BERGSON

BERGSON (Berkson), assimilated Warsaw family, descended from the court factor samuel zbitkower (d. 1800). Most of the children of his second wife, Judith Levi of Frankfurt on the Oder, were given a secular education, and converted to Christianity, founding the Fraenkel, Oesterreicher, and Flatau families which played an important role in Polish economic life. BER (Berek), Zbitkower's son by his first wife, alone remained Jewish, and under Prussian rule adopted the family name Sonnenberg. He and his wife, Tamar (Temerl), built a synagogue in the Praga suburb of Warsaw in 1807. Their home became a meeting place for the Ḥasidim in Poland. Their sons, Jacob, Leopold, and Michael, took the name Bergson (or Berkson, "son of Berek"). Members of the family included JOSEPH BERGSON (1812–?), a lecturer in medicine at Warsaw University (1841–61), and the musician michael bergson (1820–1898), father of the most celebrated member of the family, the philosopher henri bergson . Active in the Warsaw community was MICHAEL BERGSON, the son of Leopold, who served as president of the community from 1896 to 1918. Other family members were bankers and manufacturers. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: A.N. Frenk, Meshumodim in Poyln, 1 (1923); I. Schipper (ed.), Żydzi w Polsce odrodzonej, 1 (1932), 481; J. Shatzky, Di Geshikhte fun Yidn in Varshe, 3 vols. (1947–53), index; A. Levinson, Toledot Yehudei Varshah (1953), 204; EG, 1 (1953), 235–54. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Guterman, Kehillat Varshah bein Shetei Milḥamot Olam (1977), Index. (Nathan Michael Gelber)