmother; Cynthia's GRO birth entry (Q2 1931, Hitchin, 3A/1345) gives her mother's maiden name as CASTLE; the only Wear-Castle marriage in the whole English index is Henry R Wear to Martha L Castle, Hitchin Q4 1914; and the 1921 census has them at 72 Pix Road, Letchworth. THE SHARED SEGMENTS THEN DECIDED IT. Of the 297.5 cM Derrick shares with that match, only about 44 fall in regions he also shares with any Castle cousin - a single block on chromosome 2. The other 253 cM lie nowhere near them. Two people who share only one ancestral couple cannot do that: he and she descend from HENRY ROBERT WEAR AND MARTHA MAUD CASTLE together, as a couple, so his father was their son. The birth index, searched on the mother's maiden name, gives that couple six children at Hitchin between 1917 and 1936, of whom TWO WERE SONS. In June 1948 one was thirty-one and the other was eleven. And the family emigrated entire: Henry Robert Wear died in Johannesburg on 11 September 1969 and is buried at West Park, Martha Maud there on 16 March 1986. Leonard was in Johannesburg from 1940, married Phyllis Agnes Robertson at Rosebank on 7 September 1940, was divorced by her in 1951 and married again that October. CORROBORATED FROM OUTSIDE THE DNA: a seven-person MyHeritage tree kept by Leonard's own daughter gives his mother as “Muad Wear, born Castle”. No other record anywhere gives him parents at all.
- What would settle it
- The couple is proven to this archive's DNA standard. That the son is Leonard rests on the sibship - two sons, one of them a schoolboy - and not yet on a document naming him as anybody's father. REQUEST 11, drafted 15 September: the Master of the High Court at Cape Town, estates 10761/2024 (Gillian Agnes Louisa Nel, born Wear, 1941-2024) and 018561/2021 (Patricia Mary Maud Grant, born Wear, 1946-2021), both found free in the Government Gazette. Each file holds a Death Notice, Form J294, with a field for the father's full names. If either says LEONARD AUBREY ROBERT WEAR, a user-submitted tree becomes a government record. Also outstanding: WLD 1950/1948, the divorce Kurt filed against Ivone within months of marrying her, with WLD 497/1951 and 2368/1951 behind it; MHG 10245/69, Henry Robert Wear's own estate, whose death notice names his children; and Leonard's own estate, once it is settled whether he died in 1973 or 1979. The Y cannot help yet: only 34 of the 7,748 public members of the R-U106 project sit under S11477, whose common ancestor lived about 200 BCE, and no Wear, Weir or Ware is among them. A living male-line Wear taking a Y test would end it. Gillian died in March 2024, so the half-sibling test that would have settled this in a single reading is gone.
3 Why did Auguste divorce Jacob? (The when is answered: 21 March 1940)
- What is known
- *** HALF ANSWERED, 29 SEPTEMBER 2026, AND BY THE INSTRUMENT THIS ROW NAMED. *** The date is 21 MARCH 1940 — Landgericht Berlin 251. R. 80. 40, rechtskräftig that day, noted in the margin of the couple's own marriage entry on 4 April 1940 and scanned by the Landesarchiv Berlin. This row said the answer would be in “the 5 January 1924 marriage entry that preceded them”, AND IT WAS. WHAT IS STILL OPEN IS THE WHY, AND A DATE IS NOT A MOTIVE. In a Berlin Mischehe the pressure on the non-Jewish wife to divorce was official and sustained, and divorce stripped the husband of his remaining protection — Jacob was deported two years and eleven months later. NOTHING IN THE REGISTER SAYS WHO PETITIONED OR ON WHAT GROUND, and this archive will not guess at a motive it cannot see.
- What would settle it
- The Landgericht Berlin divorce case 251. R. 80. 40, if it survives in a court series. IT IS NOT IN THE MARRIAGE REGISTER'S SAMMELAKTE — the Landesarchiv has confirmed that file holds only the 1923 banns papers, so nobody should order it hoping for divorce material.
