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Nov. 12, 2018—Bob Leisz (b 1939), grandson of Leisz Brother Joseph, shared a few fun facts today. Those of you at the 2018 Reunion remember Bob—he's the one who drove 4,000 miles round trip with spouse Josie from their home in Hemet, CA to Turtle Lake! Here's what Bob shared today:

HAMBURG HAS A LEISZ MUSIC HALL! It's actually spelled  Laeisz. The Laeiszhalle, formerly Musikhalle Hamburg, is a concert hall in Hamburg, Germany and is home to the Hamburger Symphoniker and the Philharmonic Hamburg. It was built from 1904-1908.

Famous composers including Igor Stravinsky played and conducted their works in the Laeiszhalle, and Maria Callas performed there in the 1960s. Later Pink Floyd, Bee Gees and Elton John have played there.

The hall is named after the  German Shipowning Company F. Laeisz (pronounce lyze; short FL), founder of the concert venue. An old established company, it is today still active shipping company, with offices in Hamburg, Rostock, Bremerhaven and Grabow, Germany, as well as Japan and the Philippines.

While these Laeisz's ae likely not directly related to our branch of the family, they may be distant relatives from centuries ago. Attention Ancestry.com researchers: Try entering the spelling Laeisz and see what comes up!

NOTE: ABOVE INFORMATION IS COURTESY OF BOB LEISZ'S SON STEVE LEISZ (b. 1963). Today a professor at Colorado State University, Steve was in the Peace Corps years ago and traveled throughout Europe during that time. It was then that Steve discovered this information of interest to our family. Thanks Steve and Bob!

The great-grandson of Leisz Brother Joseph, Stephen Joseph Leisz (b. 26 Dec 1963) is a professor in the department of anthropology at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Steve wrote the following email on 31 Jan 2021:

"I have a question that I am wondering if anyone in the extended Leisz family can answer: Does anyone know what our surname means or the history of it?  

The reason I’m asking this is that I have informally done a bit of research on the name’s meaning, ever since I met two German tourists in an outdoor restaurant near the harbor in Kupang, West Timor, Indonesia in 1998.  

As background I’ll write out the story as well as what I have been able to find out about the Leisz name since then. Between all of the family, maybe we can actually figure out what our surname means."

While there working with the office for a few days, I took one afternoon to walk around the city and I was by the harbor, sitting at an outdoor restaurant, eating a late lunch. There were only two other tourists there, two older women, and they asked me where I was from, in heavily accented English. 

Kupang is not a popular tourist destination in Indonesia and I was the first foreigner they had seen there, and they were the first I had seen (except for a colleague at WWF). We talked a bit and I found out that they were both retired and from Germany. 

When we exchanged names, I pronounced “Leisz” as I usually introduce myself in Europe using a German pronunciation (as I have found the correct pronunciation is with a long “i” instead of a long “e”, sort of like halfway between “Lice” and “Lize”) and they asked me how it was spelled. 

They then told me what they knew about our name. They said that they believed that Leisz was originally spelled Leiß. They also explained that when typewriters were first introduced there was no ß so when the name was typed it would be typed using as a ‘sz’ or ‘ss’ or ‘tz’ in the place of ß to indicate the sound made by that letter (which is sometimes called the German long ‘S’ from what I understand); how it was typed depended upon where in the German speaking world you were. 

So according to them Leisz is the same name as Leitz and Leiss and Leiß. They then explained that from their knowledge, when typewriters came out the ß was typed in the north of Germany as ‘ss’ in the middle part of the German speaking world (southern Germany today) as ‘tz’ and in the Austro-Hungarian Empire as ‘sz’.  If this is true then our family is also related to families with the surnames Leiss, Leitz and Leiß. 

As an aside Leitz is also the name of a very large office supply company in Germany and the Leitz Group is known for making precision woodworking tools. 

Another thing I discovered about our name came from Google Earth and internet search engines. When they first were becoming popular in the mid-2000s I typed Leisz into the search Google Earth search bar, and the program zoomed into “Leiszhalle” in Hamburg, Germany. 

I then typed “Leisz Hamburg” into the yahoo search engine and a document about the “Leisz ‘Flying P’ line of Hamburg came up. That was about a shipping line that was started in the late 1800s out of Hamburg owned by a family with a similar surname to ours. However, since then the spelling on the internet of the company name and the Hamburg Hall name has changed to Laeisz in both cases, so the hall is Laeiszhalle, and the shipping line is Laeisz Shipping line.  However, the pronunciation of the surname in German is “lyze” which is the same as the German pronunciation of our name. 

So, in closing, does anyone know what our name Leisz means?  Or if we are related to any of these other surnames that are pronounced similarly to ours in the German speaking world?"

"I do remember a story my Dad told me (Bob Leisz, b. 1939 from Hemet, CA) that came from his grandpa (Leisz Brother Joseph). He said that sometime in the early to mid-1800s that his parents (Anna Maria "Mary" Schmidt Leisz and spouse Leopold/Lipot Leisz) had come from the Alsace-Lorraine region and had moved east.  

Also, there is a Doug Leisz out in northern California, who my sister Nadine corresponded with in the early 1980s (1984 or 1985 I think). He had been high up in the Forest Service and Nadine came across his name on documents when she was going through files at the Forestry Desk in the Peace Corps offices that we both worked in. 

Doug said his wife had done some genealogical research and found out that his branch of the Leisz family had come into the U.S. in the 1840s via Mexico—the route was Mexico (Texas maybe? not sure where), to Kansas, to Northern California (around the time of the gold rush maybe).  He claimed that his wife's research showed that his branch and our branch were related from the same area of the German-speaking world. So there may be that connection, too."

ON JUNE 5, 2021, KARYN LEISZ-FOLEY (SEE ABOVE STORY RE DOUG LEISZ) JUST SHARED A DOCUMENT HER MOTHER CREATED ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF THE LEISZ SURNAME. HERE IT IS, CHECK IT OUT!

Steve Leisz, great-grandson of Leisz Brother Joseph, looked at the surname document that Karyn Leisz-Foley sent us are replied, "It seems very plausible that our branch is related to Douglas Leisz's branch of the family and from that 4th (if I remember correctly) brother mentioned in the document - at least geographically the families seemed to originate in the same area, only ours went east before coming to the U.S. 

I wish Grandpa Joe (Joseph Francis Leisz (1910-1993, eldest son of Leisz Brother Joseph) was still alive to ask about all of this. My father told me many years ago, probably when I was in my early teens or even before, that Grandpa Joe told him that before our Leisz's were in eastern Europe they had lived in the Alsace region (modern border of Germany and France). That would put them coincident of Douglas's family."

This is exciting and may be the information we need to connect these two family branches back in Europe! Thanks Steve and Karyn. 

DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE MEANING OF THE SURNAME LEISZ? CONTACT US HERE AND LET US KNOW!