Father City Foundation
The Vaterstädtische Stiftung is a residential monastery in Hamburg and a member of the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband - Landesverband Hamburg eV It maintains around 420 apartments, spread over ten residential buildings in the districts of Eimsbüttel and Eppendorf .
Foundation ideas
The foundation offers assisted living for older people. The aim of assisted living is to ensure that the residents organize their lives as independently as possible and manage the household as independently as possible. If care is necessary, help can be given in the search for outpatient care services, therapists or individual helpers.
Small to medium-sized apartments with affordable rents in good residential areas should provide residents with a dignified and appropriate living environment.
Most of the apartments are barrier-free. The apartment sizes are between 35 and 80 m² and are equipped with a kitchen and shower / toilet.
Residential pens
- S.-S.- Rosenthal-Altenhaus , Kielortallee 23, inherited in 1909 by Stammann & Zinnow, roof extension 1986/87 by Dietrich-Michael Wex, 54 residential units
- Max- and Mathilda-Bauer-Stift, Kielortallee 25, inherited in 1926 by Dyrssen & Averhoff, modernized in 1989 by Dietrich-Michael Wex, 36 residential units
- Theodor-Wohlwill-Stift, Kielortallee 26, inherited in 1930 by Dyrssen & Averhoff, modernized in 1988 by Dietrich-Michael Wex, 34 residential units
- Otto-Rautenberg-Stift, Tornquiststraße 19b, inherited in 1899 by Stammann & Zinnow, modernized in 1986 by Dietrich-Michael Wex, 22 residential units
- Martin-Brunn-Stift, Frickestraße 24a-c, inherited in 1897 by Alfred Löwengard, modernized in 1987 by Dietrich-Michael Wex, 28 residential units
- Julius-Ernst-Oppenheim-Stift, Frickestrasse 26, inherited in 1909 by Stammann & Zinnow, modernized in 1988 by Dietrich-Michael Wex, 49 residential units
- Gustav-Kämmerer-Stift, Schedestraße 2, inherited in 1907 by Stammann & Zinnow, modernized in 1977, 1993/94 by Dietrich-Michael Wex, 51 residential units
- Alfred- and Otto-Beit-Stift , Schedestraße 4, inherited in 1910 by Stammann & Zinnow, modernized in 1990 by Dietrich-Michael Wex, 43 residential units
- Paul-Wohlwill-Stift, Kurzer Kamp 2, inherited in 1959 by Strebel, Schöne, Szudnagis, modernized 1974–1982 by Günther Hardege, increase in 1994 by Dietrich-Michael Wex, 48 residential units
history
Founding years
In the second half of the 19th century, there was a high point in the establishment of foundations in Hamburg, as the city transformed into a modern metropolis, which also resulted in an enormous housing shortage. Older women living alone, in particular, had great problems finding affordable small apartments with constantly rising rents.
With the new buildings of the residential foundations, Hanseatic merchants and their widows tried to remedy the situation by having small apartments built, some of which were rented free of charge or at an extremely low cost. A hundred residential foundations had been set up by 1914. The Father City Foundation played a key role in this increase. The circumstances of its establishment were a historical peculiarity, for which the double anniversary - 150 years of the foundation, 150 years of civil equality for Hamburg's Jews - is a first indication. Both events were closely related.
The Europe-wide civil unrest that erupted in the March Revolution of 1848 had brought about a lasting improvement, at least for the Hamburg Jews, by giving them civil equality. Up to that point in time, the position of Hamburg's Jews was determined by the restrictive Jewish regulations of 1710.
On February 23, 1849, despite some shortcomings, this aim of equality was achieved with the Provisional Ordinance, which was the reason for committed, liberal Jews to deal immediately with the establishment of an association for free housing, based on the basic principle of equal rights, free housing for to create Jewish and Christian families was fair.
Despite obstacles from restorative forces, the project was retained and membership and donations were also sought among the Christian bourgeoisie. When a sufficient amount of money was collected, the construction could begin.
A new, more efficient statute was adopted and the 23-person board of directors was replaced by a 7-person board, the chairman of which was the businessman Julius Horwitz until 1860. A plot of land in Eichholz, at the corner of Johannisbollwerk, was bought and the foundation stone was ceremonially laid in April 1851. The apartments enjoyed u. a. brisk demand from dock workers.
In 1860, Hirsch Marcus Cohen, a well-known doctor who had shown himself to be a staunch democrat during the revolutionary years, was elected chairman. After Cohen's death, the merchant John Rudolf Warburg was unanimously elected chairman in 1874. He belonged to a long-established Jewish family consisting of merchants, bankers and scholars.
