Gustav Fränkel (entrepreneur)

Gustav Frankel , later Gustavo Frankel (born 25. October 1871 in Bolzum ; died 10. January 1944 in Buenos Aires ) was a German merchant , textile - businessmen , local politicians and patron . The Hildesheim benefactor from a Jewish family had to emigrate to Argentina in the course of the so-called " Aryanizations " , while other family members fell victim to the Holocaust .

Life

Gustav Fränkel was a son of the Jewish Bolzum merchant Joseph or Josef Fränkel (born January 3, 1839 in Bolzum; † September 5, 1916 there) and his wife Caroline , called Lina , born on May 28, 1865 , born Güdemann (born May 21, 1916) 1836 in Bolzum; † August 3, 1919 in Hildesheim). Gustav had three older sisters: Ida (born October 14, 1865), married Stern , Bertha (born February 7, 1867), married Güdemann , and Jenny (born October 14, 1870).

Fränkel attended school in Hildesheim , where Michaelis was accepted into class VI b ( sixth grade) at the Andreanum grammar school in 1881 . From the class IV - the Quarta , which corresponds to the current year 7 - joined Frankel to secondary school , "[...] seem to coincide with the inauguration of the new building and the establishment of the Royal Andrew's Grammar School, the forerunner of today's Scharnhorst Gymnasium " . Since the name of Gustav Fränkels is not to be found as a secondary school leaver in the corresponding programs of the Andreas Realgymnasium, he probably left school with the secondary school leaving certificate in order to start a commercial apprenticeship as early as possible in his father's company .

Until January 30, 1904, Fränkel lived with his parents in the house at Kaiserstraße 6 in Hildesheim, where his stays were only interrupted by military services in Dortmund , Braunschweig and Malchin . On October 1, 1893, he was appointed sergeant in the reserve . In the address book of the city of Hildesheim, Gustav Fränkel's name can be found for the first time in 1895 together with the professional title businessman . From 1898 he was mentioned there as an authorized signatory and from 1903 as co-owner of his father's company GD Fränkel GmbH (sack factory and manufacture of filter materials).

On August 15, 1900 he married Elisabeth Schäfer (born August 15, 1876 in Berlin). With her he had four children born in Hildesheim: Heinz Julian (born August 18, 1901), Hilde (born September 6, 1902; married to Dipl.-Ing.Heinrich Kleber since 1929 ), Ernst Gerhard (born June 30, 1905) and Hans Peter (born June 5, 1907). Gustav Fränkel and his family lived in their own residential and commercial building at Kaiserstraße 39 from January 30, 1904 to June 11, 1926 .

Julius Wolff Fountain in Hildesheim
(contemporary postcard , around 1911)

After the birth of his children Frankel began cultural, social and political activities in Hildesheim between 1910 and 1924. During this time he was co-founder of the City Theater Hildesheim AG , gave the city the Julius Wolff Fountain initiated and financed the nursery Marie Burger height , built several foundations for both social and educational purposes.

In the middle of World War I , Gustav Fränkel was elected mayor in 1916 , an office that he held until the Weimar Republic in 1924. During these years he became the first Jew elected to the municipal colleges to become involved in local politics in his hometown.

After almost all of their children had grown up, the Fränkel couple moved to Hanover in 1926 . By the local district Kleefeld , his place of residence in accordance with the client and carousel farmers Hugo Haase named Villa Haase in Spinoza Street 9 at the Eilenriede , is Frankel made every morning in a black Horch - limousine ride to his sack factory to Hildesheim.

The files of the Hildesheim trade inspectorate contain no information about the relationship between the entrepreneur Fränkel and his employees. This "[...] is, however, a positive statement", since otherwise complaints, lawsuits or notifications of defects would have been documented. In 1930 the sugar factories demanded Hildesheimer Börde "because of the unexpectedly large harvest" of sugar beet filter cloths or 35,000 sacks of, which Frankel to avert this emergency with the consent of the works council at the Labor Inspectorate an "exceptionally employment of about 110 workers" for the Buß - and requested day of prayer . The Hildesheim NSDAP used this situation for anti-Semitic agitation . Fränkel's "[...] remedying an emergency to prevent production downtime" was blown up into an exploitation scandal. Under the heading "We are clearing up the case of the local Jew Fränkel" , eight almost inquisitorial questions from an apparently personally known prosecutor were found on an anonymously printed, dark red flyer which, instead of a person responsible under press law, only showed the name of the printing company Bakeberg & Löhner who apparently already knew.

