Richard Merländer

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Richard Merländer (born December 20, 1874 in Mülheim an der Ruhr ; † September 1942 in Treblinka ) was a co-owner of the silk and velvet wholesaler Merländer, Strauss & Co in Krefeld and, as a Jew, was a victim of the Shoah .

Life

Stumbling blocks for Richard Merländer in front of the Villa Merländer.

Richard Merländer was born as the son of the businessman Bendix Merländer (1833-1897) and his wife Johanne Levy (1834-1911) in Mülheim an der Ruhr . Richard Merländer had two sisters (Charlotte, born in 1866 and Helene, born in 1869) and two brothers (Samuel (later renamed Karl) , born in 1867 and Max, born in 1871). The parents initially ran a haberdashery shop there, and later a shop for women's ready-to-wear goods . Like his father, Richard Merländer took up the profession of businessman and founded the velvet and silk wholesaler Merländer, Strauss & Co in 1904 together with Siegfried Strauss and Hermann Heymann . In 1905 he moved from Mülheim to Krefeld.

The company bought silk fabrics that it had printed with patterns it had designed. In addition, hand-painted individual pieces were produced. Sample collections were put together that were sold to clothing manufacturers and fashion houses - mainly in the Rhineland. In the mid-1930s, the company had annual sales of around three million Reichsmarks and at times employed up to 50 people.

Between 1924 and 1925, Merländer had the " Villa Merländer " built as his private residence on Friedrich-Ebert-Straße in Krefeld. Merländer had one room in the new house decorated with wall paintings by the Krefeld artist Heinrich Campendonk . Because Richard Merländer was homosexual and of Jewish descent, he was persecuted by the National Socialists after 1933 . From September 1935, the Nuremberg Laws stipulated who was considered a Jew . Campendonk, too, suffered reprisals because the Nazis classified his art as " degenerate ". Merländer had the wall paintings painted over in order to take further pressure off himself or to avoid further trouble.

In 1938 he had to give up his company; his property was confiscated. The German Reich and the Nazi regime imposed various taxes and special levies on Jews (e.g. Jewish property tax after the November pogrom 1938 ) with the aim of compelling or forcing Jews to sell valuables well below their value. In the end, Merländer also had to sell his house, but he could not freely dispose of the proceeds from it either. In 1941 he therefore had to move into the " Judenhaus " at Bismarckstrasse 118 and on July 23, 1942, to a room in the guesthouse at Hubertusstrasse 68. A last letter from Richard Merländer to his partner Ludwig Hagemes in Berlin has been received from this address. On July 25, 1942, he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and murdered in the Treblinka extermination camp in September 1942 . By order of the Krefeld District Court on December 11, 1950, Richard Merländer was declared dead on May 8, 1945.

literature

  • Barbara Kaufhold: Jews in Mülheim an der Ruhr . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2004, pp. 188–189.
  • Ulrike Renk: Years of Silk. Das Schicksal einer Familie , Aufbau Taschenbuch, Berlin 2018 (Richard Merländer and the Villa Merländer play an important supporting role in this fictional novel.)

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personal data
SURNAME Merländer, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH December 20, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Mülheim an der Ruhr
DATE OF DEATH September 1942
Place of death Treblinka