Fritz Hirschfeld

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Fritz Hirschfeld, private photo,
1920s
Official photo,
March 1938

Fritz Hirschfeld (born October 22, 1886 in Berlin ; † October 11, 1944 in Auschwitz ) was a German jurist of Jewish descent, a judge in Potsdam , a refugee in the Netherlands , interned in the Westerbork transit camp and in the Theresienstadt concentration camp and murdered in the Auschwitz extermination camp . After his conversion he also worked as a translator and author.

Life

Fritz Hirschfeld grew up in Berlin. His parents were liberal Jews . He attended the Königliche Wilhelms-Gymnasium up to the Abitur in 1905. He then studied law in Heidelberg, Marburg and Berlin. He also attended lectures in philosophy and psychology. After his doctorate as Dr. jur. he became a court assessor at the Prussian Ministry of Justice.

During the First World War he was badly wounded, so that he was treated for a long time in the military hospital and was later considered a disabled man . After his recovery he continued his judicial career in Potsdam.

In 1919 he married Margarete Schulz, a Protestant teacher from Dahlenburg . In 1924 their daughter Anne Dorothea was born.

In 1927 Hirschfeld became the presiding judge at the Potsdam Labor Court . He held this position until Hitler came to power .

After lengthy internal conflicts and under the impression of Romano Guardini's personality , Hirschfeld converted to the Catholic Church in 1935 .

After the pogrom night in November 1938, Hirschfeld was imprisoned in the Potsdam police prison. He was allowed to emigrate against payment of 38,000 Reichsmark Jewish property tax and 35,000 Reichsmark Reich flight tax . Maimi von Mirbach , with whom he played in a private string quartet, bought Hirschfeld's house and property in Neubabelsberg for 59,000 Reichsmarks, so that the money was available. His “Aryan” wife, already suffering from cancer at the time, stayed in the house; she died in 1941. The daughter was brought to Great Britain.

After intermediate stops - a planned emigration to Brazil failed because of the upper age limit imposed there - Fritz Hirschfeld found accommodation with the Franciscan Sisters of St. Gertrudisgesticht in Nieuwkuijk ( Heusden (Netherlands) ). He intensified his musical activities, made friends with Dutch families and immersed himself in Catholic literature. He had already translated Augustine's Enarrationes into Psalmos , Beda's Vita Sancti Cuthberti and the history of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey . Now he turned to Joost van den Vondel and wrote a translation of rhymes from his Eucharistic poem Altaergeheimenissen and later from De Heerlijkheid der Kerken . He summarized his own thinking in the three-part book Von derreality. Thoughts about world and overworld together. Only three of these typescripts have survived. They were handed over to the Justice Center Potsdam by Myriam Teulings (Nijmegen) on August 2, 2018.

After the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, baptized Jews were initially exempt from the deportations that began immediately . That changed after Archbishop de Jong's pastoral letter on July 26, 1942. On August 15, 1942, Fritz Hirschfeld was taken to the Westerbork transit camp. His letter from the day before he was transported to Theresienstadt, April 19, 1943, is the last document he received. The transport to Auschwitz took place on October 9, 1944. There he was gassed on October 11th .

Commemoration

In March 2019, a stumbling block for Fritz Hirschfeld was laid in Nieuwkuijk, the Netherlands, on the site of the St. Gertrudis Sticht, which was demolished in 1969 . Another stumbling block has been in Potsdam, Griebnitzstraße 8, since December 2019. A hall in the Potsdam Regional Court was named after him.

Web links

Commons : Fritz Hirschfeld  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Guardini taught from 1923 to 1933 Catholic Weltanschauung at the University of Berlin.
  2. ^ A b Fluchthilfe Hauskauf , Potsdamer Latest News, July 21, 2005
  3. ↑ In memory of the persecuted Potsdam Jewish lawyer Fritz Hirschfeld - daughter of a Dutch contemporary witness hands over personal items to the Potsdam Regional Court
  4. ^ Letter of April 19, 1943, page 1 ; Page 2
  5. ↑ heusdeninbeeld.nl
  6. ↑ Opdat wij niet forgotten; De Stolpersteine-man was hier , bd.nl, March 12, 2019
  7. ↑ Potsdam Latest News , December 7, 2019
  8. ↑ Stumbling block for Potsdam lawyers moved , Potsdamer Latest News, March 20, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Hirschfeld, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Jewish judge, murdered in Auschwitz
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 1944
Place of death Auschwitz