FACING THE CHINESE embassy in London’s Portland Place, there is an imposing Art Deco edifice standing on a corner plot. It is the home of the Royal Institute of British Architects (‘RIBA’). We visited the place in August 2024 to view a small exhibition called “Raise the Roof: Building for Change”. Amongst other things, it explores the role of British architects, such as Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, in enforcing the image of British imperialism during the 1930s in South Africa and India. After viewing this, we wandered around the RIBA building, which, as was explained in the exhibition, contains materials collected from the Empire as well as images depicting the arrogantly supposed superiority of the British colonisers over the colonised.
The building contains various informative panels, which explain aspects of its history. It was constructed between 1932 and 1934. The architect George Grey Wornum (1888-1957), who was born in London, designed the RIBA building.
In one of the meeting halls, there is an elegant carved wooden screen, The Dominion Screen, which was carved in Quebec pine and designed by the artist Denis Dunlop (1892-1959). It contains vignettes of life in five former British possessions (only 4 of which were Dominions): Australia, South Africa, India, Canada, and New Zealand. It was paid for by William Lewis Gerstle (1868-1947), who was born in San Francisco (USA). His daughter, Miriam (1898-1989) married George Grey Wornum in 1923. She was a designer. Seeing the name Gerstle on the information panel next to the screen rang a bell in my mind.
There was an extensive Gerstle family living in the Bavarian town of Ichenhausen (near Günzburg) during the 19th century. I knew this because when researching my mother’s family, I took a great interest in this small town. It was where two of her ancestors were born. At least one of their relatives married a Gerstle from Ichenhausen. I wondered whether Miriam Gerstle’s family were originally from Ichenhausen.
When I got home, I did a little research on the Internet, and soon discovered that Miriam’s father, William, was the son of Lewis Gerstle, who was born in Ichenhausen in 1824. He died in San Francisco in 1892 (www.geni.com/people/Lewis-Gerstle/6000000008091395228). Like many Jewish people from Ichenhausen, he left the small town to seek his fortune elsewhere – in his case, in the USA. He arrived in California in 1850. During this period, many other members of his family migrated to the USA (see: www.angelfire.com/ab7/yamey/ICH.html). Many members of my mother’s family (descendants of Jakob Seligmann [1775-1843] and Moses Wimpfheimer [born 1784] of Ichenhausen) did the same thing; they went to larger German cities, such as Augsburg, to the USA, to France, and to South Africa, where my mother was born.
It turns out that Miriam Wornum is my fourth cousin twice removed!
I am pleased that after so many years of having passed the RIBA building, we finally got to see its interior, which, incidentally, is open to the public. It is a fine example of the architecture that was fashionable in the 1930s. What I had not expected was to discover that its architect was married to a lady whose ancestors were born in the same small German town as those of my mother.
yamey 