Michael Weil was born in Bad Kissingen on October 4, 1885 as the fifth of eight children of the merchant Hermann Weil and his wife Klara, née Berg. His father came from Aufhausen in Wuerttemberg, which is a suburb of Bopfingen nowadays. At least at the end of the 1870s Hermann Weil moved to Bad Kissingen where he married Klara Berg, who was born there, and had eight children with her. The family lived in Weidgasse 10. In 1890, Max’s father was given citizens’ rights by Bad Kissingen Magistrate. From 1896 till 1899, Michael attended the first three classes of Kissingen Realschule, the predecessor of contemporary Jack-Steinberger-Gymnasium.

At the beginning of 1905, the family moved to Frankfort/ Main where Michael’s father opened a food store in Rechneigrabenstrasse. In May 1923, Michael married Frida Elsa Rosenthal in Frankfort who had been living in Philippstein before. They had two children – Claire and Kurt – and could emigrate to the USA with them in September 1938. In 1942, Michael Weil had been registered as a soldier in the US Army in New York just like his older brother Sali. Presumably, Michael Weil died in Washington on December 4, 1973.

Of Michael’s siblings, Ida (1906), Justin and Siegfried (1917) had died early. His parents also didn’t live to experience Nazi terror (Klara died in 1913, Hermann in 1932). His younger brother Max, on the other hand, was deported to Mauthausen in 1942 and murdered on September 16. His sister Hermine and her husband Salomon were deported from Berlin to Kowno and became victims of the Shoa there. The fate of his sister Lina (*1890) has not yet been clarified. She was still registered in Hölderlinstraße in Frankfurt in 1939/1940.