Gisela A. Weil Collection 1829-2005 Bulk dates: 1933-1985

The Gisela Weil Family Collection holds material by and about members of her family, especially the family of her mother, the Warburgs, and the various branches of their family. The collection includes correspondence, many articles both published and unpublished, clippings, official papers and educational certificates, lengthy narratives by family members, and a few photographs.Series I comprises papers of the Meyer/ Mitchell family. The bulk of these consist of the correspondence of Felix Meyer (later Mitchell). These letters were written from Felix in England to his family members, most often his parents and younger sister Gisela.The second series contains the papers of the lawyer Erwin Weil, Gisela Meyer's eventual husband. All of his papers derive from the years prior to their marriage.The largest series of the collection is Series III, which focuses on the members of the Warburg family.Series IV consists of papers of more distant family members, including members of the Derenberg, Schiff and Robinow families.The final series of this collection contains articles included in the collection without clear indication to which family branch or member they belonged.Olga Meyer was the daughter of Willy Elkan and Elsa Warburg Elkan. Following the death of Willy Elkan, Elsa married her second husband George Melchior in 1917. In 1920 her daughter Olga married Adolph Meyer; they lived in Hamburg and had two children, Felix and Gisela. Olga and Adolph's son Felix was sent to boarding school in Scotland in 1937. Later, he joined the British Army's Intelligence unit as a translator and interrogator of German POWs, serving in the 8th Hussars Division. Upon becoming a citizen Felix changed his surname to Mitchell. After the war, he stayed in Great Britain and lived in London for the rest of his life. He went on to become a managing director of several firms. In 1928 he married Eva Rose, who was active in Jewish causes and became an executive of the United British Fund for World Jewish Relief. While Felix was in England his parents and sister immigrated first to Holland and then to Ann Arbor, Michigan, with the assistance of Olga's mother Elsa Warburg Melchior. They later moved to White Plains, New York, where for several years they resided in a house that belonged to the Warburg family. Erwin Weil was born in 1906 in Frankfurt am Main, the son of the engineer Theodor Weil and his wife Martha Weil née Hirschheim. In 1935 he immigrated to the United States with the assistance of his brother Rudolph and his cousin Siegmund Herzfeld. At some point later he married Gisela Meyer.Processeddigitize