43 Hanukkah menorah

Vienna, 1853

silver, embossed, engraved

present of the widow of Sámuel Leiner (Újpest), 1917

To commemorate her late husband, the widow of Sámuel Leiner, neé Antonia Adutt, a descendant of the Viennese Turkish Jewish family Adutt, donated all Jewish family antiquities to the museum in 1917. Her first Viennese ancestor was Adutt Leon, born in Constantinople (today Istanbul, Turkey), who founded his business enterprise in Vienna in 1818. Antonia married the glue and gelatin maker Samuel Leiner in Újpest in 1879. The widow wrote her will in 1917, and at the same time donated the precious family collection of Judaica to the museum, which had been open to the public for almost two years. The items take us back to the history of the Turkish-Jewish community in Vienna. The museum thanked the widow for her donation in the Jewish political weekly paper Egyenlőség, and it is from there that we know how the menorah had been used when it was not in the collection of a museum, but of a Sefardi Jewish family in Vienna.