General Leopold Blumenberg

Leopold Blumenberg was born in Brandenburg in Prussia, the 21st child of Abraham and Sophia Blumenberg. He served in the Prussian Army, achieving the rank of first lieutenant and receiving a medal for his service during the First Schleswig War of 1848-1851. Despite these achievements, Blumenberg encountered anti-Semitism in the army, convincing him to emigrate to the United States in 1854. Though he was married at the time, we know little about his wife other than that her name seems to have been Emilie. The couple settled in Baltimore, where they would raise their six children and where Leopold worked in the textile industry, producing cloaks. He becamea prominent member of Baltimore’s German speaking community, served on the board of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and was involved with reform congregation Har Sinai, whose rabbi, David Einhorn, expressed adamant abolitionist views that accorded with those of Blumenberg.

With the outbreak of war, Blumenberg joined the Union cause and organized the 5th Maryland Regiment, in which he was commissioned captain of Company C. He quickly rose to the rank of major and in March 1862 became part of the Army of the Potomac and fought in General McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign, and from there joined the Washington garrison. In September Blumenberg received orders to march to Sharpsburg, Maryland, where the Union Army was making its stand against Army of Northern Virginia’s advance into the North. Here, in the Battle of Antietam, Blumenberg successfully lead the recapturing of Bloody Lane from the Confederates, though he was severely wounded in the action. President Lincoln asked to meet him and awarded him an appointment as Provost Marshal of the Third Maryland District in 1863. Later President Andrew Johnson commissioned him a the honorary title Brigadier General, U.S. Volunteers.

General Leopold Blumenberg

c. 1864