Author: richardbrook@bruckfamilyblog.com

POST 110: DR. WALTER LUSTIG, DIRECTOR OF BERLIN’S “KRANKENHAUS DER JÜDISCHEN GEMEINDE” (HOSPITAL OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY) THAT SURVIVED THE NAZIS

 

Note: The Blog post is about Berlin’s Jewish Community Hospital that inexplicably outlasted the Nazis, and its wartime Director, Dr. Walter Lustig, born in Ratibor, Germany, the same town where my father was born.

Related Posts:

POST 13, POSTSCRIPT: THE FORMER JEWISH CEMETERY IN RATIBOR (RACIBÓRZ)

POST 48: DR. ERNST NEISSER’S FINAL DAYS IN 1942 IN THE WORDS OF HIS DAUGHTER

POST 49: GUIDE TO THE “LANDESARCHIV BERLIN” (BERLIN STATE ARCHIVE) CIVIL REGISTRY RECORDS

POST 107: HARRO WUNDSCH (HARRY POWELL), A “DUNERA BOY” INTERNED IN THE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK

 

This post has to do with my family only insofar as Dr. Walter Lustig, the man at the center of this story, was born in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the town in Upper Silesia where my father and many of his family were born. From around 1942 until shortly after WWII ended in April 1945 Dr. Lustig was the Director of Berlin’s Krankenhaus der Jüdischen Gemeinde, the Hospital of the Jewish Community, a Jewish institution that miraculously withstood the Nazi onslaught.

This assault on German Jews left only between 5,000 and 6,000 Jews alive in Germany by the end of the war, compared to 500,000 Jews living there towards the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933 when the Nazis seized power. By the time WWII started in 1939 two-thirds of these Jews had emigrated, though there still remained roughly 167,000 Jews in Germany in 1941, most of whom would be murdered.

Berlin’s Jewish Hospital is 265 years old. It was originally built in 1756 on Oranienburger Strasse near the Jewish cemetery in Berlin. Then, during Berlin’s mid-nineteenth century economic expansion that was due in large measure to its entrepreneurial Jewish population, the Jewish community built the city’s first general hospital, one of the largest of its kind, on Auguststrasse; it was built primarily to serve the needs of the Jewish population. As the years passed, even this structure proved inadequate, so in 1913, the current hospital along Iranischestrasse opened on the site it occupies today (Figure 1); there were seven principal buildings, together with ancillary structures. Presently, the hospital is located in the Wedding locality in the borough of “Berlin-Mitte” (Figure 2), which prior to 2001 was a separate borough in the northwestern part of Berlin.

 

Figure 1. The main building of the “Krankenhaus Der Jüdischen Gemeinde” (Hospital of The Jewish Community) that opened in 1914 along Iranischestrasse

 

Figure 2. Map of Berlin’s 12 existing Boroughs and the neighborhoods in each, with Berlin-Mitte circled including the neighborhood of “Wedding” where Berlin’s Jewish Hospital is situated today

 

I have briefly mentioned Berlin’s Jewish Hospital in connection with three previous Blog posts. In Posts 48 and 49, I related the story of how one of my distant relatives, Dr. Ernst Neisser, was taken there on the morning of October 1, 1942, following his attempted suicide after being told to report to an “old age transport,” a euphemism for deportation to a concentration camp; fortunately, he survived only three days until October 4th before succumbing to his trauma. I say “fortunately” because the fear among Jews who attempted suicide is they would be resuscitated only to then be shipped to a concentration camp and gassed there.

According to a Jerusalem Post article by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, published on June 23, 2007, entitled “A hospital with history,” numerous Berlin Jews, like Dr. Ernst Neisser, who attempted suicide with gas or sleeping pills in the face of deportations ended up in Berlin’s Jewish Hospital for treatment, the only hospital that would still treat Jews during the Nazi era. According to this article, upwards of 7,000 Berlin Jews killed themselves before the Nazi dictatorship fell. Although Jews committed suicide in all sorts of ways, by far the most common method involved the ingestion of a poison such as potassium cyanide or an overdose of an opiate or sedative, usually Veronal.

Then, in Post 107, I mentioned an English lady named Kathy York, whose grandmother Maria Wundsch née Pauly (Figure 3), a distant relative of mine, worked at Berlin’s Jewish Hospital during WWII when Dr. Lustig was the Director there. Kathy tells me letters written about her grandmother’s fraught time working at the hospital exist, but these have yet to surface.

 

Figure 3. Dr. Maria Wundsch née Pauly with her husband Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch as a young married couple; Maria Wundsch, a full Jew, worked at Berlin’s during the war and likely survived because she was in a mixed marriage (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

I previously also told readers about Daniel B. Silver’s book about the hospital, entitled, “Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis.” I have relied heavily on this book in describing Dr. Lustig’s tenure as Director of the hospital and the hospital’s situation during the war. It is not my intention here to thoroughly review what interested followers can easily read for themselves, but rather to bring to light a few findings and connections I made on my own that add a little to the story. This said, some background about Dr. Walter Lustig and his wartime administration of the hospital are warranted.

After fierce street-to-street fighting against entrenched remnants of Hitler’s SS, on April 24, 1945, Russian soldiers had finally succeeded in wresting control from the Nazis of a stretch of Iranischestrasse that included the battle-scarred buildings of the “Krankenhaus Der Jüdischen Gemeinde” (Hospital of The Jewish Community). There they found hundreds of people including doctors, nurses, patients, workmen, and others who claimed to be Jewish. The Russians did not initially give credence to their assertions believing Joseph Goebbels’ 1943 declaration, chief propagandist for the Nazi party, that Berlin was “Judenrein,” or “Judenfrei,” meaning “cleansed (or free) of Jews,” according to National Socialist terminology applied in the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Eventually the survivors convinced their Russian liberators they were Jews who had inexplicably outlasted the Nazis.

At the time of liberation, three of the hospital’s seven main buildings were no longer a part of the hospital. In late 1942, the German Army, the Wehrmacht, had expropriated the nurses’ residence, the Schwesterheim, as well as buildings that had housed the gynecology and infectious disease departments, for use as a military hospital, the Lazarett. Then, in 1944, the Gestapo appropriated and fenced off the hospital’s pathology laboratory and an adjacent gatehouse to use as a Sammellager, a collection camp for Jewish deportees. By 1944, most of Berlin’s remaining Jews had already been deported so a single, smaller holding facility now sufficed.

According to Daniel B. Silver, several published sources report the hospital’s population at the time of liberation at around 800. However, Hilda Kahan, Dr. Lustig’s secretary throughout his tenure as Director of the Jewish Community Hospital, states in a videotaped interview that the number was closer 500. Regardless of the precise number, they represented a large proportion of Germany’s identifiable Jews as they were defined by the Nazis. Statistics a young Jewish woman was compelled to maintain for the Gestapo on a monthly basis indicate only 6,284 known Jews remained in Berlin on February 28, 1945. (Silver, 2003, p. 2)

Included in the final number of Jews found at the Hospital upon its liberation, according to Daniel Silver “. . .were patients and members of the medical, nursing, and support staff who had taken up residence in the hospital at various times, either because they had been bombed out or evicted as Jews from their former homes or because they were slave laborers assigned to work at the hospital. Also on hand were the remnants of groups of Jews who had been transferred to the hospital when the Nazis closed other Jewish institutions in Germany, such as orphanages and old age homes. Most of these unfortunates had been deported before the war ended, but some remained in April 1945. Among them were a handful of abandoned children who were suspected of being fully Jewish but whose ‘racial’ status had not been definitively determined. The Nazis had used the hospital as a kind of ghetto to which they consigned Jews who had nowhere else to live or whose status was ambiguous. These included Jews of foreign nationality and Jews who were being held there as potential bargaining chips in negotiating exchanges for German nationals captured in Palestine. The authorities also used the hospital to house Jews who had been brought to Berlin from other cities in Germany as part of a Nazi effort to separate them from their Aryan spouses. This was intended as a first step in overcoming the political and legal barriers to the deportation of Jewish men who lived in mixed marriages and whose Aryan spouses refused to divorce them despite Gestapo pressure to do so.” (2003, p. 8) As Winter further notes, “Most of the hospital population were half-Jews or spouses of Aryans. As such, they had been protected by Nazi rules that everyone knew could be changed at any time.” (2003, p. 12)

Also included among the “patients” were several Jews not receiving medical treatment who were protected from deportation by one or another prominent Nazi; this may have included Jews who had illicit affairs with well-placed Nazis, childhood friends of important Nazis who sought to protect them, Jews who had bribed high-ranking Nazis, or other cases whose reasons can only be guessed. A “lucky” group of survivors included Jews who had been incarcerated in the hospital’s auxiliary police ward, the so-called Polizeistation. These were Jews who fell ill while already in the hands of the police, Gestapo, or SS who for unknown reasons the Nazis sought to restore to health before killing them. Unbelievable!

My family’s remote association to Berlin’s Jewish Community Hospital and its miraculous survival through WWII, in addition to the hospital’s wartime Director’s connection to Ratibor, the same town in Upper Silesia where my father was born, drew my interest in writing this Blog post. Hoping I might be able to add a little to what has already been written and is known about Dr. Walter Lustig, I contacted Mr. Paul Newerla (Figure 4), my retired lawyer friend from Racibórz who now researches and writes about the history of the town and Silesia and asked whether he could track down a copy of Dr. Walter Lustig’s birth certificate at the archive. Paul graciously agreed to help. He not only was able to locate Dr. Lustig’s birth certificate, but the Racibórz archives also provided a legal document related to Dr. Walter Lustig’s father, Bernhard Lustig, dated the 22nd of March 1939. I will discuss this in further detail below.

 

Figure 4. With my friend Paul Newerla, retired lawyer and Silesian historian, standing by the statue of John of Nepomuk, located in middle of a parking lot in Racibórz

 

First, let me tell readers a little about Walter Lustig. He was born as Walter Simon Lustig on the 10th of August 1891 in Ratibor, the son of the merchant Bernhard Lustig and his wife Regina Lustig née Besser. He graduated from the local gymnasium in March 1910 and enrolled at the University of Breslau in October of the same year. He studied medicine, specializing in surgery, and received his medical degree and license in the spring of 1915. He was drafted during WWI and served as a military doctor. During his wartime stint, he obtained a Ph.D., also in medicine. His military service was performed in Breslau, where he treated casualties from the eastern front. After the war he worked in public administration while maintaining a private medical practice; he spent most of his career as a medical administrator. He wrote prolifically on medical subjects.

Clearly driven to advance professionally, in 1927 he relocated to Berlin. His move there coincided with two changes that had far-reaching consequences. He married a non-Jewish physician, Dr. Annemarie Preuss, and took a job with the Berlin police department where he became acquainted with Fritz Wöhrn and Rolf Günther who eventually became Adolf Eichmann’s key aides in overseeing the hospital. It was Adolf Eichmann’s department in the Reichssicherbeitshauptamt (RSHA), the Reich Security Main Office, that had formal jurisdiction over the Jewish hospital.

According to Daniel Silver, Lustig “. . .advanced within the police hierarchy until in 1929 he was appointed to the position of director of the Police Presidium’s medical affairs department. He held the prestigious bureaucratic titles of Oberregierungsrat (chief administrative counselor) and Obermedizinalrat (chief medical counselor).” (2003, p. 24-25) The police department had broad administrative responsibilities that extended beyond criminal matters, and included overseeing health matters in schools, institutions, and group care facilities, and conducting occupational training for medical personnel; suffice it to say, this brought Lustig into contact with many senior government officials and leaders in the medical community.

