Stumbling blocks in Tübingen city center
The Stolpersteine in Tübingen remind of the fate of the people who were murdered, deported, expelled or driven to suicide under National Socialism .
History of the laying of the stumbling block
After Stolpersteine had been laid in the southern part of Tübingen in 2011 , in 2016 a private initiative for the laying of further Stolpersteine in the inner city of Tübingen supported the demands of the Working Group of Christian Churches (ACK) "unanimously and emphatically" Has. In September 2017, the culture committee of the city of Tübingen approved a motion to lay the stumbling block with a large majority.
The 29 stumbling blocks were laid on July 10, 2018 in eight locations by the Cologne artist Gunter Demnig in downtown Tübingen. For this purpose, 23 descendants of the Tübingen Jews from England, France, Israel and the USA traveled for three days. The order listed corresponds to the laying and can thus also be hiked through the city.
Another 26 stumbling blocks (listed here from Uhlandstraße ) were laid by Gunter Demnig on July 13, 2020 in downtown Tübingen - due to the corona, without the participation of descendants. With the completion of this third project, almost all of those former Tübingen Jews will be remembered with a stumbling block whose names are on the Synagogenplatz Tübingen memorial on Synagogenplatz.
Young people in grades 5 to 12 of the Geschwister-Scholl-Schule Tübingen spent a whole school year studying the history of Tübingen during the Nazi dictatorship and contributed to the descriptions of their lives, which are the basis of the texts.
Corner of Holzmarkt / Neue Strasse
Jakob Oppenheim
Corner of Holzmarkt / Neue Strasse (map)
HERE LIVED
JAKOB OPPENHEIM
JG. 1874
"PROTECTIVE" 1938
GESTAPOZENTRALE
ESCAPE 1940
USA
Jakob Oppenheim was born on April 27, 1874 in Bebra / Hessen and came to Tübingen in 1905. He was married to Karoline Oppenheim, b. Sailor from Aschbach in Franconia . His son Heinz was born in Tübingen in 1907 and his daughter Gertrud in 1911.
Jakob Oppenheim was one of the most successful and respected merchants in Tübingen. In 1906 he took over the women's clothing and trousseau business “Eduard Degginger u. Co. ”at Neue Strasse 16; the name was changed to "Eduard Degginger successor".
He later bought the former officers' mess Neue Straße 1 from the city of Tübingen, had it extensively renovated and relocated his business there. His brother-in-law Albert Schäfer, who came to Tübingen in 1911, became a partner. For a city like Tübingen, the company was an unusually large and representative business in this branch. After major losses during the First World War, there was a considerable upswing in the mid-twenties; the size of the business and the reputation of its owners increased accordingly.
From 1914 to 1925 Jakob Oppenheim was head of the synagogue and from 1925 to 1934 the community and foundation curator of the Tübingen Jewish community. As early as 1930, the initially creeping, later open boycott of Jewish businesses, flanked by SA guards in front of the office building, made itself felt and brought considerable losses that seriously damaged his company and ultimately drove the company into ruin. Under enormous political pressure, he initially rented out his business to the NSDAP City Councilor Karl Haidt and in 1937 the name "Eduard Degginger Successor" was deleted from the commercial register.
There were repeated interrogations by the Gestapo in Stuttgart , making it unavoidable to leave Germany. As the last of the Tübingen Jews, he and his wife Karoline managed to escape to the USA via Genoa in 1940 . The household items posted as freight never arrived at their destination. Jakob Oppenheim lived in Cleveland , Ohio with a broken heart, as his son Heinz writes. He died there on March 5, 1947.
Karoline Oppenheim, b. sailor
Corner of Holzmarkt / Neue Strasse (map)
HERE LIVED
KAROLINE OPPENHEIM
GEB. SAILOR
JG. 1883
Escape 1940
USA
DEAD 11/7/1944
Karoline Oppenheim, b. Seemann was born on May 28, 1883 in Aschbach near Bamberg . She was the wife of the textile merchant Jakob Oppenheim and came to Tübingen with him in 1905. Their son Heinz was born there in 1907 and their daughter Gertrud in 1911.
Karoline Oppenheim was very committed to society, she was a co-founder of the Jewish women's choir and was active in the Jewish women's association, in which all Jewish women in Tübingen were organized. The association's tasks encompassed a broad spectrum, from educational work to charitable activities to assessing the social position of Jewish women. In 1940 Karoline Oppenheim fled to the USA with her husband, initially to Cleveland / Ohio, and later moved to her daughter Gertrud in Pennsylvania . She died in Philadelphia on November 7, 1944.
Dr. Heinz Oppenheim
Corner of Holzmarkt / Neue Strasse (map)
HERE LIVED
DR. HEINZ OPPENHEIM
JG. 1907
Escape 1936
USA
Heinz Oppenheim was born on April 25, 1907 in Tübingen. There he graduated from high school in 1925 and then studied medicine in Tübingen, Munich and Vienna. In 1930 he received his doctorate. From 1931 to the end of April 1933 he worked as an assistant doctor at the Tübingen University Clinic for Ear, Nose and Throat Diseases. As of May 1933, he was unable to continue his work as an assistant doctor in Germany because of a decree by the Reich Labor Ministry that was now in force and, as a Jew, was not given a health insurance license.
That is why he went to Strasbourg for six months and then to Switzerland to the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim . Since there was no prospect of a successful professional activity in France or Switzerland either, he returned to Tübingen and tried to set up a private practice as a general practitioner in Neue Straße 1. This also turned out to be hopeless, since as a Jew he did not get a health insurance license and because private patients did not dare to see a Jewish doctor.
In 1935 he married Dorothee Hayum from the Hayum family of lawyers and emigrated with her to the USA in 1936. Their daughter Lilian was born in 1945. From 1943 to 1945 Heinz Oppenheim served in the medical department of the American army.
In the USA Heinz Oppenheim worked as a very respected chief physician and professor of ear, nose and throat medicine and was a member of various scientific associations. He was licensed as an ENT specialist in New York, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Heinz Oppenheim was a member of the Jewish community "Adath Israel Congregation". He died suddenly on November 23, 1969 in his Louisville, Kentucky office.
Dorothee Oppenheim, b. Hayum
Corner of Holzmarkt / Neue Strasse (map)
HERE LIVED
DOROTHEE OPPENHEIM
GEB. HAYUM
JG. 1912
Escape 1936
USA
Dorothee Hayum was born on April 28, 1912 in Tübingen as the only daughter of the lawyer and liberal (DDP) city councilor Simon Hayum and his wife Hermine, nee. Because. She attended the humanistic grammar school (today Uhland grammar school ) in Tübingen, where she graduated from high school. She then studied law in Munich, Freiburg and Tübingen. There she completed her studies with a doctorate in 1934.
In 1935 she married Dr. Heinz Oppenheim. Since the National Socialists had imposed professional bans on Jewish civil servants and lawyers by law of April 7, 1933, she had no chance of being admitted to the bar and had to forego a legal career. In 1936 she and her husband fled to the USA. In 1945 their daughter Lilian was born there, who studied in Indiana and now (2018) lives in Louisville / Kentucky. Dorothee Oppenheim died in 1950.
Gertrud Oppenheim, married. Eagle
Corner of Holzmarkt / Neue Strasse (map)
HERE LIVED
GERTRUD OPPENHEIM
VERH. ADLER
JG. 1911
Escape 1938
USA
Gertrud Oppenheim was born on November 17, 1911 as the daughter of Jakob Oppenheim and his wife Karoline Oppenheim, b. Seemann born in Tübingen. She attended the girls 'high school in Tübingen (today Wildermuth Gymnasium ) and then a girls' boarding school in French-speaking Switzerland. Then she helped in her father's flourishing textile business.
In 1935 in Frankfurt / Main she married the lawyer Dr. Otto Adler. She fled with him to the USA in 1938 and lived in Philadelphia / Pennsylvania. In 1940 she took in her parents Jakob and Karoline Oppenheim and made their living together with her brother Heinz Oppenheim.
Albert Schäfer
Corner of Holzmarkt / Neue Strasse (map)
HERE LIVED
ALBERT SCHAEFER
JG. 1878
“Protective custody” 1938
Dachau
Tortured
Dead from the
consequences of imprisonment on May 4, 1941
Albert Schäfer was born on August 26, 1878 in Hainsfarth / Bavaria. After high school and a commercial apprenticeship, he worked for larger textile companies in Nuremberg, Würzburg and Munich for a long time.
In 1911 he came to Tübingen and together with his brother-in-law Jakob Oppenheim took over the management of the clothing company "Eduard Degginger Successor". They acquired the former officers' mess at Neue Straße 1 and converted it into a prestigious business and residential building. It was soon considered the most renowned clothing store in Tübingen.
From 1913 to 1933, "Eduard Degginger Successor" was the market leader in Tübingen, but as early as 1931 a boycott of all Jewish businesses began, first slowly and then from April 1, 1933 on a state initiative. As a result, profits fell rapidly and only a few loyal customers remained. On the morning after the Reichspogromnacht in November 1938, Albert Schäfer was arrested and brought to Dachau. At the end of the month he was released from the concentration camp on the condition that he leave Germany immediately and with the forced promise not to tell anyone about his experiences in the concentration camp.
In January 1939, Albert Schäfer and Jakob Oppenheim had to sell the office building, which had meanwhile been rented to the NSDAP city councilor Karl Haidt, to him for well below its actual value. In March 1939, the newly introduced so-called “silver levy” also robbed the Schäfer family of almost all of their valuables. Further compulsory taxes were paid to the state from the proceeds of the house, the so-called “Jewish property tax”, so that Jakob Oppenheim and Albert Schäfer only had 10,000 Reichsmarks left, to which they no longer had access.
Albert Schäfer suffered severely physically and mentally from the consequences of his imprisonment in the concentration camp and died on May 4, 1941 in Tübingen. Since the Jewish community had already dissolved, there was no one who wanted to take care of the funeral. An intrepid horse-drawn carriage driver hid him under a tarpaulin and brought him to the Wankheim cemetery. He was buried there in the presence of his wife and few remaining friends. Both daughters had fled Germany before - it was the last burial in this small Jewish cemetery.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2,3 Interview Barbara Zumbroich with Gisela Förster, contemporary witness Tübingen June 15, 2018)
Selma Schäfer, b. sailor
Corner of Holzmarkt / Neue Strasse (map)
HERE LIVED
SELMA SCHAEFER
born Sailor
JG. 1887
DEPORTED 1941
RIGA
MURDERED 23.3.1942
Selma Schäfer was born on March 14, 1887 in Aschbach near Bamberg as the younger sister of Karoline Oppenheim, b. Seemann and came to Tübingen in 1911 together with her husband Albert Schäfer. The couple had two daughters, Herta and Liselotte. Selma Schäfer worked in the business of her husband and brother-in-law. In addition, she was known throughout the city for her great social commitment to poor people in Tübingen. Selma Schäfer was a member of the Tübingen Jewish Women's Association, which was founded in 1924 and was active in the social and cultural field.
After her husband's death in 1941, Selma Schäfer was forcibly relocated to Haigerloch . In November it was brought from Haigerloch to Stuttgart to the collection point at the Nordbahnhof. From there, she and many others were deported to Riga on December 1st, 1941 in unheated freight cars for three days . On March 26, 1942, she was massacred there. She has not received a grave on her husband's side, but her name is on the collective memorial stone for the murdered Jews from Tübingen, which Victor Marx had set up in the Wankheim cemetery after the war.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2,3 Interview Barbara Zumbroich with Gisela Förster, contemporary witness Tübingen June 15, 2018)
Herta Schäfer, married. Meinhardt
Corner of Holzmarkt / Neue Strasse (map)
HERE LIVED
HERTA SCHAEFER
VERH. MEINHARD
JG. 1911
ESCAPE 1937
USA
Herta Schäfer was born on October 27, 1911 in Tübingen as the first daughter of the textile merchant Albert Schäfer and his wife Selma. She attended the upper secondary school for girls, (today Wildermuth-Gymnasium) in Tübingen and then a girls boarding school in French-speaking Switzerland.
In 1935 she married Gustav Meinhardt, who had a textile business in Nuremberg, and moved in with him. In 1937, under the increasing pressure of the National Socialists, they decided to flee to New York. She lived in Florida until her death in 1989. At the invitation of the city, she came to visit Tübingen again.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2,3 Interview Barbara Zumbroich with Gisela Förster, contemporary witness Tübingen June 15, 2018)
Liselotte / Michal Schäfer, married. Wager
Corner of Holzmarkt / Neue Strasse (map)
HERE LIVED
Liselotte SCHAEFER
VERH. WAGER
JG. 1921
ESCAPE 1937
PALESTINE
Liselotte Schäfer was born as the second daughter of Albert and Selma Schäfer on June 22, 1921 in Tübingen. She attended the high school for girls (today Wildermuth-Gymnasium) in Tübingen. When asked, she did not remember any discrimination from classmates or teachers, except that she was never allowed to attend the many BDM events and therefore often felt alone.
She was the only Tübingen Jew to join the Zionist youth movement after reading about organized emigration to Palestine in a newspaper . Near Munich she attended a six-week preparatory course in which one learned Hebrew and agricultural work. In 1937 she took the train to Trieste . Together with other young people, she arrived in Palestine by ship and quickly managed to gain a foothold in kibbutz life. She dropped her German first name Liselotte and took on the Hebrew first name Michal to identify with her new home.
In 1940 she gave up the kibbutz life in order to earn money in Tel Aviv for her parents' escape, which however never happened. In 1946 she married Eliahu Wager, whose family came from Odessa . With him she has two sons, a daughter and four grandchildren. Together with other families, they founded the Ginnossar kibbutz on the Sea of Galilee . In 1960 they first moved to Haifa , and in 1971 to Jerusalem . Michal Wager worked there as a volunteer translator in the archive of the Yad Vashem memorial for many years .
(Sources: Ref. 1,2,3 Interview Barbara Zumbroich with Gisela Förster, contemporary witness Tübingen June 15, 2018)
Hirschgasse
Rosalie Weil, b. Herrmann
HERE LIVED
ROSALIE BECAUSE
GEB: HERRMANN
JG. 1871
DISTRIBUTED 1903
HEILANSTALT SCHUSSENRIED
"RELOCATED" July
9,
1940 GRAFENECK MURDERED
July
9, 1940
"ACTION T4"
Rosalie Herrmann was born on August 20, 1871 in Stuttgart to a Jewish family.
On April 9, 1896, she married Sigmund Weil in Stuttgart and moved with him to Tübingen on January 26, 1903. There Sigmund Weil became a partner in the publishing house of the " Tübinger Chronik " together with his brother Albert .
Homesick to Stuttgart, she was admitted to the Schussenried sanatorium on November 13, 1903; the marriage was divorced on May 1, 1907. On July 9, 1940, 75 patients were transported from Schussenried to the Grafeneck killing center, where she fell victim to the “ T4 ” euthanasia campaign .
Mauerstrasse
Philippine Reinauer
HERE LIVED
PHILIPPINE REINAUER
JG. ADMISSIONED IN 1860
1941
HEGGBACH SANITARY
INSTITUTE DEPORTED 1942
MURDERED IN
AUSCHWITZ
Philippine Reinauer was born on July 15, 1860 in Mühringen / Horb as the first daughter of Marx Reinauer and his wife Fanny Reinauer, geb. Reinauer. On August 22nd, 1872, they moved to Tübingen at Kirchgasse 13. In October, their father registered a business as an optician and engraver. (His brother-in-law Leopold Reinauer lived at Collegiumsgasse 6 and had a shop with regional products.) He died on March 23, 1881. His wife Fanny lived in Kirchgasse 8 from 1906 and in Rappstraße 46 from 1909. She died on March 19, 1919 ( lit. 3).
From 1909 Philippine Reinauer lived at Mauerstraße 25 with her sister Sofie. Nothing is known of her professional career, the job title given was "Privatière".
On March 26, 1941, she and her sister Sofie were admitted to the Heggbach / Laupheim nursing home . Jews were often housed in this institution for a few months and then deported. Philippine Reinauer was deregistered in Heggbach on July 11, 1942 and "brought" to the Stuttgart assembly camp. From there, the death transport went to Auschwitz on July 13, 1942, where they are lost. Presumably she was murdered there. (City Archives Tübingen, address book 1877)
(Sources: Ref. 1,2,3,7)
Sofie Reinauer
HERE LIVED
SOFIE REINAUER
JG.
ADMISSIONED IN 1864
1941
HEGGBACH SANCTUARY
MURDERED January 11, 1942
Sofie Reinauer was born on February 6, 1864 as the third child of the married couple Marx and Fanny Reinauer in Mühringen / Horb. From 1909 she lived in Tübingen with her sister Philippine at Mauerstraße 25. Sofie worked as an embroiderer from 1922 to 1937. She had a trade license for it, but earned only a very modest income.
On March 26, 1941, she and her sister Philippine were transported to the Heggbach / Laupheim nursing home. Sofie is said to have died there of old age on January 11, 1942. Her grave is in the Laupheim Jewish cemetery.
Of the four other siblings of the two sisters Philippine and Sofie Reinauer, only the last son, Bernhard Reinauer, survived, who was also born in Mühringen on February 5, 1872. Bernhard emigrated to the USA in 1888 at the age of 16. He lived in Cook , Illinois and died in 1952. He had two sons.
The elder, Max Lincoln Reinauer, lived in Los Angeles / California from 1915 to 1990 and also had two sons. The younger, Robert Louis Reinauer, was born in Chicago / Illinois in 1920 and died in Kitsap / Washington in 2010 , where he lived from 1940. He had two children, Dirk, geb. 1960, and Deonne Roberta, b. 1961.
(Sources: ref 1,2,3,11)
Kelternstrasse
Dr. Albert Pagel
HERE LIVED
DR. ALBERT PAGEL
JG. 1885
DEPORTED 1942
THERESIENSTADT
MURDERED
IN 1943
AUSCHWITZ
Albert Pagel was born on December 3, 1885 as the son of the well-known medical historian Julius Leopold Pagel and his wife Marie, b. Labashin, born in Berlin. He attended the humanistic Lessing-Gymnasium in Berlin and passed the Abitur there. He then studied law and philosophy in Berlin with a focus on legal philosophy.
In 1907 Albert Pagel became a trainee lawyer and in 1911 an assessor and received his doctorate in 1909 at the University of Giessen . From 1912 to 1914 he was an assistant at the law faculty of the University of Berlin . During the First World War he did military service as a judge in various places. Since Albert Pagel suffered from a chronic illness that had worsened under the conditions of the war, he returned from the war in poor health. A career at university or in the judiciary was out of the question.
