Background

Liebes in Prussia

Three Jewish heads of families registered the family name Liebes in Kempen, Posen Province (now Kępno, Poznan, Poland) in 1834: Jacob, Joachim, and Salomon. At least one other head of household (Wolff Liebes) was living in Kempen at the same period.

Very slightly later, Liebes families are found in nearby towns such as Rawitch and Ostrowo. These families later moved to Breslau and Berlin, and later to the New World.

Liebes in Alsace-Lorraine

The Liebes family name is found in Alsace before the French Revolution. In old records (including Ancien Regime Catholic records), the name was spelled Libes. A Frantz Anton Liebes, born in 1810, who seems to have been the first in the family to be able to read and write, mentions in his third marriage act that his name was misspelled Libes in his birth act and should be spelled Liebes, and he signs in German Altschrift. How did he know? Where did he learn to write? Anyhow, there seems to be a link between Alsatian and more Germanic Liebes families.

Liebes in the New World

There seem to have been two periods of intense migration out of the “Old World”: one in the second half of the 19^th century (maybe something to do with the 1848 troubles in Prussia and elsewhere in Europe – is there a historian who can help here?) and the second of course during the Nazi period.

A Kempen LIEBES settled in England in the mid 19^th century and changed his name to LEBUS to preserve pronunciation.

There were many LIEBES settlers in the 19^th century, both in North and South America, from the Prussian and English branches (the latter changed their name back to LIEBES) and possibly from the Friesian branch