Friedrich Julius friend

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Friedrich Julius Freund (born January 4, 1898 in Darmstadt ; † May 18, 1944 in Auschwitz ), often also Fritz Freund , was a German lawyer from Darmstadt and cousin of the Jewish art scholar Karl Freund (1882–1943), who was also murdered by the Nazis . After Nazi persecution in Darmstadt, Friedrich Freund moved to Berlin in 1937 with his wife Hilde (née Nickelsburg, born September 9, 1901 in Worms; † May 18, 1944 in Auschwitz). In 1943 both were first deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto and then to Auschwitz for murder. Stolpersteine ​​in Mommsenstrasse are reminiscent of them. 52 in Berlin-Charlottenburg .

Stumbling block Friedrich Freund
Stumbling block Hilde Freund

Youth and education

Friedrich Freund was the son of the businessman Carl Freund (September 19, 1868 in Feudenheim ; † February 3, 1936 in Darmstadt) and Anna Amalie Friedberger, who had been married to him since April 14, 1896 (* September 25, 1873 in Laubenheim ; † 14 June 1914 in Darmstadt). Father Carl Freund was the brother of the Pfungstadt cigar manufacturer Max Freund and, as an authorized signatory, was responsible for sales in his company.

Carl Freund and his wife Anna Amalie moved from Pfungstadt to Darmstadt after their wedding, where they first moved into an apartment at Elisabethenstrasse 54. Friedrich Julius Freund was born here on January 4, 1898.

In May 1903, the family moved to Landgraf-Philipps-Anlage 44. Friedrich Freund grew up here and from 1905 attended the old secondary school on Kapellplatz, which was destroyed in the Second World War and the forerunner of today's Georg Büchner School .

Anna Amalie Freund died on June 14, 1914. Three years later, her son passed his matriculation examination on Easter 1917. In April 1917 he joined Field Artillery Regiment No. 61 in Darmstadt and at the same time enrolled in law at the University of Frankfurt am Main . A short time later he was called up for military service. In his résumé of 1921 he wrote about his participation in the war: “On June 12th I came into the field, was wounded there, came back to the field troops after recovery and stayed there until May 5th, 1918, where I went to various hospitals as a result of burial and gas poisoning , was last referred to a home hospital. I was released from military service on December 14, 1918. "

Even before Friedrich Freund was called up for military service, his father married a second time, on April 12, 1916, Erna Mathilde Alma Levi (born June 23, 1894 in Frankfurt am Main; † January 23, 1933 in Darmstadt). This marriage resulted in two daughters: Hildegard (married Shelton, born March 26, 1917 in Darmstadt; † December 4, 1999 in London) and Hanna (married Tabori, born May 4, 1919 in Darmstadt; † 1969 in the USA)

After the end of the First World War, Friedrich Freund studied law at the universities of Heidelberg and Gießen before moving to the University of Gießen for the winter semester of 1920/1921 . In Heidelberg he had also become a member of Bavaria Heidelberg in the Kartell-Convent , the association of German students of the Jewish faith. When he moved to Giessen, he joined the local Staufia Giessen .

On March 17, 1921, Friedrich Freund applied for admission to the law faculty examination that took place in mid-April. On June 11, 1921, he received the notification from the Darmstadt Ministry of Justice, “that we have admitted you to the Darmstadt I district court for preparatory service after you passed the faculty examination well in general. Accordingly, you want to register with this court to take up service. ”Friedrich Freund became a trainee lawyer and was working on a dissertation at the same time. At the end of 1922 he received his doctorate in Giessen with a thesis on the nature of the state as a problem of law and with the grade cum laude .

After working for lawyers, Friedrich Freund finished his preparatory service in 1924 and received notification on June 27, 1924 that he had passed the state examination "on the whole well". On July 25, 1924 he was appointed court assessor. in November he applied for admission to the bar, which was granted to him on December 4, 1924 for the "District Court of the Starkenburg Province of Darmstadt". In January 1925 he opened his practice at Bismarckstrasse 49 in Darmstadt. He still lived at home with his father, stepmother and stepsisters and was an important support for the family, which was badly affected by the inflation.

