Oppenheim Family History

German and Jewish (Ashkenazic): habitational name from a place on the Rhine between Mainz and Worms so named from an unexplained first element + Old High German heim ‘homestead’. There was an important Jewish settlement here before the Holocaust.

Due to persistent persecution, members of the Oppenheim community were periodically forced to flee from their native city and hence the surnames Oppenheim and Oppenheimer became widespread throughout southern and western Germany.