Aron Benario from Obernbreit was an important merchant. His economic success was accompanied by his reputation in the town. From 1865, he was the first Jew to be elected to the municipal council twice.
Aron Benario
The biography of the Benario family is typical of the development of rural Jewry. In 1817, when the Jews in Bavaria had to adopt new surnames instead of their traditional names, Moses Loew chose the name Lobbenstein. This was denied to him, so he called himself Benario (from nen ari; Hebrew for son and lion) and added the O for Obernbreit. The purchase is listed in the register: "Mixed goods business".
Since the business was not profitable enough for his five sons, Aron, who was born in 1823, tried his hand at other trades: he became an apprentice to a watchmaker and worked for farmers in Obernbreit. "So I grew older and older in stupidity . . . until I reached the age of eighteen." At the same time, he was not idle in business. In his autobiography, he reports on an extremely successful exchange of Coburg coins together with his brother, who had a one-horse carriage. "Later we bought a pair of small horses . . . the harness for it was lent to me by Herr von Hirsch . . . which I later bought cheaply. . . . Now the carriage was complete, and so the driving began."
From these beginnings, he built up an unrivalled haulage company, where he became particularly rich in the construction of the railway line.
He bought "plots of land that were cheap at the time" and sold them at a profit. When the railway work was already completed . . . [I] dared . . . to start an iron business."
He was also extremely successful in this profession. He built a representative house opposite the town hall for this purpose. Following the trend of the time towards convenient locations, he first founded a branch in Marktbreit and gave up the business in Obernbreit in 1879.
The economic success had also gone hand in hand with his reputation in the village. From 1865 he was the first Jew to be elected twice to the municipal council.
When he died in 1890, none of his brothers and eleven children were still living in Obernbreit. Friendly connections between descendants in America and the sponsoring and sponsoring association of the former synagogue Obernbreit e.V. still exist.
Friedrich Heidecker