Lawyer in Darmstadt

Friedrich Freund quickly advanced to become a well-known Darmstadt lawyer and also played a role in social life.

“On May 11, 1926, Dr. Fritz Freund member of the brotherhood of the Starkenburg Lodge B'nai B'rith . Here he gave concerts in front of a selected audience and gave lectures. In the Jewish community of Darmstadt, he was committed to the benefit of poorer people and shocked the finer society with his socialist views. Soon the people of Darmstadt called him, more or less ironically, a noble communist. Fritz Freund traveled to the Orient and the Mediterranean on cruises. He had a long-term rental in the Hessian State Theater. His friends included actors, singers and visual artists. "

In 1927 Freund bought a villa at 37 Bismarckstrasse near his first practice, to which he moved his office and apartment. In addition, he continued to take care of his father and his family. For his father's sister, Hanna Kay, who had returned to Germany from New York after the death of her husband, he found an apartment in Berlin at 52 Mommsenstrasse in 1932, an address that would later play a role in his life. His stepmother died unexpectedly on January 23, 1933, and Friedrich Freund took care of his two half-sisters from then on.

On the evening of January 30, 1933 and in the days that followed, there were demonstrations and leaflet campaigns by the KPD and the Iron Front in Darmstadt after the Nazis came to power . At one of these events, Fritz Freund was beaten up by SA Rotten. It is not known whether he participated in the demonstration or was just a spectator or just a “passer-by. The police took him into protective custody without notifying the family of the arrest. It took several days for his father to find out what had happened. He immediately went to the police headquarters with his daughter Hanna and talked to the officers until they released his son. ”On March 5, 1933, he and the lawyer Ebo Rothschild , who worked in a neighboring law firm, had to put old left-wing parties' election posters scraping around his home.

On April 7, 1933, the Reichstag passed the Law on Admission to the Bar , which banned most Jewish lawyers in Germany from practicing their profession. Friedrich Freund was not directly affected by this as he was granted the frontline fighter privilege . He was able to continue doing his job, but at the same time had to look after his family more and more. After the law against overcrowding in German schools and universities had been passed on April 25, 1933 , the two 14- and 16-year-old half-sisters were expelled from the Eleonor School immediately . Friedrich Freund made initial contacts in preparation for the two of them to emigrate.

On June 29, 1933, the Darmstadt attorney general opened a court of honor against Friedrich Freund. In anticipation of the MeToo debates, he was accused of sexual harassment of the three apprentices working in his office. In August 1933 he was reprimanded for this and had to pay a fine of RM 500.

In the summer of 1934 Friedrich Freund's father fell ill and in the spring of 1935 had to be accommodated in Max Rosenthal's Darmstadt private clinic. Max Rosenthal (born October 13, 1884 in Jacobshagen ; † November 3, 1939 in Darmstadt) was originally a specialist in surgery and gynecology and has been based in Darmstadt since 1919. Together with his wife Johanna, he expanded his practice on Eschollbrücker Straße to a private clinic, which, however, ran into existential difficulties in April 1933: Like all Jewish doctors, Max Rosenthal's license as a statutory health insurance doctor was withdrawn. The continued treatment of private patients was made more difficult by anti-Jewish propaganda, which ultimately urged Germans to avoid Jewish doctors. Rosenthal was able to continue operations under difficult conditions. In 1938 his license to practice medicine was revoked ; a year later he died of a stroke. After Rosenthal's death, an old people's and infirmary of the Jewish community was set up in the private clinic.