After the National Socialists seized power and the so-called Nuremberg Laws came into force in 1935, Gustav Fränkel began to protect himself against the worst consequences of " Aryanization ", so that he could at least retain influence on his company until he emigrated Textilwerke Hildesheim informed the Hildesheim trade supervisory office "[...] simultaneously in the name and on behalf of the company GD Fränkel GmbH" on November 8, 1935, that it had taken over the sack factory, which had already been closed on October 19 of that year, and that it will continue this unchanged.

After the textile works had been temporarily managed by Willy Schacht and members of the Fränkel family on the board, Gustav Fränkel announced on February 15, 1938, “[...] that he had transferred the Hildesheim textile works to the Hildesheim Schacht textile works & Co. KG ".

After a large part of the Fränkel family had already emigrated to Argentina in 1938 , Fränkel's “ Aryan ” son-in-law Heinz Kleber followed in 1939 as the last member of the company to travel abroad. Gustav Fränkel, who died in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires during the Second World War in 1944, had to pay 876,000 Reichsmarks (RM) " Reich flight tax ", a " Jewish property tax " in the amount of 300,000 RM, and lost when converting Reichsmarks into " Emigrant Marks ”by Deutsche Golddiskontbank AG an additional 1,490,000 RM. "[...] In total, the family lost 4,400,560.22 RM", of which they were reimbursed just under 1,000,000 DM after the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany and after a long legal dispute through a settlement in 1956 .

Gustav Fränkel's sister Berta, who was married to Moritz Güdemann, fared worse . After they were last penned together with their daughter Hanna (born July 8, 1891) in the so-called " Judenhaus " at Friesenstrasse 16 in Hildesheim, both were deported to the Theresienstadt camp on July 23, 1942 . Bertha died there in the Terezin camp on June 30, 1943. Her daughter Hanna was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on May 15, 1944 , where she was also murdered.

literature

Hartmut Häger : Gustav Fränkel. A Jewish entrepreneur, mayor and “benefactor” of Hildesheim. In: Hildesheim City Archives (ed.): Hildesheim Yearbook for the City and Monastery of Hildesheim , Volume 84. Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 2012, ISSN 0944-3045.

Web links

Hartmut Häger: Gustav Fränkel - a Jewish entrepreneur, mayor and benefactor in Hildesheim on the site vernetztes-erinnern-hildesheim.de

Remarks

↑ Notwithstanding, Gustav Fränkel is named in the WohnArt article “Georg Fränkel”.

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h o.V. : Fränkel, Gustav in the database of Niedersächsische Personen (new entry required) of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library - Lower Saxony State Library in the processing of January 4, 2013, last accessed on December 15, 2016
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p Hartmut Häger: Gustav Fränkel - a Jewish entrepreneur, mayor and benefactor in Hildesheim on the website vernetztes-erinnern-hildesheim.de , last accessed on December 15, 2016
↑ oV : Hanover's historic homes. Episode 8: The Villa Haase in Spinozastraße 9. In: Wohnart , issue 10 (2014). ( online as a PDF document at haus-und-grundeigentum.de , last accessed on December 15, 2016)

personal data
SURNAME	Frankel, Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Frankel, Gustavo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German businessman and textile entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH	October 25, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bolzum
DATE OF DEATH	January 10, 1944
Place of death	Buenos Aires

[4] Notwithstanding, Gustav Fränkel is named in the WohnArt article “Georg Fränkel”.

[GWLB-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h o.V. : Fränkel, Gustav in the database of Niedersächsische Personen (new entry required) of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library - Lower Saxony State Library in the processing of January 4, 2013, last accessed on December 15, 2016

[Vernetztes_Erinnern-2] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p Hartmut Häger: Gustav Fränkel - a Jewish entrepreneur, mayor and benefactor in Hildesheim on the website vernetztes-erinnern-hildesheim.de , last accessed on December 15, 2016

[Wohnart-3] V : Hanover's historic homes. Episode 8: The Villa Haase in Spinozastraße 9. In: Wohnart , issue 10 (2014). ( online as a PDF document at haus-und-grundeigentum.de , last accessed on December 15, 2016)