Was Erich von Manstein Jewish?

As part of my series considering allegations of jewishness in relation to senior figures in the Third Reich: I would next like to look at Erich von Manstein. I wasn't aware there was an allegation of jewishness in relation to Manstein since this fact isn't really mentioned in the several biographies of him that have been written or his own memoirs.

It was only after someone asked me about this claim on X did I realize that this was actually argued by some people. I did a little bit of digging to see what I could find in terms of the sources of this accusation and this short article is the result.

The claims around Manstein centre on the fact that his birth name was not Erich von Manstein, but rather Erich von Lewinski. Manstein's father was an aristocratic Prussian artillery general called Eduard von Lewinski, while his similarly aristocratic mother was Helene von Sperling.

Manstein was then left fatherless when he was young and was then adopted along with a cousin by the family of his maternal aunt Hedwig von Sperling whose husband was Georg von Manstein. In fact he was also related by marriage on his mother's side to Field Marshall Paul von Hindenberg later titular President of Weimar Germany (whose wife was his mother's sister).

Both sides of Manstein's biological family contained Prussian generals and there is no sign of jewishness in the family ancestry. (1) The suggestion that because he had Polish surname derived from his biological father means he was necessarily part jewish is simply absurd since there were and are plenty of Poles who have no known jewish ancestry at all.

The only member of his family who could have been classed as jewish was his rather off-beat relative (who seems to have been his uncle-in-law not his actual uncle) who converted to Judaism and called himself Avraham ben Avraham von Manstein. (2)

As an aside 'Avraham ben Avraham' (lit. 'Abraham the son of Abraham') is clearly not a normal given jewish name as it is jewish custom to avoid alliteration of this type, because the 'ben' (i.e., 'son of' and 'bat' for 'daughter of') is the sign of the start of the surname thus you would not call yourself 'Abraham the son of Abraham of Manstein', but rather simply 'Avraham ben Avraham'.

That he had an in-law who converted to Judaism does not make Manstein himself jewish.

The only other evidence of jewishness is the claim by his former (part-jewish) adjutant Alexander Stahlberg that Manstein once told him - in response to his own worries about his jewishness - that he had jewish ancestors too. (3) However this - as Rigg correctly notes - is pure speculation as there is no evidence of such and the SS investigation into Manstein's family origins in 1944 never revealed any jewish ancestors either. (4)

Therefore, as we can see, there is no evidence that one of the Third Reich's premier military strategists had any jewish ancestors.

References

(1) https://militaryhistoryblog.wordpress.com/2007/07/28/erich-von-lewinski-called-von-manstein-his-life-character-and-operations-%E2%80%93-a-reappraisal-by-jorg-muth/

(2) https://www.zeevgalili.com/english/2009/03/the-uncle-of-the-nazi-general-von-manstein-who-convert-to-judaism/

(3) Bryan Mark Rigg, 2002, 'Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and the Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military', 1st Edition, University Press of Kansas: Lawrence, p. 314, n. 62

(4) Ibid.