In October 1933, Lustig lost his job because of the issuance of the Nazis’ Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (“Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums”). This law initially exempted veterans of WWI such as Lustig but because he had been stationed in Breslau and not on the eastern front, the exemption did not apply to him, and he lost his position. At some time, between 1933 and 1935 Lustig was employed by the health department of the Berlin Jewish Gemeinde, or community (more on this below). According to Daniel Silver, when exactly Lustig was employed by the Gemeinde, and what his exact duties were are unknown, though he apparently became active in matters relating to the Jewish hospital around this time. Regardless, Lustig proved as adept at rising in the official Jewish bureaucracy at the Gemeinde as he had rising through the ranks of the Berlin police department.

Without overwhelming readers with the tangled structure of the Jewish community, it is still worth reviewing the hospital’s situation following the events of Kristallnacht that took place on the 9-10 November 1938 to provide context for Dr. Lustig’s powerful administrative position during the war. In a structure that prevailed before the Nazis came to power and still exists today, every religious denomination was organized into a Gemeinde, depending on context, roughly translated as community, municipality, congregation, or parish. Prior to the Nazis seizing power in 1933, the Gemeinde in smaller cities resisted the formation of a central Jewish organization fearing it would be dominated by the Berlin Gemende. Eventually the reality of the Nazi takeover overtook regional concerns, and a central organization called the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden, or Central Representation of German Jews, was formed. It was renamed after 1935 to “Jews in Germany,” a significant distinction meant to signal that Jews were no longer to be considered Germans.

As the remaining German Jews became more concentrated in Berlin over time, the distinction between the Berlin Gemeinde and the Reichsvertretung became blurrier with many officials holding parallel positions in both organizations. After Kristallnacht, the Reichsvertretung was dissolved by the Nazis, only to be resurrected when the Nazis realized this organization facilitated emigration, which at the time the Nazis were encouraging. Consequently, a new Jewish central organization was organized, substituting the word Reichsvereinigung (central organization) for Reichsvertretung (central representation). Membership in this organization was compulsory for every Jew, which was created to better discriminate against and control the Jewish population. It was under tight Gestapo supervision.

Daniel Silver summarizes the hospital’s situation by 1941: “So it was that by 1941 the hospital functioned under the organization umbrella of the Reichsvereiningung, although, through the Gemeinde health department, it still maintained a formal relationship to the Berlin Gemeinde. The most important aspect of the new arrangements that began in 1938 was that, through the Reichsvereiningung, the hospital was placed under the direct supervision of Department IV B 4 of the RSHA. Originally this had been the department in charge of ‘Jewish emigration and evacuation.’ By 1941 it had become the department for ‘Jewish affairs and evacuation,’ emigration having been largely abandoned as a Nazi objective. Its head was Adolf Eichmann, the bureaucratic mastermind of the Final Solution.” (2003, p. 40)

Measures taken against Jewish professionals which began in 1933 with passage of the Nuremberg racial laws that pushed Jewish doctors out of jobs in non-Jewish clinics had a profound effect on the makeup of the Jewish hospital’s professional staff as it stood in 1941. Things came to a head with the decree of July 25, 1938, when all Jewish physicians, of which there were about 3,000 at the time in the Reich, were stripped of their medical licenses. By September, a limit of 700 Jewish physicians, referred to by the degrading title of Krankenbehandler, or “carer for the sick,” were restricted to treating Jewish patients or working in Jewish institutions.

Ironically, one of the beneficiaries of this provision was Walter Lustig. While many of Lustig’s contemporaries had by 1938 decided to emigrate, he consciously decided not to do so. Whether this was hubris or his marriage to an Aryan that he thought afforded him some protection or his previous relationship with Nazis during his days in the Berlin police department, Lustig benefited from others’ departures to rise in the Jewish hierarchy. Daniel Silver describes it as follows: “When his boss in the Gemeinde/Reichsvereinigung health department, Erich Seligmann, left Germany for the United States in 1939, Lustig took over his position. In July 1939, the Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt (Jewish chronicle) described him as the person who henceforth would be responsible for health matters within the Reichsvereinigung. In that capacity, he played a key role in filling vacancies that opened up at the hospital because of the emigration of members of the medical staff. At some point in 1940 or 1941 (exactly when is unclear), he was appointed as the Gesundheitsdesernent, or chief of the health department (of the Gemeinde), and thus became a member of the governing board of the Reichsvereinigung.” (2003, p. 43)

Eventually in around October 1942, Walter Lustig became the hospital’s director after the previous director Dr. Schoenfeld and his wife killed themselves; they had been among 100 Gemeinde and Reichsvereinigung officials handpicked in the second major deportation of communal officials, a selection Lustig was compelled to participate in after initially demurring. From 1942 onward, he was repeatedly forced to aid in the selection of hospital staff for deportation, and according to Daniel Silver was “. . .arguably the most powerful figure of German Jewry and the absolute master of the hospital.”

Again, quoting Daniel Silver, “For many, Lustig’s name evokes predominantly negative feelings. According to one source, ‘The name Walter Lustig awakens even today vigorous aversion among Jewish witnesses of the events.’ Yet even his detractors give grudging credit to his talents and to his accomplishment in keeping the hospital open through the final years of the Nazi regime. His contemporaries describe him in wildly differing terms—turncoat and Gestapo collaborator; savior of the hospital; the man who sent hundreds of Jews to their death; the man who saved hundreds of Jews from the camps; a protector of children; a lecher.” (2003, p. 26) Further complicating how Lustig is viewed in hindsight is the criticism that he was unsympathetic to the plight of his fellow Jews and that he was a Jewish anti-Semite, and that his mistresses may have influenced the people he selected for deportation. More on his purported anti-Semitism below.

At the time Mr. Winter published his book in 2003, he stated there were no known pictures of Walter Lustig. (2003, p. 26) While writing this Blog post, I was able to establish email contact with Daniel Winter, who formerly served as the general counsel to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Service. He mentioned that following the publication of his book students from the University of Potsdam, outside Berlin, found a picture of Walter Lustig while developing a traveling exhibit about Berlin’s Jewish Hospital. Unable to locate his copy of this image, I have separately contacted the University of Potsdam hoping they might find and send me one. I’m optimistic about sharing it with readers in the future.

Figure 5. Mr. Roger Lustig, expert on Jewish families of Prussian Poland, whose father Ernst Lustig was a distant cousin of Dr. Walter Lustig, the wartime Director of Berlin’s Jewish Hospital

Relatedly, about ten years ago, I attended a talk sponsored by the Los Angeles Jewish Genealogical Society given by a Mr. Roger Lustig (Figure 5), who specializes in research on Jewish families of Prussian Poland, and is a top expert on general German Jewish research. This talk was given just before my planned 13-week trip to Europe to follow in the footsteps of my Jewish family’s diaspora. I contacted Roger asking whether he might be able to refer me to someone in Racibórz who could help me. Because Roger also has ancestors from there, he was happy to assist. Over the years, we’ve periodically stayed in touch. Naturally assuming that Roger might in some way be related to Walter Lustig because of the common surname and their respective connections to Ratibor, while writing this Blog post, I asked him whether he might have Walter’s photograph. He was unable to help explaining that because Dr. Lustig was a short man, about 5’2”, he was self-conscious about being photographed. This comports with how informants described Lustig to Daniel Silver, namely, that he was small. (2003, p. 26) Others added that he was a “small, delicate person” and that he had “cold stabbing eyes—terrible eyes.” Another informant reported that Lustig was very Germanic in appearance, a man who “‘looked like a major from the First World War,’ with spectacles and a big moustache.” (2003, p. 26)

Roger Lustig pointed out something interesting to me during our recent exchange that speaks to whether Walter was anti-Semite. While writing his book, Silver coincidentally interviewed Roger Lustig’s father, Ernst Lustig, who addressed this question (i.e., Ernst Lustig’s great-great-grandfather was the brother of Walter Lustig’s great-grandfather (2003, p. 176)): “The characterization of Lustig as a Jewish anti-Semite is at odds with the reaction of his distant cousin Ernst Lustig. In a brief and anguished commentary on the judgment in the Wöhrn trial, Ernst Lustig expresses surprise and shock at the unfavorable way Walter Lustig is described. ‘What is difficult for me to comprehend,’ he writes, ‘is how this man could develop such a horrible attitude toward Jews when he himself was a flawless Jew.’ He remembers his cousin as a man who maintained friendly relations with his Jewish relatives, a man whom he knew as ‘Uncle Walter,’ and a man who once provided Ernst’s father with a genealogical sketch of the family that descended from Dr. Lustig’s great-grandfather Abraham, who had lived in the town of Adamowitz. This seems out of character with the picture of Walter Lustig as a man who took no interest in his Jewish roots, although it is true that the time in question, 1937-38, was already after the date when Walter Lustig decided to throw his lot in with the Jewish community to which the Nazis in any event had irrevocably assigned him.” (2003, p. 215)

It is difficult to reconcile the differing judgements of Walter Lustig. On the one hand, there is the man who selected colleagues and fellow employees for deportation, while on the other was a man who occasionally came to the rescue of assistants who’d been arrested by the Nazis. Then, in March 1943, the Gestapo showed up with trucks in front of the administrative building prepared to deport the entire establishment, patients, doctors, nurses, and all other employees; it was only Lustig’s call to Adolf Eichmann that forced the Gestapo to stand down, though it resulted in fully half of Lustig’s workmates being arrested. As Silver asks, “Did Lustig originate this Faustian bargain, offering up fully half of the total number of his professional colleagues and employees as the price for saving the hospital, and thereby himself and his job? Or was this decision imposed on him in circumstances over he which he had no control whatsoever? It is unlikely that anyone will ever know.” (2003, p. 143)

It is worth noting that while the RSHA and the Gestapo were technically part of the same organization and under the authority of the same leader, SS Führer Heinrich Himmler, the German bureaucracy was teeming with internal rivalries and tensions (2003, p. 141), a situation which may partially explain why the Jewish hospital survived the war. For all of Lustig’s purported influence with the Gestapo, he was unable to save his own father from being deported to Theresienstadt in 1943. (2003, p. 173 & p. 221)

Longtime followers of my Blog may recall the postscript to Post 13 about the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor. In that post, I explained the role a Polish gentleman named Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński played in photographing all the headstones of the graves before the cemetery was demolished during Poland’s Communist Era. At a time when purchasing film and processing black-and-white negatives cost a lot, Kazimierz photographed, developed, created a portfolio with a site plan, and donated all his work to the Muzeum Raciborzu to be archived. After learning about these images, I arranged to photograph all the images in 2015. Recalling these and the accompanying Excel database, I scrolled through them and discovered they include a photo of Walter Lustig’s mother’s headstone, Regina Lustig née Besser. (Figure 6) As mentioned above, Walter’s father, Bernhard Lustig, was deported to Theresienstadt where he died, so obviously no picture of his gravestone exists.

 

Figure 6. The headstone of Dr. Walter Lustig’s mother, Regina Lustig née Besser (1866-1914), interred in the former Jewish Cemetery in Racibórz (photo courtesy of Kazimierz Świetliński)

 

Walter’s birth certificate, which my dear friend Mr. Paul Newerla was able to obtain from the Racibórz archives confirmed Walter’s date of birth, the 10th of August 1891, and his parentage. (Figures 7a-b) As I mentioned above, while Paul was searching for Walter Lustig’s birth certificate, the archives stumbled upon a legal document related to Bernhard Lustig dated the 22nd of March 1939. (Figures 8a-g) At the time Bernhard was 82 years of age indicating he’d been born in 1857; I would later learn he was born on the 6th of February 1857. Because he was in frail health at the time, Bernhard Lustig had requested that a Mr. Arthur “Israel” Stein be appointed as his guardian, which the courts granted. Despite his failing health, four years later the Nazis deported him to Theresienstadt, where he perished. One can only imagine the cruel circumstances under which Bernhard died.

