Abraham Hammerschmidt

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Abraham Hammerschmidt (right) together with his wife and children in 1905

Abraham Ludwig Hammerschmidt (born January 28, 1858 in Jastrow , West Prussia Province , † February 15, 1934 in Cottbus or Senftenberg ) was a German lawyer, notary and politician ( DDP ).

Life

Abraham Hammerschmidt was born as the eldest of eleven children of the wealthy Jewish farmer and grain trader David Hammerschmidt and his wife Berta. He studied law in Berlin and Münster . He served in the Prussian military in Detmold . He then worked as a trainee lawyer in Elberfeld and as a court assessor at the Prussian Chamber of Commerce. In 1881 he passed his legal traineeship and was sworn in for civil service. In November 1885 he passed the legal state examination. During his studies he also dealt with classical literature and in 1884 published the tragedy Rienzi . In Berlin he met and fell in love with Bertha Hirschberg. Since she was a penniless orphan, his father did not consider her befitting. So it came to the break with his parents after the engagement of the two.

In the following years he planned to set up a practice as a lawyer. Since the competition in the imperial capital Berlin was very strong, he looked for a place of justice that could be reached in less than an hour and a half by express train from Berlin and in which there was a good ratio between the number of residents and licensed lawyers. His choice fell on Cottbus. There he settled as a lawyer on January 5, 1886. In the same year he married his fiancée Bertha. In August 1887 the eldest son Hermann was born. He was followed by Frieda (born 1892), Hertha (born 1893), Fritz (born 1894), Hans (born 1895) and Walter (born 1900). All of his sons became lawyers. Hermann and Hans later worked in his office, Fritz and Walter settled in Berlin. His two daughters married in Berlin. His office and the living quarters of his family had been housed in Cottbus in the Bahnhofstrasse 62 house, which he had built, since 1893 .

In 1890 he was elected to the board of the synagogue community in Cottbus . However, on August 8, he initially rejected the election in a letter to the Lord Mayor of Cottbus, Paul Werner , as he considered himself unsuitable because he was “completely remote from the cult of the religious community”. After threatening coercive measures, the district president accepted the election on November 1st. Abraham Hammerschmidt represented more liberal religious views. So his son Hermann married a Catholic woman without having to fear any family consequences. Abraham even played Santa Claus for Hermann's sons .

In 1899 he was appointed a notary. In 1905 he was appointed to the Prussian Council of Justice . It was common at the time to have to pick up the certificate of appointment at the Berlin Palace . However, Abraham Hammerschmidt found this too cumbersome. He had learned from a colleague that the certificate would be sent to you after a while if you did not accept the invitation to Berlin. Instead, after a while, a gendarme appeared and informed him that the invitation was actually an order and that he could not withdraw from it. Abraham Hammerschmidt replied: “I can, and the gendarmerie can do me.” To the gendarme’s answer: “Mr. Lawyer, I am here on the orders of His Majesty”, Hammerschmidt replied: “Can me too.” This argument was followed by one charges of lese majeste and a civil trial the Bar Association , but both due to an amnesty were not pursued. However, the incident stuck in the memory of his fellow citizens and gave him the reputation of being a "man of the people". For this reason a delegation from the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council offered him a ministerial post during the November Revolution . When Abraham Hammerschmidt found out the reason for the offer from the delegates, he replied: "Well, tell your workers and soldiers council that he can do me too." He was then taken to the local court prison, but released the next day.

Sonnet by Abraham Hammerschmidt at the grave of his wife Bertha

Abraham Hammerschmidt's wife Bertha died in November 1916. The Cottbus Jewish cemetery was already full. Thanks to an exemption from Mayor Hugo Dreifert , Bertha was allowed to be buried in a wooded parcel south of the southern cemetery. Abraham had a monument made of shell limestone erected there, on which he immortalized his mourning in a sonnet . The New Jewish Cemetery was built around this tomb between 1917 and 1919 and still exists today.

