Adolf Reiss

House Reiss in Bad Soden

Adolf Reiss (born September 20, 1877 in Frankfurt am Main ; † April 10, 1962 in Bad Soden am Taunus ) was a German lawyer and patron of charitable welfare , who found a place of refuge in his house for Jewish citizens who were troubled during the Nazi era gave.

Life

Adolf Reiss was the son of the Frankfurt lawyer Justizrat Paul Reiss and his wife Fanny nee Goedecke. He passed his matriculation examination at the humanistic municipal high school in Frankfurt. Together with his brother Eduard , he began studying at the University of Göttingen in 1896 and studied law. He completed his studies with a doctorate. jur. from. Like father and brother, he became a member of the Corps Hannovera .

Until 1910 he worked as a court assessor and judge in the judiciary. After that he was a managing board member of the Central Office for Private Welfare in Frankfurt am Main until 1933 , which goes back to a Jewish welfare initiative led by the Frankfurt entrepreneur Wilhelm Merton . In addition, he was involved in child welfare and the promotion of disabled young people. Like his father and grandfather, Adolf Reiss took on numerous social welfare tasks and supported them with considerable amounts of money.

In 1933 he retired from his professional life to Bad Soden am Taunus, where he inherited the family's summer home, Haus Reiss , after his father's death . Unlike his brother Eduard , he did not flee from the threat of reprisals abroad because of his Jewish ancestors. Over the next few years, the Reiss house became a place of refuge for Jewish citizens in distress. In 1941 his house and the library were badly damaged by an air raid, but at least the house was soon made habitable again. In 1952 he was given honorary citizenship by the city of Bad Soden am Taunus . His father and grandfather Enoch Reiss had also already received this honor in recognition of their patronage in the city.

Since Adolf Reiss himself was unmarried and childless, he bequeathed the Reiss house to the city of Bad Soden with his death in 1962 and last willed that the house should serve non-profit, social and cultural purposes.

Honors

• 1953: Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Article “ Traces of Jewish life in the Main-Taunus-Kreis ” on the website of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation in the Main-Taunus-Kreis e. V.
2. ↑ Erika Ullrich, Edith Vetter: Where Soden's spa guests stayed. BoD - Books on Demand, 2005 p. 139

literature

• Heinrich F. Curschmann: Blue Book of the Corps Hannovera zu Göttingen, Volume 1: 1809-1899 Göttingen 2002, No. 839
• Erika Ullrich, Edith Vetter: Where Soden's spa guests stayed. Bad Soden 2005 pp. 137-140 ISBN 3833422505
• Joachim Kromer: The Reiss family in Soden. Series: Materials on the Bad Soden history. Issue 2 1987, ed. from the working group for Bad Soden history.