Oppé Family papers

This sub-collection contains material relating to Paul Oppé's family, in particular his wife, Valentine, and his two children, Armide and Denys, but also his mother, Pauline, and his brother, Henry (known as Harry).

The majority of the material in this section of the Archive consists of correspondence received by various Oppé family members. Occasionally the content of these letters offers insight into Oppé's life and work - this can mostly be found in the large amount of letters from Oppé himself and occasional letters from various family friends that were connected to the arts - but mostly this material captures other themes which relate to the social history of the first half of the twentieth century. These themes include the First and Second World Wars, classical music and musicians, women's history, maternity, domestic staff, health, upper class and aristocratic society and private schools.

Aside from the material which relates to individuals, there is some legal and genealogical documentation of births, deaths and marriages in the family, covering Oppé's parents' generation down through to his that of his grandchildren. There is also material relating to wills, estates and properties which relates to inheritances from the Oppé and Jaffé families.

The material also includes a large amount of photographs of the family.

The Oppé family, originally Oppenheimer, emigrated from Germany, via France, to the UK in the nineteenth century. One of the sons, Siegmund Armin Oppé (1835-1886), became a silk merchant and married Pauline Jaffé (1849-1940), from a family of linen merchants and warehousemen based in Belfast. They were both from Jewish families and married within the faith.

They settled in Denmark Hill, South London, and started a family. They had eight children: Albert Sanvel (1869-1953), Marguerite (1870-1941), Ida (1871-1912), John Daniel (1876-1952), Adolphus Paul (1878-1957), Henry Sigismund (1880-1915), Thomas Armin (1880-1917), and Ernest Frederic (1885-1970). It is uncertain, despite their shared Jewish heritage, whether their children were raised in the faith.

After the death of Siegmund in 1886, the family moved to Godalming and later to Pamber Heath, both situated to the South-West of London. Pamber Heath became a hub for the family until Pauline's death in 1940.

Paul Oppé left the family home for University in 1894, moving several times between Scotland and England before settling in London in 1905 and getting married to Valentine Tollemache in 1909. They had two children together, Armide and Denys. As a family, they had strong links to Oppé's mother and siblings, particularly the twins, Henry and Tom, and his youngest brother, Ernest.

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