Odeda is right. In the UK by law  a woman always took the nationality of her husband.until well after WW2. .. In this case there may already have been difficulties in this marriage due to cultural differences, and also the husband may have lost his livelihood through being an enemy alien. Wives of enemy aliens tended to struggle financially if their own family couldn't support them.  British-born wives of enemy aliens  were in any case strongly  encouraged to divorce their husbands by public opinion after English fatalities started piling up. My relative's wife was attacked angry neighbours at one point .  However, money was the cause of the break-up of their marriage. He returned to Germany in 1920 to find work,  and his wife found the hostility and foreign language  made settling there with him impossible.
Eva Lawrence
St Albans, UK.

Such was the sexist attitude in times gone by (we forget what the prevailing mores was - women did not get the vote in GB until 1918 for the over 30s and in 1928 for the over 21s) that married women could not be naturalized directly or confer their citizenship onto others (unless they were widows) and their names do not appear on the naturalization papers of their spouses, yet the names of their husband's parents do, as well as their children residing with them aged under 21, in the case of Victorian and early 20th century naturalizations.

The same attitude was prevalent in wills where assets were left to sons but not to daughters (or daughters only received a small derisory amount), on the basis that future husbands would be providing for them (if they married). This caused poverty for some female family members who had brothers who had benefitted from their fathers' largesses.  I am never sure how much of this was due to attitudes of the time, or what could be called culturally Jewish "patriarchal" attitudes. Even more recently I have found evidence of this occurring post WW2 - where in one case assets were left to the son of the family, but nothing to the three daughters - despite them receiving a good education which would seem progressive. It all seems contradictory.

Jill Whitehead, Surrey, UK

Thanks for your reply.
Just been double checking on some old paperwork. It appears he came to Manchester in 1901 from Lemberg in Poland age 15. (incidentally a person of same name born same year appears in 1901 census ,but born in Manchester). I think I was wrong to assume he got citizenship by marrying. He was interned in the isle of man during WW1 and interned again during WW2.There appear to be so many half truths and untruths that after so many years I am unlikely to come up with a definitive answer.
Gerald Jacobs

On Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 05:20 PM, <gsjacobs412@...> wrote:

I am now guessing the first marriage was to enable him ( an eastern European) to stay in England, and the separation (described as a widower and a spinster) a method for both of them too move on.

May I suggest you check the naturalization laws in GB for that period in history?
Did a female British citizen really confer her citizenship on an alien male?

In England in the 1930's one of my Austrian born Jewish male relatives, who eventually had the honor to be sent to the Isle of Mann as an enemy alien married a gentile British born citizen - and she lost her citizenship. She even became an enemy alien herself for a short time (though not incarcerated). 


 
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Odeda Zlotnick
Jerusalem, Israel.

Thanks for all replies.

It sounds as though there were a lot of untruths involved. I am now guessing the first marriage was to enable him ( an eastern European) to stay in England, and the separation (described as a widower and a spinster) a method for both of them too move on. The synagogue authorities obviously were not too bothered about earlier involvements and let the marriage proceed, so I must presume that it was legal.

Obviously as this all happened a long time ago, I will never get definitive answers,, but I think I have got as far as I can. I am still tracking the first wife who remarried in 1913 and remarried again in 1917 (this time in New Zealand)
thanks again

Gerald Jacobs

I was at a family reunion on Sunday attended by the grandchildren of a family member who was divorced in the High Court of Scotland in Edinburgh in 1916, on her second attempt (the first had been in 1911).  She had been pregnant when she married her husband, and they had married in a synagogue in 1908 (in Glasgow where he came from, rather than Edinburgh where she came from), despite her Cohen husband being illegitimate himself with a mother who was not Jewish and a father who was Jewish. Clearly no checks had been made as the marriage was authorized by the synagogue.

The 1916 petition for divorce succeeded because her husband wanted to remarry (a non Jewish woman - whom he married in a church), so he could be proved to be the guilty party. The case was reported in the Scotsman newspaper, and after WW1 my widowed great grand aunt moved from Edinburgh to London with her daughters including the divorced wife and her son, presumably to escape the stigma. 

However, it was common for people to remarry when they were already married. There is a case of this in my husband's non Jewish family from the 19th century where a family member had originally married in Lancashire but a remarriage took place, also in Glasgow, where his ancestor was away for work purposes. 

Divorce was too expensive for most people, and I do not know who paid for my family's divorce in Edinburgh, whether it was one person or a number of family members, but presumably some financial recompense was made by the court in 1916 - nowadays assets are split half and half, but I do not know how they worked it out in 1916. 

Jill Whitehead, Surrey, UK

I notice that one marriage was before the Great War and the second one after. If your relative was not English,  an enemy alien, his English wife would have benefitted by divorcing him. I have a relative whose case was similar, though  I'm not sure whether his second marriage was a synagogue one, but it took place abroad.

A second thought is that divorces were expensive as well as frowned upon, so lying about the split may have been mutually agreed..

Eva Lawrence,

St Albans UK.

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Eva Lawrence
St Albans, UK.

On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 10:16 PM, <gsjacobs412@...> wrote:

First question is . would he be allowed to marry in a Synagogue after marrying out.

Allowed - or forbidden - by whom?

Third question is. If he was not a widower is the marriage strictly legal

According to whose laws?
 
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Odeda Zlotnick
Jerusalem, Israel.

I'll leave others to comment on questions #1 and #2, but as to #3:  Is it possible that your relative and wife No. 1 divorced?  Granted, this would (sadly) have entailed each of them lying on the occasion of their remarriages.  But I'm not sure this means that divorce can be ruled out as an explanation: after all, there was considerable stigma attached to divorce in those days.
Have you checked contemporary newspapers in case there is any record?

Peter Lobbenberg, London

I have a relative who married a non Jewish lady in a registry office in 1908. In 1919 he married a Jewish lady in a synagogue.
First question is . would he be allowed to marry in a Synagogue after marrying out.
On the marriage to the Jewish lady he is shown as a widower. I dont believe he was. It would appear that by the time he married for the second time his first wife had already remarried, and on her marriage certificate she was shown as a spinster. All rather suspicious
Second question is .what checks are likely to have taken place to confirm he was actually a widower. would he have been asked to supply a death certificate
Third question is. If he was not a widower is the marriage strictly legal

Gerald Jacobs