Heinrich Stahl (community council)

Heinrich Stahl (born April 13, 1868 in Berlin ; † November 4, 1942 in the Theresienstadt ghetto ) was chairman of the Jewish community in Berlin from 1933 to 1940 .

Life

Berlin memorial plaque on Alt-Rudow 43 in Berlin-Rudow

Heinrich Stahl was born as the son of the farmer Israel Stahl in Berlin-Rudow . He embarked on a commercial career and was director of Viktoria Insurance for many years .

In the municipal elections in 1930, Stahl was elected for the first time in the representative assembly of the Jewish community in Berlin. At that time he was head of the welfare office and looked after the community's old people's homes. He also became a member of the Berlin Masonic Lodge Victoria .

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists , Stahl was elected chairman of the community council on June 23, 1933, making him the highest representative of the Jewish citizens of Berlin. In the first year of his term of office he founded the “Jewish Winter Aid”. After the establishment of the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany , he was a member of the first presidential committee from September 1933. After this organization was converted into the “ Reich Association of Jews in Germany ”, he was deputy chairman Leo Baeck there from July 1939 .

In January 1940, his bad relationship with Baeck led to his removal from the community chairmanship. The background to the conflict was Stahl's demand to expand the influence of Berlin's large Jewish community within the Reichsvereinigung. Moritz Henschel succeeded him as the last chairman of the Jewish Community in Berlin during the Nazi era . Heinrich Stahl has since lived in seclusion in Berlin.

On June 11, 1942, he was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto , where at the beginning of October 1942 he was appointed deputy chairman of the council of elders under the “Jewish elder ” Jakob Edelstein . Soon afterwards, on November 4, 1942, Stahl died in the Theresienstadt ghetto.

memories

A Berlin memorial plaque is located next to his birthplace, Alt-Rudow 43 in Berlin-Rudow . There the year 1942 is wrongly given for his chairmanship.

In 1954, on the initiative of Heinz Galinski, a Heinrich Stahl Prize named after Stahl was launched, initially endowed with DM 2,000 and awarded at irregular intervals, since 1956 a total of 14 times, most recently in 2004 and 2010.

literature

• Israel Gutman (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Holocaust - The persecution and murder of European Jews , Piper Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1998, 3 volumes, ISBN 3-492-22700-7
• Ernst G. Lowenthal: From Moritz Veit to Heinrich Stahl. Community leader 1845 to 1943 / A contribution to the history of the Jews in Berlin , in: Yearbook “Der Bär von Berlin”, ed. v. Association for the History of Berlin , 28th year, Berlin 1979.

Web links

• Stahl, Heinrich The Theresienstadt Lexicon