Abraham Hammerschmidt began to be politically active in Cottbus at an early age. He was initially a member of the Liberal Association, whose first chairman he also became. For him he was since 1910 a member of the city council of Cottbus. There he took care of the new city ​​theater in particular . He was a member of the theater deputation and the theater association. After the Liberal Association was absorbed into the DDP in 1918 , he became a member there. For her he ran unsuccessfully for the Prussian Landtag and the Reichstag . He remained in the city council until 1933 and was chairman of his parliamentary group and member of the presidium . In the first local elections in Cottbus after the seizure of power of the Nazis on 12 March 1933 his party received the now German state party meant no more seats. In this election the NSDAP achieved an absolute majority in the city parliament of Cottbus for the first time.

In the following time, Abraham Hammerschmidt and his family were exposed to the incipient persecution of the Jews by the National Socialists. During the " Jewish boycott " on April 1, 1933, two SA men took up positions in front of the office and sent all employees away. The business of Jewish merchants in Spremberger Strasse was similar . On April 4, Abraham and his two sons Hans and Hermann received three identical letters from the President of the Regional Court with the request to resign from the office of notary . The reasoning stated, among other things, "that the maintenance of public order and security is exposed to serious danger if Germans continue to have to be presented with documents that have been recorded or certified by Jewish notaries in legal dealings." It is therefore advisable to resign “in their own interest” and with “consideration for the excited popular mood”. On April 7, the Law on Admission to the Bar issued a ban on representation for all Jewish lawyers. The exception was the “ front-line combatant privilege ” for lawyers who had been admitted before August 1, 1914 or who had fought in the First World War. Thus Abraham and his two older sons Hermann and Fritz were spared. However, his younger sons Hans and Walter were affected. In the period that followed, the number of clients dropped significantly. One reason for this was that Hans was now missing a lawyer in the office. However, many Cottbus textile companies and business people who were represented by the firm also withdrew because of the general anti-Jewish mood. Six of the firm's 13 employees had to be fired.

Abraham Hammerschmidt died on February 15, 1934. He was buried next to his wife in the New Jewish Cemetery. The Cottbuser Anzeiger refused to publish its obituary. In January 1933, shortly before the “seizure of power”, the newspaper congratulated Hammerschmidt on his 75th birthday and described him as “a highly esteemed citizen of our city”. Already two months later it was emphasized that "the claim that the judiciary Hammerschmidt was involved in your publishing house or that Jewish capital was at work in your company was fictitious."

Fate of his family

Stumbling blocks of the Hammerschmidt family in Cottbus
Memorial stone for the Hammerschmidt family on the New Jewish Cemetery in Cottbus

Due to his death in 1934, Abraham Hammerschmidt did not live to see the murder of a large part of his family. Four of his siblings who lived in Wiesbaden were deported to Theresienstadt and murdered there. Another sister from Wiesbaden was deported to Lublin . She probably died in Sobibor . His youngest son Walter was arrested in Berlin on November 9, 1938 during the Night of the Reichspogroms and deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp . With bribes, his wife managed to buy him out to emigrate in December. However, he died in January 1939 of sepsis caused by the wounds inflicted in the concentration camp. His urn was buried in the family grave at the New Jewish Cemetery in Cottbus. He is the only child next to his parents. Abraham's daughter Hertha was deported to Auschwitz in 1943 and murdered there. His son Fritz, who was deported to Auschwitz together with his wife, son and mother-in-law in 1944, suffered the same fate. His son Hermann died in 1944 in the Oderblick labor education camp near Schwetig . His niece Frieda Glasfeld, who worked as an office manager in his office, was deported to the Warsaw ghetto in 1942, from which she did not return. His daughter Frieda had died in Berlin in 1937. Hans was the only one of his children to survive the Holocaust . In 1939 he emigrated to Ecuador via Cuba . His wife and children also survived.