Since his parents had died in 1909 and 1912, Albrecht Pagel was looked after and cared for by his younger sister Charlotte. He continued to work scientifically as a private scholar, was a member of the Kant Society (founded by Hans Vaihinger ) and published works on legal philosophical and legal topics.
On August 21, 1927, Charlotte and Albert Pagel moved to Tübingen at Kelternstrasse 8, probably because his younger brother Walter Pagel worked as an assistant at the Pathological Institute from 1926 to 1928. Albert had good contacts with the philosophical and law faculties and took part in university life.
(Dr. Walter Pagel and his wife Dr. Magda Pagel, née Koll, were unable to do their habilitation as Jews in Tübingen and Heidelberg due to National Socialist laws and emigrated to Great Britain with their three-year-old son Bernard in 1933. Walter Pagel lived as a respected professor of pathology and Medical history in London and died in 1963.)
Dr. Albert Pagel and his sister Charlotte, meanwhile both sick, continued to live at Kelternstrasse 8 until they were both picked up on August 20, 1942. On August 22nd, they were deported from Stuttgart to Theresienstadt and on January 23rd, 1943 to Auschwitz , where they were murdered.
Charlotte Pagel
HERE LIVED
CHARLOTTE PAGEL
JG.
DEPORTED 1894
1942
THERESIENSTADT
MURDERED IN
AUSCHWITZ
Charlotte Pagel was born on September 29, 1894 as the daughter of the well-known medical historian Julius Leopold Pagel and his wife Marie, b. Labashin, born in Berlin. She was the sister of Dr. Albert and Dr. Walter Pagel.
Since her younger brother Walter accepted an assistant doctor position in Tübingen in 1926 as a prosector at the anatomical institute of the university, Charlotte Pagel came to Tübingen with her sick brother Albert in 1927; they lived at Kelternstrasse 8. Charlotte Pagel looked after and looked after her brother, who suffered from a chronic illness.
Contemporary witnesses have remembered the Pagel siblings as lovable neighbors and tell how Charlotte provided poor children in the Hölderlin School with sandwiches. Her brother Walter writes that she was the best and most loving person, very beautiful and of great musicality; She gave up a career as a singer and had a family of her own in order to take care of her helpless brother.
Both siblings were picked up on August 20, 1942 in Kelternstrasse and deported from Stuttgart to Theresienstadt on August 23, and on to Auschwitz on January 23, 1943, where they were murdered.
(Sources: Ref. 1)
Woehrdstrasse
Dr. phil Josef Wochenmark and Bella Wochenmark, b. Freudenthal
Wöhrdstraße 23 (map) (demolished today)
RABBINER
LIVED
HERE
DR. JOSEF
WOCHENMARK
JG. 1880
BEFORE DEPORTATION
ESCAPE TO DEATH
03/08/1943
HERE LIVED
BELLA
WEEKLY MARK
GEB. FREUDENTHAL
JG.
DEPORTED 1887
1943
THERESIENSTADT
MURDERED
AUSCHWITZ IN
1944
In Wöhrdstrasse 23, the cantor and teacher Dr. Josef Wochenmark with his wife Bella and their two sons Alfred and Arnold.
The father of the family was (as his son Arnold writes) “academically minded” ( lit. 5, p.321), educated, well-read, hardworking and very eager to develop an identity as an educated German Jew. He took on many tasks of spiritual care and the care of the Jewish community, teaching the children in school and Talmud as well as visiting the sick in the clinics, and spent long hours in his library working on his dissertation; he completed it in 1933 with Prof. Dr. Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (the founder of the “German Faith Movement”).
Josef Wochenmark was born in Rozwadow / Galicia in 1880 in one of the crown lands of the Habsburg monarchy and, like many Jews, had to leave the country in 1918 because of anti-Semitic attacks. He was well aware of the strong rejection of the non-Jewish German public towards the “Eastern Jews”, but also the reservations of the equality that had meanwhile been integrated into 1864, e.g. T. assimilated Jewish bourgeoisie.
Although he came from an Orthodox background, Josef Wochenmark was emphatically liberal and innovative within the community, because in Tübingen practicing the Jewish religion was more of a private matter. There were few contacts with members of the almost entirely non-Jewish university, for example with the seminar and colloquium of his doctoral supervisor and with the Jewish students who took part in the kosher lunch that his wife Bella ran together with a small guesthouse.
In the daily, lively discussions, he expressed his opinion openly. His son Arnold said that his father “had the confidence in the German people that they were too civilized, too clever to deal with such a scoundrel like Hitler ( Lit. 6, p. 96). He said that if you don't walk around in a caftan and speak Yiddish, but behave educated and adapted, you will not be discriminated against ( lit. 2, p. 96). "
With the emigration or flight of many members, Josef Wochenmark's community shrank considerably, which is why the Jewish senior councilor transferred him to Schwäbisch Gmünd in 1934. The two sons Arnold and Alfred had meanwhile emigrated to Switzerland, the parents were considering emigrating to the USA. The persecution increased and the weekly marks were transferred to Stuttgart. There, at the age of 61, Josef Wochenmark still achieved his goal in life: in March 1941, he became an Orthodox rabbi , the last rabbi of Stuttgart. Here, too, and despite adverse circumstances, he continued his education. His wife Bella worked as an unskilled worker in Stuttgart. Both were interned in a "Jewish house". Distress, isolation, control, bans on going out and wearing the yellow star determined their everyday life. There were only desperate letters left: "We will continue here as long as we can and hopefully you are healthy and do not lose your belief in God" ( Lit. 5, p. 96).
Before the deportation, Josef and Bella Wochenmark tried to kill themselves; Josef Wochenmark died on March 8, 1943, but his wife Bella survived seriously injured and came to Theresienstadt in April 1943, from there to Auschwitz on October 16, 1944, where she was murdered.
(Sources: Ref. 2 pp.319-344, Ref. 5 p.321 and p. 326, Ref. 6 p.326)
Alfred Wochenmark / Alfred W. Mark
HERE LIVED
ALFRED
WOCHENMARK
JG. 1917
ESCAPE 1933
SWITZERLAND
1937 USA
Alfred, the older son of the Wochenmark family, was born on June 20, 1917 in Freudental near Ludwigsburg . In 1925 the family moved to Tübingen. Like his younger brother Arnold, he attended elementary school and then the humanistic grammar school (today Uhland grammar school) in Tübingen. Both faced anti-Semitic hostility at school.
In 1932 Alfred had a particularly bad experience. When Hitler drove through Tubingen * he went to the Neckar Bridge out of curiosity and mingled with the cheering crowd. When he returned, the neighbor on the ground floor asked him: “Well, have you seen the Führer?” Alfred replied: “Yes, I also saw Götz von Berlichingen”. Behind him stood the SA man who lived upstairs in the house. The latter beat Alfred bloody and said: “You insulted the Führer.” (Note: It is generally assumed that Adolf Hitler never went to Tübingen (which would otherwise have been documented). It is possible that he drove from Stuttgart via Lustnau (Stuttgarter Straße) traveled to Reutlingen for a major event.)
After that, Alfred no longer wanted to stay in Germany and, during the summer vacation of 1933, took the opportunity to cycle to see his father's brother in Basel, who ran a kosher bakery there. The 16-year-old was one of the first Jews to flee abroad in 1933. The parents absolutely wanted Alfred to come back and do his Abitur in Tübingen, but Alfred resisted. Since he, like all those who had fled, did not get a work permit in Switzerland, he did an apprenticeship as a cabinet maker from 1933 to 1937. But with the completion of his apprenticeship, his residence permit ended.
The 20-year-old managed to immigrate to the USA with great energy: He turned to the Salvation Army in Basel, which put him in contact with a relative on his mother's side named Sol Freudental in Baltimore / Maryland. Having arrived in the USA, he quickly found work as a trained cabinet maker in New York. There he married the Jewish American Edith Schulman in 1940, with whom he had two sons, Kenneth and Lance. In 1941 he volunteered for five years in the military in order to "defeat Germany". He changed his name to Alfred W. Mark .
In 1958 he took over a furniture company in Manhattan, in which his son Kenneth worked. Lance was studying law. In 1987 Alfred W. and Edith Mark visited Tübingen from their former residence in Florida. In 1998 Alfred W. Mark died.
Arnold Wochenmark / Arnold Marque
HERE LIVED
ARNOLD
WOCHENMARK
JG. 1921
FLIGHT 1937
SWITZERLAND
Arnold Wochenmark was born on March 31, 1921 in Crailsheim and came to Tübingen at the age of four, where he attended elementary school and the humanistic grammar school (today Uhland grammar school). His memories of Tübingen were later very ambivalent: on the one hand, the children's world with sledding on the Österberg , playing with the electric train and the wonderful summer vacation in the Black Forest, where the family lived in a holiday home and the father was relaxed ... The parents were stressed "Serious", there was little fun, the father looked strictly after his homework and Arnold had to sneak away on the street to play.
But in high school this carefree period ended abruptly. Even before 1933, Jewish students were exposed to anti-Semitic hostility, from 1933 things got really bad: No classmate shook hands with him, nobody wanted to walk next to him on school trips, nobody spoke to him, not even a teacher, he felt completely isolated. During the break he was symbolically crucified once by tying him to a board, the teachers did not intervene. The joy of school became a horror, his performance deteriorated, so that he was transferred to secondary school. His best friend from Woehrdstrasse suddenly didn't know him anymore and secretly told him that he was no longer allowed to greet him, the Hitler Youth had forbidden him to do so; actually he has nothing against him, but he must end the friendship. Arnold no longer understood anything. After the family moved to Schwäbisch Gmünd in 1934 , they only had contact with Jews, they had to give up their radio and no longer had a telephone. He was also no longer allowed to visit the public swimming pool, "one no longer had any joy in life", it was depressing, but the family stuck together.
In 1937 Alfred wrote to his parents from Basel that his uncle had a vacancy for a baker's apprentice. His parents hid this letter from Arnold because they had other plans for him. But Arnold called his brother in Switzerland from the post office and found out about the apprenticeship and that he had to make up his mind immediately. Arnold presented his parents with a fait accompli and saved his life. His residence permit was tied to the three-year apprenticeship, after which he was only tolerated as a volunteer for a limited period. From 1940 Arnold had to report to the Swiss Labor Service, where hard work in road construction and agriculture was to persuade the refugees to continue their journey. When the USA entered the war in 1941, however, it was no longer possible for him to travel to his brother in the USA; Despite all his efforts, he was unable to bring his parents back to Switzerland. The immigration authorities gave him the succinct answer: "Your parents' immigration is undesirable." In 1938, Switzerland introduced the visa requirement for Jews and, with a few exceptions, refused immigration applications on principle.
There was a xenophobic climate in Switzerland, so meeting other young Jews on the Sabbath and in the synagogue was very important in order to be able to support one another. Arnold regularly attended the English Club to prepare for his emigration. On March 18, 1945, in Basel, he married Johanna Braunschweig, who fled France in 1942 at the age of 17. Alfred helped the young couple to get the emigration papers for the USA and so Arnold and Johanna Wochenmark left Switzerland in 1946. After a few months in New York, where their daughter Linda was born in June, they moved to San Francisco / California. Arnold initially worked there in a chocolate factory and quickly rose to management. The son Jeffrey was born in 1949, the son Bernard in 1951.
In 1951 the family took the name Marque. Linda, who had trained as an interpreter, died in an accident in Geneva when she was only 22 years old. Jeffrey studied biophysics and married the Japanese Myako, has two children with her and lives in San Francisco. Bernard became a photographer and insurance salesman, married the German-Englishwoman Carol and also lives with his family in San Francisco. Her two daughters are now (2018) 30 and 34 years old.
At the age of seventy, Arnold Marque graduated as an insurance salesman while studying at home and ran an insurance agency. He was the spokesman for the former Tübingen Jews; he visited Tübingen in 1981 and 1987. He and his wife lived full and active lives near San Francisco well into old age. Arnold Marque died a peaceful death on October 10, 2016 at the age of 95.
Stauffenbergstrasse
Adolph Bernheim
HERE LIVED
ADOLPH BERNHEIM
JG. 1880
ESCAPE 1939
USA
Adolph Bernheim, born on July 11, 1880 in Hechingen , was with two brothers a partner in a mechanical colored weaving mill in Bronnweiler near Reutlingen , which her father had founded in 1874. This was a solid medium-sized company. Adolph Bernheim participated in the First World War and was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class.
After his marriage to Hanna Bach from Augsburg in 1921, they lived with their two children Doris and Hans in the village of Bronnweiler until 1930. Then the family moved to Tübingen to give the children a good education. They bought a stately villa at Staufenstrasse (since 1945: Stauffenbergstrasse) 27.
The Bernheims were drawn to the intellectual life in the university town. They lived in cautious restraint. However, friendly relationships developed with some non-Jewish neighbors on the Österberg due to shared intellectual interests. B. in neighborhood music and literary circles.
Adolph remained an active partner in the factory in Bronnweiler. When “Aryan” spinning mills were forced to stop selling yarn to “Jewish” factories, the factory had to be sold in 1938 - and so was the villa. The family first moved to Stuttgart.
After much harassment, they managed to emigrate to the USA in Cincinnati / Ohio in July 1939. Hanna Bernheim writes about it: “We could not freely use our bank account, but only withdraw a certain amount per month. For the emigration we had to pay the Jewish tax of 25% of the property, as well as a 5% atonement tax for the Paris attack. The Customs Agency sent two people into the house. They looked through all the clothes that were already packed. We had to deliver silver and jewelry in the spring of 1939. After all, we could only leave with hand luggage, without winter equipment, without bed and table linen, without furniture and other household items ... I could only take 10 marks with me ”( Lit. 1, p. 126).
Parts of the furniture were packed in containers, shipped by a forwarding company via Stuttgart to Hamburg and stored there in the port to be shipped to the USA - but in 1940 the goods were confiscated by the Gestapo and auctioned off. The Bernheims only found out about this after the war.
Settling in in the USA was very difficult for all family members. At 60, Adolph was rejected as too old to work in the textile industry. He worked as a salesman for paper goods and textiles and for five years as a factory worker. In 1952 the forced sale of a house in Tübingen was reversed and they were able to sell their villa in 1954. After that, he could only retire at the age of 75. He received a monthly pension of DM 800 from 1958. Adolph Bernheim died on March 19, 1966 at the age of 86 in Cincinnati.
Hanna Bernheim, b. Brook
HERE LIVED
HANNA BERNHEIM
GEB. BACH
JG: 1895
ESCAPE 1939
USA
Hanna Bernheim, b. Bach was born in Augsburg on November 11, 1895 and grew up with three siblings. Her father Max Bach was a wealthy wholesaler. The family practiced the Jewish faith, and the parents taught the children to be proud of it. Hanna studied pedagogy, psychology and art history in a women's school.
During the First World War she helped with childcare and people feeding. She completed an apprenticeship in social welfare and worked in the municipal welfare office until she married Adolf Bernheim in 1921. Then they moved to Bronnweiler and in 1930 to Tübingen.
Hanna confessed to enlightened Reform Judaism. She got involved in the Jewish community and generously supported Jews and Christians in Tübingen for decades. In her autobiography “History of my Life” she vividly describes her life in the village of Bronnweiler, where she lived a simple lifestyle so as not to attract attention as a capitalist woman. But she lived modern and could z. B. driving a car. Hanna describes the small steps of exclusion from 1933 onwards, completely unsentimentally and without charge.
From 1936 to 1938 she was the last chairwoman of the Jewish women's association in Tübingen, which often met in her villa on Staufenstrasse (since 1945: Stauffenbergstrasse) 27. She was active in the cultural care of the small Jewish communities in the country. All Jewish women in Tübingen were organized in the women's association founded by Karoline Löwenstein in 1924. He formed a network of charitable welfare with a wide range of charitable activities, but also socio-political discussions and cultural lectures. The women took on visiting services for the sick and in old people's homes. They sewed, knitted and crocheted for the needy - which also benefited Christians and people outside of Tübingen.
At the end of her report, Hanna Bernheim describes the bureaucratic harassment and economic plundering of her family. Her husband and son left Germany by ship, she by plane to stop off at her daughter's in London: “And so I flew out of hell straight into heaven.” (Hanna Bernheim (1895–1990) “History of my Life ", Konrad Theiss-Verlag, Darmstadt 2014. p. 186)
But life was not easy there. 45-year-old Hanna, whose standard of living in Germany had included a nanny and a cook, now had to learn to cook and earn extra money. She has worked in the USA as a nurse, as a saleswoman in the clothing industry and as a chauffeur as well as a sales assistant for her husband.
The emigration to the USA was made possible by the guarantee of a cousin of her husband, who made it easier for them to get used to the "exile" by welcoming them. Hanna wrote in a letter: “We lived very modestly, but comfortably. Of course we worked hard for many years, but enjoyed all the holidays, often with relatives. ”(Source: Hanna Bernheim (1895-1990)" History of my life ", Konrad Theiss-Verlag, Darmstadt 2014 p. 26) Hanna Bernheim died in 1990 very old.
Doris Bernheim, married. Doctor
HERE LIVED
DORIS BERNHEIM
VERH. DOCTOR
JG 1923
CHILD TRANSPORT 1938
ENGLAND
1939 USA
Doris Bernheim, born on April 11, 1923 in Tübingen, attended the secondary school for girls there (today Wildermuth-Gymnasium). At the beginning of the 1930s she was not exposed to any discrimination. Fortunately, their teachers were impartial and democratic. In 1934 she was allowed to take part in a vacation stay organized by the National Socialist Welfare Association.
Her mother Hanna writes: “Of course, our children suffered a lot from the defamations, although their teachers and most of their classmates were far less hostile than in other cities. The fact that 'dogs and Jews were not allowed to enter' in the swimming pool left deep marks on the child's mind. "( Lit. 1 p. 127)
In 1938 Doris Bernheim came to England on a Kindertransport, where she was a boarding school student and briefly attended a housekeeping school. She emigrated from London to New York in 1939 and then moved to live with her parents in Cincinnati, Ohio. Studying could not be financed. In order to earn money quickly, she completed a six-month training course as a beautician, but attended further training courses in the evenings.
In 1947 she married the engineer Bernard H. Doctor, had two daughters, Linda-Jo and Ruth-Diane, and has four grandchildren. Today (2018) she lives widowed in Israel.
Doris Bernheim was present with her husband and daughter Ruth at the Stolperstein laying in 2018.