Due to the illness of his father, Friedrich Freund had to worry more about the fate of his sisters. He dealt again with plans to emigrate and looked for solutions for her and also for her aunt who lived in Berlin. In 1935 he was able to enable his sister Hildegard to travel to Switzerland. She did a one-year training as an infant nurse in Geneva and was subsequently taken by Freund in the autumn of 1936 to a ship in Genoa that took her to Palestine. Friedrich Freund had obtained the necessary entry documents. After that he devoted himself to the departure of his sister Hanna. In the winter of 1936 she was able to travel from Berlin by train to Brindisi and from there by ship to Palestine. After her arrival she went to the children and youth village Ben Shemen founded by Siegfried Lehmann .

Move to Berlin

During these efforts to get his sisters to leave Germany, his father Carl Freund died on February 3, 1936 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Darmstadt. Shortly thereafter, he informed the President of the Darmstadt Regional Court for the first time that he was absent for a long period and appointed a deputy. That had a lot to do with the efforts to get his sisters to leave, but probably also with private changes. Because at that time he must have met Hilde Elisabeth Nickelsburg (born September 9, 1901 in Worms ; † May 18, 1944 in Auschwitz). She worked as an X-ray assistant in the practice of her father, the medical doctor Leopold Nickelsburg (born September 21, 1868 in Worms; † September 28, 1937 in Berlin), who came from an old Jewish family in Worms, was also a member of the community council and was still responsible in 1934 for the 900th anniversary of the Worms synagogue. When and where Friedrich Freund and Hilde Nickelsburg met is not known; the two married on December 24, 1936 and initially lived in Darmstadt.

On March 12, 1937, this time at the "current address" Berlin-Charlottenburg, Mommsenstrasse 52, where the Freund couple lived together with aunt Hanna Kay, Friedrich Freund again informed the Darmstadt district court of a longer absence and named another deputy. This notification of absence was followed by a final notification to the Darmstadt Regional Court on December 30, 1937. On a preprinted letterhead with the address Mommsenstrasse 52, Freund stated: “After I contacted attorney Dr. Max Ranis [..] as my deputy in accordance with § 25 RAO, I hereby give up my admission to the Darmstadt District Court with effect from the end of 1937 with regard to my final move to Berlin. ”On the occasion of this move, Freund should also sold his villa in Darmstadt.

Nothing is known about Freund's plans after his final move to Berlin. He would have been denied renewed admission to the bar after September 27, 1938 at the latest. On this date the “Fifth Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law ” came into force, and with it the front-line combatant privilege , which had enabled him to practice his profession until his Darmstadt license was returned, was suspended. And with the November pogroms of 1938 , all plans finally became obsolete. Friedrich Freund was arrested and taken to the Oranienburg concentration camp . When he was able to return to Berlin on December 14, 1938, he found a situation that made life increasingly unbearable for him and his family. Hilde Freund was no longer allowed to work as an X-ray assistant and earned a little extra income as a radiotherapist at a private broadcaster, Friedrich Freund tried to earn some money as a piano tuner and Aunt Hanna Kay held out even though she still had an American passport.

There are no reliable indications as to which emigration attempts the Freunds made and where they may have failed. Kimmig merely claims that they did not want to go to Palestine, and so they got deeper and deeper into the vortex of coercive measures against Jews. In 1940 Friedrich Freund was “employed as a forced laborer in Deuta-Werken GmbH. Hilde Freund initially worked as an 'unpaid office assistant' in the employment office, later as a 'voluntary helper' for the Jewish religious association at Rosenstrasse 2-4. "Until 1941, they were also able to write to Friedrich Freund's sisters in Palestine. "On December 15, 1941, Hilde and Fritz Freund were forced to leave their apartment at Mommsenstrasse 52 and taken to Levetzowstrasse 7." They shared this fate with many of their neighbors: "At the beginning of the year, they lived in the house at Mommsenstrasse 52 Year [1942] at least twenty adult Jews. It is not known how many children under the age of sixteen were among them. On January 25th, one week after the ' Wannsee Conference ', the sisters Friederike Berliner, b. Grünthal and Käthe Grünthal were deported from their apartment at Mommsenstrasse 52 to Riga . On March 28, Eugenie Fritzler followed and was deported to Piaski . The 64-year-old Margarete Jacoby, b. Cohn committed suicide in her home on April 7th. On June 13th, Hermann Kann was taken from his apartment and deported to Sobibor . "