4 Why did a German consulate treat Kurt as a Jew rather than a Mischling? (Where “Israel” came from is answered)
- What is known
- *** ANSWERED 1 OCTOBER 2026, FROM HIS OWN PASSPORT. *** This row used to reason that he left Germany in 1933, six years before the compulsory-name decree, and that as a Mischling he would have been outside it anyway — so the name looked like a family-tree embellishment. IT IS NOT. The German Consulate in Johannesburg issued him a passport on 26 JULY 1939 and HE SIGNED IT “ISRAEL KURT LUWINSKI” IN HIS OWN HAND. The decree of 17 August 1938 reached him six thousand miles from Berlin, and he complied. WHAT IS STILL OPEN IS WHY: the document records the classification and gives no reason for it. The question is now about an act by a named office on a known day rather than about a word on a tree. AND THE ROW'S OWN PREMISE IS SEPARATELY IN DOUBT: his Berlin driving licence is dated 30 JANUARY 1934, so “he left in 1933” is itself no longer safe.
- What would settle it
- The consular file behind the 1939 passport, if it survives — Deutsches Konsulat Johannesburg, July 1939 — which would say on what basis he was classified. Failing that, a Reichsvereinigung or Jewish-community registration for the family in Berlin.
5 Is Georg a brother or a cousin?
- What is known
- Born at Hammerstein two months after Jacob was born at Schubin. Both dates from the Bundesarchiv. They cannot both be sons of one mother.
- What would settle it
- ASKED, 15 September 2026. Both towns are now in Poland and both civil registries opened in 1874, so an 1884 birth entry names both parents outright. Written to Archiwum Państwowe w Bydgoszczy for Standesamt Schubin, and to Archiwum Państwowe w Koszalinie for Standesamt Hammerstein and any Jewish register covering Sally Leibholz, born there in 1847. If both entries survive, one line of each decides it.
6 What happened to Gertrud Leibke on 27 February 1943?
- What is known
- She died in Berlin, not in a camp, on the day of the Fabrikaktion. The tree also duplicates her across two brothers.
- What would settle it
- Berlin death register; merge the duplicate and establish which brother she married.
7 When did Ivone actually marry de Witt?
- What is known
- Recorded as 2 February 1948, four and a half months before she married Kurt, with no divorce between.
- What would settle it
- The Germiston marriage register.
8 Who was the Pinto da Rocha?
- What is known
- Henrique's father, and the tree can only call him "Unknown da Rocha". LOCATED, 14 September 2026: Henrique's South African deceased estate, gazetted three times in 2023 — estate 12294/2023, DA ROCHA, HENRIQUE FIGUEIREDO PINTO. A South African estate file contains the Death Notice, form J294, and that form asks for the full names of the father and the maiden name of the mother.
- What would settle it
- Order the J294 from the Master of the High Court quoting 12294/2023. Then his 1968 marriage record, which unlike the 1948 form does carry parents. And in parallel a letter to the Arquivo da Defesa Nacional: he turned twenty five weeks after the Colonial War began, and a Portuguese military registration names both parents.
9 Does Jacob have a Stolperstein?
- What is known
- None found in Schöneberg. The Leibholz stones located so far belong to other Leibholz families.
- What would settle it
- Koordinierungsstelle Stolpersteine Berlin. If there is none, there could be.
10 Do any of the 100 index Luwinskis connect?
- What is known
- Not one has been shown to. They may be entirely unrelated people who share a rare surname.
- What would settle it
- Allenstein and Kreis Rössel Catholic registers, for Joachim born 1865 and back.
Nothing at that state.
Requests, drafted
Written out in full in requests/ — the Porto one in Portuguese and English, ready to send.
- Conservatória do Registo Civil do Porto — death and burial of Ivone de Figueiredo, b. 4 March 1922 Lourenço Marques.
- Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique, Maputo, and the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisbon — Lourenço Marques civil registration, 1924 and c. 1941.
- Landesarchiv Berlin — Schöneberg marriage 5 January 1924; the divorce file; Kurt's 1912 birth entry; Gertrud Leibke's death, 27 February 1943.
- Arolsen Archives — Jacob, Samuel, Georg, Oskar, Elli and Werner Leibholz.
- Master of the Supreme Court, Pretoria — estate file 7584/1969, Kurt Luwinski.
- National Archives of South Africa — the 1948 and 1951 divorce actions, and the Germiston marriage register.