Hans Bernheim / John Bernheim
HERE LIVED
HANS BERNHEIM
JG. 1924
ESCAPE 1939
USA
Hans Bernheim was born on August 5, 1924 in Tübingen and attended the humanistic grammar school there (since 1937 Uhland grammar school). From 1935 there were only non-Jewish friends and he was increasingly marginalized. He was tolerated in class and on the soccer team and was even allowed to take part in a school trip in 1937. His mother, who was brought up to be an absolutely reserved demeanor, allowed her son to beat up a Hitler Youth every time he cursed him as a Jew.
In the spring of 1938 he went to Berlin to attend a private Jewish school. Looking back, he says: “If you are no longer accepted, it is easier to leave. In Berlin I was able to live with an aunt who also had school-age children ”( Lit. 2, p.307). In 1939 he emigrated with his parents to Cincinnati / Ohio.
As a 15-year-old, he sold newspapers in the morning before going to school. In 1943 he was drafted into the US Army ( lit. 2). During World War II he served as a "technical sergeant" in a tank division that advanced to Pilsen in Czechoslovakia in 1945. After that he was briefly stationed in Stuttgart, from where he visited his old home in Tübingen and Bronnweiler in a jeep and in uniform.
In the spring of 1946 he returned to Cincinnati, where he worked as an auto mechanic. In 1949 he married Jeanne Glaab there. They had three children, John-Rudolph, Sue-Ellen and Robert, and four grandchildren. Hans (John) Bernheim died on August 27, 2014 in Cincinnati.
Keplerstrasse
Pauline Pollak, b. Heidelberg
HERE LIVED
PAULINE POLLAK
GEB. HEIDELBERGER
JG.
DEPORTED IN 1868
IN 1942
THERESIENSTADT
LIBERATED
Pauline Pollak, b. Heidelberger, was born on May 28, 1868 in Markelsheim near Mergentheim / Hohenlohe . In 1892 she married Leopold Pollak, who was a teacher and cantor in Olnhausen an der Jagst for 26 years. Six daughters were born there between 1895 and 1906: Recha, Martha, Rosa, Clara, Mathilde and Selma.
The second oldest, Martha, emigrated to the USA in 1912 at the age of 15 and married Justin Loewenberger there. In 1914 the family moved to Tübingen, at Rümelinstraße 2. Before they left Olnhausen, Götz von Berlichingen paid the cantor Pollak a farewell visit. Their children had often played together.
Leopold Pollak also worked as a teacher and cantor in Tübingen until his death in 1923. He was buried in the Wankheim cemetery.
The widow and her three unmarried daughters moved to Keplerstrasse 5. She lived here from 1925 to 1935, and since 1931 with her granddaughter Therese. When the two daughters who were last living with her had to flee Germany, she moved to Karlsruhe to live with her daughter Clara in 1935. But during a visit to her daughter Mathilde, who was married in Würzburg, in 1940, Clara was deported with her family. So Pauline Pollak had to stay with Mathilde.
On September 22, 1942, she was deported to Theresienstadt with the family of her daughter, who had two children. In 1945 they were all liberated by the Red Army and emigrated to New York a year later. She died there in 1951 after her wish to see all of her living daughters again was fulfilled.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2)
Rosa Pollak, married Cap maker, m. Ostrich
HERE LIVED
PINK
CAPMAKER
GEB. POLLAK
JG. 1898
ESCAPE 1935
PALESTINE
Rosa Pollak was born on June 30, 1898 in Olnhausen an der Jagst as the third of six sisters. She spent her youth in Tübingen at Rümelinstrasse 2. Her sister Recha writes about it in retrospect: "But Tübingen was a paradise for us young girls and we had a wonderful youth" ( Lit. 1, p. 59).
In 1922 Rosa married the Jewish businessman Benno Kappenmacher from Haigerloch. Her daughter Therese was born in Haigerloch three years later. After nine years of marriage, Rosa's husband had a fatal accident and she and her daughter moved back to Tübingen to their widowed mother and unmarried sister at Keplerstrasse 5. In 1935, Rosa Kappenmacher moved on to her sister Clara in Karlsruhe.
From there, she and her 10-year-old daughter fled to Palestine that same year. As the first of the sisters, she involuntarily left her homeland.
In 1951 she emigrated from Israel to New York with her daughter and sister Selma in order to see her mother Pauline again, who died soon afterwards. Rosa Pollak married a second time, A. Strauss from Lohr am Main.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2)
Therese Kappenmacher, married. star
HERE LIVED
THERESE
CAP MOVERS
JG. 1925
ESCAPE 1935
PALESTINE
Therese Kappenmacher was born on April 11, 1925 in Haigerloch . She was the daughter of Rosa, b. Pollak, who married the businessman Benno Kappenmacher there.
After her father had a fatal accident, her mother moved back to Tübingen with the six-year-old in 1931 to live with grandmother Pauline Pollak at Keplerstrasse 5, where her aunt Selma also lived.
Therese had bad experiences in elementary school. As the only Jewish child in the class, she was harassed before 1933. Your teacher, Fräulein Merz, a pastor's daughter, was an anti-Semite. After the class had to listen to the first Fiihrer's speech in 1933, the teacher began to hit Therese and urged her classmates to do the same.
Therese was the first Jewish student in Tübingen to be physically attacked. Soon she no longer dared to go to school. Her mother Rosa felt compelled to leave Tübingen and moved the 10-year-old to her sister Clara in Karlsruhe. In the same year, the two fled to Palestine.
In 1951 they left Israel and moved to the USA with their aunt Recha's family. She was probably able to see her grandmother Pauline Pollak there again shortly before she died. Therese later married Kappenmacher and lived in Minneapolis / Minnesota.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2)
Clara Pollak, married. Dreyfuss
HERE LIVED
CLARA POLLAK
JG. 1900
DEPORTED 1940
GURS
INTERNS DRANCY
1942 AUSCHWITZ
MURDERED
Clara Pollak was born on February 17, 1900, the fourth of six sisters in Olnhausen an der Jagst. She lived in Tübingen from 1914 to 1931, first at Rümelinstrasse 2, then after the death of her father from 1925 at Keplerstrasse 5 together with her mother and sisters Mathilde and Selma.
In 1931 she married Wilhelm Dreyfuss in Karlsruhe. With him she had a daughter, Bertha, and a son, Leo. Their mother Pauline Pollak had also lived with them since 1935. While she was visiting her other daughter Mathilde in Würzburg, Clara was deported with her husband and two children to the Gurs internment camp in southern France in 1940. In 1942 Clara and her husband were deported from Gurs to Auschwitz. Both were murdered there.
Their two four- and six-year-old children did not come to Auschwitz, but were able to go into hiding in France with the help of the OSE (Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants) and were later smuggled into Switzerland. The two orphans emigrated to the USA in 1946 to live with their aunt Recha, the eldest of the sisters, who had fled from Emmendingen near Freiburg via Switzerland to New York in 1940, remained childless and had been widowed since 1945.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2 and Mail from Bertha Dreyfuss to Günter Häfelinger from June 6, 2018)
Mathilde Pollak, married. Fechenbach
HERE LIVED
MATHILDE POLLAK
VERH. FECHENBACH
JG. 1901
DEPORTED 1942
THERESIENSTADT
LIBERATED
Mathilde Pollak was born on September 17, 1901 in Olnhausen an der Jagst as the fifth of six daughters. She lived in Tübingen from 1914 to 1929, first at Rümelinstrasse 2, then after the death of her father from 1925 at Keplerstrasse 5 with her mother and her youngest sister Selma, and for the first two years with Clara.
In 1929 she married Max Fechenbach in Würzburg, with whom she had two children, Susan and Walter. In addition, her mother Pauline had lived with her in Würzburg since 1940 because her sister Clara had been deported from Karlsruhe to Gurs and the mother could no longer live there.
But on September 22, 1942, Mathilde was also deported to Theresienstadt with her whole family and mother. Mathilde later reports: “Eichmann came twice a year and looked through the residents' lists. Immediately after his departure, transports with thousands of people went to the extermination camps ( Lit. 1, p.167). "
In spring 1945 Theresienstadt was liberated by the Red Army and they all returned to Würzburg for the time being , except for their son Walter, who had been deported to Auschwitz in 1944. He was able to escape on one of the death marches after the evacuation of Auschwitz, fell seriously ill and finally struggled to get to Würzburg on foot.
In 1946 all of the Fechenbachs emigrated to New York with their mother Pollak , where Mathilde's sister Martha lived and the sister Recha lived with Clara's orphans. Susan Fechenbach married Gary Loewenberg from Berlin there, and Walter Fechenbach married Gerda Prifer from Vienna. Walter Fechenbach died in New York in 2007.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2)
Selma Pollak
HERE LIVED
SELMA POLLAK
JG. 1903
ESCAPE 1936
PALESTINE
Selma Pollak was born on October 26, 1903, the youngest of six sisters in Olnhausen an der Jagst.
She spent her youth in Tübingen at Rümelinstrasse 2, after the death of her father from 1925 with her mother and her sisters Clara and Mathilde at Keplerstrasse 5. After these two sisters had married, her widowed sister Rosa moved in 1931 with her six-year-old daughter Therese back on.
Selma remained single. From 1933 she lived with her eldest sister Recha and her husband in Emmendingen near Freiburg. In 1936 Selma fled Germany to Palestine to live with her sister Rosa.
In 1951 Selma moved from Israel to New York. She followed the wishes of her mother Pauline, who had moved to the USA in 1946 and wanted to see all of her four daughters there again. In New York, Selma lived with her sister Rosa.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2 and Mail from Bertha Dreyfuss to Günter Häfelinger from June 6, 2018)
Klara Wallensteiner, b. Reichenbach
HERE LIVED
KLARA
WALLENSTEINER
GEB. REICHENBACH
JG. 1869
BEFORE DEPORTATION
ESCAPE TO DEATH
08/19/1942
Klara (or Clara) Wallensteiner was born on October 18, 1869 in Hohenems (Oberamt Feldkirch / Vorarlberg) as the third and last child of the wine merchant and brandy manufacturer Karl Reichenbach and his wife Helene Karoline Lotte, née. Nathan (from Laupheim / Württemberg). The Reichenbachs were a long-established, well-respected Jewish family. In 1875 Karl Reichenbach emigrated to Zurich / Switzerland with his wife and two children Hermann and Klara (the oldest, a girl, had already died at birth); In 1881 they were naturalized and stayed in Zurich, where Karl Reichenbach died in 1885 at the age of 45. His wife moved to Ulm and died there in 1923.
What became of Hermann Reichenbach is not known.
The daughter Klara married Julius Wallensteiner from Ravensburg in 1894 (born on August 10, 1858), also from a long-established, respected Jewish family. He was a chemist in a powder factory in Rottweiler and converted to the Protestant faith in 1911. He died in Rottweil in 1912, perhaps during a chemical experiment. The marriage produced a daughter.
Klara Wallensteiner must have settled in Tübingen before 1920. (Information from the Tübingen City Archives: The influx cannot be determined more precisely, as the influx to Tübingen was not archived until 1920.) It is certain that Klara Wallensteiner also belonged to the Protestant Church at the time of her death. She lived at 9 Keplerstrasse.
Klara Wallensteiner was already on the deportation list in May 1942. On the intercession of the Tübingen police chief Friedrich Bücheler, she was initially able to stay. He had pointed out that the 72-year-old was bedridden and had to be transported lying down; In addition, she could never participate in public life and lived in a back room that could not be rented elsewhere.
In August, however, she probably learned that the city was to be made “free of Jews”. She was then transferred to Ludwigsburg at short notice, where she committed suicide by taking tablets on August 19, 1942 - one day before the deportation in Tübingen. (Source: Ref. 2, there article Ravensburg: Jüdische Geschichte, Familie Wallensteiner, Julius Wallensteiner ")
Collegiate church
Richard Goelz
Stiftskirche Am Holzmarkt 1) (map)
HERE ARRESTED
KMD PRIEST
RICHARD GÖLZ
JG. 1887 ARRIVED
IN CHRISTIAN RESISTANCE
December 23,
1944 WELZHEIM
PROTECTIVE CAMP LIBERATED January
19, 1945
In the Tübingen collegiate church , a stumbling stone in the floor of the vestibule indicates that the collegiate and collegiate church musician and Wankheim pastor Richard Gölz were arrested here on December 23, 1944 and taken to the Welzheim concentration camp after Jews repeatedly hiding in the Wankheim rectory in 1943/44 had hidden.
This stumbling block was laid on October 31, 2012 due to a resolution of the collegiate church council.
In the southern part of Tübingen, a street is named after the pastor couple Richard and Hildegard Gölz with the explanation of the Wankheim pastor couple who granted Jews protection and asylum from Nazi persecution.
Uhlandstrasse
Adolf Dessauer
HERE LIVED
ADOLF DESSAUER
JG. 1852
HUMILIATED / Disenfranchised
TOT 11/30/1939
On May 20, 1852, Adolf Dessauer was born in Wankheim as the son of Leopold and Clara Dessauer. His parents had a total of nine children, four of whom died prematurely. In 1875 he moved to Tübingen with his brother Jakob Dessauer, and they founded their joint optician and engraving business there. This business helped him, among other things, to become part of the wealthy middle class.
Adolf married Lina Halle on May 1, 1881, who was born in Hockenheim on March 26, 1857. Her parents were Moses Halle and Babette Halle, née Feinemann. Little is known about Lina apart from her life data. Lina died on September 21, 1928 in Tübingen.
The couple Adolf and Lina had five children together. Ernst Nathan, Anne, Julie, Erich and Lucie Dessauer. The family had their residence at Uhlandstrasse 16. The first floor was assigned to the optician's company. The Jakob Dessauer family lived on the 1st floor and the Adolf Dessauer family on the 2nd floor.
Adolf was a very respected member of the city of Tübingen. Two honorary posts make this clear: On the one hand, he had an outstanding position within the Jewish community in Tübingen. From 1900 to 1914 he was head of the synagogue. This office ended when the Jewish community in Tübingen was dissolved in 1939.
On the other hand, Adolf was also a member of the jury. Lay judges decide together with professional judges about guilt and punishment - not a very simple honorary position. After working for the community, he was one of the few Jews in Tübingen's club life during the Weimar period to take on a role as a functionary - in 1919 Adolf was elected a deputy member of the board of the non-profit housing association.
On January 16, 1927 he was elected to the committee of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith, where he was described as a privateer. A private individual is someone who is financially so well provided that he does not have to pursue a job. So you can see that the Adolf Dessauer family belonged to the wealthy upper class of the city of Tübingen. In the first half of the 20th century, such families shaped and enriched social life in numerous German cities - also due to the fact that the Jewish religion requires wealthy families to do charitable work for their living environment. The rule of the National Socialists - in addition to the cruel crimes against humanity - abruptly ended cultural diversity and prosperity in Germany.
Like all German Jews, Adolf was affected by the name change ordinance, which came into force in January 1939. On January 13, 1940, we find records in the Tübingen city archive for the first time that confirmed his new name: Adolf Israel. German Jews who previously had different first names were obliged to use Israel or Sara as first names. The Nazis' ulterior motive was that this name change meant that Jews could no longer hide their identity. This was an additional form of discrimination against the Jews. These compulsory first names were officially canceled on October 30, 1947, two years after the end of the Nazi reign of terror.
After the pogrom night, Adolf was put under massive pressure in anonymous threatening letters to sell the house on Uhlandstrasse. In the end, he had to forcibly sell his optician and engraving business to Anton Brick on January 28, 1939 and pay a high “Jewish property tax”.
A short time later, Adolf Dessauer died at the age of 87 on November 30, 1939 in Tübingen. Fortunately for him, it could be said that he died before the deportations began in 1940. Thus he escaped the fate of a deportation that many Jews had to endure, including some of his children: Ernst Nathan Dessauer, Anne Dessauer, Julie Dessauer and Erich Dessauer.
(Sources: Ref . 1,2,3. Schwäbisches Tagblatt dated Saturday, November 9, 1996 - Article by Martin Ulmer “Station of fragile existence”. E-mail from Edna Klagsbrun to Leonie Löffler on October 10, 2019)
Anne Theresia Dessauer, married Erlanger
HERE LIVED
ANNE DESSAUER
VERH. ERLANGER
JG.
DEPORTED 1883
1942
THERESIENSTADT
MURDERED
Anne Theresia Dessauer (married Erlanger) was born on May 29, 1883 at 5 p.m. in Tübingen. She is the twin sister of Julie Babette Dessauer (married Berger). Her parents were the optician Adolf Dessauer and his wife Lenchen Dessauer (née Halle). From 1903 Anne grew up with her siblings at Uhlandstrasse 16 in Tübingen. She grew up in a wealthy, traditional family that was known in Tübingen. Anne's family explicitly acknowledged the Jewish faith. However, nothing further is known about Anne's childhood and her life before her wedding.
On February 20, 1906, she married Hugo Erlanger (October 11, 1879– January 31, 1937). This was a merchant from Ulm, born in parish churches in Lower Bavaria. The two were married by Dr. Jonas Laupheimer in Buchau. The young couple Anne and Hugo moved to parish churches in Lower Bavaria together. Here they had their first son Fritz Max on March 31, 1913, who took up the job of teacher as an adult. (Fritz Max lived with his mother in Tübingen for a short time in 1933). He too was not spared by the Nazis and was deported to the Dachau concentration camp on November 12, 1938 until December 15, 1938. On December 1, 1941, he was deported to the Riga concentration camp. It is not known where he was between 1938 and 1941. Fritz Max is believed to have died on the return transport from the Riga concentration camp in early 1945, the circumstances of the death are unclear. Where it should be transported to can no longer be taken from the sources.
His parents Anne and Hugo separated almost 20 years after their wedding in 1925. What is certain, however, is that in the 1920s - unlike today - it was very unusual for a couple to separate. Apparently, after separating from her husband, Anne moved back to her parents' house at Uhlandstrasse 16 to her father, where she stayed until January 30, 1933. It is known that Anne had a very good relationship with her father.
