Some impossibilities
1. Could Salomon Cassirer be Siegfried Cassirer and could Simon and Leopold thus be two previously unaccounted for children of Siegfried and Henriette? This is attractive as a possibility because, as Irene Newhouse wrote in 2005 (Family Tree, footnote 217) "I'd have expected Siegfried to have been named Scheftel, Samuel, Saul or Salomon at birth, incidentally." (My emphasis).
However, for this to be the case, two of the children (Julie and Simon) would have been born on 7 Nov and 19 October 1848 respectively , which is biologically so close to impossible as to be out of consideration! In addition, Ernestine Wachsmann would have had to have been a first wife of Siegfried Cassirer (see 2 below).
2. Could Ernestine Wachsmann have been a first wife for Siegfried Cassirer prior to Henriette Fisher (1821-91)? This is not possible because Henriette's children (Jenny and Julie were born in 1848 and 1844 respectively whilst Ernestine's children (Simon and Leopold) were born in 1848 and 1847 respectively. So the two wives would have been producing children in the same years, which is not considered proper.
Therefore we may conclude that Siegfried Cassirer was not Salomon Cassirer and is NOT the father of this line.
3. Could Leopold be a direct descendant of Markus Cassirer? This is a preferred explanation from the history as understood by Johanna Goerke from her grandmother. Her grandmother was known to have a clear and accurate memory and Johanna recalls her as saying that Bruno Cassirer and Leopold Cassirer were brothers and that Leopold is a descendant of Salomon Cassirer.
3.1 Could Leopold be a son of Salomon (Salo) Cassirer? Leopold Cassirer was born in 1847. Salomon Cassirer was born in 1847. Therefore Leopold could not be a son of Salomon.
3.2 Could one of the later descendants be related to Salomon Cassirer? Quite a bit is known about most of Salo’s children ruling out any link. The most likely available link would be Salo’s daughter Paula Cassirer (1876-1907) who married Carl Gotthelf with daughter Hildegard Ida Gotthelf. Either another child or her daughter could have married a later descendant of this line since little is known about her. However there is no evidence of this at this point.
3.3 Could Leopold be a brother of Bruno Cassirer? There are several relevant people in the database:
(i) Bruno Cassirer (1872-1941) Leopold (1847-1927) would be 25 years younger than Bruno Cassirer and was born only 6 years after Bruno’s father Julius Cassirer. Leopold cannot be a brother of this Bruno Cassirer.
(ii) Bruno Walter Kaufmann (1903-1943) the father of Marion Cassirer ne Kaufmann was born too late to be a brother of Leopold.
(iii) Bruno Rosenbaum (born abt 1864 to 1885) was the husband of Margarete (Grete) Cassirer. Leopold was born 17 years earlier (only eight years after Bruno’s father in law) which makes it unlikely that he is a brother of this Bruno.
Louis Cassirer (1839-1904) was Bruno Rosenbaum’s father in law. Louis Cassirer’s daughter, Else (1873-1942), married Bruno Cassirer (1872-1941) in 1898. However it is hard to imagine a credible link between Leopold (1847-1927) and these facts.
So far there is no clear or likely link between any of the relatives named Bruno and Leopold. This does not mean that there was not another so far not known relative called Bruno who was not linked or indeed Leopold’s brother.
4. Could Markus (b 1801) possibly be the GF of the GF of Gertud? This is not possible for two reasons:
(i) We know who the parents of Markus are through documentary records and they are Moses Ben Loebel Cassirer, and his GF was thus Loebel Cassirer. So their Cassirer surname stretch back several more generations. The adopting of surnames amongst ashkenazic jews primarily took place in the 1700s up to the mid 1800s.[http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/printarticle.aspx?id=2126]
(ii) Consider:
GGGF Gertrud 1800 (say) - Bujakow - was a cashier at a "Grafen" (lord, count, earl?). Bujakow was given the name of Cassirer.
GGGF Gertud Bukajow (GF Salomon) b 1800 (say) GGF Gertrud b 1850 (say) GF Gertrud - Salomon b abt 1810 F Gertrud - Leopold Gertrud Cassirer
We are assuming here an unusually short life-time for each successive father, but in any case that puts the birth of Bukajow back before 1800.
5. Could Salomon be a brother of Markus Cassirer? We know that Salomon Cassirer - GF of Gertrud - must have been born around 1810 - even though we don't know the exact date. Reasoning for this is that men tended to be slightly older than their wives and then taking into account the age of the parents when children were born. This could of course be wrong but not very wrong.
(i) Salomon was born in the right period - perhaps to be born between Loebel and Jacob Cassirer.
(ii) Salomon could have been named after his maternal grandfather Salomon FRIEDLÄNDER (although there was a reluctance to use names of people until they were dead. While this is true in most communities of Ashkenazic Jews (Jews of Central and Eastern European origin), the opposite is the case among Sephardic Jews (Jews of Iberian or Middle-Eastern origin), who often choose to name children after living relatives.).[http://www.kveller.com/pregnancy/Naming/Choosing_A_Name.shtml]
But our Cassirers are Ashkenazic, descending as they do from Moses ben Israel Lazarus (Isserles-Lazarus) who was the author of "Darkhe Moshe" the ashkenazi viewpoint of Josef Caro's sephardic Halachic tradition and a codifier of ashkenazi traditions.[http://genealogy.meta-studies.net/ZDocs/Stories/stories01.html#] Rather awkwardly for this theory then is the fact that Salomon FRIEDLÄNDER lived until 6 Mar 1831 (according to the genealogy by Michael Geballe).
It strains credibility that Salomon Cassirer was born in 1831 since he would be 14 years younger than Ernestine (the date is from her gravestone, although it could have been mis-read). However, if we accept that this is credible then Simon would have been born when he was 17 (which is possible given Jewish men are adults at 13). But again it is hard to imagine Salomon marrying a women almost twice his age.
Conclusion
Leopold Cassirer, son of Salomon Cassirer and Ernestine Cassirer (ne Wachsmann) was most likely a grandson of Loebel moses Cassirer (1738-1808).
Salomon was the almost certainly the son of Mausche Cassirer and therefore not a son of Gerson or Hirsch or Jacob Cassirer . Consistent with this Ernestine is not amongst their known wives names nor is Salomon amongst their known children.
We have identified Mausche Cassirer, Arrendator of Bujakow as the father of Salomon Cassirer. Salomon’s son Loebel Cassirer married Ernestine who became Ernestine Wachsmann. Ernestine and her husband moved to Gogolin – close to Siegfried, where they developed their businesses in cement and possibly in conjunction with Markus, Simon and Siegfried in brewing. Ernestine and her husband would have produced a family of whom only the gravestone of Leopold and Simon have survived. It would be unusual for them only to have had two children. Perhaps also there was a son of Salmon called Bruno and that was the Bruno Cassirer who was one of Leopold’s brothers .