Birth Name: Gregor Florian Gysi
Place of Birth: Lichtenberg, East Berlin, Soviet occupation zone of Germany
Date of Birth: January 16, 1948
Ethnicity:
*37.5% German (including Baltic German, 1/32 Austrian and remote Swiss-German)
*25% Ashkenazi Jewish
*25% Russian
*12.5% Walloon, possibly remote Sephardi Jewish
Gregor Gysi is an German politician, attorney, and author.
Gregor Gysi’s parents were Klaus Gysi and Irene Olga Lydia Lessing. Both were communists and part of the German resistance during the Nazi Era.
Klaus Gysi was born in Berlin to Herrmann Gysi, a doctor, and Erna Polowsky, an accountant.
His paternal grandfather, Herrmann Gysi, was also from Berlin. His surname can be traced back to Samuel Gysin, who was born in 1681 and emigrated to Germany in the early 17th century from Läufelfingen, Switzerland.
His paternal grandmother, Erna Polowsky, was from Bensheim, Hesse, and her parents were Julius Potolowsky and Karoline Frank. Julius Potolowsky was likely Russian and not Jewish, as Erna was classified as a Half-Jew by the Nazi government. Karolina Frank was from a Jewish family that had lived in Rhineland-Palatinate for generations. She was killed in the Holocaust in 1943. Her parents were named Marx Franck and Esther Dreifus.
Irene Olga Lydia Lessing was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Her family was expelled to Germany at the beginning of World War I. Her parents were Gottfried Lessing and Tatjana von Schwanebach.
The parents of his maternal grandfather, Gottfried Lessing, were Anton Lessing and Lydia Marie Francoise de Cuyper. Anton was a German Jew from Bavaria who came to Russia after his commercial apprenticeship to start industrial companies. He administered a mine that employed over 40,000 people and later founded the Kolomnaer Maschinenbau-AG, which played a key role in the industrialization of Russia. Lydia Marie Francoise de Cuyper was from Liege, Belgium. Her parents were Antoine de Cuyper and Francoise Saporta. The surname Saporta is almost exclusively found among Sephardi Jews of Spanish origin and also in a few Christian families who could have left Judaism after the Reconquista.
His maternal grandmother, Tatjana von Schwanebach, was from Russia. Her parents were Nicolai Anton von Schwanebach and Olga Saburowa. Olga was from a Russian noble family, and Nicolai was from a noble family of German origin with some Austrian ancestry. His mother, Caroline von Brückner, was Baltic German and was born in Cēsis, Latvia.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Gysi
https://www.geni.com/people/Gregor-Gysi/6000000023514060551?through=6000000023514137118
https://www.sephardichorizons.org/Volume3/Issue3/tagger.html
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Gysi
https://www.stolpersteine-berlin.de/de/taunusstr/11/feodor-potolowsky
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