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Bettelheim is a surname and Jewish family.

History

The first bearer of it is said to have lived toward the 2nd half of the 18th century, in Pozsony. To account for its origin the following episode is related in the family records:

There was a Jewish merchant in Pozsony, 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 Pozsony 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 Freystadtel, on the Waga (Hungarian: Galgóc(z)), is an oil-painting which depicts the daring rescue of the Jewess from the hands of her abductor.

People

• Leopold (Meyer Léb) Bettelheim (1777 - 1838), Hungarian physician (hu)
  • Sámuel Bettelheim (19th-c., Galgóc), Hungarian physician, politician (hu) ∞ Éva Bettelheim (19th-c.), Hungarian female Hebraist, Talmudist (hu)

• József Lipót Bettelheim (19th-c., Pozsony), Hungarian physician (hu)
• Lipót Bettelheim (19th-c.), Hungarian rabbi (hu)
• Mózes Bettelheim (19th-c.), a Jewish community pesident (hu)
• Bernard Jean Bettelheim (Hungarian: Bettelheim John Barnardé; 1811, Pozsony - 1870, Brookfield, Missouri), Hungarian Jewish Christian missionary
• Rosalie Bettelheim (1832, Budapest - 1892, Baden bei Wien), wife of Adolf Jellinek
• Jacob Bettelheim (pseudonym: Karl Tellheim; 1841, Vienna - 1909, Berlin), an Austrian-German dramatist
• Karl Bettelheim (1840, Pozsony - 1895, Vienna), Hungarian-Austrian physician (hu)

• Albert (Aaron) Siegfried Bettelheim, or simply Aaron S. B. (1830 - 1890), a Hungarian rabbi and Hebraist, journalist
  • Felix Albert Bettelheim (1861, Hlohovec - 1890, Baltimore, Md.), a Hungarian physician and surgeon acted in Panama

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  • Caroline von Gomperz-Bettelheim (Hungarian: Bettelheim-Gomperz Caroline; 1845, Pest - December 13, 1925, Vienna), Hungarian-Austrian court singer ∞ Julius von Gomperz (1824 - 1909)
  • Anton Bettelheim (1851, Vienna - 1930), a Hungarian-Austrian author, literary critic, journalist

• Henri Bettelheim, a Viennese Jew
  • Charles Bettelheim (1913, Paris - 2006), Austrian-French socialist economist

• Bruno Bettelheim (1903 - 1990), Austrian psychologist

• Oszkár Betlen (Bettelheim) (1909, Pozsony - 1969, Budapest), Hungarian journalist, historian (hu)
• Mildred Constantine Bettelheim (1913, Brooklyn, New York - 2008), an American curator

Other members

• Adolf Bettelheim (Hungarian: Bettelheim Adolf)
• Ernst Bettelheim, a Budapest lawyer
• Mór Bettelhelm, Hungarian banker
• Richard Bettelheim
• Samu Bettelheim, Hungarian writer

References

This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia article "Bettelheim" by Isidore Singer, George Alexander Kohut, Edgar Mels, Joseph Sohn, Cyrus Adler, William Salant, a publication now in the public domain.

This page or section lists people with the surname Bettelheim. If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name(s) to the link.