Theresienstadt and Auschwitz

For the time being, the Freunds were spared direct deportation, probably also because they both performed forced labor in an economically important company. For the time being, they were only sent to the assembly camp set up on the site of the former Liberal Synagogue in Levetzowstrasse for the planned resettlement of Jewish families. Friedrich Freund was able to secure a place for Hanna Kay in the Jewish old people's home on Grosse Hamburger Strasse; she still enjoyed some protection from the persecution because of her American passport. “When Fritz Freund learned that the Jewish old people's home on Grosse Hamburger Strasse was also being used as a collection camp for the deportations, he took his aunt, who still had her American passport, out of the old people's home and took her to the Jewish hospital in Iran Street. Hanna Kay, b. Freund on February 22, 1943. Her body was buried on March 1, 1943 in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee. "

On June 18, 1942, the lawyer Friedrich Freund entered into a contract in the assembly camp with which he financed his deportation himself. “They were home purchase contracts for people who were to be deported to Theresienstadt . Above all, they promised 'Reich Jews with war decorations' adequate accommodation and assured them food and medical care. Freund had the contract explained to him in detail and rewrote a mortgage letter of 23,000 RM to pay for a 'home purchase contract'. "On October 1, 1942, at the instigation of the Gestapo Berlin, the entire property of him and his wife" on the basis of § 1 of the law on the confiscation of communist property [..] in connection with the law on the confiscation of property hostile to the people and the state [..] in connection with the decree of the Führer and Reich Chancellor on the utilization of the confiscated property of enemies of the Reich “in favor of the German Fed rich. According to a declaration of assets made on January 25, 1943, the joint assets amounted to around 80,000 RM, including the 30,000 RM for the “home purchase contract”.

Also on January 25, 1943, Friedrich Freund was deported from Berlin's Anhalter Bahnhof to Theresienstadt. Hilde Freund followed on February 2, 1943. On March 15, 1943, the bailiff made an inventory of the Freunds' property that had remained in Mommsenstrasse 52. It was valued at 3,315 RM and later sold for 2,652 RM in favor of the German Empire. An extensive correspondence between different institutions and authorities developed around the confiscated property of the Freunds, in which various claims were asserted. This also involved the release of the cash balance of 30,000 RM in favor of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany , which Friedrich Freund joined on October 2, 1943 with a declaration from Theresienstadt. It is uncertain whether this transaction was carried out, especially since the Reichsvereinigung's assets had also been confiscated in the meantime .

“The Freund couple was abducted on May 18, 1944 on the 3rd transport, which was called 'Eb' in Theresienstadt, along with 1,062 men and boys and 1,437 women and girls. In a transport list written with a typewriter, the couple is listed as' 680 Freund, Friedrich Israel 4.1.1898 Rechtsanw. 10639-1 / 86 'and' 681 Freund, Hilde Elis. Sara 9.9.01. without occupation 10888-1 / 89 '. The transport arrived in Auschwitz on May 19, 1944. ”In the memorial book for the victims of the National Socialist persecution of Jews in Germany , May 18, 1944, the day of the deportation, is recorded as the day of their death.

Hilde and Hanna Freund

It is unclear why Friedrich Freund, his wife Hilde and their aunt Hanna Kay, who was also an American citizen, did not leave Germany. And that, although Freund was very familiar with the departure modalities, as he had demonstrated with the example of his two sisters and for whom he had enabled both of them to enter Palestine.

