Five highly decorated World War I veterans, The Heimann Brothers: David, Max, Julius, Siegfried and Hermann LBI Photo Collection

The Heimann brothers are a perfect example of the eagerness with which German Jews served in the German army. All five of the Heimann brothers fought on the frontline, four of them at the Western front, where Julius Heimann fell on May 8, 1915. David Heimann fought on both the Eastern and the Western fronts.  All were highly decorated for their services. The brothers were descendants of Hayum Loeb Heimann of Oberdorf-Bopfingen, a village sixty miles southeast of Stuttgart in Southern Germany. The community records show that the family had lived in the area since Roman times and was respected for its philanthropic and cultural contributions to the local and surrounding communities.  In honor of Germany’s victory over France in the war of 1870/71, Chaim Loeb Heimann, the brothers’ grandfather, had a Torah commissioned in Vienna, which he donated to the Oberdorf synagogue.