The name Mühsam

My 6×great-grandfather Pinkus was born around 1741 in Zülz, Silesia, a rabbi's son, at a time when Jews in the German lands had no fixed legal rights at all. At about sixteen he was a grenadier in Frederick the Great's army at the Battle of Leuthen — 5 December 1757, Prussia outnumbered three to one, a victory still taught in military academies. In the chaos a senior officer was wounded and taken; Pinkus dealt with the patrol, tied the man to his own back, and crawled him across a frozen field of the dead and dying, flattening himself whenever a patrol passed, until he reached the Prussian lines. Frederick had the young soldier brought before him, promoted him, and told him: if you ever find yourself in need, come to your King.

After the war Pinkus married Barbara, of Byczyna, and they built a prosperous trading business near Pitschen. In 1780 he bought land in the town itself, built a house, and arrived with the family's belongings — and the Magistrate turned them back at the town limits, invoking a privilege of 1555 that let Pitschen exclude Jews. The furniture was never even unloaded. For four years Pinkus fought on every legal front available: petitions refused, appeals deferred, and royal Cabinet Orders from Frederick himself — which the Magistrate simply ignored.

So, twenty-seven years after the battle, Pinkus remembered what the King had said. He and Barbara walked to Berlin — several hundred kilometres, on foot, in winter — and were granted their audience. Frederick heard the account, was furious, and declared, in words the family has carried ever since, that whoever had been forced to fight so arduously — so mühsam — for his rights deserved the support of his King: he commanded that Pinkus bear that word as his name. To Barbara he said: “She has a brave man.” The royal command was issued in writing on 18 December 1785. Pitschen resisted one final year — and when the family at last entered as recognised residents, the decent citizens of the town came out to welcome them, a band of music at the head.

Pinkus and Barbara lived out their lives in Pitschen, raised nine children, and were buried in Namysłów — Pitschen had no Jewish cemetery of its own; their Hebrew gravestones still stood, much worn, into the twentieth century. He died on 28 July 1807, she on 14 August 1822. Their daughter's line runs eight generations and roughly 285 years down to me — through a great-great-grandmother murdered at the Ninth Fort in 1941, and her granddaughter who escaped to England — and it is the reason my maternal line carries the name Mühsam at all. The story rests on a 1912 family chronicle and modern genealogical research, independently confirmed by a second compiled record.