This two-volume work documents 11,000 individuals belonging to ten Jewish families who were related to the Fraenkel family from 1397 to 1992. Many illustrious names from science, culture and politics are amongst those recorded: Behrend Lehmann von Halberstadt, the financier King August the Strong, the composers Giacomo Meyerbeer and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the writers Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne, Paul Heyse and Karl Wolfskehl, the dramatist Carl Sternheim, the philologist Jakob Bernays, the philosophers Theodor Lessing, Israel Jacobson and David Friedländer, the art historians Max Friedländer and Aby Warburg, the doctor Sigmund Freud and the Nobel prize-winning chemist Adolf von Baeyer were all family members.
The first volume contains accounts of the family's history, as well as a bibliography and an index of persons. The second part presents ten tables -- one genealogical summary and nine complete family trees -- of outstanding value to biographers. The index of persons covers about 17,000 entries, including cross references, and refers to the relevant locations in the articles and family trees.