Irwin Steingut [SEP] place of birth
in Schlegel), on Manhattan's Lower East Side, the first of two sons to Simon and Lena Steingut. His mother, formerly Lena Wolbach, was born in Kiev, then in the Russian Empire. Simon Steingut was born on December 24, 1856, in Hamburg, one of three sons of Joseph Steingut, a banker who founded the banking house of Steingut & Son. He emigrated to the United States, sometime before 1881, where he took up residence in the portion of New York's Lower East Side known
named Mary. The divorce decree in 1881 prohibited Simon (although not Mary) from remarrying until she died. After Lena Woldach gave birth to Irwin, Simon obtained a modification of the decree from Judge Miles Beach. He then married Lena on April 10, 1894.
Within two years Lena Steingut had engaged a lawyer to seek support from Simon pending divorce. Steingut agreed but objected to the allegations of cruelty, telling all that his wife (at six feet, almost 14 inches taller than him) regularly beat him.