Kind of an obscure ask but I wonder what insight others may be able to give.
My grandmother was from northern Germany (Schleswig Holstein, outside of Hamburg), born in 1927. She immigrated to the US in the mid 1950s. When I was 13, she gave me a silver articulated fish charm on a necklace. She said that when she was growing up in Germany, this was a traditional gift given to a girl upon becoming a teenager. However, I have never heard of this tradition outside of her and even she said at the time that finding one of these fish was “difficult”. I have since done some research on the articulated fish and found that they are commonly associated with the Jewish bessamim, which was also a frequent gift given to Ashkenazi Jewish girls at their bat mitzvahs. I find this connection really interesting since we have no known Jewish heritage except for a 1% ashkenazi Jew result in my brother’s ancestry DNA test 😂
Was this a jewish tradition that somehow became secularized in certain German communities? Or is it possible my family has some distant Jewish connection?
The charm looks a lot like this: https://thesilverelves.com/products/articulated-moving-fish-pendant-sterling-silver-925-tse094