Hildegard and Hanna Freund initially both lived in the children's and youth village Ben Shemen , but had difficulties getting used to life there. After about a year there, they moved to Tel Aviv, where they made do with odd jobs for two years before parting ways. “In 1938 Hanna went to Jerusalem. She found a job with the BBC and worked as an interpreter. Hildegard followed a year later. She let a young officer recruit her for the Middle East Forces and was sent to a training camp. Then she moved with the combat troops to Cairo. From here she sought correspondence with her brother in Berlin via the British Red Cross. ”On April 14, 1942, she actually received a short Red Cross message from Friedrich Freund, which he had posted on October 6, 1941 . Another message from Freund, dated December 15, 1941, reached the sisters on January 6, 1942.

As Sergeant Higgins, Hanna Freund worked for the BBC for the British Secret Service. There she met the agent George Tabori , who was exposed in Istanbul , who remembered her in a later interview: “Then I got married in Palestine, Hannah Freund. She had come from Darmstadt with her sister at the age of 13, her parents were already dead. Her brother had arranged that she could grow up in the children's kibbutz. In 1942 she was the head of that office. She was very blonde, very beautiful, very Zionist. It took me almost a year to persuade her to marry me. ”In the German biography it is noted about this relationship that the two were married from 1942 to 1953. She went to the USA with Tabori and studied psychology in New York. Kimmig reports that Hanna Tabori worked as a social worker and looked after African-American homosexuals in Harlem.

Hildegard Freund married in Milan in 1948 the Budapest- born Francis Shelton, a well-known cellist and lawyer who, among others, had also worked in the English secret service under George Tabori and who had taken care of displaced persons in Italian camps after the end of the war . The Shelton couple had lived in England since 1950, after Francis Shelton was granted British citizenship for his services.

Hildegard Shelton looked for traces of her brother Friedrich Freund after the end of the Second World War. She traveled to Berlin, found the house at Mommsenstrasse 52 intact, and tried to clarify the fate of her brother and her aunt Hanna Kay with the help of a lawyer. On September 22nd, 1947, she found out about the deportation of Friedrich and Hilde Freund, but nothing about their further fate. In the summer of 1948 she traveled to her native Darmstadt. The house in which she grew up, at Landgraf-Philipp-Anlage 44, was destroyed, and the Villa Bismarckstrasse 37, which had formerly belonged to Friedrich Freund, had survived the war. With the help of Friedrich Mainzer , she applied for compensation for herself and in the name of Hanna Tabori . Defendant was the doctor Dr. Ludwig Riemenschneider (born January 1, 1895 in Darmstadt), who had acquired Freund's villa, obviously taking advantage of his plight. In a settlement concluded on June 24, 1949, Riemenschneider undertook to pay Hanna Tabori and Hildegard Shelton 5,500 DM in five equal annual installments to compensate for all reparation claims. While visiting a former sewer who had worked for her parents, Hildegard Shelton discovered pieces of furniture and works of art from the apartment in the Landgraf-Philipp-Anlage in their apartment. “Two watercolors, a view of Naples and one of Vesuvius, were returned to her by the former sewer. They were pictures that used to hang in the bedroom of her half-brother Fritz. "

Works

  • The essence of the state as a problem in jurisprudence , legal dissertation, Giessen, 1923