Anne was forced to move to Hechinger Strasse 9, where she lived until October 24, 1941. (Several Jews, including Selma Schäfer, already lived in Hechinger Strasse). The fact that the National Socialists penetrated more and more into the private lives of Jewish people and did everything possible to stigmatize Jews is shown by the law on changing family names and first names of January 5, 1938, along with many other reprisals: Article 13 decreed that all Jews need a first name that immediately shows their Jewish origins. The men were named Israel and the women Sarah. We read from the sources that Anne had to adopt such a first name on December 17, 1938. From there on she was Sara Anne Theresia Erlanger. On October 24, 1941, the Gestapo forced her to leave Tübingen and move to Haigerloch. Why Haigerloch? Many Tübingen Jews came to Haigerloch, it was a preliminary stage of the deportation and a kind of collection point of the Nazis for the Jews in order to better transport them afterwards. This was an imprisonment where they ghettoized the Jews. They were concentrated in ghettos, where they lived together in a very confined space, until the Gestapo transported them to a concentration camp. Haigerloch was also one of the largest Jewish communities, which is why the people in Haigerloch were not so against the Jews. (Because most of the Jews were there, they set up their first collection point here.)
Anne is known to have cancer with which she struggled a lot. It is unclear what cancer Anne suffered from. Severely ill with cancer, Anne came from Haigerloch to a clinic in Fürth. It is not known who caused Anne to move to a clinic, but it can be assumed that she came to a clinic in Fürth because of her cancer. Despite their poor health, the Nazis had no mercy:
Anne was deported from Nuremberg to Theresienstadt on September 10, 1942, where she starved to death 20 days later, on September 30, 1942. Anne had to die because of the poor conditions in the concentration camps. However, this biography of Anne is not an isolated case at the time. However, one thing is very unusual for the time that Anne was transferred to a clinic because of her illness. Because Anne had not learned a real profession or at least none is known except that she was a housewife, as was common at the time. it can be assumed that Anne would have lived happily in a district of Tübingen or in Tübingen had it not been for the Nazi era.
Fritz Max Erlanger
No stumbling block in Tübingen, as his last voluntary stay was in Göppingen.
Fritz Max Erlanger was born on March 31, 1913 in Pfarrkirchen, Lower Bavaria. His parents, Anne Therese, b. Dessauer and his father Hugo Erlanger separated when Fritz, their only child, was eleven years old.
After his parents separated, Fritz was sent to the "Wilhelmspflege" boarding school in Esslingen. His parents left the parish churches in Lower Bavaria and returned to their places of birth. Father Hugo moved back to Buchau am Federsee, where he sold textiles and tobacco products. He died relatively young in a hospital in Ulm in January 1937. Anne Erlanger moved back to live with her parents in Tübingen, where Fritz often came to visit her.
After school and the three-year training as a teacher at Esslinger Wilhelmspflege, there were initially shorter positions in Tübingen and Rottweil, until Fritz took up the post of prayer leader and teacher in the newly founded Jewish school at the Israelite community in Göppingen on September 1, 1936.
From November 15, 1938, Jewish children were officially banned from general schools. However, long before that, Jewish parents were very concerned about continuing to send their children to general school. “I couldn't see how my children were treated in school,” said one Jewish father. Because attending school was often more like running the gauntlet. On the way to school, other children threw stones at the Jewish children, verbally abused and harassed them. Usually the teacher did not stop them. The founding of the school for the Jewish community in 1936 was also intended to protect their own children.
According to the few surviving memories of his students, Fritz Erlanger must have been a talented teacher. It was certainly not easy to teach 20 to 30 children aged 6-14 years in one room at the same time. Due to the flight of Jewish families, the number of students decreased continuously. Schools in the rabbi's house were stopped by June 9, 1939 at the latest, because the city of Göppingen bought the building and left it empty.
Fritz Max Erlanger lived in Göppingen until mid-1941. Presumably he was hired as a slave laborer during this time. After moving from Göppingen in July 1941, Fritz was registered with his mother in Tübingen at Uhlandstrasse 16 for a month. From August 12, 1941, Fritz Erlanger lived in Hanover, where he worked again as a teacher at the Israelite horticultural school for a few months. This school was one of the last Jewish educational institutions on German soil.
At the end of October 1941, Fritz Erlanger met and fell in love with Edeltraud Lapidas in Hanover. They got married after a very short period of only three weeks. At the beginning of December 1941, Fritz and his wife were deported from precisely this horticultural school (it served as a collection camp for 1,000 Jews from the Hanover area) to the Jewish ghetto in Riga. There they lived in the abandoned apartments of their Latvian co-religionists who had been shot shortly before. (At the end of November and beginning of December 1941, 27,000 Latvian Jews were shot by the German security police and the SD Einsatzgruppe A in the Rumbula forest near Riga. This created “space” for Jews who were to be deported from the “Reich” Newcomers therefore lived in the apartments of their Latvian co-religionists, which had only just been abandoned, and were thus constantly confronted with their murder.)
The ghetto in Riga was dissolved from the summer of 1943, and the residents who were still alive were moved to the Kaiserwald concentration camp. From August 1944, the tortured prisoners were moved again in front of the approaching Soviet troops, now to the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig.
Edeltraud and Fritz Max Erlanger also arrived here on October 1, 1944, Edeltraud's prisoner personnel form is one of the last sure signs of life of the couple. It is almost a miracle that both were still alive, because only 86 of the original 1001 people of the transport from Hanover survived the end of the war. It is not known whether Edeltraud and Fritz had contact with each other in Riga or Kaiserwald; the hope of survival together may have given them strength. It is said that the prisoners from the Stutthof concentration camp were sent on death marches . Presumably Fritz Erlanger managed to escape. He did not survive this escape. According to a fellow sufferer, he was shot - probably accidentally - by Russian soldiers when he and other refugees asked farmers for food. (Dr. Lothar Dessauer, one of Fritz Mutter's cousins, recorded in 1971: “I remember that many years ago my deceased cousin Hermann Levi told me in conversation that Fritz Erlanger had been accidentally shot by the Russians while he was with his comrades allegedly this message comes from a fellow sufferer of Fritz Erlanger, whose name I understandably do not know. ") [Source http://www.stolpersteine-gp.de/fritz-max-erlanger ]
Ernst Nathan Dessauer
In Hamburg, his last voluntary stay, there is a stumbling block in his memory (see Stolpersteine Hamburg ).
Ernst Nathan Dessauer was born on January 20, 1882. On October 25, 1941, he was deported to Lodz and died on January 12, 1942 in the Litzmannstadt ghetto. He was 59 years old at the time.
Nathan Dessauer was born in Tübingen, he came from the traditional Jewish Dessauer family, which was well known beyond Tübingen. Nathan Dessauer was named after his great-grandfather. he was the oldest of the five children of Adolf and Lenchen Dessauer.
Nathan Dessauer moved to Hamburg in 1922, when he was 40 years old. Nathan Dessauer lived in Von-Sauer-Straße 1b (Altona, Bahrenfeld) in Hamburg. Since Nathan applied for a passport in Hamburg, we know something about his appearance from this source: The registration office describes him as a man of medium stature with dark blond hair with an oval face and gray-blue eyes.
Nathan, like the rest of his family, explicitly acknowledged the Jewish faith and joined the German-Israeli Congregation in Hamburg on October 10, 1928. Even at this point in time, the German-Israeli community in Hamburg was one of the largest Jewish communities in all of Germany. Today it is still one of the largest with over 3500 members.
At that time, Nathan Dessauer was sublet in a rear building near the Altona harbor. After the National Socialists came to power on January 30, 1933, Nathan Dessauer moved to the “Jewish” Grindelviertel, where he lived from 1934 to 1939, also sublet. He generally changed his apartments quite often: In November 1940 he lived with the Jewish couple Jacob and Helene Wertheimer in Bahrenfeld, which is now a district in the western part of Hamburg.
After the death of his father Adolf Dessauer in 1939, Nathan inherited some securities and around 1500 Reichsmarks. That was a lot of money at the time, which means that he was a very wealthy person, which was rather unusual for Jews at the time.
Despite the increasingly difficult living conditions for German Jews, Nathan Dessauer did not attempt to migrate to Palestine, as Lucie, his sister, 12 years younger than him, did. We do not know why he did not attempt to migrate, perhaps because he hoped that the misery in Germany would soon be over and that he would not have to leave his homeland.
On September 26, 1941, Nathan was brought to the Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel police prison by officials from the "Judenreferat" as a prisoner of the Hamburg Gestapo. A "Judenreferat" is a Gestapo unit that was set up especially for the murder of Jews. This only deals with finding people of Jewish faith and then murdering them.
The reason for the arrest is unknown, but there have been many grounds for non-Aryans. In other words, it didn't matter what you did! The fact that you were not completely Aryan, that is, that you did not correspond to the ideal image of the Nazis (tall, blond, blue eyes, energetic and loyal) was enough to be arrested by the National Socialists.
Nathan Dessauer stayed in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp until October 16, when he was transferred to the town hall. The town house was occupied by the Gestapo at the time and a large number of people were mistreated, tortured or even killed there.
We do not know why Nathan was released again to be taken to the town hall, but a week later, on October 25, 1941, the deportation order came. A few weeks later the one for the Westheimer couple, with whom Nathan Dessauer had sublet, Nathan Dessauer was taken to the ghetto "Litzmannstadt" under number 184 for "Jewish transport 1". Today it is the Polish city of Lodz. In this ghetto, Nathan did not survive the second winter and died at the age of 59.
His property was auctioned in Germany and the 691 Reichsmarks plus his inheritance were transferred to the Reich Treasury "in favor of the Reich". The National Socialists did not shy away from murder, nor did they have any qualms about making the most profit from it.
(Sources: Refs 1,2,7).
Julie Babette Dessauer, married Berger
No stumbling block in Tübingen, as her last voluntary stay was in Berlin.
Julie Babette Dessauer (married Berger) was born on May 29, 1883 in Tübingen as the twin sister of Anne Dessauer (married Erlanger). Her parents were the optician Adolf and his wife Lenchen Dessauer. She grew up in a rented apartment in Neckargasse at the beginning of her childhood. After a while this apartment became too small for the Dessauer family, so Julie's father Adolf and his brother Jakob bought a house in 1903 and moved with their families to Uhlandstrasse 16. She grew up there with her four siblings. There is no record of how Julie spent her childhood and adolescence.
On May 28, 1909, she married the Berlin businessman Theodor Berger in Tübingen and then moved to live with him in Berlin. She worked there as a grocer. She and her husband had two children, a son Hans and a daughter Ines. We couldn't find any more detailed information about Julie's life in Berlin. It can be assumed that she mainly raised her children Hans and Ines.
Nothing more can be found about her husband either. It is likely that the two of them led a good and largely peaceful life at the beginning of their marriage, as Jews made up a large part of the population in Berlin at the time and therefore played an important role in city life.
Julie's son Hans Berger was born in 1910. As an adult, he emigrated to Palestine and was accepted into a kibbutz there. No year numbers are known. His emigration suggests that it was increasingly difficult for Jews to lead a carefree life in Germany. Presumably Hans was a far-sighted, cautious person who realized early enough that as a Jew there would be no future in Germany for him. But he also had no luck as an emigrant: he had an accident in 1936 while working in a quarry and left behind a pregnant woman who gave birth to his son Yoram some time later. When Julie found out about her newborn grandson, she set out for Palestine around 1937 to take Yoram with her to Germany. She believed that the conditions in Palestine were too poor to raise children. Little Yoram's mother did not allow this.
Julie's younger daughter Ines was born in 1912. She came to Israel in the early 1950s and also moved to a kibbutz with her husband. There she died of malaria in 1954.
Julie herself was deported by the Berlin State Police on December 14, 1942 with the 25th local transport to the Auschwitz extermination camp and murdered there. Sources do not record what happened to her husband or how much time she spent in the camp.
No stumbling block has been laid for Julie in Tübingen, as a stumbling block is laid at the last voluntary place of residence of the person concerned, which in Julie's case is in Berlin.
Dr. Erich Dessauer
No stumbling block in Tübíngen, as his last voluntary stay was in Stuttgart. (see stumbling blocks Stuttgart )
Erich Dessauer was born on November 13, 1887 in Tübingen. he was one of five children of the Dessauer family and went to school in Tübingen. After graduating from school, he studied law at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen and also obtained a doctorate in law.
So he was a lawyer with a doctorate and thus a highly specialized, also scientifically trained academic. Since Jews had already been discriminated against since the Middle Ages in that they were excluded from the guilds and thus could not learn a trade, such an academic biography is by no means unusual for German Jews.
Erich Dessauer and Emma Levy married in September 1917 and then lived at Uhlandstrasse 21 in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt. Erich Dessauer quickly became one of the most respected lawyers in Stuttgart, his law firm, which he ran with two colleagues, was probably the most important in Bad Cannstatt. This emerges from reparation files from the Ludwigsburg State Archives.
The childless couple from Dessau led a cultivated life. Erich's wife Emma was a professional musician, for example she played the violin in the orchestra of Radio Stuttgart. Both enjoyed art and culture so much that they were well known in Stuttgart's bourgeois society. It can be deduced from the fact that they were even listed as an example in the book “Stuttgarter Kunst”.
In 1936 the “Law for the Restoration of the German Professional Civil Service” was passed. As a result, Erich Dessauer had to leave his office as a Jew, and from then on he had to call himself “legal adviser”, which means something like legal advisor. His legal expertise was therefore denied to him and all other Jewish lawyers by the National Socialists.
Despite this discrimination, Erich Dessauer did not let himself be discouraged and opened a "legal consultancy practice" in Stuttgart - and since citizens of Jewish faith were only allowed to receive legal assistance from Jewish legal consultants, Erich Dessauer had to work more than ever. This was reinforced by the fact that more and more Jewish legal consultants emigrated from Germany in the same situation.
Erich Dessauer was arrested on September 3, 1942, and in mid-June 1943 Erich and Emma were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto by order of the Gestapo. It is said from Theresienstadt that there was a strong bond among the Swabian prisoners, so they greeted and talked vigorously in Swabian. Erich Dessauer is said to have greeted with "here good Württemberg allewege", which means something like "here it is as good as in Württemberg".
Dr. Erich Dessauer was transported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, where he was murdered on October 16, 1944 in the gas chambers of the concentration camp.
Erich's wife Emma survived the Holocaust and later opened a bookstore and a sales department for newspapers and magazines in Stuttgart. She died of natural causes on January 27, 1975. (Source: Stolpersteine Stuttgart .)
Lucie Clara Dessauer, married Levi
No stumbling block in Tübingen, as Stuttgart was her last German place of residence.
Lucie Clara was born on February 1, 1894 in Tübingen. She experienced a beautiful and carefree childhood with her four older siblings and their parents, Adolf and Lenchen Dessauer in Neckargasse and from 1903 in Uhlandstraße 16. Her family was middle-class, which can be easily recognized by their residence at the time, namely a house in Uhlandstrasse, which is very large and centrally located. The house is still standing today.
Adolf Dessauer was an optician and engraver and was very involved in the Jewish community of Tübingen, as well as an honorary judge at the local and regional court. The family was therefore very highly regarded in both Jewish and non-Jewish circles. Above all, Lucie's father lived very strictly religiously, which of course also carried over to the family and they were therefore evidently very traditional and religious. To be a Jew and a citizen of Tübingen was obviously not a contradiction in terms. Due to this tradition-conscious background, many Jewish festivals and traditions were probably part of Lucie Clara's life very early on. The anti-Jewish laws of the National Socialists probably hit the Dessauer family especially, also in their way of life.
Lucie learned to play the piano and received singing lessons in her childhood. She also sang with a lot of enthusiasm in a choir. Music has been a big part of her life from the start. She later trained as a childcare worker and worked in a day care center.
When Lucie was 24, she met her future husband, who was a very distant relative. They married on June 12, 1919. Hermann Levi, her husband, was a bookseller and antiquarian from Stuttgart. There he took over the R. Levi family bookstore, and the newly married couple lived in Stuttgart from then on. In 1920 the daughter Suse saw the light of day and four years later, in 1924, her little sister Agathe. The young family continued to live in Stuttgart on Werastraße. Lucie Levi became a housewife after her marriage and the birth of two children. However, she was involved in many charity areas, which is why she was highly regarded. Precisely because her family was so religious, she also had a connection to the Jewish women's association and participated with great commitment.
When the situation for Jewish families in Germany became increasingly dangerous when Hitler came to power in 1933, the two daughters of the family emigrated to Palestine between 1933 and 1939. That Lucie and Hermann were able to flee in time was only due to a lucky coincidence. When she was young, Lucie was friends with a young woman who later married Eberhart Stähle. This Herr Stähle held a high position in the National Socialist Party.
Lucie's old friend, whose name is not known, sent a message through her husband that the Levi couple had to leave Germany immediately, otherwise bad things would happen to them. Lucie and Hermann listened to their friend and left Germany for Palestine in the spring of 1939. After a few weeks, the two reached Haifa and traveled from there to Tel Aviv. The daughters joined the family again here. Since Hermann Levi could not find a permanent job in Tel Aviv, the family moved to the country. In the meantime, Suse married, and Lucie's first grandchild Edna was born in 1944. Lucie and Hermann lived in a small house, surrounded by fruit trees and vegetable patches for their own use. Unlike in Stuttgart, they now earned their living with music lessons. Lucie gave piano lessons and Hermann gave violin lessons. The transition from a middle-class life in Germany to a life in a small house in Palestine was certainly not easy for them. But apparently they did it well. Her granddaughter Edna still talks about the wonderful and carefree school holidays in the country with her grandparents and about the delicious German dishes that Lucie prepared. After the war, Lucie learned that none of her siblings had survived the Nazi era and the concentration camps. This must have been a difficult time for her. Thank goodness she had her family who probably stood by her side during this difficult time.
In 1957 Lucie became a grandmother for the second time when Ariel, Suse's son, was born. Between 1955 and 1965, Lucie and Hermann traveled to Switzerland and Germany every summer to visit relatives and friends who lived there. Lucie Levi died in 1969 at the age of 75 in Karkur-Tel Schalom, Israel, in a nursing home. Her last three years were marked by serious illness.
She left behind her husband, two daughters, a son-in-law and two grandchildren. Her granddaughter Edna Klagsbrunn lives in Israel to this day (2020) and is very happy that her grandmother Lucie is remembered.
(Sources: Lit. email correspondence 2.3 Leonie Löffler with Edna Klagsbrunn on 10/01/2020)
Dr. Simon Hayum
HERE LIVED
DR. SIMON HAYUM
JG. 1867
WORK BOT 1934
ESCAPE 1939
1941 USA
Simon Hayum was born on January 27, 1867 in Goldschmiedstrasse, near the synagogue , in the old, Jewish part of Hechingen as the sixth and youngest child of the married couple Heinrich and Auguste Hayum, born in Freiburg. The family had come from the middle-class milieu of small Jewish traders for generations. Simon Hayum committed himself to this all his life.