 

Figure 7a. Copy of Walter Simon Lustig’s Ratibor birth certificate, Certificate No. 391, showing he was born on the 10th of August 1891 to Bernhard Lustig and Regina Besser née Besser, and that he was given the added name “Israel” on the 1st of January 1939

 

Figure 7b. Transcription & translation of Walter Lustig’s birth certificate

 

Figure 8a. Page 1 of a legal document dated the 22nd of March 1939 regarding Dr. Walter Lustig’s father, the merchant Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8b. Page 2 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8c. Page 3 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8d. Page 4 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8e. Page 5 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8f. Transcription of the first two pages of the legal document regarding Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8g. Translation of the first two pages of the legal document regarding Bernhard Lustig

 

Interestingly, the legal document Bernhard submitted to the court also requested that he be allowed to submit a corrected declaration of value for assets he’d mistakenly overvalued; this resulted in overpayment of the “Jewish expiation tax,” for which he sought reimbursement. It seems unlikely the courts ever acted upon this request.

From 1945 to the present, most people have expressed incredulity that the Nazis permitted an identifiable Jewish institution to continue to exist in Berlin, a city Goebbels had declared in 1943 “cleansed of Jews.” Mr. Silver offers possible explanations: 1) the Nazis saw the hospital as playing a useful role in the large-scale deportations during a time when all other Jewish organizations and institutions had been eliminated (2003, p. 62); 2) earlier in the war, before the large-scale deportation of most Jews, it is possible the Nazis allowed the hospital to survive to provide for the treatment of Jews who could spread epidemics to the general Aryan population (2003, p. 235-6); 3) for bureaucratic convenience, that’s to say, as a place in which the Gestapo could establish a kind of ghetto (2003, p. 237); and 4) for reasons of ambition, Adolf Eichmann may have stage-managed the transfer of the land and buildings the hospital occupied to a small powerless agency, the Academy of Youth Medicine, which he could easily control and thereby preserve the hospital and the site he coveted. (2003, p. 238)

Let me end this lengthy post by briefly discussing what is known about Walter Lustig’s fate. Following the war, the hospital fell into the Soviet-administered zone of Berlin. By then, Lustig had been appointed by the occupation-controlled local government as the director of health services for the Wedding district and had turned over the administration of the hospital to his aide Ehrich Zwilsky. Incredibly, Lustig had remained head of the Reichsvereinigung and had even petitioned the Soviet authorities to have it converted to the new Jewish Gemeinde, with himself as the head. His ambition clearly clouded his judgement; a more prudent course might have compelled him to flee, given the overall negative verdict by many who worked with him and thought he was a turncoat and Gestapo collaborator. Regardless, in June 1945, according to Ruth Bileski, a young Jewish woman sent in 1943 as a forced laborer to work in Lustig’s office, he was taken away accompanied by two uniformed Soviet officers, never to be seen again. Some claim he may have stage-managed his own disappearance to avoid being tried, although the likelier outcome is that he was killed by the Soviets.

REFERENCES

Siegel-Itzkovich, Judy. “A hospital with history.” Jerusalem Post, June 23, 2007, https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=Siegel-Itzkovich%2c+Judy.+%e2%80%9cA+hospital+with+history&d=4898311699633967&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=KvOBC3e8wZezfu1SQux0Q8WOOLP6t1uU

Silver, Daniel B. Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

 

POST 109 (PART 2): JOHANNA & RENATE BRUCK’S WARTIME TAGEBUCH (“DIARY”), YEARS 1942-1944

 

Note: In the second part of Post 109, I discuss the broader historic context in which Johanna and Renate Bruck, wife and daughter of my esteemed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), recorded the daily happenings in their lives between January 1942 and December 1944. Regrettably, their “Tagebuch” does not encompass the final few months of the war in Berlin through the surrender of the city on May 2, 1945. Thus, the circumstances of any hardships Johanna and Renate may have suffered in this period at the hands of the Russians and the Allies are unknown to us. Like in years 1940 and 1941, Johanna and Renate’s lives are replete with social engagements (getting together with friends; attending movies, plays, and operas; dining out; shopping; clothes fittings; etc.), distractions (tap, tennis, violin lessons), Renate’s amorous liaisons, and, most remarkably, multiple trips. With a few notable exceptions, the war passes almost unnoticed. I do not dwell on Johanna and Renate’s personal lives except where it adds nuance and texture to their accounts or provides some temporal context. From a story-telling perspective, I explore developments in the war and other happenings that while not explicitly discussed in the diary must have weighed on Johanna and Renate’s minds.

 

Related Posts:

POST 83: CASE STUDY USING THE UNITED KINGDOM’S “GENERAL REGISTER OFFICE” DATABASE TO FIND ANCESTORS

POST 108: RENATE BRUCK & MATTHIAS MEHNE’S “LONG-DISTANCE MARRIAGE”

POST 109 (PART 1): JOHANNA & RENATE BRUCK’S WARTIME TAGEBUCH (“DIARY”)—YEARS 1940-1941

 

As discussed in Post 109(1), in November and December 1941 Johanna Bruck transacted the exchange of her apartment in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland] at Oranienstrasse 4, with one in Berlin occupied by a couple named the Günthers, located at Xantener Straße 24, in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Johanna physically relocated to Berlin in February 1942, followed several weeks later by Renate. Johanna used the intervening period to have the apartment completely refurbished and upgraded.

By September 1941 Johanna understood that Renate’s application for her to be treated “as an equal to German-blooded people” had been or would be rejected. Given how prominent Dr. Walter Bruck (Figures 1-2) had been in Breslau during his lifetime and the certainty the Nazis knew he was “racially” Jewish and that his daughter was a mischling of the first degree may have been the impetus for Johanna to move her daughter to Berlin; after all, by 1938, Renate Bruck had already been expelled from the “Oberlyzeum von Zawadzky,” the Upper Lyceum in the Zawadskie district of Breslau, the private school for daughters from upper class families. Johanna must have felt the anonymity of a larger city afforded her daughter better protection.

 

Figure 1. Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch at the helm of her Adler automobile with her daughter Renate and husband, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck, in a pre-war photo reflective of their upper-class lifestyle

 

Figure 2. Dr. Walter Bruck with his wife and daughter

 

My cousin Thomas Koch discovered an interesting thing when he examined the Berlin Address Books following Johanna and Renate’s move to Berlin. Johanna is not listed in the 1942 directory, though this may simply have been a function that her move occurred after the directory went to press. However, more mystifying is that she is not listed in the 1943 Berlin Address Book. There are several possible explanations: (1) sloppiness on the part of the publisher in updating the 1943 Address Book; (2) Johanna and Renate lived at Xantener Straße 24 but under the name of another person because of Renate’s racial status as a mischling. This possibility seems unlikely because it would have made obtaining ration cards very difficult and would have been contradictory to the openly, social lifestyle Johanna and Renate led. (3) Johanna unintentionally forgot to register properly; or (4) Johanna and Renate temporarily lived outside Berlin, which was in fact the case for a period in 1943-1944, which I will discuss below.

On May 4, 1942, Johanna makes one of the few entries suggesting the war may have started to impact the everyday lives of ordinary Germans, when she remarks, “Food very scarce!!!” While the scarcity of food is rarely mentioned again, the arrival of “care” packages from friends and relatives outside of Berlin is carefully noted throughout the diary suggesting Johanna and Renate depended on these.

In Post 109(1), I mentioned to readers that upon Renate’s arrival in Berlin, she attended the “Kunstgewerbeschule,” the School of Arts and Crafts. However, neither Johanna nor Renate ever takes her compulsory schooling seriously; numerous instances of Renate missing school are noted. According to Renate’s lifelong friend, Ina Schaesberg, Renate acquired a special skill in arts and crafts that enabled her to make “very pretty and practical things from felt that sold well and brought in money.”

Renate departed Breslau accompanied by her mother on March 19, 1942, though Renate makes a point of noting that two days prior she had visited Matthias Mehne, her future first husband, at his luthier shop to say her goodbyes. (Figure 3) There was already a clear fondness between the two of them. It seems likely Renate and Matthias met at his shop while she was taking violin lessons there. According to Bettina Mehne, Matthias’s daughter by his second marriage, lessons were given not by Matthias himself but by his good friend, a man named “Kulenkampf.”

 

Figure 3. Renate Bruck’s first husband, Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne, at his luthier shop in Berlin in a post-war photo

 

Regardless, immediately after Matthias’s arrival in Berlin in February 1943, he called Renate and they become inseparable until he was forced to enlist in the Wehrmacht towards the latter part of April 1943. Readers may recall from Post 108 that Matthias was found to have helped a Jewish detainee and friend, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, escape a Sammellager in Breslau, a collection camp for Jewish deportees, with his rucksack in hand. As punishment, the judge, a friend, forced him to join the army rather than let the Gestapo kill him as they had wanted to, figuring he would be killed anyway. Clearly, Matthias’s departure from Breslau, did not prevent the Wehrmacht from finding him there, so his relocation to Berlin was more likely related to his blossoming relationship with Renate than an attempt to avoid military conscription.

By around the 22nd of April 1943, Matthias was forced to present himself in Paris for induction into the German Army, but not without first talking to Johanna about his future with Renate according to an entry before his departure. It took me a while to work out that Renate and her mother referred to Matthias as “boy” throughout much of the diary, possibly because of his youthful demeanor or for some other unknown reason. He was clearly Renate’s primary love interest (Figure 4), though a man named “Gerhard” (surname unknown) was also vying for her affection at the time, a man her twin daughters claim was a love interest for years after the war following her marriage and divorce from Matthias.

 

Figure 4. Renate Bruck and her first husband Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne in Berlin in 1947-48 following his release form British captivity

 

Before backtracking and telling readers about some historic events of WWII I would have expected to be discussed in the Tagebuch, let me briefly tell followers what happened to Matthias following his enlistment. Renate received news of Matthias’s capture on October 12, 1943. He was evidently assigned to the Italian theater-of-war. The Allies landed in Sicily in around July 1943, and by September 1943 had invaded the Italian mainland. Matthias was captured by the Americans in Italy, but quickly turned over to the British and interned as a prisoner of war near Nottingham, England. Renate received her first letter from him dated the 27th of February 1944 about a month later, on the 26th of March 1944. I want to emphatically emphasize that Matthias was not a Nazi but was forced as punishment to enlist in the Wehrmacht because of the courage he had shown trying to help a Jew escape an internment camp in Breslau.

On her 17th birthday on the 16th of June 1943, Renate received a diamond ring. While there is no reason to think this was connected to Matthias, who was by then in the German Army, the day after receiving his first letter in March 1944 following his British internment, Renate celebrated what Johanna referred to as Renate’s “engagement day.” Might Matthias have proposed in his letter? Possibly.

At the beginning of February 1943, the Axis forces including Germany’s 6th Army and its foreign allies surrendered in Stalingrad following a brutal battle that had lasted five months, one week, and three days. There is nary any mention of this development during the war in Johanna’s diary. Nor is there any mention of the “Rosenstrasse Protest” that took place in Berlin during February and March 1943, which fundamentally affected Renate and other mischlinge. This demonstration was initiated and sustained by the non-Jewish wives and relatives of Jewish men and mischlinge who had been arrested and targeted for deportation, based on the racial policy of Nazi Germany. What started out with dozens, then hundreds of women protesting, eventually turned into thousands of women demonstrating in icy winter weather over seven days, until 1,700 Berlin Jews herded together into the Jewish community house on Rosenstrasse near Alexanderplatz were freed. The Rosenstrasse protest is considered a significant event in German history as it was the only mass public demonstration by Germans in the Third Reich against the deportation of Jews. One can only imagine how much horror and misery might have been avoided had such protestations by Germans occurred much earlier. To my cousin Thomas Koch this is very personal since his grandmother and future mother were among the Rosenstrasse protestors, and his Jewish grandfather among those freed.