Since the late 1940s, a memorial stone on the family's grave in the New Jewish Cemetery in Cottbus has been commemorating the fate of the Hammerschmidt family . In addition, on September 28, 2006, five stumbling blocks were laid in front of the family's residence at Cottbuser Bahnhofstrasse 62. They were stolen on November 14th of the same year and renewed on December 13th. Abraham's siblings from Wiesbaden were also honored with stumbling blocks .

Works

  • Rienzi - tragedy in 5 acts. Verlag der Bäderschen Buch- und Kunsthandlung, Elberfeld 1884.

literature

Web links

Commons : Grave of the Hammerschmidt family  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Alexander Kuchta: Hammerschmidt, Abraham. In: Cottbus Municipal Collection. Retrieved October 16, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Helmut Schweitzer: Nazi violence in Cottbus: The lot of the Hammerschmidt family. 1991.
  3. ↑ a b Wolfgang Hammerschmidt: Search for traces. 1996, p. 91.
  4. ↑ a b In memory of the Hammerschmidt siblings. In: Souvenir sheets of the Active Museum Spiegelgasse . October 2010, accessed November 3, 2017 .
  5. ↑ a b Wolfgang Hammerschmidt: Search for traces. 1996 pp. 93-94.
  6. ^ Jutta Rückert, Otto Rückert: Cottbus . In: Irene Diekmann, Julius H. Schoeps (eds.): Guide through the Jewish Brandenburg. 1995, p. 67.
  7. ^ Wolfgang Hammerschmidt: Search for traces. 1996, pp. 112-113.
  8. ^ Wolfgang Hammerschmidt: Search for traces. 1996, pp. 96-99.
  9. ^ Wolfgang Hammerschmidt: Search for traces. 1996, pp. 100-102.
  10. ^ Justizrat Hammerschmidt / a seventy year old. In: Cottbuser Anzeiger . January 28, 1928.
  11. ↑ a b Wolfgang Hammerschmidt: Search for traces. 1996, pp. 121-123.
  12. ↑ a b Wolfgang Hammerschmidt: Search for traces. 1996, pp. 118-121.
  13. ^ Wolfgang Hammerschmidt: Search for traces. 1996, p. 123.
  14. ↑ Peter Lewandrowski: The Cottbus indicator reveals his liberal traditions. In: Wochenkurier. April 27, 2018, accessed June 14, 2019 .
  15. ↑ a b c Wolfgang Hammerschmidt: Search for traces. 1996, pp. 176-177.
  16. ↑ a b Wolfgang Hammerschmidt: Search for traces. 1996, pp. 154-156.
  17. ↑ Hammerschmidt, Walter. In: Memorial book for the victims of the Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany. Retrieved October 14, 2017 .
  18. ↑ Hammerschmidt, Hertha. In: Memorial book for the victims of the Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany. Retrieved October 14, 2017 .
  19. ↑ Hammerschmidt, Fritz. In: Memorial book for the victims of the Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany. Retrieved October 14, 2017 .
  20. ↑ Hammerschmidt, Hermann Karl Siegfried Franz. In: Memorial book for the victims of the Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany. Retrieved October 14, 2017 .
  21. ↑ Glasfeld, Frieda. In: Memorial book for the victims of the Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany. Retrieved October 14, 2017 .
  22. ↑ Stefanie Endlich: Memorials for the Victims of National Socialism. A documentation. Volume II, Federal Agency for Civic Education (ed.), 2000, ISBN 3-89331-391-5 , p. 253 ( pdf ).
  23. ^ Stumbling blocks in Cottbus. In: Lausitzer Rundschau . September 27, 2006, accessed October 14, 2017 .
  24. ^ Wolfgang Swat: Vandalized memory. In: Lausitzer Rundschau. November 15, 2006, accessed October 14, 2017 .
  25. ↑ New “stumbling blocks” for the Hammerschmidt family. In: Lausitzer Rundschau. December 13, 2006, accessed March 4, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Hammerschmidt, Abraham
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hammerschmidt, Abraham Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, notary and politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Jastrow
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1934
Place of death Cottbus or Senftenberg