Four years after Simon's birth, German Jews became equal citizens with all rights. On the one hand, the child grew up aware of modern aspirations for emancipation; on the other hand, the Hechingen Jews very strictly obeyed the Sabbath rest, the Torah study and the kosher food rules. The parental home represented a close connection between family ties, religious morality and tradition, which encouraged a sincere life and tolerance.
After elementary and secondary school in Hechingen, Simon attended grammar school in Stuttgart, supported by relatives. He then studied law in Berlin, Leipzig and Tübingen and finally settled as a lawyer in Tübingen in 1892, first at Kronenstrasse, then, from 1905, at Uhlandstrasse 15. The emancipation seemed to have succeeded. This is also shown by her marriage to Hermine Weil, daughter of a banking family, also from Hechingen, in 1897.
He was successful in his profession, saw himself as a representative of the "common people" and their rights. In 1913 Julius Katz, his sister Johanna's son, joined the firm as a partner, and in 1929 Simon's son Heinz joined the firm. They were the largest law firm in Tübingen with a high reputation. Politically, his involvement has belonged to the Free People's Party, the later DDP, with the aim of further democratization since he was a student. The party was left-wing liberal. The humanistically educated man, who also used Latin quotations every day, integrated himself more and more into society. In the middle of the 1890s he became a member of the museum society, in 1898 of the citizens 'association, and as chairman of the citizens' committee until 1912, he was responsible for the city's budget. In this role, he initiated the construction of the Uhland pool, among other things. In 1919 he became a local councilor.
Simon Hayum belonged to the generation of founders who only moved into leading positions after the turn of the century and helped shape public life. He fought for a democratic republic, for full political equality, for the maintenance of peace and for a social policy with a social liberal accent.
Simon Hayum remained true to his faith throughout his life, often reading the Talmud in the evenings. From the beginnings of the republic until the Nazi era, he also shaped the Jewish state representation of Württemberg as Vice President, then as President until 1935.
There were anti-Semitic incidents in Tübingen even before 1933, and Hayum, as chairman of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith, dealt with these qua officially, so to speak. But in his retrospective of 1939 they seemed marginal to him, at least one had the possibility of taking legal action against them.
In 1929/30 the world was destabilized and with it the young democracy. The hour of the militant right had come, and from 1933 it became existentially threatening for people like him. His situation changed suddenly. As a councilor, he resigned himself on March 31, 1933 to forestall the expulsion. One day later, on April 1, 1933, Hayum's office was boycotted. The increased SA posts branded his office as Jewish. He remarked: "Nothing can happen to us anymore, we are guarded." After an hour, the SA people left and you could work normally again. Things remained quiet in Tübingen, but this was also the only Jewish office.
It was followed shortly thereafter by the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” on April 7, 1933, which allowed the dismissal of Jewish civil servants, the law on “Admission to the Bar”, which made it possible for lawyers to be withdrawn. Simon Hayum withdrew from his license in 1934 in favor of his son, and the order situation of the law firm, which was stigmatized as Jewish, became increasingly precarious, so that finally Simon's nephew and partner Julius Katz emigrated to Switzerland in 1935 and his son Heinz and his family emigrated to the USA in 1938, despite still existing approval.
For a long time, however, Simon Hayum and his wife hesitated to leave the country that was “home” to them in Tübingen and where their old mother still lived in Hechingen, despite a specific threat, for example from his son-in-law Louis Koppel in Dortmund. They lived withdrawn and isolated themselves. It was only after the November pogrom of 1938 that it became clear to them that it was no longer possible to stay. Shortly afterwards, in mid-December, Julius Katz had obtained the entry visa for Switzerland. Brother Joseph, resident there for a long time, provided the necessary guarantee. Warned by an anonymous phone call, the Hayum couple finally decided to flee to Switzerland on February 2, 1939, thus avoiding the arrest that had been announced.
They lived in Zurich for two years, after receiving a visa until 1947 in Quins (New York), finally with their daughter Edith, who lived with her husband in Cleveland.
(Sources: Ref. 2, Book 29 Simon Hayum: Memories from Exile , 2005 and Book 39, 2013.)
Hermine Hayum, née Weil
HERE LIVED
Hermine Hayum,
née Weil
JG. 1875
Escape 1939
Switzerland
1941 USA
Hermine Hayum was born on February 8, 1875 in Hechingen. She grew up there until she entered a boarding school in Geneva. Simon Hayum knew her by sight, in the synagogue and on the street. “We were interested in each other,” he notes. He characterized the situation as follows: “The circles of mine did not intersect with those of your own. Belonging to the long-established banking house MI Weil und Söhne, she was one of the leading and wealthy families in the Jewish community ... Our families went their own way. ”A connection between the two was only conceivable through the emancipation that Simon pursued through his law studies and the establishment as a lawyer made possible.
They got closer while ice-skating on the Anlageensee and finally got married on May 3rd, 1897. “There were completely different circumstances in which she came through our marriage, also the outlook on life was in many ways different”, but she got “quickly and easily found in it ”, Simon doesn't forget to emphasize. It turned out to be a good marriage. She was a good, reliable, intelligent and humorous partner to him, and a caring daughter-in-law and daughter to his and her mother. She gave birth to six children. They formed an extended family the old way, while the upper-class Jewish families raised only one or two children.
First, in 1898, came Luise, the problem child who died after a year. Then, on May 1, 1900, Margarete, Grete, as she was called at home. She was followed by Edith on March 25, 1902, then Heinz on August 10, 1904, Julius on May 20, 1906, and finally Dorothee on April 28, 1912.
Hermione was a loving, understanding mother, progressive about her children's future planning. Modern educational ideals such as independence and personal responsibility were promoted in Jewish families. Three of Hermine's children, Margarete, Heinz and Dorothee studied law and Dorothee also successfully completed her studies, even in 1934. She then attended a Jewish household school in Berlin and then worked in a law firm until she married Dr. med. Heinz Oppenheim. Edith, who, unlike her siblings, attended girls' secondary school because she was ill for a long time and not very strong, was then employed as a stenographer in father's office, as a kindergarten teacher and as a nurse until she finally got Dr. med. Siegfried Koppel married. Margarete also had her law degree, in which she had been very successful until then, because of her marriage to Dr. jur. Louis Koppel finished. Julius left grammar school and trained first in banking with Siegmund Weil, his uncle, then with banks in Frankfurt and finally in Hechingen and Sigmaringen as the manager of the branches there. Heinz, already very successful at a young age, worked as his father's partner in the law firm. A good education for the children was a must for Jewish parents, a survival strategy, Simon and Hermione were convinced of that.
Outside of the family, Hermine Hayum was fulfilled by a joyful duty of charity, which is of great importance within the Mosaic religion. A fine-meshed network of social care for the sick, needy and poor developed. This was how orphans and widows were cared for. Hermine was involved in the Jewish women's association in Tübingen and supported the poor with ideas and finances. She and Simon distributed food and financially supported the social welfare office. Her house at Uhlandstrasse 15 had an ironing room downstairs next to the office, which was heated in cold winters and where hot soup was given out for those in need. But during the Nazi regime the social activities of the Jewish women's association had to be stopped.
Hermine and her husband were considering emigrating to Switzerland as early as 1935, together with their grandson Ulrich, the son of Margarete and Louis. The aim was to enable the boy to have an undisturbed higher education. This did not succeed for various reasons. It was by no means just their love for their homeland that held them back. Hermione's old mother in Hechingen, though well looked after by an old maid, should not be left alone. The sending of Margarete's children to boarding schools in England had to be arranged after their father was banned from practicing law. Heinz's newly won permission to continue working should not be questioned.
So Simon and Hermione wanted their children to be safe first. On the other hand, they feared that both the son Heinz, his wife Ellen and daughter Renate, and the two Koppel families could suffer severe disadvantages if they left Germany before them.
In 1936 Dorothee and Heinz Oppenheim, who could not work as a doctor, left Germany for the USA. Heinz and Ellen, together with Renate, followed in 1938. After the pogrom night in November 1938, both families of the daughters in Dortmund and Cologne were in dire straits. The two men Siegfried and Louis Koppel were arrested. Siegfried, the doctor, came to Dachau, Louis, the lawyer, to the Gestapo prison. The Nazi hordes came into the apartments, property was destroyed, they were humiliated, and after they were released from prison, the departure had to be organized and financed as quickly as possible within three weeks. The parents in Uhlandstrasse phoned Cologne and Dortmund every day. The calls for help became more and more desperate. With the help of friends, Margarete managed to obtain a permit for England, where her older children were already living, in order to wait for the entry permit for the USA. So Margarete and Louis went to England together with Reinhardt in 1938. Edith and Siegfried both had the affidavit for the USA until mid-1939. Only when everything was settled, partly with Simon's money, and with the support of Joseph, who lived in Switzerland and who granted his brother an annuity, the two decided to flee themselves. How difficult it must have been, especially for Hermione, to part with the things that, as her husband writes, "had been part of our lives for so long" ... "It was a shame." The house had to be way below value be sold, the SA standard withdrew immediately afterwards. In January / February 1939 the foreclosure auction of the household goods took place in the house itself and greedy buyers came immediately. The compulsory taxes for Jews, the “Jewish property and atonement taxes” and the “Reich flight tax” had to be paid from the proceeds. Securities, jewels, jewelry and works of art had to be deposited. Since Hermine and Simon were able to flee on February 2, 1939, they were spared the so-called "silver levy" of March 1939, when they would have to hand over all of their personal jewelry with the exception of the wedding ring and their table silver to the pawn shop in Stuttgart. Nonetheless, they arrived in Switzerland as good as penniless, whose “open air” welcomed them across the border.
(Sources: Ref. 2, Book 29 Simon Hayum: Memories from Exile , 2005 and Book 39, 2013.)
Dr. jur. Heinz Hayum, wife Ellen Hayum and daughter Renate Hayum
HERE LIVED
Dr. jur. Heinz Hayum
JG. 1904
Banned from working in 1938
Escape 1938
USA
HERE LIVED
Ellen Hayum
JG. 1908
escape 1938
USA
HERE LIVED
Renate Hayum
JG. 1930
escape 1938
USA
Heinz Hayum was born in Tübingen on August 10, 1904, the fourth of six children to the lawyer Simon Hayum and his wife Hermine, née Weil. As the first son, he received special attention from his parents. Like four of his siblings, he attended Uhland-Gymnasium, which he finished with good success. He had started to study law “after having obtained his university entrance qualification early”, as his father describes it, and successfully passed the exams.
He was interested in his father's profession at an early stage and was always present in the office. From a social point of view, Heinz also orientated himself entirely towards his father. Like the latter, he became a member of the Museum Society and, while studying, founded an offshoot of the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, an academic local group called the “Association of Students of Jewish Faith”. With this body, Heinz tried to do educational work at the university. In November 1925 he dissolved the association.
He dedicated his doctoral thesis on January 27, 1927 to his father Simon on his sixtieth birthday. After the exam, he married Ellen Oppenheimer, born in 1908 in Heilbronn, in April 1929, who, as her father-in-law writes, has become "a dear daughter and her husband a loving, capable partner who faithfully shares his joys and worries".
Heinz now joined his father's office as the third lawyer. Due to his great skills, his conscientious work and his understanding of the clients, he gained great recognition both with them and with the court.
In 1930 his daughter Renate was born, the only grandchild of his parents that they could see growing up in Tübingen.
When he and his father were insulted and insulted anti-Semitically by students at Uhland-Gymnasium in July 1932, it was Heinz who went to his former school, called on the headmaster and demanded that the students, some of whom he had recognized, be punished. His sense of justice made him act so fearlessly - we can read that from this incident. A little later, from April 1, 1933, such incidents increased. In addition, the attacks against Jewish lawyers began. She was the first to receive an inquiry from the Württemberg Ministry of Justice as to whether the legal fathers of young lawyers would be willing to forego their admission. Shortly afterwards it became known that the day before, on April 7th, a law had been passed nationwide that ordered the revocation of the license of all Jewish attorneys, with the exception of those who had already been admitted to the law before August 1, 1914 or who had participated in the war. Heinz's license was withdrawn on May 29, 1933 with effect until September 1, 1933. The Wuerttemberg Bar Association specified in a letter dated July 15, 1933: "Any kind of professional connection with a 'legal expert' (...) whose admission is contrary to non-Aryan descent or communist activities is prohibited." An office community was also prohibited. What should happen to Heinz, his wife and the child? The family looked around. They asked grandmother Jules Dreyfus's cousin, a banker in Basel, to lawyers friends who had emigrated earlier, to his father-in-law Henry Oppenheimer in Heilbronn, all without any useful results. Together with his cousin Alfred, Heinz went on an exploration trip to Palestine, but that too did not give him or his own a chance.
In September 1933, Heinz became a member of the supervisory board of Württembergisch-Hohenzoller'schen Privatbank AG, the successor organization to the Siegmund Weil banking group, his uncle's bank. It was a so-called "discreet company connection". In 1934, however, the bank was forced to align itself, and the Jewish supervisory board members lost their mandates. Father and son tried to obtain re-registration in Stuttgart while he was secretly working in the law firm. That didn't go well for long. Heinz was denounced and his father was attacked by the bar association and he was threatened with an honorary trial.
The complaint came from our neighbor Schoffer, who was also a lawyer and who had known and connected with Simon from a young age. The background was that he hoped that things would go better with his law firm, "when the Jewish competition no longer exists."
The complaint was dropped through connections in Berlin and Stuttgart. It was particularly noteworthy that Simon Hayum succeeded in 1934, with the support of the District Court President Landerer, to get his son re-admitted, albeit at the expense of his own resignation. Landerer had contacted the State Minister of Justice directly and included the entire Tübingen judiciary, including the public prosecutor. Their sense of justice demands it to be noted “that attorney Hayum II is not inferior to any German (sic) attorney in terms of conscientious professionalism, expertise and collegiality." Heinz Hayum was re-admitted to the bar and remained so until his emigration in 1938. His father resigned. However, clients stayed away from the firm. There wasn’t that many Jewish clientele anymore and they were meanwhile also impoverished. So things finally went downhill with the law firm in Uhlandstrasse.
In 1935, Simon's nephew and long-time partner Julius Katz emigrated to Switzerland. Then Heinz gave up and was forced to take up a position in the Berlin branch of the Warburg bank in autumn 1936. He left the office in Uhlandstrasse to the lawyer Erich Dessauer. However, in the summer of 1938 it became apparent that it was no longer possible to remain in the Berlin store. He returned his license to practice as a lawyer in Tübingen, transferred part of Ellen's fortune and embarked for the USA with his family at the beginning of November 1938, a few days before the Reichspogromnacht in Rotterdam. He became a very successful partner in a book revision firm in Seattle, Washington.
His daughter Renate received her doctorate in 1952. Heinz died of cancer very early in 1962 at the age of 58.
(Sources: Ref. 2, Book 29 Simon Hayum: Memories from Exile , 2005 and Book 39, 2013.)
Albert Weil
No stumbling block in Tübingen, as he fled to Switzerland in 1931.
If you want to write a biography of Albert Weil, there is no getting around the history of the Tübingen Chronicle. Albert Weil was the owner of the newspaper for almost 30 years and made a significant contribution to it during this time. Since he did not work as an editor himself and lived cautiously, there are hardly any sources on his person. And yet the time in Tübingen was decisive for his life.
Albert Weil was born on January 22, 1862 in Ellwangen. Through his father's business - his father Leopold was the founder of the "Jagstzeitung" in Ellwangen - he and his brother Sigmund, who was one year younger, became familiar with running a newspaper at an early age. The Weil brothers came to Tübingen when the competition against the Jagstzeitung in Ellwangen was too great and at the same time the sick publisher of the “Tübinger Chronik” was looking for a successor. After selling the Ellwanger Zeitung, the brothers bought the Tübingen store together in 1903.
We do not know the exact date of the marriage, it must have been around 1890 when he married the Bad Buchau factory owner Frieda Moos. In 1892, the couple's eldest daughter, Martha, was born. Four more daughters followed.
In the summer of 1903 Albert Weil moved to Tübingen with his wife Frieda and their five daughters. Shortly afterwards, the couple's sixth child, their son Hermann, was born in Tübingen. Albert Weil immediately set about investing in the Tübinger Chronik, which at the time still had its publishing premises at Hirschgasse 1 (today Betten-Hottmann), in order to increase the newspaper's circulation. However, the limited space in the old town quickly set limits and forced him to look for a new company building. After several relocations, it should now be a permanent move. Albert Weil bought the property on Uhlandstrasse. The new building could already be started in spring 1905 and the move took place in autumn of the same year. The family moved to the second floor.
Albert Weil was characterized by a progress-oriented publishing management. In addition to setting machines, a new rotary machine was also put into operation. The number of subscribers rose continuously and the extension on the Neckar side took place as early as 1930. In terms of content, the chronicle was oriented towards the middle class in Tübingen and avoided reporting on Jewish community life. Only reports about people (birthdays, etc.) could be found in the newspaper. Both the political left and the right wing were excluded from the reporting. The liberal center determines the reporting.
This content orientation shows how little Albert Weil defined himself about his Jewishness, instead he was an assimilated Tübingen citizen. The absurdity of the National Socialist racial policy, which this assimilation deliberately and brutally destroyed, is particularly evident in this example.
At the topping-out ceremony for the new building in Uhlandstrasse, the architect Fischer described the building as one “in which a considerable amount of work would be done every day for the common good, for the spread of popular education” (Tübinger Chronik, July 17, 1905). The publisher felt it was his duty to inform the reader in such a way that he was “always up to date”, so it was formulated in a self-promotion. New subscribers were recruited with the option of taking out so-called “subscriber insurance”. It was a kind of life insurance that paid 3,000 Reichsmarks in the event of a fatal accident. Despite his central role within Tübingen's civil society, anti-Semitic attacks on Albert Weil increased since 1929. He was defamed as a Jewish person, but also as the person responsible for the "Tübinger Chronik". Above all, the Tübingen fraternities dissuaded Albert Weil. These attacks were ignored in the local section of the newspaper, as were the increasing appearances of the National Socialists.
When the National Socialists achieved high profits in the Reichstag elections in 1930 and the anti-Semitic pressure on the publisher increased, he decided to sell the newspaper. “I don't wait until the Nazis steal everything from me,” he is quoted from memories. Now he was able to negotiate a good sales price and ensure that his son Hermann was appointed as his successor. In July 1931, Albert Weil moved to Baden near Zurich in Switzerland with his wife Frieda and his second oldest daughter Fanny. Here he, who had suffered from a weak heart for years, wanted to spend his quiet retirement. His “weak heart” may have worsened due to the steadily growing anti-Semitic pressure - if this agitation cannot be seen as the cause of Albert Weil's poor health. Hermann Weil finally had to give way to pressure from the Nazis in the spring of 1933 and give up his work in the Chronicle.
