Klein
'The small one', a plain word that became a great Jewish name.
- Origin
- German
- Register
- German family
The seat of Klein
Seat vacantChief
No one leads the Klein community yet. When the movement opens, you can stand for its leadership, or help elect whoever does.
Current mission
No shared goal set yet. Once Klein has leadership, it sets the public focus: a restoration, a gathering, a real-world project that helps its own.
The Klein clan is being rebuilt. Join the waiting list for the movement today, and you help decide who leads it and what it does.
Help rebuild the Klein clan →What does the Klein name mean?
Descriptive, Middle High German klein, small or slight, the by-name for the shorter or younger of two men who shared a Christian name. One of the most characteristic and frequent of all Ashkenazi surnames.
The history of Klein
Klein began as the homeliest of distinctions, the small Hans, set apart from the tall one, and became one of the common descriptive surnames of the German-speaking world.
It is, above all, one of the signature surnames of Ashkenazi Jewry, carried out of the German lands and the Pale across the great migration to become an utterly familiar name in New York, London and beyond, borne in American fashion, film and letters until the plain German word for 'small' reads, to many ears, simply as a Jewish family name.
The castles of the homeland
The great strongholds of the homeland, look one up, see what it looked like in its prime, and recreate it to explore.
Neuschwanstein CastleStill standing · prime 1886
Hohenzollern CastleRestored · prime 1867
Eltz CastleStill standing · prime 1615All castles in Germany → · Strongest castles in Germany → · Castles of Europe
Play As Your Clan
Hold a real castle against whatever you choose to send at it, take a ship out in her own service years, or stand at the shoulder of someone the record remembers. The chronicler sets the scene; the deeds are yours.