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I remember my grandfather, Eduard Silberstein, as a quiet and gentle man, with a short grey beard and blue eyes. He possessed a keen sense of humor and could, on occasion, be the “life of the party.”
He was born in Jassy, Romania, in 1857, one of four children of Orthodox Jewish parents. His father, Osias, a prosperous merchant banker, sent his sons to a Cheder, a Jewish religious school. My grandfather and his brother Adolf (Dolfi) rebelled very early against this rather narrow and Talmud oriented education. They aspired to a more secular view on the world.
When came the time to go to a university, Eduard chose Vienna, and Leipzig or Heidelberg. (I am unsure about which of the two latter schools). He studied Law and Philosophy and graduated with degrees in both disciplines. His brother Dolfi went to Germany, studied Medicine, married a “suitable” German Jewish young lady, and practiced medicine in Berlin until Hitler's rise to power.
My grandfather's student days seemed happy. He was known to remark that he lent money to fellow students to pay their tailor, but that they always turned out to be more elegantly dressed than he was; he, the “rich” lender!
He spoke fluent Romanian, German, French (with me), Greek, (he read ancient classical Greek as well), Spanish. He had, however, great difficulty learning English; this in spite of his many travels to