All six children of the Weil couple managed to escape on time. During these years they were able to receive financial support from their father and thus survive the difficult time on different continents. However, the two grandchildren from the first marriage of the eldest daughter Martha had to be lamented as victims. Werner died after the death march to Groß-Rosen, Margarethe went to Holland with her husband's family, was deported to Auschwitz with her husband and in-laws and murdered there. Albert Weil died four years after his wife on June 29, 1946 in the Israeli retirement home in Lengnau, Switzerland. He was spared being murdered by the Nazis. Nevertheless, they have destroyed his life by making it impossible for him to continue practicing as a critical, committed publisher.
(Sources: Lit. 1,2,12)
Frieda Weil, née Moos
No stumbling block in Tübingen, as he fled to Switzerland in 1931.
Frieda Weil was born as Frieda Moos on June 20, 1872 in Bad Buchau am Federsee. She came from a wealthy industrial family. Around 1890 she married Albert Weil from Ellwangen. In 1892 the eldest daughter was born. When she moved to Tübingen with her husband in 1903, the thirty-one year old had already given birth to five daughters. Their sixth child, the son Hermann, was born just a few weeks after moving to Tübingen.
Nothing is known about her childhood and youth. In Tübingen, Frieda Weil, as the wife of the founder of the Tübingen Chronicle, certainly belonged to the upper class of Jewish families. It can therefore be assumed that she was also a member of the Jewish Women's Association, which was founded in Tübingen in 1924, as in Berlin, and was dissolved by the Gestapo in 1938. In Tübingen, as in other places, the association saw itself as a charitable institution that helped the needy so as not to leave them to public welfare. In addition, Frieda Weil was certainly busy with the big household, since in Jewish families it was left to the women to raise the children and run the house socially.
In June 1931, Frieda and Albert Weil, accompanied by their last unmarried daughter, Fanny, moved into exile in Baden / Ch. Frieda died here on December 17, 1942 in the Israelite retirement home in Lengnau / Ch. Only her husband and daughter Fanny were still around. What may she have already learned by this time of the difficult lives of the persecution of her children?
Today we know that a granddaughter and a son-in-law were murdered in Auschwitz and a grandson in the Groß-Rosen concentration camp. The daughter Martha survived in hiding in Belgium. The daughter Vera escaped from the Gurs camp in France and survived. The daughters Hedwig and Else survived in exile in the USA and Israel and the only son Hermann survived the difficult time in exile in Africa.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2)
Fanny Weil
No stumbling block in Tübingen, as he fled to Switzerland in 1931.
Fanny Weil was born on December 20, 1895 as the third of six children of Albert and Frieda Weil in Ellwangen. In 1903 the family moved to Tübingen. Fanny Weil spent her childhood and youth here, the details of which are not known. She is often photographed in the family group, often with her niece Ingeborg (Measures), whose favorite aunt she was.
When her parents decided to emigrate to Switzerland in 1931 because of increasing anti-Semitic attacks, she went with them and stayed there until her father's death in 1946. She then moved to live with her sister Hedwig in the USA (New York).
Lilli Zapf ( Lit. 1) reports, without naming precise sources, that she died there after years of hard work. She remained unmarried.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2)
Hermann Weil
HERE LIVED
Hermann Weil
JG. 1903
escape 1934
Tanzania
Hermann Weil, born on July 11, 1903, was the sixth child of Albert and Frieda Weil. Since he was the only son in the family, he traditionally continued his father's work and took over the Tübingen Chronicle after his father left. After finishing school in Tübingen, Hermann lived for a few years in Cologne, where he also met his wife Luise, née. Chur, a non-Jewish woman and where their daughter Ingeborg was born. After returning to Tübingen in the late twenties, he initially worked together with his father in the company and was appointed managing director for ten years after the sale in 1930. However, the pressure of National Socialist competition and the “Act on the Conciliation of the Press” brought Hermann Weil's activities to a quick end. As early as 1931 the attacks on the family and the newspaper increased sharply.
The name Hermann Weils had therefore been completely deleted from the imprint since November 1930 and he himself was dismissed from the company in 1933. The family also had to vacate the apartment above the newspaper immediately. Since Hermann Weil, as a well-known citizen, was also exposed to hostility on the street, he moved with his family to his parents in Switzerland via a short stopover in Stuttgart-Sillenbuch. In Tübingen, belongings had to be sold far below their value.
In Switzerland, Hermann Weil came across an advertisement from a Swiss family who were looking for a partner to buy land in Arusha / Tanganyika (today's Tanzania). Albert Weil wanted to give his son a new start in Africa and made the purchase money available. So it happened that Hermann Weil set out with his wife and child in 1933 to build a new life in Tanganyika by building and setting up a farm / coffee plantation.
Hard early years had to be survived, as the coffee plants only bear the first fruits after four years. An uncertain financial future and recurring malaria diseases hit the family hard. When the first successes emerged, World War II had broken out in Europe. All Germans were interned in the English mandate of Tanganyika, and the farm was expropriated as hostile foreign assets. Although Hermann Weil was released after a week as a now stateless Jew, he only got his farm back in a completely neglected state after the end of the war.
For the second time the family faced economic failure. The lands were sold and Hermann Weil accepted a managerial position at an English coffee company, which he held until 1963. After his wife Luise died in 1959, he married a cousin of his wife in 1960. With her he moved back to Germany in 1963. In Cologne he found a home for the last time. He took back German citizenship and received a small pension. However, his poor health was not recognized as "due to persecution". In a settlement, the loss of the Tübingen household goods was compensated and a one-off additional pension payment was granted.
Hermann Weil died on February 13, 1973 in Burscheid near Cologne.
In a letter to Lilli Zapf in 1964, Hermann Weil wrote: “You will understand that I would like to keep silent from the public about my personal affairs within my fatherland and about my extraordinary fate during the thirty years in Africa. The experiences of these years would fill volumes anyway, and it is impossible to even attempt to describe them in brief. ”( Lit. 1 p. 173)
(Sources: Lit. 1,2,12)
Luise Weil, née Chur
HERE LIVED
Luise Weil
born Chur
JG. 1902
escape 1934
Luise Weil, née Chur, was born in Cologne in 1902. She was a Christian and married Hermann Weil, the son of the Tübingen publisher Albert Weil, in the early twenties. The daughter Ingeborg was born in Cologne in 1925. The family had lived in Tübingen since the late 1920s.
Little is known about Luise Weil's years in Tübingen. Photos show her several times with her daughter Inge among the Hermann Weil sisters. The pictures give the impression that Luise Weil was warmly welcomed by her husband's family.
In 1933, as a Christian, she refused to part with her husband and child. As a Protestant, she would have been able to continue her stay in Tübingen. When the attacks and attacks on Jewish fellow citizens increased in Tübingen, and her husband Hermann was dismissed as managing director of the Tübinger Chronik and the family was deprived of their livelihood, she emigrated with her husband and child, first to her in-laws in Switzerland and from there Arusha / Tanganyika, where the couple bought land for a farm with the support of Albert Weil. The early years were very difficult. House and stables had to be built and vegetables wrested from the country both for personal use and for sale. Many years later, the daughter Inge said that the mother had learned to make butter and sausage, to run the house and to support the families of the employees in the event of illnesses and accidents.
After the first big coffee harvest, the goal of a new and secure existence seemed to be approaching. However, when Luise gave birth to her second child, son Klaus, in 1939, World War II broke out in Europe and the farm was expropriated as hostile foreign assets. The family was sent to a farm 100 km north of Arusha. They had to report to the police weekly. Since that time, Luise Weil suffered more and more from malaria attacks and a severe eye disease that led to blindness in one eye.
In 1942 the family was sent on again, this time to a farm in the highlands. The mild climate induced Luise to take in English pensioners who wanted to relax in the highlands from the unhealthy climate in the lower areas.
After the war, Luise followed her husband back to the completely overgrown plantation and from here on to his new workplace, a coffee plantation at the feet of Mount Kilimanjaro. The hard work and the unhealthy climate for a European woman sapped her health. Luise Weil longed to return to Europe from a country that could not really become her home, her daughter remembers. In 1959 Luise Weil died as a result of an operation. She was buried in Tanganyika.
(Sources: Ref. 2.12)
Ingeborg Weil, married Measures
HERE LIVED
Ingeborg Weil
married measures
JG. 1925
Escape 1934
Tanzania
Ingeborg Weil, married Measures, was born on April 2, 1925 in Cologne. A little later (exact date not known) the parents Hermann Weil and Luise Weil, née Chur, moved with their little daughter to the father's family in Tübingen. Here Inge, as she was called, spent happy years with the extended family, lovingly cared for by her father's sisters, grandmother and mother.
The liquidation of the household in 1933, the hasty flight to Switzerland and shortly afterwards the onward journey to Tanganyika were, according to her own statements, "very exciting and adventurous (...), but since my parents were there I was very happy."
After the family found their first place to stay on the farm near Arusha, Ingeborg Weil went to a small village school run by a South African teacher. Afrikaans was the language of instruction here, which made it difficult for Inge to follow the lessons. Instead, she learned Swahili, the language of the local people, very quickly. The school education of their daughter was important to Hermann Weil and his wife and so after a year they sent her to a German school with boarding school in Oldeani, 100 km from Arusha. A difficult time began for Inge. She herself later described them as the worst years of her life. She suffered from particularly severe malaria attacks, and in addition, she was discriminated against and ostracized by her German classmates because of her Jewish father. The German teachers were silent, probably out of fear of reprisals after their return to National Socialist Germany. Only after about five years when a teacher found the courage to tell Inge's parents about the difficulties did they bring her home immediately. For Ingeborg Weil, school education was over at the age of 14.
In September 1939 the family's economic situation seemed to stabilize. The first coffee harvest could be brought in successfully. Inge's brother Klaus was born. With the attack of the National Socialists on Poland and the beginning of the Second World War, however, dark clouds came up again. Tanganyika was British territory and therefore all Germans were interned. Although Hermann Weil was released from the camp as a stateless person after a week, they were not protected from the confiscation of their farm. The family was sent to Oldeani to work on a farm. Before that, Brother Klaus was baptized in the church in Arusha. Inge was also baptized because her father was not a practicing Jew and her mother was Protestant. Both children were later confirmed. Inge was sent from Oldeani to live with a befriended English family. Here she looked after the family child and received lessons in English. Since then, English has become their everyday language. English was also increasingly spoken in the family. In 1943, Inge Weil was 18 years old, and she met a captain in the English army. After the war she moved to England with him. Her son Peter Measures was born there.
It was not until September 1961, after 28 years, that Ingeborg Measures returned to Tübingen for the first time, visited the sites of her childhood and met old friends of the family. During a later visit in 1995, she saw her childhood friend, the actor Walter Schultheiß. During this visit Ingeborg Measures also had an interview with the Tübingen history workshop.
Ingeborg Measures, née Weil, died in London in 2019.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2)
At the wood market
Dr. Julius Katz
HERE LIVED
Dr. Julius Katz
JG. 1887
Professional ban
Escape 1935
Switzerland
1941 USA
Julius Katz was the son of Max Katz (1850-1917) and his wife Johanna Katz, née Hayum (1862-1939). Max Katz was a merchant in his white goods store at Holzmarkt 2 in Tübingen. "White goods" used to be a widely used name for underwear.
Max Katz was a respected citizen of Tübingen, which can be deduced, among other things, from the fact that from 1909 to 1917 he was also the head of the synagogue.
Julius Katz, born on May 11, 1887 in Tübingen, attended primary school in Tübingen and then the Uhland high school. He then studied law in Berlin, Heidelberg and Tübingen. From 1913 he worked at the Tübingen regional court. At the time he lived at Kaiserstraße 6, today it is at Doblerstraße 6.
Julius Katz was the nephew of the lawyer Dr. Simon Hayum and worked with him in the office at Uhlandstrasse 15 when he received his license in 1913.
After Julius Katz had "voluntarily" given up his admission to the regional court, he was deleted from the list of lawyers at the regional court in Tübingen on December 12, 1935. The word “voluntary” is very ambiguous here: although the Jewish lawyer Katz returned the license on his own initiative, the background was of course the increasing pressure that the National Socialists exerted on Jews. It was not far before Jewish lawyers were banned from practicing their profession - Julius Katz knew that and thus actively anticipated them. In more humane times, however, a successful lawyer would never have given approval “voluntarily”.
His emigration to Switzerland (October 1935), together with his wife Wilma, née Schloss, shows that this did not break his will to live. Here Julius Katz studied Swiss law, took another legal exam and was admitted to the Zurich bar in 1938. Nevertheless, he did not seem to feel safe even in neutral Switzerland. In 1941 he emigrated to Los Angeles in the USA. After acquiring the necessary language skills, he was able to work as a simple accountant and auditor. He died there of an incurable disease on March 18, 1948.
His wife Wilma lived until the 1970s and corresponded with Lilli Zapf in 1974.
Wilma Katz, née Schloss
HERE LIVED
Wilma Katz
born castle
JG. 1894
Escape 1935
Switzerland
1941 USA
Wilma Katz, née Schloss, was born on August 17, 1894 in Heilbronn. She was the daughter of the former merchant Isidor Schloss. He was the owner of the wool and yarn wholesaler L. & I. Schloss AG in Heilbronn. The sources give us no information about Wilma's childhood.
As a young woman she married the lawyer Dr. jur. Julius Katz. He worked as a lawyer at the Tübingen regional court. As early as 1933, Wilma and Julius made the plan to emigrate to Switzerland. The age for Jews in Tübingen was meanwhile so difficult that they obviously saw no other way than to leave their hometown Tübingen, where they were professionally successful and socially integrated. So they moved to Zurich in the spring of 1935.
Julius Katz studied Swiss law and was admitted to the bar in 1938 after another examination. Although they probably spent a few quiet years in Switzerland afterwards, they did not trust the political situation in Europe. Wilma later wrote “We weren't bothered; but my husband saw the events coming and made the appropriate decision to emigrate to California. ”This emigration seems to have been successful for the couple: Wilma Katz liked being in California, they had found a new home, as she wrote. The remaining time together was short, however: Julius Katz died of an incurable disease in 1948.
Wilma, on the other hand, lived in a home in Los Angeles until the mid-1970s.
(Source: Ref. 1)
Kronenstrasse
Leopold (junior) Hirsch
HERE LIVED
Leopold Hirsch
JG. 1876
Escape 1939
South Africa
The former business and residential building of the Hirsch family behind the market square symbolizes the rise and fall of the commercially successful, socially committed and respected Jewish citizens of Tübingen.
There is a report about Leopold's (junior) grandfather Leopold (senior) Hirsch : In 1855, Leopold Hirsch, the head of the synagogue in Wankheim, moved in after he had obtained civil and residential rights in Tübingen against the stubborn resistance of the Municipal Council had fought. In 1859 he opened here in Kronenstrasse. 6 a men's clothing store that provided a livelihood for two more generations.
Like most Jews at the time, Leopold Hirsch was religiously orthodox, socially engaged and a German patriot in his political stance, which earned him further sympathy among the conservative bourgeoisie. One can see him as an example of a fully assimilated Jewish German. He had a total of 14 children. When Leopold Hirsch died in 1875, his son Gustav, who was still born in Wankheim in 1848, took over the men's clothing business.
Even Gustav Hirsch , Leopold (jun.) Father was always active in the Jewish community, for 25 years he was the synagogue and Foundation nurse. He also worked in the non-profit citizens' association until the mid-20s. He died in 1933 and, like his father, was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Wankheim.
His eldest son, Leopold (junior Hirsch) , born in 1876 , had already taken over the family business in 1910 and continued to run it successfully. Leopold Hirsch junior was extremely popular with his customers, most of whom came from the lower town. He was easy to get along with, friendly and helpful. He attached great importance to quality goods. Time and again he granted poor customers installment loans, offered them goods at reduced prices and also gave a few gifts. In the local newspaper, the "Tübinger Chronik" at that time, he often recommended himself with classifieds ("good and cheap", "large selection at the cheapest prices in only the best materials"). Business flourished for a long time and also survived difficult years such as the inflation year 1923/24 and the boycott year 1933 (“Do not buy from Jews”). Many contemporary witnesses later confirmed that the Hirschs were popular business people. One customer aptly described the company's good image with the sentence: "Everyone bought at Jud 'Hirsch because he was a good man."
Politically, Leopold Hirsch was close to the SPD, and during the First World War he served as a soldier at the front. This is also shown by the assimilation of Jews in German society at the beginning of the 20th century. Many of them felt themselves to be German citizens at first; religion was not a key differentiator from other Germans. Many German Jews must have been offended by the fact that their patriotic services were not valued in their country. Many years later (1964), Hirsch also complained in a letter: “I took part in the First World War, I was not wounded. Nevertheless, I came to Dachau in 1938. I was a member of the Tübingen City Guard on horseback and took part in the 400th anniversary as a city rider. "
Like his father before, Leopold Hirsch jun. held the office of synagogue director (1925–1934) in the Jewish community. After the National Socialists came to power, it became more and more difficult for the previously successful textile merchant Leopold Hirsch to make ends meet. After an arbitrary tax audit, the Tübingen tax office accused him of evading taxes in 1938 and sentenced him to a back tax payment and a fine. As a result, he got into financial difficulties and decided to close down. In 1938 he was forced to sell his business and property well below value. He sold it to the Bierlinger Josef Tressel, who had worked for Leopold Hirsch from 1926 to 1928 and was a member of the NSDAP and the SA.
After the Reichspogromnacht of November 9-10, 1938, Leopold Hirsch was deported to the Dachau concentration camp with four other Jewish people from Tübingen. At the end of the year he was released because he had already applied to see his son Walter. Walter Hirsch had emigrated to Johannesburg in 1935.
In April 1939 Leopold Hirsch managed to escape to South Africa with his wife Johanna. Looking back, he wrote in a letter dated February 4, 1964: “When I left Tübingen in 1939, my company was 80 years old. My wife and I were only allowed to take 10 marks each with us, but my son looked after us in Johannesburg. "( Lit. 1, p. 139)
Leopold had contractually waived all claims to the house and property, which is why his reclaims were rejected in the restitution process that dragged on from the end of the war to the end of the 1960s.