Let me turn now to an entry made by Renate on the 11th of May 1943, in which she noted that she would not be accepted in the Reich Labor Service, the Reichsarbeitsdienst or RAD. The Reich Labor Service was a major organization established in Nazi Germany to help mitigate the effects of unemployment on the German economy, militarize the workforce, and indoctrinate it with Nazi ideology. It was the official state labor service, divided into separate sections for men and women. So called “half-breeds,” mischlinge, were not excluded from labor service. The mother of my cousin Thomas, like Renate also a mischling, was in the Reichsarbeitsdienst in 1940. Thus, it is a source of irritation to Thomas that Renate was somehow able to avoid the labor service. Were the conditions “tightened” for Renate through contacts Johanna had that “prevented” her from being accepted? Or was Renate’s non-acceptance intended to protect her from something or exclude her from something contrary to the rules? We may never know the answers to these questions.

Years ago, when I was still working with Thomas Koch trying to discover where Johanna and Renate Bruck had gone after they left Breslau, which we now know to have been in February-March 1942, Thomas shared with me an application that had been submitted by a woman named Ms. Edith Czeczatka to the Tracing Service of the German Red Cross in 1948. Ms. Czeczatka requested information on the whereabouts of Johanna and Renate and gave as their residential address in the town of Erfurt, Germany, Dammweg 9. (Figures 5a-b) I mentioned this in Post 83, even including a picture of the residential building where they lived. (Figure 6) Johanna and Renate’s association with Erfurt was a mystery until the discovery of their Tagebuch.

 

 

Figure 5a. 2019 letter to my cousin Dr. Thomas Koch from the “Deutsches Rotes Kreuz Generalsekretariat Suchdienst,” the German Red Cross’s Tracing Service, responding to his request for information about Renate Bruck; this letter cites a 1948 request for information on Johanna and Renate from a former neighbor when they lived at Dammweg 9

 

 

Figure 5b. Translation of 2019 letter from the German Red Cross’s Tracing Service to my cousin Dr. Thomas Koch

 

Figure 6. The apartment building at Dammweg 9 in Erfurt, Germany where Johanna and Renate Bruck lived after Renate was employed by the MAKO Maschinen Co. GMBH as a draftswoman

 

 

An entry on the 22nd of May 1943 explains why Renate accompanied by Johanna temporarily moved to Erfurt that year. That day, Renate was told to come for an interview at the employment office of “MAKO Maschinen Co. GMBH”; she’d apparently applied for and been hired as a technical draftswoman beginning on June 1st. More on this company below. The company had offices in both Berlin and Erfurt, but Renate was required to report to Erfurt beginning on the 17th of June 1943 for training. Almost immediately, the girls that had been hired were given two months of paid vacation until the drawing rooms were readied. It is clear from the diary that Renate was permanently assigned to work in Erfurt.

Towards the beginning of September 1943, prior to moving to Erfurt, Johanna and Renate went to visit family and friends in Breslau, then spent a few days vacationing in Jannowitz, Silesia [today: Janowice Wielkie, Poland], before returning to Breslau, then leaving for Erfurt on September 12, 1943. For the period of her employment, Renate and her mother lived in Erfurt on weekdays, then returned to Berlin on weekends.

It appears that for at least a year until September 24, 1944, Johanna and Renate lived with a family called the “Hallers.” Then, on September 25, 1944, they moved within Erfurt into the house at Dammweg 9, previously mentioned, where the “Maulhardt” family also lived. Presumably, this was a boarding house the family owned.

Let me digress now and briefly discuss the MAKO Maschinen Co. GMBH that Renate worked for. MAKO was a company network owned by Max Kotzan, and the name was a combination of letters from his first and last name. The 1943 Berlin Address Book identified the various components of the business which included chemical-technical and metallurgical development; machine factories; and apparatus engineering and construction. Curious to get a better handle on what the company actually produced, I came upon an obscure reference which I found intriguing because it shed light on Germany’s efforts to develop solid fuel rockets, which might well have changed the trajectory of the war. Quoting briefly from a publication entitled “The V2 and the Russian and American Rocket Program” by Claus Reuter:

“More and more information is now surfacing telling of the launch of a ballistic missile powered by solid propellant near Arnstadt just before the war ended.  [EDITOR’S NOTE: Arnstadt is a town in Thuringia, Germany, about 20 kilometers south of Erfurt. During the Second World War, it was the site of a prisoner-of-war camp, mainly for Poles and Russians.]. Many believe it was this missile which was to carry a nuclear payload. The missile was developed in the top-secret think-tank installation at the Skoda factory under the control of the SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler. . . .

. . . Most historians and experts say that because of the shortage of solid propellants the missile was never produced and that no nuclear program existed.

More and more eyewitness accounts surface telling us a different story, accounts which say the missile was launched successfully. Also, a photo surfaced showing a large missile being built at the MAKO factory in Rudesleben, Thuringia. It shows the Sonderrakete A-4 (Special Rocket A-4) for solid fuel. The launch took place nearby at one of the top-secret factories in Thuringia the Polte 2 plant. The plant was controlled by SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler.

The MAKO plant specialized in the construction of pressure tanks and also produced equipment for the Luftwaffe, like drop tank, for the rocket program oxygen tanks for the V-1 and also mobile liquid oxygen transport tanks for the V-2 rocket batteries. The MAKO was owned by Maz Kotzan. Kotzan as a WWI flyer had close connections to Hermann Goering and Ernst Udet, both WWI pilots. The MAKO received the contracts from the RLM [EDITOR’S NOTE: Nazi Germany’s Ministry of Aviation, “Reichsluftfahrtministerium,” abbreviated RLM]. Behind the Polte 2 plant Kotzan had erected two aircraft hangers and a landing strip.

Here personalities like SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler or Wernher von Braun arrived to visit some of the installations. In the MAKO and Polte 2 plants some of the top-secret developments were tested. It was here that the Americans found the top-secret radar-absorbing aircraft paint. The paint was immediately shipped to the U.S.”

I am obviously no rocket scientist, pardon the pun, so suffice it to say the advantage of a solid motor is that it can provide huge amounts of thrust, and is therefore used as a booster to make satellite launching rockets gain high initial velocity before using higher-efficient liquid motors to gain horizontal velocity above the densest part of the atmosphere. There seems little doubt that had the Nazis been able to master this technology and place fissile material atop a missile powered by solid fuel, at a minimum, the war would have dragged on and more misery and death occurred.

I will readily acknowledge to readers that I have veered quite a distance from Johanna and Renate’s diary, but this was primarily in the interest of drawing attention to the company for which Renate worked, which was obviously deeply involved in Germany’s arms development. There is virtually no mention in their diary of Johanna and Renate’s time in Erfurt, except for their continuing active social lives. However, it is safe to assume that part of their reticence to talk about Erfurt could be connected to statements of secrecy they were sworn to. Clearly, as a mischling Renate wanted to draw as little attention to herself as possible, and it’s somewhat surprising the company even hired her given her status.

Evidently, by virtue of Renate’s amorous relationship with Matthias Mehne, her future first husband, she and Johanna had gotten to know Matthias’s parents, referred to as “Ma and Pa” in the diary and his sister “Lu,” short for Luzie. Matthias’s parents were Albert Eugen Mehne (b. 1883, Dresden) and Hedwig Gertrud Marie Göbel. Johanna and Renate regularly visited, received packages, and stayed in touch with them during Matthias’s wartime absence. While a reference I found states Albert Eugen Mehne moved to Gelsenkirchen, Germany around 1922 (Figure 7), which is about 500 miles due west of Breslau, Johanna and Renate always visited them in Breslau during the war, suggesting Matthias’s parents had returned there at some point.

 

Figure 7. Obscure reference from “Amati Auctions” mentioning that Renate’s future father-in-law, Eugen Mehne, worked in Gelsenkirchen, Germany after 1922

 

Surprisingly, Johanna and Renate traveled quite extensively during the years 1942 through 1944. While there were periodic disruptions and delays on account of the war, amazingly the trains continued to run on a predictable schedule though often with significant delays. Among the places they stayed besides Berlin, Breslau, and Erfurt were the widely scattered towns of Friedrichroda (small town and health resort in Thuringia), Babelsberg, Potsdam, Jannowitz, Neuendorf and Kantreck in Pomerania bordering the Baltic Sea, and Hamburg. They clearly knew people in many of these places, but others were seemingly vacation destinations.

Not surprisingly, the war had an impact on the lives of Johanna and Renate, although this fact is rarely manifested in the diary. However, on the night of February 16, 1944, the Allies launched a major bomb attack against Berlin, and the following day Johanna was notified by teletype that “our apartment had suffered greatly.” Then, on February 18th, Johanna remarks “Our apartment—a field of rubble, quite terrible.” It does not become clear until an entry in the early part of May 1944 that Johanna and Renate’s apartment was still habitable.

It goes without saying there are dozens and dozens more entries in Johanna and Renate’s Tagebuch reflecting on the weather, taking umbrage in air raid shelters, Johanna being hospitalized, and much more. Readers should realize I’ve been very selective in the entries I’ve chosen to highlight to make this post engaging and more reflective of the wartime events that had to have impacted Johanna and Renate’s lives. My intent is merely to give followers a glimpse into the lives that my ancestors Johanna and Renate Bruck lived during WWII (Figure 8), and how surprisingly “normal” their existence seems to have been given the enormity of death and destruction that surrounded them.

 

Figure 8. Post-WWII photo of Renate and Johanna Bruck in England

 

REFERENCE

Reuter, Claus (2000). The V2, and the Russian and American Rocket Program. (2nd ed.). Repentigny, Quebec (Canada): S.R. Research & Publishing.

 

 

POST 109 (PART 1): JOHANNA & RENATE BRUCK’S WARTIME TAGEBUCH (“DIARY”)—YEARS 1940-1941

 

Note: This is the first of a two-part story about the wartime “journal” or “diary” written by Johanna and Renate Bruck, the widow and daughter of my esteemed ancestor from Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland], Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), a second cousin twice removed. The German word “Tagebuch” strictly speaking translates as a diary or journal but in effect is more of a record or log of the extensive daily activities Johanna and Renate were engaged in between January 1940 and December 1944. What could have been an extremely absorbing account of the daily lives of an Aryan woman and her “mischling” daughter during WWII, within the context of global events and the impact of National Socialism on Jews, half-Jews, Germans, and others in Europe, instead turns into a mundane and drab account of their rather “ordinary” existences. The Tagebuch is often more remarkable for what it omits than what it says about the ongoing events of the tragic period in which it was written. It is difficult to make sense of many of the entries, which would in any case be of little or no interest to readers. For this reason I explain some of the war-related references and discuss a few specific people I’ve been able to identify.

