The second factor that ultimately led to the creation of this genealogy had its origin in music. As a budding serious musician, I was intrigued by my grandmother Malvine (née Mautner) Pollenz's claim that she was a cousin of the composer Gustav Mahler. Now that is kind of the stuff musical dreams are made of - a connection to genius in a field I intended to pursue! Perhaps genes would tell. Again, not yet out of high school, I put that one on a back burner to be explored at some future date.
While in college, and finally beginning to express some curiosity in the matter of heritage - who I might be and more importantly, who I might become - I began asking questions and eventually heard the story of my great-grandfather Theodore Pollenz, never before mentioned, at least in my hearing. Told with much head shaking and hand wringing, it was related that Theodore left my great-grandmother Bertha (née Taussig) and her four children in New York, or maybe she left him. The facts of the leaving or being left have never been made clear or documented, but it involved fleeing to Chicago, an orphanage in Cleveland, and hard times to be sure. Those facts were interesting but somewhat ho-hum. What really caught my fancy was the allegation that Theodore had "at least" one more family "out East". This was the third factor - uncovering that mystery - which led to the compilation of the data in this website.
However, all of this information was filed away in some backwater of my brain as I completed my college education, got married, forged a career in the Army and began to raise a family. That backwater brain area was triggered to action in the early 1960's by the rather arcane fact of the championing of Gustav Mahler by Leonard Bernstein, which raised Mahler from the mid-ranks of world composers to that pantheon inhabited by Beethoven, Bach and Brahms. This excited me and spurred me to investigate the alleged family connection with this newly anointed musical hero. Also, being career military, I had the opportunity to search through phone books and investigate genealogical sources as I traveled the United States and the world, seeking the name Pollenz, Mautner, Kohn, Metzl and other family members. My abiding love of history and , above all, doing detailed research on practically any subject, fed the seed of an idea - I vowed that I would someday complete a family genealogy.
The genealogy seed fully germinated when I made contact with those "out East" Pollenz branches and confirmed that Theodore had not only one additional family, but two. Using the Army War Room "red phones" in the Pentagon (during the infrequent lulls in world crises) where I was stationed at the time, I talked one evening to both of my grandfather Isador's half brothers, Theodore Pollenz Jr. and Augustus Pollenz. They averred, albeit guardedly it seemed, that they were at least dimly aware of each other, but stated that they were completely unaware that their father Theodore had another family "out West". Augustus did also mention that there was a Julius Pollenz somewhere whom he thought might be related in some way. That cemented my pact with the genealogy muse - angel or devil, I'm not sure which - and from then on, world-wide phone calls and letters to any and all suspected kin, questioning of relatives and serious genealogical research was conducted whenever and wherever the opportunity arose.
I pursued the genealogy on and off (mostly off) for the next 30 years when, thanks to the marvel of the Internet, I was contacted by a number of Pollenzes who wondered, "Are we related?". In 1996 Doris Budowski from Tel Aviv, Israel, whose grandmother was a Pollenz, contacted me. A few years later I was contacted by Wolfgang Stadler from Vienna, Austria, whose great-grandfather was a Pollenz. This opened up the field to include hitherto unsuspected "European" Pollenzes.