Berthold Hirsch

Berthold Hirsch (born April 15, 1890 in Vienna ; died November 25, 1941 in Kaunas ) was a German-Jewish publisher.

Career

Hirsch was born as the son of Simon Hirsch and Franziska Hirsch. After marrying the bookseller's daughter Amanda Steckerl (died 1932), he ran the southern German mail order book and magazine store R. Steckerl together with her in Klenzestraße 14 in Munich . From 1928 on, the couple lived in a villa at Apianstrasse 8 (today Petergörglstrasse) in the suburb of Obermenzing .

In 1931, Hirsch donated 238 volumes from his publishing bookstore to the local council and thus laid the foundation for the local community library. On the night of the pogrom in 1938, Berthold Hirsch was deported to the Dachau concentration camp , where he was forced to report to lawyer Dr. To grant Kügle power of attorney for all property matters . His house at Apianstrasse 8 was then sold by the lawyer to “Vermögensverwaltung München GmbH” and from there in 1940 to the president of the “Comradeship of Artists” Robert Scherer.

After his release, Hirsch had to do forced labor for a construction company. In 1939 he tried unsuccessfully to emigrate to Shanghai. Together with his brother and sister-in-law, he was deported to Kaunas on November 20, 1941 and murdered there five days later along with 1,000 other Munich Jews.

Honors

In memory of Hirsch, the city of Munich decided on October 1, 2009 to name a new road in Obermenzing after him.

literature

• Gudrun Azar: Berthold Hirsch. In: Moved into the light. Jewish life in the west of Munich. Herbert Utz Verlag, Munich 2008, 159–160, ISBN 978-3-8316-0787-7 (catalog of the exhibition of the same name in the Pasinger factory , April 10 to May 25, 2008).