Bettelheim

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Bettelheim is the name of a Hungarian noble family. The first bearer of it is said to have lived toward the second half of the eighteenth century, in Pressburg. To account for its origin the following episode is related in the family records:

There was a Jewish merchant in Pressburg, whose modest demeanor gained for him the esteem of his fellow-townsmen. He was popularly called "Ein ehrlich Jud" (honest Jew). His wife was a woman of surpassing beauty, and many magnates of the country, hearing of her charms, traveled to Pressburg to see her. Count Bethlen was particularly persistent, and, failing to attract her attention, he decided to abduct her. Mounted on his charger, he appeared one day in the open market, where the virtuous Jewess was making purchases, and, in the sight of hundreds of spectators, lifted her on his horse, and, heedless of her cries of entreaty, was about to gallop off with her, when her husband appeared on the scene and, after a fierce personal combat, succeeded in rescuing her.

That a Jew should engage in a hand-to-hand encounter with a nobleman of the rank of Count Bethlen was so unprecedented, and the deed itself was so daring in view of the social status of the Jews of those times (which remained unchanged until the liberal laws of Emperor Joseph II were promulgated), that the populace thenceforth styled the hero of the story "Bethlen-Jude". This name clung to him until the royal edict, bidding Jews to assume family names, went into force, and then the name was changed to "Bettelheim". Among the family relics preserved by a scion of the house in Galgóc/Freystadtel on the Waag, is an oil-painting which depicts the daring rescue of the Jewess from the hands of her abductor.

Of the descendants bearing the name of Bettelheim the following are the most prominent:

• Albert Siegfried Bettelheim (1830–1890)
• Anton Bettelheim (November 11, 1851, Vienna - March 29, 1930, Vienna), Austrian writer, literary critic (Literaturkritiker)
• Caroline von Gomperz-Bettelheim
• Felix Albert Bettelheim
• Jacob Bettelheim/Jakob Bettelheim (pseudonym, Karl Tellheim; October 24, 1841, Vienna - July 13, 1909, Berlin), writer, translator
• Karl Bettelheim/Carl Bettelheim (September 28, 1840 Vienna - July 27, 1895), Austrian physician
• Leopold Bettelheim
• Samuel Bettelheim
• Helene Bettelheim-Gabillon
• Bruno Bettelheim (August 28, 1903, Vienna - March 13, 1990 Silver Spring, Maryland, USA), psychologist
• Charles Bettelheim, Socialist economist
• Bernard Jean Bettelheim, Christian missionary

[edit] References

This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain.

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