 

Related Posts:

POST 54: “I DECIDE WHO IS A JEW”

POST 99: THE ASTONISHING DISCOVERY OF SOME OF DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK’S PERSONAL EFFECTS

POST 100: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK, DENTIST TO GERMANY’S LAST IMPERIAL FAMILY

POST 101: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK: HIS DAUGHTER RENATE’S FIRST HUSBAND, A “SILENT HERO”

POST 102: DR. WALTER BRUCK, HIS SECOND WIFE JOHANNA GRÄBSCH  & HER FAMILY

POST 103: RENATE BRUCK: A TALE OF TWO GODMOTHERS

 

Regular followers of my Blog are aware of the multiple posts I have recently written about Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) and his extended family. This sequence of posts was prompted by a contact earlier this year from a Berlin doctor, Dr. Tilo Wahl, who in around 2013 purchased at auction the commemorative medals, personal effects, private papers, and photos that once belonged to Dr. Bruck. The seller of these items was Nicholas Newman, Dr. Bruck’s grandson, who sadly committed suicide in 2015 in London.

As Ms. Madeleine Isenberg, my friend affiliated with the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles, has been wont to tell me, there is no such thing as coincidence but rather as her uncle impressed upon her, its “beshert,” fate or predestination. Not only was it providential Dr. Wahl would stumble upon my Blog and contact me, but that he would also share copies of Dr. Bruck’s personal papers and photos. This was magnified when Nicholas Newman’s twin sisters from Sydney, Australia, similarly chanced upon my Blog while researching their deceased brother and contacted me.

 

 

Figure 1. Francesca and Michele Newman, my fourth cousins

 

Nicholas’s twin siblings, Francesca and Michele Newman (Figure 1), are the offspring of Renate Bruck’s third marriage. Since our initial encounter, we have developed a warm relationship and have had several Zoom calls. The twins have been able to fill in a few holes in my understanding of their mother and grandmother’s lives following their grandfather’s death in 1937, but most astoundingly, while examining their family memorabilia, they happened upon a so-called “Tagebuch,” written between January 1940 and December 1944 by their grandmother and mother, Johanna and Renate Bruck. (Figure 2) Technically a diary or journal, it can more accurately be characterized as a record or log of daily events the writers were engaged in.

 

Figure 2. The frontispiece of Johanna and Renate Bruck’s 5-year wartime “Tagebuch,” diary, covering the period from January 1940 through December 1944

 

Knowing the numerous questions I had about Dr. Bruck’s wife and daughter following his death, they offered to send me the original Tagebuch. While hesitant to risk losing this valuable document, I accepted their gracious offer and fortunately it arrived safely. The twins have since generously donated their mother and grandmother’s diary to the Museum of Cemetery Art (Old Jewish Cemetery), a Branch of the City Museum of Wroclaw, where their great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather are interred. Since Dr. Walter Bruck is well-known to staff of the museum, they were thrilled beyond measure to receive this donation.

Briefly, let me explain to readers how I was able to learn the contents of the Tagebuch. For much longer than I have been in contact with Francesca and Michele Newman, I have known one of their cousins from the Berlin neighborhood of Köpenick, Dr. Frank Thomas Koch (Figure 3); as another instance of serendipity, Dr. Tilo Wahl is a practicing dentist in this same district of Berlin. In any case, whereas Thomas and I are fourth cousins, Thomas and the twins are third cousins, so a generation more closely related. Over the years, Thomas and I have collaborated in tracking Johanna and Renate Bruck to England following their emigration from Germany, without specifically uncovering the intermediate steps that led to them arriving there.

 

 

Figure 3. My fourth cousin, Frank Thomas Koch, in Berlin in 2015, who is a third cousin to Francesca and Michele Newman; Thomas transcribed & translated Johanna & Renate’s “Tagebuch”

 

Given Thomas’ interest in this branch of our family, upon learning of the existence of the Tagebuch, he offered to transcribe it. I sent Thomas a high-quality PDF of the journal, which he systematically transcribed over a roughly two-month period. Then, using the best of the known online translators, DeepL, he translated the log. But Thomas went beyond a cursory perusal of the “journal.” He provided some context for events taking place in Nazi Germany that ought to have been touched on by Johanna Bruck but were not. As one additional step, I put Thomas in touch with Renate Bruck’s lifelong still-living 95-year-old friend, Ina Schaesberg (Figure 4), who was able to recall specific people named in the Tagebuch and identify their role in Johanna and Renate’s lives. Since Ina speaks little English, Thomas was more effectively able to extract information about these people from her than I could. Finally, yet another source of information was Bettina Mehne (Figure 5), daughter of Renate Bruck’s first husband, Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne, by Matthias’ second wife; Bettina was able to recognize the diminutive names of some of her ancestors.

 

Figure 4. Renate Bruck’s lifelong best friend, Ina Gräfin von Schaesberg née Weinert (b. 19 March 1926, Breslau) as she looks today (photo courtesy of Ina Schaesberg)
Figure 5. Matthias Mehne’s daughter by his second marriage, Bettina Mehne

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Briefly, let me give readers an impression of the Tagebuch. It is a five-year diary, of a type that still exists today, with some peculiarities. It covers the span from January 1, 1940, through December 24, 1944, although not chronologically. That’s to say, January 31, 1940, is not followed by February 1, 1940, but rather by January 1, 1941, then January 1, 1942, etc. While this may make sense, it prevents the reader from following the flow of events. Thus, Thomas, in transcribing and translating the diary, did so chronologically.

The diary has two authors, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s widow, Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch, and his daughter, Renate Bruck. (Figure 6) Most of the entries are recorded by Johanna, whose writing is Old German Script in vogue around the 1900’s (known as “die Kurrentschrift” or “Kurrent” for short in German); Renate’s handwriting is more typical of today’s German cursive.

 

Figure 6. Authors of the “Tagebuch,” Johanna & Renate Bruck, in England following WWII (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

The Tagebuch is written in a telegraphic style, meaning in a clipped way of writing that abbreviates words and packs as much information into the fewest number of words or characters. At times, this means that certain terms or turns of phrases are not well understood or are indecipherable.

Rarely is the Tagebuch introspective or self-analyzing. Comparatively intimate, confidential, or personal messages are rarely recorded. The diary does not give us a sense of the broader events going on in the war during the Nazi era. For Johanna and Renate life seems to go on as normal, notwithstanding the fact that as a half-Jew Renate was considered a mischling of the first degree.

The war, the aftermath of its destruction, hunger, and repression are rarely mentioned. If Renate as a mischling or her mother were ever under observation by the Nazis and their informants is never made clear. However, as the author James F. Tent asserts in his seminal book about German mischlinge, “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans,” the intensity of persecution, discrimination, and harassment of mischlinge in the Third Reich varied greatly. Tent reports that in certain areas and regions, there was little distinction between “Jews” and “Mischlinge” in terms of persecution, while in other parts of the Reich virtually nothing happened to them, and they were not treated as outsiders.

There were at least two areas where Renate’s status as a mischling affected her life. Until 1938, Renate attended the “Oberlyzeum von Zawadzky,” the Upper Lyceum in the Zawadskie district of Breslau, which was a private school for daughters from upper class families. After 1938, all “non-Aryan” girls were forced to leave. Following her expulsion from the Lyceum, until Renate relocated with her mother to Berlin in February-March of 1942, she attended the “Kloster-Schule der Ursulinen,” the Ursuline Convent School. Then, beginning in 1942 upon her arrival in Berlin, she attended the “Kunstgewerbeschule,” the School of Arts and Crafts.

The second area where Renate’s life was affected by her status as a mischling of the first degree was in her desire to be a fully recognized member of the “deutschen Volksgemeinschaft,” wanting “to belong” and not be an outsider; the Volksgemeinschaft is a German expression meaning “people’s community” that originally became popular during WWI as Germans rallied in support of the war. It appealed to the idea of breaking down elitism, and uniting people across class divides to achieve a national purpose. During the Nazi era, the wanting “to belong” among children and young people was expressed, among other ways, in their membership in the Hitlerjugend (HJ), Hitler Youth, or the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), League of German Girls or Band of German Maidens. However, anyone who was “non-Aryan” could not become a member of the Hitler Youth or BDM.

Ina Schaesberg, Renate’s lifelong friend, relates an uncomfortable situation Renate put her in on account of her desire to belong to the BDM. So the story goes that Renate forced Ina to get her a BDM uniform so they could play together as “German Maidens” privately at home wearing their outfits. Jumping ahead to January 1942 which will be discussed in Part 2 of this post, Renate was denounced for this act by an informer that required Johanna to report to the police, although the incident appears to have had no serious consequences.

Johanna resolved to address the matter of Renate’s exclusion from the BDM. She makes the following entry on January 29, 1941. “I received first a call from Norbert Pohl about BDM application to Hess.” Let me attempt to put this in context for readers and tell readers about the players, acknowledging that I do not have a copy of Renate’s BDM application so can only surmise what it may have included.

Johanna Bruck seemingly appealed the issue of Renate’s application to join the BDM to a high, if not the highest, authority, namely to Hitler’s deputy in the Nazi Party, Rudolf Hess (1874-1987). The quote above makes this evident. Hess had been the highest-ranking member after Hitler of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and Reich Minister without portfolio since 1933 when the Nazis seized power.

Johanna could have justified her request that Renate be accepted into the BDM in one of two ways. Purely hypothetically, Johanna could have argued that Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck was not the biological father of Renate and that she was the daughter of an affair Johanna had had with an “Aryan.” It’s conceivable Johanna was aware of a similar argument that had been made in the case of the German field marshal general Erhard Milch (Figure 7) by his mother, distant relatives of both Renate and me.

 

 

Figure 7. Field Marshall Erhard Milch (far left) with Hitler and Hermann Göring (white uniform) (photograph by Heinrich Hoffmann, available at www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl, copyrighted by the State Treasury of Poland)

 

To remind readers, I wrote about Erhard Milch (1892-1972) in a post entitled “I Decide Who is a Jew” (Post 54), a saying widely attributed to Hermann Wilhelm Göring, one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party between 1933 to 1945. Erhard Milch was a German field marshal general (Generalfeldmarschall) who oversaw the development of the German air force (Luftwaffe) as part of the re-armament of Nazi Germany following WWI. He was State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Aviation and Inspector General of the Air Force. During most of WWII, he oversaw all aircraft production and supply. In other words, Milch was important to the Nazis. Based on his mother’s disclosure that Erhard was not the son of her Jewish husband but supposedly born of an incestuous relationship with her uncle, an “Aryan,” he was declared a so-called “Honorary Aryan” (i.e., a person with Jewish roots who was appointed an honorary Aryan).

Thus, one way Johanna hypothetically could have argued that Renate be accepted into the BDM was by professing she was not the child of a Jew. Alternatively, Johanna could have argued that while Renate was regrettably a “mischling of the first degree,” her enthusiasm for the Nazis, their movement, and their ideals more than made up for this “flaw.” Which option Johanna chose is unknown to us. Probably her request was not supported by Hess or was delayed and put on the backburner. Regardless, several months after Johanna’s request, Hess flew to England in May 1941, ostensibly to make peace with the Allies. He was interned in England, and following Germany’s defeat, at Nuremberg he was sentenced to many years in prison as a Nazi and war criminal.

Who then was the Norbert Pohl who called Johanna Bruck on January 29, 1941? According to my cousin Thomas Koch, Norbert Pohl (1910-1968) was probably already a big shot in the SS (Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squads) at the time of Johanna’s BDM request. He was the chief judge of the SS at the Police Court VI in Krakow from July 1940 until March 1942. Johanna makes a remarkable entry on February 12, 1941, recording that she received a call from Frau Pohl, presumably the wife of the SS grandee Norbert Pohl, urging haste with the written request. On February 20th, Johanna delivered the application to the Obergau, a division of the National Socialist state, specifically to the “Obergau 4, Obergaubehörde Niederschlesien der Nazipartei NSDAP,” which was headquartered in Breslau. Pohl may subsequently have forwarded Johanna’s letter and documentation to Rudolf Hess and kept her informed about developments.

