Ketubah documenting the wedding of Josef Pollatschek to Hildegard Loewe-Fischer. Shanghai, China. Saturday (!), December 6, 1947 [23rd of Kislev, 5708]. Chinese. Signatures and transliteration of names in Latin script.
Printed form, decorated with characteristic Chinese motifs, in bold colors: cherry and peach blossoms, birds and butterflies ("bird-and-flower painting"), and bearing a broad decorative frame featuring an array of dragons in various colors.
Marriage contract arranged in several columns. The names of the bridegroom and bride appear in the far-right column, and the remaining columns show the names of the attorney who compiled the contract, along with the names of the witnesses: Hermine Weinberger, Dr. Alfred Lackenbacher, Georg März, and Erich Weinberger. The second column from the right gives all the above names, handwritten in Chinese, alongside their transliterations into Latin script. Additional details appear in Latin script: "Karlhaus" (apparently the birthplace of the bridegroom); and "Café Renée" (possibly the venue where the contract was drawn up, or perhaps the bridegroom’s workplace [?] See below).

Josef Pollatschek (apparently a native of Karlhaus, Slovakia, today Károlyháza, Hungary), lived in Vienna prior to the Second World War, and dealt in textiles. Fled Vienna to Shanghai in the course of the war; his name appears on a list, dated August 1944, of foreign refugees living in Shanghai ("List of Foreigners Residing in Dee Lay Jao Police District"), wherein his occupation is listed as "Tea-room owner." Hildegard (Hilda) Pollatschek, native of Berlin, also escaped to Shanghai sometime during the war. Josef and Hildegard are documented as a married couple in a list compiled in Shanghai by the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in 1950. The couple moved to Canada following the war and subsequently settled in Berlin, where they lived till their deaths (for more information regarding their biographies, see enclosed material; see also: Lawrence S. Freund, "A Bygone Yesterday: A Family Story, " Bloomington, Indiana: Xlibris, 2016, chapter 7).

Dr. Alfred Lackenbacher was a lawyer, a native of Baden, who lived in Vienna before escaping to Shanghai.
In the wake of the horrors of the "Reichskristallnacht" (November 1938), a large number of Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria arrived in Shanghai, China, whose gates were open to Jewish immigration at a time when many other countries had closed their doors. From November 1939 through July 1940, some 18,000 refugees entered Shanghai (estimates go as high as 20,000). Most of the migrants arrived penniless, and were absorbed and supported by local Jewish aid agencies. In 1943, following orders issued by the Japanese occupation authorities, all Jewish refugees lacking citizenship were concentrated in Shanghai’s Hongkou District, where they suffered from overcrowding and poor hygienic conditions until the end of the war. Once the war was over, roughly half of the refugees immigrated to North America, and most of the remainder eventually arrived in Israel. By the time of the Communist takeover of China in 1949, the vast majority of Jews residing in Shanghai had departed, and scarcely a few thousand remained.

Only a handful of similar marriage contracts are known to have survived. In the collection of ketubot of the National Library of Israel (NLI), only two Chinese ketubot are documented, one from Hong Kong (dated 1937, written on a printed ketubah form from Baghdad) and the other from Harbin (dated 1924). For additional examples, see: Kedem Auction Catalogue no. 61, April 24, 2018, lot no. 100; and The René Braginsky Collection, Switzerland, item no. 71 (K114).

Approx. 51X38 cm. Overall good condition. Fold lines, evidence of rolling, and minor creases. Tears to edges. Housed in original dedicated cardboard case, with printed label.