Schneider
The cutter of cloth — the needle that helped clothe a continent.
- Origin
- German
- Famous bearer
- Romy Schneider (1938–1982), actress
- Register
- German family
The seat of Schneider
Seat vacantChief
No one leads the Schneider 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 Schneider has leadership, it sets the public focus: a restoration, a gathering, a real-world project that helps its own.
The Schneider 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 Schneider clan →What does the Schneider name mean?
The tailor — literally 'the cutter', from Middle High German snīden, to cut cloth. One of the great guild trades of the German towns, and one of the most characteristic surnames carried by both German-Christian and German-Jewish families.
The history of Schneider
Cloth was costly and a coat was expected to last a lifetime, so the man who could cut and fit it held a real place in the town. The tailors' guild was among the most numerous and jealous of its standing, and the trade gave one of the commonest German surnames, in two streams that ran side by side for centuries: the German-Christian Schneider and the German-Jewish Schneider.
Both streams carried the needle to the New World, and there it built something enormous. The skilled immigrant tailor — very often a Schneider — was the raw material of the American ready-to-wear industry, the cutting rooms and garment houses of New York and Chicago that clothed a nation off the peg for the first time. A trade that had dressed one German town at a time learned, in immigrant hands, to dress a continent.
Explore With Your Ancestors · Beta
Pick any year from 500 to 1945 and any place on earth — the Schneider country, or a shore no Schneider ever reached. The chronicler sets the scene; the deeds are yours.
Notable bearers of the Schneider name
- Romy Schneider (1938–1982), actress