Oppenheimer / Oppenheim Families
Descendants of Samuel Wolf Oppenheimer

The Oppenheim(er) family was a very old family with branches throughout Europe. Some family members achieved great fame and fortune.

Heidelberg was a University town in the grand duchy of Baden, Germany. Although Jews were recorded as living in Heildeberg in 1253, The elector Rupert II. expelled all Jews in 1390. But From the middle of the fifteenth century onward Jews were regularly received in Heidelberg under comparatively favorable conditions. There was a very small Jewish in Heidelberg. In the middle of the seventeenth century (1600's) , 5 members of the famous Oppenheimer family were living there. In 1704 thirteen Jewish families were living at Heidelberg, Some members of the Oppenheimer Family moved to Frankfurt am Main and Vienna and became extremely wealthy Court Jews and Bankers. 

The Oppenheimer / Oppenheim Families are descended from Samuel Wolf OPPENHEIMER also known as Samuel Heidelberg.

Samuel was born in Heidelberg., so he was from, one of the very few Jewish families who lived in Heidelberg.

He moved to Vienna, and became a Court Jew to Emperor Leopold and Banker , imperial court factor, He enjoyed the especial favor of Emperor Leopold., to whom he advanced considerable sums of money for the Turkish war. When Austria was embarrassed by its depleted exchequer on the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession, in 1701, Samuel Oppenheimer and his two sons, together with the most important commercial houses of Germany, took charge of the commissariat of the imperial forces in Lombardy, the Upper Rhenish states, Tyrol, Bavaria, and Hungary. After his death in May 1703, the imperial government put his estate into bankruptcy, plunging all the stock exchanges with which Oppenheimer had been connected into a serious crisis, especially the Frankfurt stock exchange and all its brokers.

Another descendant of this family was the famous Joseph Süss Oppenheimer (1690-1738) who held the office of court factor to Prince Karl Alexander von Württemberg in Stuttgart. His mother was also a Frankfurt resident, and Jud Süss Oppenheimer often spent months in Frankfurt, where he owned a commodious house outside the Judengasse. Lion Feuchtwanger based the historical novel "Jud Süss" on Oppenheimer.

Professor J. Robert Oppenheimer, the inventor of the Atomic Bomb was also a descendant of this family

Samuel Oppenheimer.is the 17th Great Grandson of Rashi related through his Grand Mother Frummet BALLIN to Yocheved Bas SHLOMO Rashi's Daughter

Marc Heymann is the 9th Great Grandson of Samuel Oppenheimer.

Another member of this Heidelberg family Reb Joseph Oppenheimer from Heidelberg is Marc Heymann's 4th Great Grandfather.

He was the 7th Great Grandson of Rabbi Judah Loew the Maharal of Prague and the 3rd Great Grandson of the Chavas Yair Rabbi Chayim Yair Bacharach.