It's a success story well told at the Levi Strauss Birthplace Museum here, which occupies the 17th-century house where Strauss was born on Feb. 26, 1829. Actually, the man whose first name is now synonymous with blue jeans was originally called Loeb. Not long after arriving in New York, at the age of 18, he changed it to Levi to sound more American.
His father, Hirsch Strauss, whose death caused the family to emigrate, had been a peddler and dealer in cloth and dry goods. This was a common occupation for Buttenheim's Jews, who at the time Levi Strauss was born made up about 20 percent of the town's population. However, by 1893 so many Jews had left town, fleeing poverty and legalized discrimination in Bavaria, that the local Jewish congregation was dissolved and the former synagogue sold to a brewery for use as a storehouse.
A Jewish cemetery remained, but for more than a century no one in Buttenheim connected Loeb Strauss, whose father is buried there, with the famous Levi. Then, in 1983, a woman in Milwaukee working on a documentary about German immigrants in America contacted town authorities, who were surprised to learn that the Levi Strauss of blue jeans fame was a son of Buttenheim.
Eventually, the town acquired the Strauss birthplace, one of Buttenheim's oldest buildings, which was in derelict condition. According to museum director Tanja Roppelt, it cost about $500,000 to restore the 2 1/2-story building and convert it into a museum. "That's a lot of money for a town with only 3,300 people," she says, "but the Levi Strauss company contributed about 20 percent of it."
The museum on Buttenheim's main street opened in 2000 and has since attracted thousands of visitors from around the world -- most of them, according to Roppelt, wearing jeans. The museum has also won several restoration and design awards. "And now there is even a blue jeans boutique in Berlin called Buttenheim," Roppelt says.