Because of the clipped style in which the Tagebuch is written, we are left to wonder about some of the brief entries recorded by Johanna that may have been related to the application submission. For example, on February 28, 1941, so eight days after submitting the petition to the NSDAP, Johanna writes that she sent a letter to Mackensen. This is undoubtedly Anton Ludwig Friedrich August Mackensen (1949-1945), Generalfeldmarschall, Field Marshall General, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s military superior during WWI (Figure 8) and someone who stood up for him in 1933 after he was dismissed from his academic position. (Figure 9) Could the letter have had anything to do with Renate’s application to the NSDAP and a request for his support? It seems likely, but we may never know.

 

Figure 8. During WWI, Dr. Walter Bruck in the front seat with his first wife, Margarethe Bruck née Skutsch (1872-1942), who was Jewish, accompanied by his military superior, Field Marshall General Anton Ludwig Friedrich August Mackensen (1949-1945), and his wife (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

Figure 9. Transcription & translation of section from book entitled “Zwischen Kaiser und Führer: Generalfeldmarschall August von Mackensen” by Theo Schwarzmüller detailing how and why Mackensen came to Dr. Walter Bruck’s defense following his dismissal from his teaching position in 1933 after the Nazis came to power

 

As it relates to the formal written request Johanna submitted for Renate to the Nazi authorities on February 20, 1941, Thomas figured out the German designation for this application was called “Gesuch über die Gleichstellung mit Deutschblütigen,” an “application for equality with German-blooded people.” The relevant literature indicates about 10,000 such applications were presented, but that only about 500 of them were ever approved. Of particular interest is that Hitler himself approved or denied these requests. Hitler’s allies were apparently more lenient in ratifying them.

What is clear from the journal and what we now know was an “application for equality with German-blooded people” submitted by Johanna is that she knew many people, including influential Nazis.

Unfortunately, the Tagebuch contains no mention as to what transpired after Renate’s application was submitted. However, based on an entry recorded on the 16th of September 1941, apparently Johanna suspects that her “request” for Renate to be treated “as an equal to German-blooded people” has been or will be rejected.

Let me turn now to log entries having to do with the Nazi regime and wartime events that may be of interest to readers.

On January 30, 1940, Johanna mentions the hustle and bustle going on that week on account of “Führerwoche,” Führer Week, in honor of the seventh anniversary of Hitler becoming Chancellor of the Reich on January 30, 1933.

On February  23, 1940, schools other than Renate’s were closed on account of a so-called “coal vacation,” days schools were closed during severe winters to save coal and heating oil to be used in support of the war effort.

On February 25, 1940, Johanna records that “Klaus,” one of Renate’s friends, had his National Socialist youth initiation ceremony as school graduation ceremonies and initiation rituals into the Hitler Youth and BDM were referred to at the time.

May 1st was a National Holiday, “Tag der Arbeit,” Labor Day, interestingly appropriating a tradition from the Labor movement.

On June 2nd, 1940, Johanna mentions listening to the radio, without specifically indicating that the broadcast presumably celebrated the Wehrmacht’s victory over France. Then, on June 25th, there was a school vacation because of “the acceptance of the peace terms imposed on the French.”

Interestingly, on November 23, 1940, the day of Hitler’s failed “Beer Hall Putsch” in 1923, in Munich, the Führer delivered a radio broadcast.

In several places, Johanna merely records “Führer speech,” so we are left to peruse the history books to identify what major speech Hitler delivered on these dates. The first instance is on February 24, 1941, which corresponds with a celebration at the Münchener Hofbräuhaus on the announcement of the NSDAP platform when Hitler declared an intensification of submarine warfare.

On April 9, 1941, Johanna remarks on the “great political events in the Balkans,” which coincided with the Wehrmacht’s campaign against then-Yugoslavia and Greece, resulting in Salonika’s capture on that date.

On May 4, 1941, Johanna again merely records, “Führer speech.” This coincides with an address Hitler made before the German Reichstag, in which he invoked the alleged desire for peace on the part of Nazi Germany, which had always been thwarted and now led once again to the defeat of then-Yugoslavia and Greece in the Balkans.

On June 22, 1941, Johanna records that Adolf Hitler declared war on the Soviet Union. No further embellishment is provided. Then, on October 3rd, there is another entry, “Führer speech.” This day it turns out marked the start of the Kriegswinter-Hilfswerks, War Winter Relief Fund, and Hitler’s declaration that the Soviet Union had already been defeated and would never rise again. Barely two weeks later, the German Wehrmacht, accustomed to victory, took its first major defeat during the Battle of Moscow.

Relatedly, jumping ahead to January 3, 1942, Johanna makes another clipped entry that requires explanation: “. . .sweater and jacket donated for the soldiers.” Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion plan, called for the capture of Moscow within four months of the Axis forces invasion of the Soviet Union on the 22nd of June 1941. Hitler and his generals were convinced they would defeat the Soviet Union before the onset of winter 1941. Therefore, the German soldiers were ill-equipped for the severe winter when the Red Army counter-attacked during the Battle of Moscow, and they were largely without winter clothes. The donations of clothing from the German population were intended to compensate for this lack of winter equipment; Johanna was among the donors.

Let me turn now to some entries in the Tagebuch that give us insight into aspects of Johanna and Renate’s personal lives and their circle of friends and acquaintances. While of lesser interest than the terse war-related notes, they are still noteworthy.

According to a note recorded on the 24th of March 1940, Johanna and Renate were members of the “Christengemeinschaft.” The “Christengemeinschaft, Movement for Religious Renewal” is a Christian church that is close to anthroposophy but is regarded as an independent cult community. It was founded in Switzerland in 1922 following the suggestions of Rudolf Steiner and had followers in Breslau. Today, there are 140 congregations in Germany though the church exists worldwide. From the point of view of the mainstream churches, it represents, among other things, a different understanding of baptism.

It was through the Christengemeinschaft that Johanna sought to have Renate accepted for confirmation classes. Judging from the somewhat vague notes in the Tagebuch, there were discussions and a dispute with Church Pastor Müller about this, but Johanna eventually prevailed seemingly with the help of other members of the congregation. In any case, Renate was eventually confirmed on the 17th of March 1941.

Relatedly, on June 19, 1941, Johanna makes a point of mentioning the ban of eurythmy in schools, and the great joy it elicited; whether this was personal joy or more widespread elation is unclear. Eurythmy is an expressive movement art originated by Rudolf Steiner in conjunction with Marie von Sivers in the early 20th century. Primarily a performance art, it was also used in education, especially in Waldorf schools, and – as part of anthroposophic medicine – for claimed therapeutic purposes. The ban of eurythmy was probably connected with the flight of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s Deputy, to England on May 10, 1941. With his departure, anthroposophy lost its most important promoter among the Nazi hierarchy. Ten days prior to the ban on eurythmy, the Christengemeinschaft to which Johanna and Renate belonged had been banned, and its priests and leading community members jailed. While Johanna makes mention of the eurythmy ban, she is silent on the ban of the church. What effect the ban had on Johanna and Renate is unknown, but, regardless, by this time Renate had already been confirmed.

A brief entry from July10, 1941, “letter to . . .Lettehaus” was explained to me by my cousin. “Letteverein” and “Lettehaus” were institutions founded in 1866 to “promote the gainful employment of women.” Johanna was faced with the problem that her daughter was basically barred from higher education and university studies in Nazi Germany for “racial” reasons. But even though higher education was not attainable for Renate, economic independence was a goal for Johanna, who had to remember she would not live forever and that her assets might not be transferable to Renate. Therefore, these institutions offered options. In clarifying this entry, Thomas explained that his mother, also a mischling of the first degree, availed herself of the Letteverein and Lettehaus.

As to Johanna and Renate’s financial situation, let me say a few words. As I have alluded to and discussed in earlier posts, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck was an eminent dentist. He was the personal dentist to the last German Kaiser’s family and other members of the nobility. Judging from the lavish social events he hosted and the lifestyle he led, it can be assumed he was well-to-do.

 

Figure 10. Aerial photograph of Dr. Bruck’s lavish home and location of his dental practice at Reichspräsidentenplatz 17, destroyed during WWII

 

According to Breslau address books of the time, during the late 1920’s and the early 1930’s Dr. Bruck and his family lived in a luxurious home at Reichspräsidentenplatz 17 (Figure 10), with the owner of record at the time being Walter Bruck. Following the death of Paul von Hindenburg, the German general and statesman who led the Imperial German Army during World War I and later became President of Germany from 1925 until his death in 1934, Reichspräsidentenplatz was renamed by the Nazis to Hindenburgplatz. The renaming of the square was reflected in Breslau address books only in 1935. By 1937, however, his wife Johanna Bruck was now shown as the owner of record even though Walter continued to live at Hindenburgplatz 17. The change in ownership from Walter to Johanna Bruck was a measure to avoid expropriation of the estate by the Nazis as Walter was considered “Jewish,” whereas his wife was deemed to be “Aryan.” We know from elsewhere that Walter converted from Judaism in about 1917, around the time his mother died, and that, unlike his accomplished father and grandfather, respectively Dr. Julius Bruck and Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck, he was not interred in Breslau’s Jewish Cemetery. Obviously, as far as the Nazis were concerned, Walter’s conversion from Judaism was of no consequence and he was still deemed Jewish. On multiple occasions, Johanna mentions that she and Renate visited her deceased husband’s grave, regrettably never mentioning which cemetery he was interred in. This is a mystery to be resolved.

Dr. Walter Bruck died in Breslau on the 31st of March 1937, whether by his own hand or not is unknown. Following Walter’s death, Johanna is presumed to have sold the house around that time because when in 1939, the “racial” census takes place (Figure 11), the widow Johanna Bruck and her daughter Renate Bruck are no longer living at Hindenburgplatz 17, but at Oranienstrasse 4. (Figure 12) The latter house does not belong to Johanna but to a retired banker by the name of “E. Bucher.” Johanna and Renate apparently lived there in a large stately apartment, from which they sublet rooms. Apart from the income this generated, Johanna undoubtedly received a significant sum of money from the sale of the house at Hindenburgplatz 17 as well as an inheritance from her husband. At various points in the Tagebuch, Johanna bemoans the expenditure of money on certain things, but rarely do we get the impression that she is lacking for money, nor does her active social life or the multiple activities she and Renate are enrolled in suggest otherwise.

 

Figure 11. The 1939 German Minority Census listing Johanna and Renate Bruck, by which time they lived at Oranienstrasse 4

 

Figure 12. Table inside Oranienstrasse 4 with photograph of Dr. Walter Bruck

 

There are scores upon scores of names mentioned in the journal. An unusually large number of them are referred to as “Tante,” aunt, or “Onkel,” uncle, with most presumed to be close friends rather than blood relatives. Several, however, “Tante Leni,” “Tante Irene” or “Tante I.,” and “Onkel Willy” are known to the writer and are unquestionably Johanna and Renate’s kin. In some instances mention is made of celebrating this or that person’s birthday on a particular day or week; given my familiarity with the dates of birth of family members, I was able to work out how some of the people were referred to. Thus “Tante I.” was Johanna’s sister-in-law, Irene Elisabeth Gräbsch née Klar who was married to Johanna’s brother, Paul Karl Hermann Gräbsch. Tante Irene was often accompanied by her son “Ebi,” a cousin and frequent playmate of Renate’s. (Figure 13) “Tante Leni” was Johanna’s sister, Helene Emma Clara Steinberg née Gräbsch. (Figure 14) “Onkel Willy” was Willy Gräbsch, a merchant from Breslau, probably unmarried or widowed, whose relationship to Johanna is unclear.