On October 8, 1966, at the age of 90, he died in an old people's home in Johannesburg founded by German Jews.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2)
Johanna Hirsch, née Rothschild
HERE LIVED
Johanna Hirsch
born Rothschild
JG. 1884
Escape 1939
South Africa
“Johanna Hirsch was born in Rothschild from Nordstetten near Horb, where she was born on November 19, 1884. She emigrated to Johannesburg with her husband in 1939. She died there on June 20, 1942 and rests in the Westpark Jewish cemetery. ”( Lit. 1, p. 140)
With these few lines Lilli Zapf describes the life of Johanna Hirsch in her book.
Leopold Hirsch and Johanna Rothschild married in 1907. The son Walter was born in 1908 and the daughter Eleonore in 1915.
In addition to raising children and running the business budget, Johanna Hirsch, like most Jewish women, was active in welfare and social welfare. She worked in the Jewish Women's Association (JFV) headed by Karoline Löwenstein, in which all Jewish women were organized.
She belonged to the generation of Tübingen Jewish women born before the turn of the century, for whom it was a matter of course to get involved in welfare work. In the 1920s, welfare work formed a network of benevolent care in all social areas and classes. At the national level, the Jewish Women's Association (JFB) founded by social worker Berta Pappenheimer in 1904 played a leading role. His aim was to professionalize women's social work and to enforce social equality for women. The increasing radicalization of society in the 20s and 30s did not stop at women's politics. In 1933, Jewish women's rights activists were excluded from the non-Jewish “Bund Deutscher Frauen” (BDF). Like other organizations and institutions, it became “free of Jews”. Especially after the introduction of the “Nuremberg Laws” (1935) and their exclusion from the “Winter Relief Organization of the German People”, German Jewish women no longer had a chance to get involved in general social work. It was only possible for them to do charitable work in their own organizations.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2)
Walter Hirsch
HERE LIVED
Walter Hirsch
JG. 1908
Escape 1935
South Africa
“Walter Hirsch was born on December 20, 1908 in Tübingen. He attended the humanistic grammar school and later the upper secondary school, ”reports Lilly Zapf. These were the predecessor schools of today's Uhland and Kepler grammar school. When he started elementary school at the beginning of the First World War, his father was immediately drafted into the military. In his youth, Walter experienced the post-war chaos, the social misery and felt the increasing social exclusion and discrimination firsthand.
Under halfway normal circumstances, he would certainly have taken over the Hirsch family's men's clothing business, which had existed for three generations, one day. But it didn't get that far. Although he qualified as a textile merchant in his father's business, he then had to go abroad at the age of 21. From 1929 onwards he worked in various companies: in Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Breslau and in Aschaffenburg as a salesman and authorized signatory, but due to the creeping boycott of the Jewish textile industry, he was no longer employed after his last employer filed for bankruptcy in 1934. Back in Tübingen, he worked for a short time in his father's shop, but had no prospects there either, because he could not pay him a fixed salary due to the approaching ruin.
Completely penniless, Walter Hirsch set out for South Africa in 1935. He had to borrow the travel and emigration costs. without start-up capital, he had great difficulty securing his existence for years. Looking back, he wrote in 1957 about the early years in Johannesburg: “In the first few years of my stay I had a reading circle, that is, I circulated journals with my subscribers. Then I opened a women's clothing store, which I had to give up about a year ago because it was undercapitalized from the start. I've been a travel agent for local manufacturers for a year. ”In the 1960s, when he was almost 60 himself, he managed to set up his own business. (Destroyed Hopes, p. 289)
He died in Johannesburg in 1975.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2)
Lore Hirsch, married Silbermann
HERE LIVED
Lore Hirsch
married Silbermann
JG. 1915
Escape 1938
South Africa
Lore Hirsch was born on November 23, 1915, the second child of Leopold and Johanna Hirsch in Tübingen. Like most of the Jewish daughters, she attended the girls' high school, today's Wildermuth-Gymnasium. In the Jewish families there was generally a great interest in education: The children should attend a higher school, get a good education and, if possible, also study. Over two thirds of the Jewish families belonged to the middle and upper middle class. Generally speaking, they were “integrated”, but more precisely, they were “acculturated” because their social relationships hardly went beyond business, individual neighborly contacts and membership in individual associations. Most of the Jews in Tübingen had “only a few non-Jewish friends in total” and tended to keep to themselves. Even among Jewish and non-Jewish schoolchildren there was a certain “social distance”, as eyewitnesses in the 1980s reported in retrospect. ( Ref. 2, p. 46).
In the 1930s, political discrimination intensified due to growing anti-Semitism, bans on the use of public facilities, for example the ban on working and studying at the university, the outdoor swimming pool ban in 1933 and the introduction of the race laws (1935). For most Jewish young adults there was only one thing left to do: to flee to non-fascist countries as quickly as possible.
After her older and only brother Walter emigrated to South Africa in 1935, Lore followed him three years later. Since Walter couldn't get her entry permit to South Africa, she joined him in Johannesburg via Rhodesia. There she married Arno Silbermann, a Jewish businessman from Berlin who had also fled. The two had two children, Jeanette and Martin. Martin lived with his family in Australia for a long time. He now lives in Jerusalem. At the invitation of the city of Tübingen and the history workshop, he visited Tübingen in November 2019 with his son Ari - currently a rabbi in Manchester. In the evening memorial service on November 9, both celebrated the end of Shabat and the beginning of the new week.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2)
Paula Hirsch
HERE LIVED
Paula Hirsch
JG. 1897
Deported 1941
Riga
Murdered March 26, 1942
Paula Hirsch was the youngest daughter of Gustav Hirsch and a sister of Leopold Hirsch, the placeholder of the traditional men's clothing store at Kronenstrasse 6. She was born there in 1897, grew up in her parents' home and office and lived there with her father, Gustav, until 1933 Hirsch, whom she looked after after the death of her mother (1915). After the death of her father, she lived for a short time with her brother Leopold at Holzmarkt 1. She worked as a carer. From the summer of 1934 she was a nurse in Heidelberg for six months. In 1934 she lived for a short time with her brother-in-law Ludwig Bauer, Fritz Bauer's father, in Stuttgart. After a short stay with relatives in Ladenburg near Mannheim, she was admitted to the country home for women and girls in Reichenberg / Murr and lived there until 1941. The country home belonged to the Protestant society. The reason she was admitted to the home was because she was a single mother and a single mother. She had the illegitimate son Erich in 1925.
Both were deported on November 27, 1941, first to Stuttgart-Killesberg and then on December 1, 1941 in a transport of 1,000 Jewish people to Riga. All women with children were murdered there in the Hochwald on March 26, 1942. In 1965, in response to Lilli Zapf's later inquiries, the police headquarters only announced succinctly that the registration documents had been "destroyed by the effects of the war" in 1944. One has to assume with certainty that, as in other cases, the files and documents were destroyed in order to cover up the traces of the deportation and murder. In 1965, a message from Pastor Majer-Leonhard, the head of the Aid Office for the Racially Persecuted at the Protestant Society in Stuttgart, revealed: “Miss Paula Hirsch was housed in the Reichenberg Landheim of the Protestant Society until 1941. Miss Anne Hahn (now retired) can still remember that Miss Hirsch received the request via the Oppenweiler gendarmerie to go to Stuttgart with her 16-year-old son Erich. The files indicate that Miss Hirsch had to go to the Killesberg Jewish assembly camp on November 27, 1941. This transport went to Riga. "( Lit. 1, pp. 199f.)
(Sources: Ref. 1,2)
Erich Hirsch
HERE LIVED
Erich Hirsch
JG. 1924
Deported 1941
Riga
Murdered March 26, 1942
Erich Hirsch was born out of wedlock to Paula Hirsch, the youngest daughter of Gustav and Emma Hirsch, in Karlsruhe in 1925. He grew up in his grandfather's house at Kronenstrasse 6 in Tübingen. he lived there with his mother until 1933.
Lilli Zapf ( lit. 1) reports: “He spent his youth and school days in the Jewish orphanage“ Wilhelmspflege ”in Esslingen. On November 9, 1938, the orphanage was occupied and looted by the National Socialists. The children were evicted. Many of them arrived on foot in Stuttgart at night, where they were taken in by relatives. "(P. 201)
The 14-year-old Erich made his way to his uncle Ludwig Bauer in Stuttgart after the traumatic experience of the Reichspogromnacht. As Fritz Bauer, the son of Ludwig and cousin von Erich, wrote as attorney general in 1965, he himself had visited him several times in the Esslingen Jewish orphanage until 1935. And Erich was often in Stuttgart to visit Fritz Bauer's parents.
After 1938 he did an apprenticeship as a gardener in Hamburg-Rissen, which probably lasted until the fateful year 1941. There he was asked to come to his mother, who had been housed in the country home for women and girls in Reichenberg near Backnang since 1934. “Before his deportation, he was allowed to spend a few weeks with his mother in the country home for women and girls in Reichenberg. On December 1, 1941, he was deported with her from Stuttgart to Riga, where he was probably shot on March 26, 1942 in the high forest near Riga. ”( Lit. 1, p. 201)
(Sources: Ref. 1,2)
Arthur Hirsch
A stumbling block was laid for Arthur Hirsch on Hospitalstrasse in Stuttgart in 2009
Arthur Hirsch, Gustav Hirsch's second son, was born in Tübingen in 1886. Although he grew up in Kronenstrasse 6, he soon moved to live with his relatives in Stuttgart. His name does not appear in the sources of Lilli Zapf ( Lit. 1) and the Geschichtswerkstatt ( Lit. 1) Tübingen.
During the Reichspogromnacht of 1938 he was deported from Stuttgart to Dachau and murdered there on December 8th.
More ...: Website Stolpersteine Stuttgart .
Herrenberger Strasse
Blanda Marx, b. black
HERE LIVED
Blanda Marx
born black
JG. 1878
Escape 1934 France
Internieri DrAncy
Deported 1942
murdered November 6,
1942
Auschwitz
Blanda Marx, née Schwarz, was born on December 8, 1878 in Rexingen. Her father, Hermann Schwarz, was a trader by profession and her mother Ernestine, née Löwengart, was a housewife ( Lit. 3 p. 230). Blanda married the cattle dealer Liebmann Marx in Rexingen on November 26, 1902, who was born on February 16, 1870 in Baisingen near Rottenburg. In 1906 he moved to Tübingen and bought a brickworks property at Herrenberger Straße 46 in order to run a cattle trade there.
Blanda and Liebmann had two sons: Victor was born on July 10, 1903 and Egon on February 26, 1904, both in Baisingen. The couple's third child, daughter Meda Marx, was only a few weeks old. She was born on January 11, 1906 in Baisingen and died shortly after the birth on February 16, 1906. Her father Liebmann Marx did not grow very old either: he died on September 10, 1923 in Tübingen at the age of 53. He is buried in the Wankheim cemetery (tombstone no. 121 lit. 3, p. 209).
Nothing is reported to us about Blanda's life. Housewife is specified as the occupation. It can therefore be assumed that she led the typical life of a Jewish mother and housewife of the time. That is, she ran the household and took care of the upbringing and education of her sons. After attending high school, Victor and Egon learned the trade of textile merchants.
After the untimely death of her husband, Blanda initially continued to live at Herrenberger Strasse 46 until she fled to her second son Egon in Héricourt in Alsace on February 3, 1934. There she was arrested in October 1942 and taken to the French prisons Lure and Drancy. On November 6, 1942, she was deported to Auschwitz and murdered there ( lit. 2, p. 57).
For Blanda Marx's first son Victor Marx, his wife Marga Marx, née Rosenfeld, and their daughter Ruth Marx, Stolpersteine were laid in Tübingen in front of their house at Hechinger Strasse 9 in the southern part of the city as early as 2011 .
(Sources: Ref. 1,3)
Victor Nathan Marx
The Stolperstein was laid in Tübingen at Hechinger Strasse 9 in 2011 .
Victor Nathan Marx, the first son of Blanda Marx and Liebmann Marx, was born on July 10, 1903 in Baisingen. In 1906 he moved with his parents to Tübingen at Herrenberger Straße 46. After primary school, he attended the first two classes of grammar school and then upper secondary school. From 1928 to 1938 he worked as a textile merchant in Tübingen.
Victor Marx married Marga Rosenfeld in Würzburg on January 29, 1932, who was born on May 13, 1909 in Aub near Ochsenfurt. Their daughter Ruth was born on July 12, 1933 in Tübingen. It was "real sunshine for the whole family" ( Lit. 4) in times that were anything but easy.
Since Victor could no longer work as a textile merchant in Tübingen from September 1938, he and his wife moved to Stuttgart to live with his cousin Lothar Marx, in an apartment right next to the synagogue. He had already brought his daughter Ruth to safety with his mother Blanda Marx in Héricourt in Alsace.
After the pogrom night on November 9, 1938 and the fire in the Stuttgart synagogue, Victor was arrested and held in the Welzheim concentration camp until January 8, 1939. After his release he worked for a construction company on behalf of the Nazi authorities with the demolition of the Stuttgart synagogue until October 15, 1941. From the summer of 1939 the family lived together again in Stuttgart. Victor, Marga and Ruth were gathered on November 27, 1941 with another 1050 Jews from all over Württemberg on the Stuttgart Killesberg. From there, on December 1, 1941, they were transported in three agonizing days by freight train to Riga. The Marx family was housed there in the Jungfernhof camp.
Victor writes ( Ref. 1 p. 210):
“So came March 26, 1942. In the camp we were told that all women with children would be leaving the Jungfernhof and going to Dünamünde. There are hospitals, schools and solid stone houses where they can live. I asked the commandant to send me too, but he refused because I was too good a worker. It wasn't until months later that we found out what happened to our loved ones. Spare me the need to report about it. "(You were shot on the same day in the high forest of Riga.)"
Victor stayed in the Jungfernhof camp until it was dissolved in August 1944. From there, his ordeal led him to the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig by ship. Then he came in the cattle wagon to the overcrowded Buchenwald concentration camp for a short time and then to its sub-camp in Rhemsdorf. Under unspeakable suffering, they were driven to an extermination camp in Leitmeritz on foot, in which more than a thousand prisoners died, and finally on to Theresienstadt. There, Victor was liberated by the Russians on May 10, 1945. Victor writes ( Ref. 3, p. 211):
““ At the beginning of July 1945 we came to Stuttgart in a bus. In October 1945 my current wife, Hannelore Kahn, born on August 19, 1922 in Stuttgart, also came to me. We got married on November 25, 1945 in Stuttgart and became very happy. In 1946 we emigrated to the USA and arrived in New York on May 20, 1946. We have one son, Larry, who is 18 years old and is in college. I have always been a good Jew with a strong trust in God, without whom I would not have survived these difficult years. "
Before Victor Marx left Germany, at the end of 1945 he had a first memorial plaque for 14 victims installed in the Wankheim cemetery of the Tübingen Jews. The inscription reads: "These are the victims of the community of Tübingen who were murdered by the Nazis." ( Lit. 3, p. 229)
Victor's second wife, Hannelore Kahn, who was a distant relative from Stuttgart, had also survived a terrible time in Riga in the Jungfernhof camp. She described her whole life “from desperation to happiness” in a touching book that her son Larry Marx published in 2014 ( lit. 4). In the first part of this book, Victor's second wife describes her initially happy childhood in Stuttgart, which was sheltered in a loving family. But with the increasing harassment after the Nazis came to power in 1933, their youth was destroyed. She describes in detail her deportation to Riga, where her parents were also killed. This is followed by a description of the agony of a terrible camp life over several years and stations, until it was liberated by the Russians on May 10, 1945 after a death march in Köslin in Pomerania. But she still had to work for the Russians until the beginning of October and did not return to Stuttgart until October 10, 1945, where she married her husband Victor Marx on November 25, 1945 ( Lit. 1, p. 212). Her husband Victor experienced the same fate in the Jungfernhof camp, but they never met during this time.
In the second part of Hannelore's book, the difficulties of a new beginning in the USA are discussed. But Hannelore managed to enjoy the new life in freedom. She experienced the happiness of her marriage and her fulfilled family life after the birth of her son Larry in 1946 and later a grandson Evan Marx. The family did not live alone in New York, but had many contacts with their Jewish relatives in the USA.
Victor died in New York on April 25, 1982 at the age of 79. His second wife Hannelore survived him for a long time. She celebrated her 92nd birthday with her family in 2014 and only recently died (as of 2020).
Victor Marx reported on his life in several letters: In reference 4, as well as to Lilly Zapf on December 7, 1964 ( reference 1, pp. 209–211) and on April 22, 1973 ( reference 1, p. 211 -212).
For Victor, Marga and Ruth Marx, stumbling blocks were laid in front of their home in Tübingen at Hechinger Straße 9 in Südstadt in 2011 . The biographies of these three people can be found in the section List of stumbling blocks in the southern part of Tübingen . In the Loretto area there is a Ruth-Marx-Straße, which is reminiscent of the eight-year-old Ruth Marx, the "Sunshine".
(Sources: Ref . 1,3,4. Hannelore Marx: "From Despair to Happiness. A Jewish girl's memoir: My journey from Germany and the Holocaust to Liberation and Life in America." HLM Publishing Inc., 2014. List the stumbling blocks in Stuttgart)
Egon Marx
HERE LIVED
Egon Marx
JG. 1904
Escape 1933
France
Survived with help
Egon Elajahu Marx was born on November 26th, 1904 in Baisingen. He is the second son of Blanda Marx and the younger brother of Victor Marx. The family lived in Tübingen at Herrenberger Straße 46 from 1906.
Egon and Victor attended secondary school in Tübingen (today Kepler-Gymnasium). You completed a commercial apprenticeship in Stuttgart and Offenbach. After that, they ran their own shop for trousseau goods, especially duvets, in their parents' house at Herrenberger Straße 46. ( Lit. 2)
Egon Marx was also politically active: from 1926 he was a member of the SPD. In addition, he was a founding member and banner bearer of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold . He was also a founding member of the Tübinger Arbeiterwohlfahrt and worked there as secretary.
In June 1933, Egon Marx was able to obtain a passport and a regular emigration permit for Upper Alsace with the help of the Tübingen police director. He was accepted by a refugee committee in Mulhouse and now had to learn the French language. He found work as a representative in Belfort, his residence was in Héricourt, 10 km away. His mother Blanda Marx followed him there on February 3, 1934. It did not come to the hoped-for rescue: She was arrested there in October 1942 and deported to Auschwitz on November 6, 1942 and murdered. However, she was able to celebrate the wedding of her son: Egon Marx married the French Jew Odette Weiler from Geneva on June 4, 1939.
