STRAUSS Origin of surname

Levi Strauss (1829-1902), businessman and founder of company which made blue jeans, born as Löb Strauß in Buttenheim, Germany. His father died of tuberculosis when Strauss was aged sixteen. Two years later, at the age of eighteen, Strauss, his mother and two sisters went to the United States to join his brothers Jonas and Louis, who had begun a wholesale dry goods business in New York City called J. Strauss Brother & Co. Levi went to live in Louisville and sold his brothers' products throughout Kentucky. The family then decided to open a West Coast branch in San Francisco. Levi was chosen to represent the family and he took a steamship for San Francisco, arriving in early March 1853, where he joined his sister's family who already lived there.

Around 1872, Levi received a letter from one of his customers, Jacob Davis, a tailor from Reno, Nevada. In his letter, Davis disclosed the unique way he made pants for his customers, through the use of rivets at points of strain to make them last longer. Davis wanted to patent this new idea, but needed a business partner to get the idea off the ground. Levi was enthusiastic about the idea. The patent was granted to both men on May 20, 1873; the day the blue jean was born.
Levi carried on other business pursuits during his career, as well. He became a charter member and treasurer of the San Francisco Board of Trade in 1877. He was a director of the Nevada Bank, the Liverpool, London and Globe Insurance Company and the San Francisco Gas and Electric Company. In 1875, Levi and two associates purchased the Mission and Pacific Woolen Mills.

He was also one of the city’s greatest philanthropists. Levi was a contributor to the Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Home, the Eureka Benevolent Society and the Hebrew Board of Relief. In 1897, Levi provided the funds for twenty-eight scholarships at the University of California, Berkeley, all of which are still in place today. He died in San Francisco.

Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009), anthropologist and ethnologist considered by many to be the father of modern anthropology, born in Brussels, Belgium, to French parents who were at the time living in Brussels, he was brought up in Paris, France. His father was a painter, his maternal grandfather was the rabbi of Versailles, France. He studied law and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1935 he joined a French cultural mission to Brazil and was appointed visiting professor of sociology at the University of Sao Paulo. His wife became visiting professor of ethnology at the same institution.

From 1935-1939 the couple undertook field work together and studied ethnic groups in the Mato Grosso and Amazon Rain Forest areas. In 1938 Levi-Strauss’ wife suffered an injury which prevented her from completing some research so he proceeded to do so alone. It was this experience that confirmed his career as an anthropologist. In 1939 he returned to France and served in the French army until the capitulation in 1940. He then became a school teacher until he was dismissed under the Vichy racial laws and stripped of his French citizenship. He managed to leave France and spent most of World War II in New York, USA, as Professor at the New School for Social Research. After the end of World War II, he received a doctorate from the Sorbonne in anthropology.

In 1949 Levi-Strauss published his "Elementary Structures of Kinship" which was soon recognized as one of the most important anthropological works on the subject and in particularly regarding the position of women in non-western cultures. He argued that families acquire definite identities through their members’ relationships with one another. Thus it is not only the central individuals (husband, wife, children) who are important. He was involved with the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Musee de l’Homme in Paris. By 1955 he was known as one of France’s best known intellectuals when he published Tristes Tropiques, which combined philosophical meditation with ethnographic analyses of the Amazonian peoples. Four years later he published "Structural Anthropology", a collection of essays which gave examples and pragmatic statements about what he called ‘Structuralism’. “Structuralism was”, he said, “the search for unsuspecting harmonies”. At the same time he began to organize the establishment of several institutions in France for the study of anthropology including a Laboratory for Social Anthropology where new students could learn the discipline and a journal where research could be published.

In 1962 he published what was considered his most important work La Pensee Sauvage ["The Savage Mind"], which is about primate thought. The book sets out his theory of culture and mind and also a theory of history and social change. In this he rejected the notion that Western civilization is privileged and unique. With his emphasis on form over content he insisted that the savage mind is equal to the civilized mind. He believed that the characteristics of man are everywhere identical and this belief was the result of his many travels to Brazil and his meetings with the Indian tribes there. He derived this view from a school of linguistics whose focus was not on the meaning of words, but rather on the patterns which the words form. As a result he produced a theory of how the mind works.

In1973 Levi-Strauss was elected to the Academie Francaise. He received a number of international prizes and received honorary doctors from Oxford, Harvard and Columbia Universities. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Philosophical Society. He received many other honors both in France and elsewhere. After his death he was described as having been “one of the dominant postwar influences in French intellectual life and the leading exponent of Structualism in the social sciences.”

Adolf Strausz (1853-1944), diplomat and political economist born in Cece (Czecze), Hungary (then part of the Austrian Empire). He studied at a military academy and also at the University of Budapest, and for some time served with the general staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army. A specialist on events and conditions in the Near East, he was on several occasions sent to the Balkans and to Asiatic Turkey as an advocate of the power politics of his government. While acquainting himself with most of the leaders in the Balkans and becoming a man of importance himself, he profited from his travels to delve into the languages, cultures and aspirations of the Balkan peoples and became a champion of their national independence.

