Born 17 January 1866 in Drogobych*, died 12 July 1926 in Karlsbad (Karlove Vary), now in Czech Republic. He married a cousin Adele Gartenberg, daughter of Lazar Gartenberg, one of the wealthiest industrialists ofthe coal-mining area and he became involved in the family coal oil business. At the turn of the 19th century he was one of the most influential people in Drogobych, involved in regional politics as a long-timedeputee mayor and executive of the local qahal [Jewish administrative organisation]. According to his contemporaries, he was the actual governor of the town, frequently abusing privileges. Members of the Zionist and social-democratic circles active in Drogobych region protested against Feuerstein. He was presented in the context of this feud under a pseudonym Marek Bergman in the novel Henryk Flis (1908) by Stanisław Antoni Mueller*, where he appeared as a calculating man and skilful manipulator acting in the interest of the Polish-Jewish group of coal-oil businessmen.
The fraud committed by Feuerstein during elections to the Austrian State Council on 19 June, 1911 was a direct cause of the riot which broke out in Drogobych, brutally suppressed by the military. If we are to believe Andrzej Chciuk*’s memoir, from a window of a house at the Market Square* Schulz watched the final and particularly brutal and unjustified stage of the pacification. After many years he would confess that the sight of the massacre not only caused a trauma but also provoked in him the need for literary expression: “It may sound brief and perfunctory but from that day on I knew I would write”.
The events of 1911 undoubtedly left a mark on Jakub Feuerstein’s image (including his posthumous image). In Ziemia księżycowa Chciuk writes about “the Feuerstein mafia”, an anonymous author of a brochure Prawda o wyborach drohobyckich, published soon after the event by the Lviv society “Kadimyh”, describes him – not without passion – as a tyrant and illiterate man. In recent publications,Wiesław Budzyński* or Stanisław Sławomir Nicieja describe him in a similar tone. It should be stressed that Jakub Feuerstein’s biography is complicated. Mścisław Mściwujewski* – as it happens, Feuerstein’s bitter opponent – notes that Feuerstein often became involved in helping charities and that he supported social initiatives. For example, he founded a Jewish Orphanage*, situated from 1913 on Sobieski Street.
Before WWI one of the streets in Drogobych was named after Jakub Feuerstein (it was changed to Sienkiewicz Street in the interwar period, currently it is Franko Street).
In 1914 the Feuerstein’s moved to Vienna. (jo)
See also: 19 June 1911*.
