The observant Jewish family—long settled in Germany and traced back at least to Schutzjude Joseph Aaron Westheimer born in 1768 in Menzingen, Baden—into which he was born in 1924 as the younger of two sons in Berlin, emigrated to Sydney Australia in 1938.
The traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X, which is said to have broken from the Roman Catholic Church over "doctrinal difficulties" with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, is headquartered in Menzingen.