As a former German, Egon was interned after the war began, but in 1940 he was able to volunteer for the Foreign Legion. On January 4, 1941, he was released from military service in Lyon. His wife Odette was expelled from Alsace on July 14, 1940 and moved to live with her parents in Geneva. Egon lived there with false papers until he was arrested in 1943. But he was able to escape this arrest. Until the end of the war he lived hidden underground and was active in the French resistance movement ( Maquis ). In 1945 he returned to Héricourt with his family and parents-in-law to their apartment, which had long been plundered by the Germans. In 1951 he was the only Jew from Germany to open his own textile shop there.
Egon and Odette had two sons: Alain Marx, born on October 12, 1943, and Yves Marx, born on December 14, 1945. Alain studied political science and Yves worked in his father's textile business. He was supposed to be his father's successor in this business, but was drafted into the military around 1965 when his father died unexpectedly on October 28, 1965 in Héricourt. He is buried with his wife Odette in the Jewish cemetery in Belfort (verbal information). His shop (at the address: Etablissement E. Marx, 16, Vaubourg de Besançon Héricourt) no longer exists.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2,4)
Wilhelmstrasse
Siegmund Weil
HERE LIVED
Siegmund Weil
JG. 1871
Escape 1933
Switzerland
1941 USA
Siegmund Weil was born on October 2, 1871 in Hechingen as the son of Julius Weil and Mathilde Weil, née Wolf, into a traditional banking family. He attended primary school in Hechingen and secondary school in Vienna and Stuttgart. In 1899 he married Paula Lyon from Saarbrücken, they moved to Tübingen at Karlstrasse 3, later at Karlstrasse 11. In 1900 their son Georg was born.
In 1899 Siegmund Weil joined the family business as a banker. With his uncle Friedrich Weil, a brother of his father, the Hechingen banker Julius Weil, he managed the Tübingen branch of the Hechinger banking house MJ Weil & Sons at Grabenstrasse 1. In 1910 the two partners broke up and the partners separated there were different ideas about the future course of the bank.
Siegmund Weil then bought the former regional court building at Wilhelmstrasse 22 from the city of Tübingen, with the aim of becoming an independent regional bank. Here in Wilhelmstrasse 22, he started the Siegmund Weil bank limited as a limited partner of Mitteldeutsche Kreditbank Frankfurt / Main-Berlin, of which he was personally liable partner and to which the parent company in Hechingen also belonged.
He was a successful businessman and a well-respected German citizen. We can see that from the fact that in 1918 the King of Württemberg awarded him the Cross of Merit for War Aid.
The bank expanded, branches in Sigmaringen and Stuttgart followed and over the years twenty agencies were opened. In the 1920s, the bank was on a growth path and employed more than 40 people in the head office, branches and agencies. The success of Bankhaus Siegmund Weil was based on a very modern business strategy: It had a wide variety of offers in the credit and savings area and for capital formation; It was characterized by a high service culture and made attractive special offers to major customers. Great importance was attached to a cosmopolitan and flexible image of the banking committee.
The Siegmund Weil bank committee became one of the few leading regional banks in Württemberg-Hohenzollern and enjoyed a great reputation and the unreserved trust of its customers. The bank reached its economic peak in the years 1926 to 1929, and since 1930 the global economic crisis had an impact through a decline in profits.
Siegmund Weil was a popular and highly valued personality in Tübingen and worked for years as a commercial judge at the Tübingen regional court and he was a member of the board of the Württemberg Bankers Association in Stuttgart. On his 60th birthday in 1931, he was honored in many ways, including by the city.
But the signs of the times changed, anti-Semitism in the Weimar Republic had an insidious effect at first, and from 1933 after the National Socialists came to power. This led to public defamation and smear campaigns and, under strong pressure from the National Socialist parliamentary group in Tübingen and the Ministry of Economics, the bank was "brought into line" as early as 1933.
Siegmund Weil was already suffering from a heart condition at that time and traveled to Zurich to be treated in the hospital there. In November he left Tübingen for good with his family and emigrated first to Switzerland, in 1941 to the USA to Kew Gardens / Brooklyn NY In 1942 he died of a serious heart condition in Kew Gardens and rests there in the cemetery in Kew Gardens.
Paula Weil, née Lyon
HERE LIVED
Paula Weil
born Lyon
JG. 1877
Escape 1933
Switzerland
1941 USA
Paula Weil, née Lyon, was born on July 1, 1877 in Saarbrücken, the daughter of the respected businessman Adolf Lyon and his wife. She attended high school for girls in Saarbrücken and married the banker Siegmund Weil from Hechingen at the age of twenty-two. The young family moved to Tübingen, where Siegmund Weil became a partner in the branch of the Hechinger bank in 1899. In 1900 the son Georg was born. Paula Weil was involved in charitable work in a variety of ways in non-denominational areas. During the First World War she took care of the feeding of Tübingen elementary school children, organizationally and financially, she organized afternoons for the blind and worked for the Red Cross. Every Saturday the poor of the city got their bread from the bakery at the bank's expense and at Christmas penniless citizens were given Christmas presents. Paula Weil was a benefactress of the city in the best sense of the word and was honored in many ways by the King of Württemberg and the city of Tübingen. Despite the at that time certainly honestly meant recognition of the personal achievements and the tireless welfare engagement especially of Jewish women, in the twenties after the First World War the anti-Semitism of the empire germinated again, with increasing reservations against Jews up to defamation and smear campaigns and finally the boycott of Jewish people Shops.
The takeover and expropriation of the Weil banking house was one of the first goals of the National Socialists after they came to power in Tübingen, supported by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. In 1933 the Weil private bank in Tübingen was "brought into line" and practically expropriated.
In November 1933 Paula Weil emigrated with her family to Switzerland and from there to the USA in 1941 to Kew Gardens / Brooklyn NY After the death of her husband, she lived with her son Georg. In 1953 she returned with him to Switzerland and lived in Basel. From there she later moved to Vaduz in the Principality of Liechtenstein. During this time she came to Tübingen more often in connection with the return of the bank and stayed at the Gasthof Lamm. She visited Freudenstadt often and with pleasure. There she died on January 2nd, 1965 in the district hospital. Her ashes were buried in the family grave at Kew Gardens / Brooklyn NY.
Dr. Georg Weil
HERE LIVED
Dr. Georg Weil
JG. 1900
Escape 1933
Switzerland
1941 USA
Georg Weil was born in Tübingen on April 1, 1900, the son of the banker Siegmund Weil and his wife Paula. After elementary school he attended the humanistic Uhland grammar school in Tübingen and graduated in 1918 with the Abitur. For a short time he was called up for military service and after his release from military service in Tübingen and Heidelberg studied medicine for a few semesters, then political science in Freiburg and Tübingen.
During his studies, he prepared for his profession as a banker and initially volunteered in his father's company, later with Jakob SH Stern in Frankfurt am Main and with the Reichskreditgesellschaft in Berlin. In 1927 he completed his studies with a dissertation: "On the nature of economic levels" and obtained a very successful doctorate from Tübingen University. rer. pole.
In 1928 Dr. Georg Weil officially authorized general representative of the Siegmund Weil bank command in Tübingen. He saw the great banking crisis of the 1930s coming and, together with his father Siegmund Weil, knew how to save the bank through the difficult times. He later acted just as foresight and prudence when the bank was "brought into line" at the end of 1933.
After the National Socialists came to power in Tübingen in spring 1933, the highly respected Jewish private bank was one of the first victims of economic destruction in Tübingen. Public defamation and smear campaigns against the integrity of the owners, as well as pressure from the local council to “Aryanise” the bank, led to the dissolution of all business connections between the city of Tübingen and the Weil bank.
In order to save the bank, the Weil Bank Kommandite with the Tübingen parent company and the branch in Hechingen was converted by Georg Weil into a stock corporation called "Württembergisch-Hohenzollerische Privatbank AG", which was deliberately intended to continue the tradition of the regional bank. The newly hired bank director Richard Beck and other shareholders had the majority of the shares and also formed the board of the new banking company. The former company bosses Siegmund Weil and Georg Weil had to give up their board positions and were still represented on the supervisory board. Despite many concessions, the bank had no future for the Weil family, all of the contractually agreed obligations to Siegmund and Georg Weil were not met.
Georg Weil emigrated to Switzerland in 1933 and from there to Kew Gardens / Brooklyn, NY / USA. In 1948, Georg Weil initiated restitution proceedings to reverse the forced Aryanization of the Weil bank. In 1953, a settlement between Georg and Paula Weil on the one hand and the accused shareholders came about, and the bank was returned. Georg Weil was again the majority shareholder and on the bank's supervisory board.
In 1953 he returned to Switzerland, where he worked in Basel and later in Zurich as President of the Swiss branch of an American brokerage company and tried to gain a foothold again with the bank in Tübingen, which turned out to be difficult due to various unfavorable circumstances.
In 1955 he decided to sell his majority of shares to the major Frankfurt bank "Commerz- und Creditbank". 1958 the private bank of the Commerz- und Creditbank AG. completely taken over, run as a Tübingen branch and relocated from Wilhelmstrasse 22 to Poststrasse 4.
In 1967 Georg Weil finally moved to the USA and chose Piedmont in California as his domicile. Georg Weil died there on September 28, 1972 of a heart condition. He was married to an American who left Piedmont after the death of her husband and moved to South Carolina.
Nauklerstrasse
Sofie Weil, née Mayer
HERE LIVED
Sofie Weil
born Mayer
JG. 1852
Deported
Theresienstadt
Murdered December 8, 1942
Sofie Weil was born on June 27, 1852 in Mainz. Overall, we know little about their life. Who were her parents? Which of her siblings? Where did she go to school and what training did she enjoy?
At the age of 23 she married here in Tübingen, in 1875, seven years before the synagogue was built. Her husband, Friedrich Weil, came from a banking family from Hechingen.
In order to learn a little about the social milieu in which Sofie Weil lived here in Tübingen, here is some information about her husband Friedrich:
He and his brothers had moved to Tübingen in 1872 because his father Julius Weil had opened a branch of his Hechinger Bank at Grabenstrasse 1. At that time the building stood between today's Schimpf company and the current nunnery. It was later demolished for the construction of the nuns house. The management was largely taken over by Friedrich Weil. For a long time this bank was regarded as the backbone of the local economy, as a leading industrial and commercial bank. The university treasury and the Oberamtskasse were among their obviously highly satisfied customers. Friedrich Weil was the uncle and Sofie was the aunt of Siegmund Weil, who later founded the also highly respected Siegmund Weil bank office at Wilhelmstrasse 22.
Friedrich Weil was also a member of the Tübingen Citizens' Association and the Tübingen Museum Society, which he generously supported.
The bank on Grabenstrasse was both Sofie and Friedrich Weil's home. They had two children in the following years. In 1877 their daughter Mina Weil was born, followed by their son Carl Weil in 1879.
After 47 years of marriage, Sofie Weil's husband died in April 1923 at the age of 76. She stayed on Grabenstrasse for another seven years, until 1930. Her daughter Mina, also already widowed, moved in with her. We assume that Sofie Weil, like most Jewish women in Tübingen, also belonged to the Jewish women's association. It was founded in the year after the death of her husband and took care of the welfare system for Jewish as well as Christian interests. In accordance with the conventions of the Jewish religion, it was not just about alms, but also at that time about the goal of “helping people to help themselves”. ( Lit. 2., p. 67)
In 1930 Sofie and her daughter Mina moved to Nauklerstrasse 31.
After Sofie Weil's son Carl had to go to prison for about three and a half years in October 1935 because of unfortunate circumstances and the worst propagandistic defamation, Sofie Weil and Mina also left Tübingen. They moved to Sofie's birthplace, back to Mainz.
Was it moving or was it more of an escape? The experiences surrounding the fate of their son and brother could have been shocking for both of them.
In Mainz they lived at Rheinstrasse 79 at least until September 1939, when they were forced to move to a Mainz Jewish house at Gonsenheimerstrasse 11. From there they were deported to Theresienstadt on September 27, 1942, where Sofie Weil was murdered a good two months later, on December 8, 1942, at the age of 90.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2,7,8)
Mina Mayer, née Weil
HERE LIVED
Mina Mayer
born because
JG. 1877
Deported 1942
Theresienstadt
Murdered December 7, 1942
Mina Mayer was born on August 24, 1877 in Tübingen, the first child of Sofie and Friedrich Weil. Her mother came from Mainz, her father from Hechingen. She grew up with her brother in their parents' bank "Weil & Söhne" at 1 Grabenstrasse.
We know very little about her childhood and youth. One can perhaps assume that the prosperity of the banking house allowed the family to have a worry-free period financially - but anti-Semitism in Tübingen by no means only showed itself when the National Socialist Party came to power.
On April 1, 1899, Mina Weil married Josef Mayer, a banker from Mainz, in Tübingen, where they lived from then on. But their luck did not last long. Her husband died after only two years of marriage. We do not know anything about the circumstances of this death. At the age of 24, Mina Mayer had been living as a widow and without children since 1901, because the two had not had any children in their two-year marriage. When Mina's father, the banker Friedrich Weil, died in Tübingen in 1923, Mina Mayer moved back to her mother in her native town and the house of her childhood in Tübingen. She was now 46 years old. So they lived together again at Grabenstraße 1 until 1930 and then moved to Nauklerstraße 31 from 1930 to 1935.
The fact that Mina's brother Carl Weil was arrested in 1935 with great propagandistic attention, his Tübingen bank branch liquidated and he was sentenced to about three and a half years in prison certainly did not leave his sister and mother unaffected. It is quite possible that this was the reason why Mina Mayer and her mother left Tübingen in the same year of arrest. They moved back to Mainz, at Rheinstrasse 79. Four years later they were to see their brother Carl again for a short time.
Then they were forced to move to one of the Mainz Jewish houses, Gonsenheimer Straße 11, a Jewish nursing home or hospital. On September 27, 1942, both were deported to Theresienstadt. Mina Mayer was killed there on December 7, 1942, one day before her mother. She was 65 years old.
(Sources: Ref. 1,2,7,8)
Carl Weil
HERE LIVED
Carl Weil
JG. 1879
Escape 1940
Yugoslavia
Deported 1943
Auschwitz
Murdered September 3, 1943
Carl Weil was born on June 18, 1879 in Tübingen. He grew up with his sister Mina in their parents' house at Grabenstrasse 1, where his father Friedrich Weil ran the prestigious bank “Weil & Sons”. His mother was Sofie Weil, b. Mayer, from Mainz.
Carl Weil studied banking in Geneva and then worked as a banker in Berlin and London. In October 1909, at the age of 30, he moved to Horb am Neckar and founded the Carl Weil & Co. banking house there. He was not married and had no children. During World War I he served as a non-commissioned officer on the Western Front. There he fell ill and spent the remaining years of the war in the Tübingen garrison.
After the war he continued to run his bank in Horb and was a member of the Tübingen Museum Society. When his father died in Tübingen in 1923, he also took over his banking business at Tübinger Grabenstrasse 1. After a year, however, in 1924 he gave up this position and instead founded a branch of his Horber Bank at Uhlandstrasse 6 in Tübingen.
His main place of residence remained Horb. For his business activities in Tübingen, he must have lived in his mother's apartment at Grabenstrasse and later at Nauklerstrasse 31.
In the 20s and 30s, the Carl Weil bank developed into a successful regional bank. There were a number of agencies in the wider area. "People in Horb still say today that the banker had a car in which he drove his customers around and offered them cigars". (Stadtarchiv Horb, p. 205) But the economic success apparently did not last. He made losses and went into debt. In 1935, the Nazi propaganda paper “Stürmer” discovered the subject and turned it into a scandal. He was not given time to make up for the losses, even though that had been his aim. Since the sources for this story all report from a National Socialist perspective, Carl Weil's complicity or innocence can no longer be traced today. However, it can be assumed that the temporary financial difficulties of the bank were very welcome to the Nazi contemporaries in order to be able to take action against a Jewish banker.
He was arrested by the NS in October 1935 in Horb and sentenced to three years and three months in prison for “fraudulent bankruptcy” and “currency offenses”. His Tübingen branch was also closed. He served the sentence in prison in Ludwigsburg.
Immediately after his release, on September 14, 1939, he found accommodation in Mainz with his ninety-year-old mother Sofie and his sister Mina at Rheinstrasse 79. These two had also left Tübingen in 1935 after the striker scandal story.
Perhaps Carl Weil tried to flee to Yugoslavia in 1940. Nothing further is known about the circumstances and the result of this experiment. An attempt to escape to Switzerland in 1943 is certain after he had to witness the deportation of his mother and sister in December of the previous year. But he was arrested at the Swiss border and deported to Auschwitz. There he died on September 3, 1943 at the age of 64. At the Jewish cemetery in Horber, his name is on a memorial stone for the murdered Jews.
(Sources: Lit. 1,2,8,9,10)
See also
- List of stumbling blocks in Tübingen Südstadt
- Stumbling blocks in Baden-Württemberg
- Homepage of the city of Tübingen "History of the Jews
Literature / sources
- (Lit. 1) Lilli Zapf : Die Tübingen Jews . Katzmann Verlag Tübingen, 1974, ISBN 3-7805-0326-3
- (Lit. 2) Destroyed hopes. Ways of the Tübingen Jews (= contributions to Tübingen history , vol. 8), ed. from the Geschichtswerkstatt Tübingen, Stuttgart: Theiss, 1995, ISBN 978-3-8062-1216-7 and ISBN 3-8062-1216-3
- (Lit. 3) Frowald Gil Hüttenmeister: The Jewish cemetery Wankheim ,. Stuttgart: Theiss, 1997.
- (Lit. 4) Signs of life. Jews from Württemberg after 1933, ed. by Walter Strauss, Gerlingen, Bleicher Verlag, Gerlingen, 1982.
- (Lit. 5) Martin Ulmer: New home after 13 years of escape odyssey. In the footsteps of Arnold and Johanna Marque.
- (Lit. 6) Martin Ulmer: Anti-Semitism in the Weimar Republic. Paths of the Tübingen Jews.
- (Lit. 7) Tübingen City Archives
- (Lit. 8) Mainz City Archives
- (Lit. 9) Sigmaringen City Archives
- (Lit. 10) Stadtarchiv Horb u. Friends of the Former Rexingen Synagogue
- (Lit. 11) City archive in the Laupheim Cultural Office
- (Lit. 12) Tübinger Tagblatt archive
- Commemorative publication: "Stumbling blocks in Tübingen, relocated on July 10, 2018"
- Commemorative publication: "Stumbling blocks in Tübingen, relocated on July 13, 2020"