literature

  • Elisabeth Krimmel: Friend Without Friends - The Life of Dr. Fritz Julius Freund (1898-1944) , Justus-von-Liebig-Verlag, Darmstadt, 2013, ISBN 978-3-87390-330-2 .
  • Elisabeth Krimmel (ed.): Karl Freund 1882-1943. A Jewish art historian in Darmstadt - life and work , Commission for the history of the Jews in Hesse, Wiesbaden, 2011, ISBN 978-3-921434-32-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Unless other sources are mentioned in the following article, all information is based on Elisabeth Krimmel's book Friend Without Friends - The Life of Dr. Fritz Julius Freund (1898-1944) .
  2. ↑ History: From the Darmstädter Realschule to the Georg Büchner School
  3. ↑ a b c Friedrich Freund: curriculum vitae from 17. III. 1921, source: HStAD documents on legal training & return of admission as a lawyer
  4. ↑ Hanna Freund was married to George Tabori from 1942 to 1953 . ( German biography: Tabori, George )
  5. ↑ a b HStAD documents on legal training & return of admission as a lawyer
  6. ^ Elisabeth Krimmel: Friend without friends , p. 59
  7. ^ Elisabeth Krimmel: Friend without friends , p. 63
  8. ^ Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt : Ebo Rothschild's lawsuit against the State of Hesse regarding travel expenses during emigration. Signature H 12 DA 8766
  9. ↑ Elisabeth Krimmel, Freund ohne Freunde , p. 71, refers to the file HStAD G 21 B, no. 3383/1 as the source. In the archive system of the State of Hesse, however, only one file HStAD G 21 B, No. 3383 / 1–2 (see sources) is shown. The sheets cited by Krimmel do not exist in this and there are no other references to this court of honor proceedings.
  10. ↑ Elisabeth Krimmel, Freund ohne Freunde , p. 72, and Jens Joachim: Professional ban for esteemed medical professionals , Frankfurter Rundschau (FR), October 23, 2018. The FR article was related to an exhibition on the withdrawal of a license to practice for Jewish doctors, in which was pointed out to the fate of Max Rosenthal as an example for Darmstadt.
  11. ^ HStAD: Friedrich Freund: Documents for legal training & return of admission as a lawyer, sheet 40
  12. ^ Elisabeth Krimmel: Friend without friends , p. 79
  13. ^ List of names of the Jews in Worms: Nickelsburg
  14. ^ HStAD: Friedrich Freund: Documents for legal training & return of admission as a lawyer, sheet 41
  15. ↑ In the Berlin address book from 1938 he is there as Dr. jur. Fritz Freund recorded.
  16. ^ HStAD: Friedrich Freund: Documents on legal training & return of admission as a lawyer, sheet 42
  17. ↑ a b c d Stumbling block for Dr. Friedrich Julius friend
  18. ^ Elisabeth Krimmel, Freund ohne Freunde , p. 91
  19. ↑ Elisabeth Krimmel, Friend Without Friends , p. 96
  20. ↑ Elisabeth Krimmel, Freund ohne Freunde , p. 103, writes that the Freunds were only expelled from their apartment in June 1942.
  21. ^ Elisabeth Krimmel, Freund ohne Freunde , p. 102
  22. ^ Elisabeth Krimmel, Freund ohne Freunde , p. 100
  23. ↑ Elisabeth Krimmel, Freund ohne Freunde , p. 101
  24. ↑ Elisabeth Krimmel, Friend Without Friends , p. 104
  25. ^ Gestapo order of October 1, 1942, printed in> Elisabeth Krimmel, Freund ohne Freunde , p. 107
  26. ^ Elisabeth Krimmel, Freund ohne Freunde , p. 119
  27. ↑ Elisabeth Krimmel, Friend Without Friends , pp. 123–124
  28. ^ Elisabeth Krimmel, Friend Without Friends , p. 78
  29. ↑ Interview by Thomas Trenkler with George Tabori
  30. ^ German biography: George Tabori
  31. ^ Elisabeth Krimmel, Friend Without Friends , p. 78
  32. ^ Elisabeth Krimmel, Freund ohne Freunde , p. 132. The Musician Dr Francis Shelton . Scattered references to Shelton's espionage activities can be found in Adrian O'Sullivan: Espionage and Counteritelligence in Occupied Persia (Iran). The Success of the Allied Secret Services, 1941-45 , Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2015, ISBN 978-1-349-55990-9
  33. ↑ Registration sheet for police registration and the issuance of a German ID card, HStaD inventory H 3 Darmstadt No. 39028 . Bismarckstrasse 37 is registered there as the place of residence.
  34. ^ Elisabeth Krimmel, Friend Without Friends , pp. 128–131
personal data
SURNAME Friend, Friedrich Julius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Friend, Friedrich; Friend, fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, victim of National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH January 4, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH May 18, 1944
Place of death Auschwitz