Siegfried Heimberg

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Siegfried Heimberg (born September 9, 1898 in Madfeld , † October 21, 1965 in Dortmund ) was a businessman and chairman of the regional association of the Jewish communities of Westphalia-Lippe and the Jewish community of Dortmund .

Live and act

Siegfried Heimberg's grave, Dortmund main cemetery

Siegfried Heimberg was born on September 9, 1898, the sixth of seven children of innkeeper Heinemann Heimberg (1857-1931) and Thelina (1862-1901), née Frankenberg, in Madfeld. Thelina died in 1901 and Heinemann Heimberg married her sister, Rebecca Frankenberg, who died in childbed in 1902. Heinemann Heimberg had five more children with his third wife, Mathilde Steinmann. One of Siegfried Heimberg's siblings is the free economist Bertha Heimberg . The family house and inn burned down in 1912 and the family moved to Dinslaken .

Heimberg attended the Catholic elementary school in Madfeld and then did a commercial apprenticeship in Marburg and later in Cologne . During the First World War he participated in the war, was wounded and was a British prisoner of war from 1916 to 1919. From 1920 he worked as a freelance businessman in Cologne and later as sales manager in a magazine publisher. In 1931 he married Elfriede Zier, who was not of Jewish faith. A year later, the couple had a son.

In 1936 he was dismissed for political reasons. As a Jew, he couldn't find a job and first went to Mannheim, where his daughter was born. On October 1, 1937, he moved to Dortmund, where he had to do forced labor in civil engineering from 1938 to 1944 . He tried to emigrate to America, but the family did not receive an entry permit due to the son's disability. On September 29, 1944, he was sent to the Weißenfels labor camp and three months later to the Halle (Saale) labor camp. From there he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp . Two siblings and four half-siblings as well as the stepmother and an uncle fell victim to the Holocaust . Three siblings and two half-siblings managed to leave the country.

After Theresienstadt was liberated by the Red Army in May 1945, Heimberg returned to Dortmund at the end of July 1945. His wife moved to Großalmerode with the children at an early age and also returned to Dortmund after the war. They were assigned an apartment and in 1946 their second daughter was born.

In 1945 he played a decisive role in the re-establishment of the Dortmund Jewish religious community. According to Heimberg's contemporary report, the city administration had the remaining survivors of the former Jewish community picked up from Theresienstadt around July 1945. Heimberg succeeded in arranging meetings for the Jewish returnees with a steadily increasing number of participants. In August 1945, at the fourth assembly, he was elected to the four-person parish council and later elected its chairman, which he did initially on a voluntary basis and from 1946 on as a full-time employee . At the same time he was from 1946 to 1965 chairman of the regional association of the Jewish communities of Westphalia-Lippe. It contributed to the development of Jewish communities in this area. He laid the foundation stone for the new synagogue in Dortmund and organized the transport of Jewish orphans to Israel. He was also involved in the enforcement of the Jewish religious communities as an institution under public law. He also campaigned for the reparation laws .

Siegfried Heimberg died on October 21, 1965 in Dortmund.

literature

  • Bernd Haunfelder : North Rhine-Westphalia - country and people. 1946-2006. A biographical manual . Aschendorff, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-402-06615-7 , p. 195 .
  • Hans Chanoch Meyer (ed.): From the history and life of the Jews in Westphalia. A collective font. Ner-Tamid-Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 1963.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jürgen Zieher: In the shadow of anti-Semitism and reparation: Municipalities and Jewish communities in Dortmund, Düsseldorf and Cologne 1945-1960 . 1st edition. Metropol-Verlag, 2004, ISBN 978-3-936411-52-2 , pp. 42 f .
  2. ^ Hermann-Ulrich Koehn: Protestantism and the public in the Dortmund area 1942/43 . 1st edition. LIT, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8258-0948-5 , pp. 115 .
  3. ↑ Ursula Hesse: Jewish life in Alme, Altenbüren, Brilon, Madfeld, Messinghausen, Rösenbeck, Thülen . From the beginning to the present. Ed .: City of Brilon. City of Brilon, Brilon 1991, IV, p. 186 ff .
personal data
SURNAME Heimberg, Siegfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chairman of the Jewish community of Westphalia-Lippe
DATE OF BIRTH September 9, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Madfeld (now Brilon )
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 1965
Place of death Dortmund