Warburg pushed the expansion of the foundation. After his election, the name of the foundation was changed to Father City Foundation from 1876 . For Warburg, the increased housing shortage was a threat to large parts of the population, which he wanted to counter with the free apartments.
The population of Hamburg doubled from 100,000 in 1811 to 200,000 in 1860. The foundation was involved with its monastery buildings when the city began to expand due to the elimination of the medieval gate threshold.
A donation from Warburg of over 50,000 marks made it possible to set up another residential monastery. In Grabenstrasse in St. Pauli Nord, a two-story tenement house was bought for 45,000 marks, which was converted, renovated, and another floor was added. The building was occupied in September 1879. On the initiative of Warburg, the board of directors decided to build another monastery building, as the number of applications for free apartments had increased significantly. In 1882, the board of directors applied to the Senate for a free building site. Only after a further financial donation from Warburg was a plot of land on Baustraße (today Hinrichsenstraße) in Borgfelde allocated in 1886. The board of directors had a three-story building with 23 family apartments and twelve individual apartments built, which they could move into in 1887.
In March 1887, at Warburg's request, the foundation was sold a plot of land on Bundesstrasse at the corner of Papendamm, where a three-winged building with 52 apartments was built.
His nephew Theodor Wohlwill was elected chairman of the Father City Foundation as his successor, and further expansion took place. In 1899, due to the good financial situation, a new monastery was built in Tornquiststrasse in Eimsbüttel.
The foundation had become a respected institution whose supporting members included senators, mayors, pastors and, above all, merchants.
In 1905 the board took over the administration of the Martin-Brunn-Stift in the Frickestrasse in the new district Eppendorf. At the road bend in Schede- and Frickestrasse, a building with 42 apartments was erected after approval by the citizens, which could be occupied in 1907.
As early as 1907, another monastery building in Rotherbaum in Kielortallee had been moved into, which by testamentary provisions of the late Jewish businessman S.-S. Rosenthal had been funded. A building with a total of 33 apartments of different sizes was constructed.
Theodor Wohlwill died in 1908. Max M. Bauer was elected as his successor, under whose activity many donations could be collected, so that after his death the Max and Mathilda-Bauer-Stift in Kielortallee 25 and the Theodor-Wohlwill-Stift in Kielortallee 26 were built.
In 1933 the foundation owned a total of eleven pens with 506 apartments, which were occupied by 600 people.
National Socialism
The National Socialist rulers viewed the Jewish charitable institutions with displeasure and discriminated against them. In Hamburg this also included 13 residential pens, which were intended exclusively for Jews. Here a classification according to National Socialist criteria was clear and anti-Jewish measures could be implemented quickly. The situation was different with the equal housing foundations, such as the Father City Foundation, which had been founded by Jews but were open to all applicants, regardless of denomination. When, with the new regulation of the tax laws, the racial criteria were also applied in the foundation system, the joint foundations also found themselves in dire straits, as had already occurred with the Jewish foundations.
The Jews among the residents were identified and it turns out that there were only 17 of the 600. They had to move immediately to the Martin-Brunn-Stift, which had been spun off from the Father City Foundation. With this the ideologically conditioned separation of non-Jews and Jews in this foundation as in others was accomplished. The equal housing pens had to be "aryanized" on the instructions of the social authority.
In addition to the Martin-Brunn-Stift, the John-R.-Warburg-Stift and the Mendelson-Israel-Stift in Kurzen Kamp were intended for Jews. These three named pens, like the other 13 Jewish ones, belonged to the 80 so-called “Jewish houses”.
Since October 25, 1941, with the first deportation from Hamburg, people were also transported from the monasteries to the ghettos and extermination camps. In July 1942, the big deportation trains went to Auschwitz and Theresienstadt, this also affected the residents of the three formerly parity residential pens. At the end of the war it was found that apart from three destroyed buildings, the rest of them had survived the war with repairable bomb damage.
post war period
An initial inventory showed that nine of the 13 monastery buildings had survived the war undamaged. The roof structure of the monastery in Tornquiststrasse, today's Otto-Rautenberg-Stifts, was destroyed and the pens in Grabenstrasse, Baustraße and Bundesstrasse were in ruins.
With the currency reform, the foundation's lack of capital also became apparent. Rubble plots were sold and a monastery was built in Fuhlsbüttel. In the years to come, the foundation was expanded and modernized.
literature
- Angela Schwarz: The Father City Foundation in Hamburg from 1849 to 1945 .
- Angela Schwarz: The first community foundation in Hamburg - apartments for Jews and Christians . In: Hamburg Key Documents on German-Jewish History, August 15, 2017. doi : 10.23691 / jgo: article-32.de.v1 .