 

Figure 13. Renate Bruck on her 10th birthday, the 16th of June 1936, with her first cousin Ebi Gräbsch, with whom she spent much time playing
Figure 14. Johanna’s sister, Helene Emma Clara Steinberg née Gräbsch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personally intriguing is the mention made on March 30, 1940, that Renate went to visit “Tante Margarethe” to wish her a happy birthday. The quotation marks indicate that while she was not a relative, she was still referred to as an aunt. There is no doubt this is Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s first wife who was Jewish, Margarethe Bruck née Skutsch. (Figure 15) She was born on March 30, 1872, in Breslau [Wrocław, Poland], and murdered in the Theresienstadt Ghetto on the 22nd of September 1942. (Figure 16) It is surprising that Johanna and Renate were in touch with Walter’s first wife, although, as this was certainly the case, it’s astonishing that Johanna made no mention in the diary when Margarethe was deported. Perhaps Johanna had already distanced herself from this Jewish “aunt” by then?

 

 

Figure 15. Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s first wife who was Jewish, Margarethe Bruck née Skutsch (1872-1942), and who was murdered in Theresienstadt

 

 

Figure 16. Margarethe Bruck née Skutsch’s death certificate from “Holocaust.CZ” showing she was murdered on the 22nd of September 1942 in the Theresienstadt Ghetto

 

Among the names mentioned are a coterie I surmise are people who provided professional services to Johanna, such as housecleaners, cooks, seamstresses, teachers, clergy, etc. This includes “Fräulein Anna,” Miss Anna. According to Ina Schaesberg, she was the cook in the Bruck household for many years, during Dr. Bruck’s lifetime and after his death. She was considered “Aryan.” According to the 1935 “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor,” Jews were forbidden to employ “Aryan maids” under the age of 45. However, since Anna exceeded this age limit, she could remain employed in the house of Walter Bruck even after 1935. Following the death of Walter in 1937, she continued to work for Johanna and even followed her to Berlin (more on this in Part 2 of the post).

Johanna’s and Renate’s beloved long-haired dachshund, “Resi,” is often mentioned, though it took me some time to figure out that this was a dog and not a person. (Figure 17)

 

Figure 17. Renate Bruck with Resi, her long-haired dachshund

 

Because Renate was an exceptionally cute young girl who blossomed into a very attractive young woman, she had droves of admirers whom she frequently saw and skillfully manipulated. The fate of most are unknown, but in at least two instances Johanna tells us precisely the dates they were killed while serving in the Wehrmacht. The death of “Hans Roth,” often mentioned in the diary, is noted on October 26, 1941, though he was killed on the 21st of September 1941 on the Eastern Front as his death certificate confirms. (Figures 18a-b) Similarly, an even closer friend of Renate’s, “Christoph von Kospoth,” was killed-in-action on the 4th of April 1944 near Dresden, Germany. (Figures 19a-b)

 

Figure 18a. Cover page from ancestry.com of Hans Ferdinand Roth’s (1921-1941) death certificate, one of Renate Bruck’s childhood friends
Figure 18b. Hans Ferdinand Roth’ death certificate showing he was killed on the Eastern Front in September 1941

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 19a. Cover page from ancestry.com of Christoph von Kospoth’s (1923-1944) death certificate, one of Renate’s many teenage admirers
Figure 19b. Christoph von Kospoth’s (1923-1944) death certificate showing he was killed in Croatia in 1944

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other names and deaths are recorded by Johanna, but I’ve been unable to match them with historic documents which might have been able to tell me more about them.

Many names in the Tagebuch include only forenames or surnames, so it’s impossible to precisely identify these individuals. However, in several instances, with surnames and professions given I was able with certainty to discover the identities or people. While these rarely add much to the narrative of Johanna’s and Renate’s lives, I will discuss a few only because I was able to learn something about them.

A name that frequently appears in Johanna’s entries is called “Hella Goossens.” She appears to have been a friend. This represents the sole instance where I was able to find a picture of someone named in Johanna’s and Renate’s diary who was not a family member. A vivacious looking woman born on the 21st of May 1884 in Hagen, North Rhine-Westphalia, a Rio de Janeiro Immigration Card shows she immigrated to Brazil in 1950 (Figure 20); she is identified as a domestic worker. Seemingly, she was joining her son, Herbert Goossens, who had immigrated there in 1939. (Figure 21)

 

Figure 20. The Rio de Janeiro Immigration Card for Hella Goossens, one of Johanna Bruck’s friends from Breslau, showing she immigrated to Brazil in 1950

 

 

Figure 21. The Rio de Janeiro Immigration Card for Hella Goossen’s son, Herbert Eugen Goossens, showing he immigrated to Brazil in 1939

 

As I alluded to earlier when talking about Johanna and Renate’s financial situation, both were involved in numerous extracurricular activities, particularly Renate. For her part, Johanna was taking Italian lessons with a Frau Koesel at the home of a Frau Conberti. Mrs. Conberti is listed in Breslau Address Books between 1934 and 1941 and shows she was an interpreter and language teacher. (Figures 22a-b) One is left to wonder whether Johanna was merely taking Italian for self-improvement, or envisioned emigrating to Italy? In the case of Renate, she was taking piano lessons, violin classes, tap classes, confirmation classes, and more. She would meet her future first husband, Matthias Mehne, in late 1941 in Breslau at his luthier shop, and immediately be “smitten” by him, but there is no indication they got involved romantically until they met again in Berlin in 1942.

 

Figure 22a. Cover page from ancestry.com of 1941 Breslau Address Book listing Maria Conberti as an interpreter and language teacher
Figure 22b. 1941 Breslau Address Book listing Johanna’s Italian language teacher, Maria Conberti

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Readers may wonder, as I did, whether any of Johanna’s and Renate’s acquaintances and friends are directly or indirectly acknowledged as Jewish. In one instance the name “Grete Stomberg or Sternberg” is noted, who can be presumed to have been Jewish because her apartment was confiscated by the Nazis. Another named individual was “Ferdinand Abramczyk,” later identified through a Breslau Address Book as a Justizrat, a member of the Judicial Council, who’d had “Israel” added as his middle name by the Nazis to mark him as Jewish.

Johanna frequently mentions bouts of “biliary pain,” most frequently caused by obstruction of the common bile duct or the cystic duct by a gallstone. This would eventually lead to hospitalization.

There is one final topic I want to discuss before ending the rather lengthy first part of Post 109. As previously mentioned, it appears that by September of 1941, Johanna is aware that Renate’s application for her to be treated “as an equal to German-blooded people” has been or will be rejected. This may have been the impetus for Johanna to relocate to Berlin. However, rather than simply move there, Johanna sought to swap apartments with someone from Berlin. She hosted a couple, the Günthers, with whom she would eventually exchange apartments. In February-March 1942, Johanna and Renate would move to Xantener Straße 24, in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. More will be said on this in Part 2 of Post 109.

Among the more popular posts I have published in my Blog are veritable wartime diaries I have managed to get a hold of from various branches of my Jewish family. In all these instances, there is clearly an effort on the part of the author to write names in code or designate Jewish or “righteous” individuals by single letters or initials to conceal their identities. At no time do I detect a similar intent by Johanna or Renate.

Literally, with the hundreds of entries in Johanna’s and Renate’s Tagebuch, it is difficult to do justice to the diary. However, as I’ve indicated multiple times, the clipped style of writing associated with a telegraphic style makes it unlikely I would have been able to decipher the names of most of their acquaintances and friends nor the role they played in their lives. More importantly, it’s improbable this would have added much to the narrative since so many of the entries focused not on the political and current events of the time but rather on the social and amorous activities of the writers.

In closing I will quote from Ms. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska’s observations of Johanna and Renate’s diary. Renate is my friend and Branch Manager, Museum of Cemetery Art (Old Jewish Cemetery) which is a Branch of the City Museum of Wroclaw, the  institute where the Tagebuch was donated. Sadly, Renata’s thoughts mirror my own: “I am amazed that in the era of mass deportations of Breslau and Silesian Jews from 1941 to 1944, there is nothing in the diary on this subject. On November 21, 1941, over a thousand people were arrested, held for four days at the Odertorbahnhof train station, then deported to Kaunas, Lithuania, and shot on November 29th. Among them were many famous and influential inhabitants of Breslau, including Willy Cohn and his family, author of the famous diary/journal entitled “Kein Recht. Nirgends” (“No Law. Nowhere.”), published in German and Polish. In the context of the war, the everyday life of Johanna and Renate seems quite banal and normal. It’s hard for me to believe it, because as early as 1942, mischlinge were also deported to the occupied part of Poland and East.”

REFERENCES

Schwarzmüller, Theo. Zwischen Kaiser und Führer: Generalfeldmarschall August von Mackensen. Paderborn, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 1995.

Tent, James F. In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans. Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 2003.

 

POST 108: RENATE BRUCK & MATTHIAS MEHNE’S “LONG-DISTANCE MARRIAGE”

 

Note: This post is about Renate Bruck, my third cousin once removed, and her long-distance marriage to her first husband, Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne. In my years of doing ancestral research, I have only ever once come across such an arrangement in the case of good friends of my father. Given the uncommonness of such marriage covenants, I became curious about them. I learned as with many social and cultural “protocols” involving the Nazis, there were very specific provisions in law that governed not only long-distance marriages, but also posthumous marriages (i.e., “marriages of convenience”), and even post-mortem divorces.

 

Related Posts:

POST 99: THE ASTONISHING DISCOVERY OF SOME OF DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK’S PERSONAL EFFECTS

POST 101: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK: HIS DAUGHTER RENATE’S FIRST HUSBAND, A “SILENT HERO”

 

 

Figure 1. Renate Bruck’s lifelong best friend, Ina Gräfin von Schaesberg née Weinert (b. 19 March 1926, Breslau) as she looks today (photo courtesy of Ina Schaesberg)

 

The inspiration for this post came from my 95-year-old friend, Ms. Ina Gräfin von Schaesberg née Weinert (b. 19 March 1926, Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland]). (Figure 1) Ms. Schaesberg, whom I’ve mentioned to readers in previous posts, was best friends with my third cousin once removed, Renate Bruck (1926-2013), their entire lives. (Figure 2) Over the course of many email exchanges, Ina, with whom I’ve now become friends, mentioned in passing that she had attended Renate’s wedding to her first husband, Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne (1908-1991) (Figure 3), hereafter Matthias Mehne, in around 1943 in Wiesbaden, Germany. Ina emphasized that Matthias had not physically been present at his own wedding, so I became quite curious about this situation.

 

Figure 2. In a school play in around 1936 Renate Bruck in white dressed as a princess, and Ina Schaesberg garbed in black as her “prince” (photo courtesy of Ina Schaesberg)

 

 

Figure 3. Renate Bruck and her first husband, Matthias Mehne, in Berlin in around 1947 or 1948 (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

As I alluded to in the introduction to this post, I have only once previously come across such an arrangement involving two of my father’s very close and staunchly anti-Nazi friends, Peter and Lolo Lau. (Figure 4) In their instance, however, Peter’s brother, Rudi Lau, had been his stand-in when he got married to Lolo. While Peter would eventually be captured and held for several years as a prisoner-of-war in Virginia, at the time of his marriage he was still an active German soldier in the Wehrmacht stationed in then-Yugoslavia. Rudi Lau himself would never marry as he later died of injuries sustained during WWII.