From 1880 to the end of WW I, Strausz was considered one of the senior experts on Balkan affairs, and he rendered great services especially to Bulgaria. His articles received wide publicity in leading European newspapers.
From 1890 to 1923 he was professor of the commercial geography and ethnography of the Balkans at the Oriental Academy of Commerce and at the University of Budapest. He co-founded and edited "Revue de l'Orient" and "Die Donaulaander". He edited also "Gazette de Hongrie". During the Russo-Japanese war he was appointed representative of the Japanese emperor from Vienna to Constantinople.

Strausz was among the earliest supporters of Zionism in Hungary. During WW I, he sensed the growing menace of anti-Semitism, and immediately after the war received permission from the government to organize Jewish self-defense in order to prevent pogroms. The Karlsbad Zionist Congress of 1921 delegated him to travel to the Land of Israel; his descriptions of that journey were published by the international press.

While in several of his writings dealing with the Balkans he described also the Jews living in the different places, from the 1920's onwards he devoted himself more exclusively to research on the history of the Jews in Italy. In 1929 appeared his "Das Roemische Ghetto, die zweithausend-jaahrige Geschichte der juediscen Gemeinde zu Rom".

Strausz received many distinctions, including those from the king of Bulgaria and the Holy Dragon Order of Japan. In 1923 he retired. He was honorary president of the Zionist Organization of Hungary.

His numerous published books include "Bosnien, Land und Leute" (Hungarian, 1881; German, 1882); "Bulgarische Industrie" (1886); "Voyage au Montenegro" (1888); "Die Balkan-Halbinsel" (1888); "Bulgarische Grammatik"; "Bulgarische Volkdichtungen" (1894); "Romania" (1894); "Paris" (1898); "Bulgaria ipara" ("Bulgarian Industry", 1901); "Szerbia" (1903); "Die Asiatische Tuerkey" (1905); "Die neue Balkanhalbinsel und das tuerkische Reich" (1913); "Grossbulgarien" (1917); "Das osmanische Reich" (1917).

Oscar Straus (1870-1954), composer, born in Vienna, Austria. He studied in Vienna and Berlin with Max Bruch. During the Nazi regime he lived in France and in the United States. In 1948 he went back to Vienna. Straus gained international fame through his operettas, notably A Waltz  Dream (performed 1907), The Chocolate Soldier (per. 1908) and The Last Waltz (per. 1920). His operettas have a unique artistic quality which distinguishes them from other operettas. He also composed instrumental works, film scores and about five hundred cabaret songs. He died in Bad Ischl, Austria.

Eliyahu Ashtor (born Eduard Strauss) (1914-1984), historian and librarian, born in Vienna, Austria. He attended the Theological Seminar in Vienna for five years. In 1936 he graduated as Doctor of Philosophy in Oriental studies and history at the University of Vienna.

In 1938, following the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany, he immigrated to Eretz Israel, then British Mandate of Palestine and changed his name from Eduard Strauss to Eliyahu Ashtor. From 1939 to 1957 he was librarian at the oriental department of the National and University Library at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Ashtor continued his studies at Hebrew University and received his PhD in Philosophy.

He taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1948 until 1954 under a research fellowship and a teaching contract. In 1955 he was admitted to the faculty as a lecturer of Arabic studies. Ashtor was admitted to the Faculty of Law in 1956 as a lecturer in Islamic law. He was in the faculty until 1968. In 1963 Ashtor was appointed to associate professor and then professor, in 1969. From 1967 to 1968 he was Directeur d’etudes associes, at the "Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes", Section des sciences economiques, Sorbonne, Paris, France. He was visiting professor at the department of history at Harvard University from 1968 to 1969 and from 1972 to 1973 he was visiting lecturer at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Aryeh Ludwig Strauss (1892-1953), poet and writer, born in Aachen, Germany. He first wrote poems and stories in German. He then became a Zionist, associated with the Ha-Poel ha-Tzair movement and served as the editor of its periodical. In 1924 he visited Eretz Israel. From 1929 till 1933 he taught German literature at the University of Aachen. Following a second visit to Eretz Israel, in 1934, and the Nazi rise to power, Strauss emigrated to Eretz Israel and settled in Jerusalem where he taught at Hebrew University.
Strauss’ essays on aesthetics and on Hebrew literature were published posthumously entitled Be-Darkhei Sifrut (1959). Among his last works are the drama Tiberius (1924), the story Der Reiter (1929), the poems in German Land Israel (1934), the fairy tales collection Die Zauberdrachenschnur (1936), the poem Heimliche Gegenwart (1952) and the book of aphorisms Wintersaat (1953). He died in Jerusalem.