 

Figure 4. My father’s lifelong friends Lolo & Peter Lau in Oberhausen, Germany in 2012 who were married in the Free State of Danzig in Peter’s absence while he was deployed in the Wehrmacht and his brother Rudi was his “stand-in”

 

To the best of Ms. Schaesberg’s recollection, in the case of Renate and Matthias’ marriage, Matthias had no stand-in.

As I began to contemplate the circumstances of Renate and Matthias’s marriage, I surmised that as Germany’s fortunes changed as the war progressed, it was not inconceivable that Matthias had been drafted in 1943 into the German Army even though he would have been 35 at the time.

Let me briefly digress. Anticipating what will be the subject of an upcoming Blog post, I am in possession of a copy of Renate and her mother Johanna Bruck’s five-year wartime Tagebuch, in essence a diary. (Figure 5) In early 1943, Renate and Johanna Bruck had relocated to Berlin from Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], likely as a precautionary measure; since Renate was a mischling of the first degree according to the Nuremberg Race Laws (i.e., her father’s parents were Jewish making her half-Jewish), and in danger of being deported and murdered, the anonymity of a larger city may have afforded her more protection. Suffice it for now to say Renate’s diary entries make numerous mention of her future first husband Matthias during the months of March through April 1943, thereafter which he is rarely mentioned. As a brief aside, Renate and Matthias were both originally from Breslau and likely knew one another from there, but only became involved romantically after they separately moved to Berlin. Matthias was not Jewish so the reason why he moved to Berlin is unknown.

 

Figure 5. The frontispiece of Johanna and Renate Bruck’s 5-year wartime “Tagebuch,” diary, covering the period from January 1940 through December 1944

 

I already knew from the German newspaper article I had found among Renate’s father’s personal papers that Matthias was a prisoner-of-war in England in the latter stages of WWII. (Figures 6a-c) Curious as to how and when he was captured by the British, I turned to Ms. Bettina Mehne (Figure 7), Matthias Mehne’s daughter by his second marriage. I presented my theory to Bettina that Germany’s declining fortunes during the war caused them to draft older men. The actual story is more involved.

 

 

Figure 6a. Undated German newspaper article post-dating WWII about Renate Bruck’s first husband, Matthias Mehne mentioning he was a British POW

 

 

Figure 6b. Transcription of newspaper article about Matthias Mehne

 

 

Figure 6c. Translation of newspaper article about Matthias Mehne

 

Figure 7. Matthias Mehne’s daughter by his second marriage, Bettina Mehne, who related the story behind her father’s forced deployment during WWII

 

I refer readers to Post 101 in which I discussed at length Matthias Mehne’s courage on Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938, and the role he played protecting a Jewish man named Alfons Lasker that night. The fearlessness Matthias showed that night extended throughout the war, and has, to this day, connected the Mehne and Lasker families. Alfons Lasker’s daughter, Ms. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, was arrested in Breslau, shipped to Auschwitz, and miraculously survived. Anita, who is a world-renowned cellist, wrote a biography in 2000 entitled “Inherit the Truth,” detailing her wartime experiences. In this book she documents Matthias Mehne’s role in protecting her father on Kristallnacht, the passage of which is quoted in Post 101.

According to Bettina Mehne, there is one story Anita does not relate in her biography which explains why Matthias Mehne was forced to join the German Army. After Anita Lasker and her sister were arrested in Breslau and held there in a Sammellager, a collection camp for Jewish deportees, they attempted to escape with Matthias Mehne’s rucksack in hand; why this came to be in their possession is not clear. After they were recaptured, the Nazis found Matthias’s name in the rucksack, and he too was arrested and brought before a judge. Already subject to weekly questioning by the Gestapo because Matthias and his father refused to fly the swastika outside their luthier business on various “flag days” and hang a photo of Hitler inside their shop, they wanted him sentenced to death. The judge, however, was a friend of Matthias from the riding stables, and instead forced him to join the army as punishment, telling the Gestapo to let the Italians do their dirty work and kill him. So Matthias was soon sent off to war, though he made prompt work of being captured by the Americans, thereafter which he was handed off to the British.

With the benefit of Bettina Mehne’s firsthand account, I now understand the circumstances that lead to her father’s incarceration as a prisoner-of-war. Given Matthias’s status as a POW, I was curious how his marriage could be arranged across enemy lines, so to speak. I turned to Ms. Regina Stein (Figure 8), a provenance researcher, who’d previously and graciously researched at no cost to me address information for Matthias for the years 1943-1990. Regina sent me an interesting article from German Wikipedia on so-called “Ferntrauungen,” long-distance marriages (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsches_Eherecht_im_Zweiten_Weltkrieg#Ferntrauung_im_Zweiten_Weltkrieg). Let me highlight some relevant information.

 

Figure 8. Dr. Regina Stein, provenance researcher in Berlin, who provided a source for background information on distance marriages, marriages of convenience, and post-mortem divorces in Nazi Germany post-1939

 

 

It is clear from this article that German marriages during WWII with an absent groom were not uncommon. Beginning in 1939, various special regulations were enacted by the German Reich. This made it possible for distance marriages, posthumous marriages (“marriages of convenience”), and even death divorces. Post-mortem marriages had already taken place in France during the First World War.

Beginning with the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws on the 15th of September 1935, marriages between “Deutschblütigen,” German-blooded people, and Jews was prohibited, and “extramarital sexual intercourse” between Jews and other Germans barred. Different regulations applied to mischlinge, a pejorative term often applied to Jews meaning “hybrid, mongrel or half-breed.” From 1942 onward, however, their applications for marriage permits were no longer processed for the duration of the war. I’ll briefly return to this below, specifically as it relates to Matthias and Renate.

The possibility of a remote marriage existed according to “§§ 13 ff. der Dritten Verordnung zur Ausführung des Personenstandsgesetzes (Personenstandsverordnung der Wehrmacht) vom 4. November 1939,” (Third Ordinance for the Implementation of the Personal Status Act (Personal Status Ordinance of the Wehrmacht) of November 4, 1939. Such marriages were possible for Wehrmacht members (i.e., the Wehrmacht was the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945) who “took part in a war, a war-like enterprise or a special mission” and left their location, presumably were deployed. For such a remote marriage to take place, the Wehrmacht soldier had to declare his intent to the battalion commander who recorded it; had to provide an affidavit documenting “Aryan descent”; and the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the High Command of the Armed forces, had to submit a marriage license to the bride’s registry office. According to Ina Schaesberg, Matthias Mehne and Renate Bruck‘s remote marriage took place in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1943 or 1944.

As I’ve discussed, we know that at the time of Matthias and Renate’s marriage, he was already a POW in England, likely in late 1943 or possibly early 1944. The German regulations accounted for such an eventuality. For POWs, the battalion commander to whom a Wehrmacht soldier declared his intent to marry was replaced by a steward appointed according to the agreement of the treatment of POWs or by the most senior captured officer of the highest rank. The marriage ceremony in the local registry office, as in Renate and Matthias‘ case, had to take place within two months, though this timeline changed at various times during the war.

Colloquially, the long-distance marraige was referred to as a “Stahlhelmtrauung,” a “steel helmet wedding,” or as a “Trauung mit dem Stahlhelm,” or “steel helmet wedding ceremony,” because a steel helmet was positioned in the place where the groom would otherwise have stood during the ceremony in the Standesamt, the registry office. The marriage took effect when the woman declared her intent to marry before the registrar, even if the groom had already died by this time. In the latter event, the marriage was deemed to have taken place on the day when the groom had declared his intent to marry. While the free copy of the marriage certificate sent to the Wehrmacht soldier did not indicate it had been a long-distance marriage, the marriage register in the registrar’s office showed the marriage had been concluded in the absence of the husband.

The possibility of long-distance marriage excluded those soldiers who had not written down their intent to marry, but in whom it could be proved that they had been willing to marry. However, it seems that on November 6, 1941, Adolf Hitler had signed a secret decree together with Hans Heinrich Lammers, the head of the Reich Chancellery, and Wilhelm Keitel, the head of the Wehrmacht High Command, in which the Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick was empowered to “order the subsequent marriage of women to soldiers who have fallen or died in the field, if it can be proven that there was a serious intention to marry and there are no indications that the intention was given up before death.” For professional soldiers, the approval of the High Command of the Wehrmacht had to be obtained. It was only on the 15th of June 1943 that the Reich Minister of the Interior notified the registry offices “confidentially” of Hitler’s decree and established guidelines for processing posthumous marriage applications.

In the case of such “Leichentrauung,” “funeral marriage,” or “Totenehe,” or “death marriage,” it was up to the woman alone to testify to the authorities of the last will of the dead person. The woman who entered such a marriage with a dead man did not become a wife through marriage, but rather a widow. As a war widow, she was eligible to obtain financial benefits and claim an inheritance, and any common children were not considered out-of-wedlock. Parents often objected since they were typically excluded from the inheritance, and claimed the bride was only concerned with obtaining economic advantages, sometimes justifiably. The possibility of abuse, such as legitimizing children conceived by men other than the deceased husband, was another issue. Because of well-founded concerns, in around 1944, the right to inheritance was limited to the children conceived by the fallen bridegroom. In total, there were about 25,000 such marriages with fallen soldiers.

In connection with the discussion about entering into marriage with a deceased, the Reich Ministry of Justice discussed whether a marriage that had had already been dissolved due to death could still be divorced. This is referred to as a “Totenscheidung,” “divorce from a deceased.” The impetus here was that supposed “hero widows” were free to lead “dishonorable, carefree lives” and get involved with other men following the deaths of their fallen bridegrooms. To address this concern, the Reich Ministry of Justice issued confidential guidelines which made “war adultery” punishable; the possibility of a “death divorce” was created for women who broke their marriage vows while their husbands were on the front lines or acted “offensively” following their husband’s deaths. Legal proceedings could be initiated, and, if “proven” the wife committed adultery, the divorce was effective retroactive from the day before the husband’s death. A wife culpably divorced lost the right of inheritance and the survivor’s pension.

Considering Renate and Matthias’s distance marriage, I became curious whether I could obtain a copy of their marriage certificate from the civil registry office in Wiesbaden where their marriage had supposedly taken place; I wanted to know whether the certificate made any mention of the distance marriage, and who might have been a witness to the ceremony besides Ina Schaesberg. I contacted the Rathaus, City Hall, but they responded I was not closely enough related to obtain the document in question.

As an aside, Germany has a period of “privacy” for vital records. Unless you are immediate family, you cannot access birth records until 110 years following the birth of the individual, marriage records for 80 years, and death records for 30 years. Assuming Renate and Matthias married in 1943, their marriage record will not publicly be available until 2023. Consequently, I asked Renate’s twin daughters by her third marriage, Francesca and Michele Newman (Figure 9), to inquire about their mother’s marriage license. The Wiesbaden Rathaus checked marriage records between 1941 and 1946 but regrettably could not find any trace of Renate and Matthias’s wedding certificate. What to make of this is unclear.

 

Figure 9. Renate Bruck’s twin daughters by her third marriage, Francesca and Michele Newman, my “movie star” cousins

 

One final point I would like to make about Renate and Matthias’ distance wedding. As previously mentioned, according to the Nuremberg Laws, Renate was a mischling of the first degree because she was half Jewish. By 1943, the presumed year of her marriage, the Nazi regulations prohibited marriages between German-blooded people and mischlinge. While Matthias could clearly prove he was of “Aryan descent,” is it possible Renate did not have to submit such documentation to the registry office? If so, this seems highly unusual given the Nazis penchant for strictly enforcing discriminatory measures against Jews and mischlinge. Without a copy of Renate and Matthias’ marriage certificate the question remains unanswered.

 

REFERENCE

Lasker-Wallfisch, Anita. Inherit the Truth: A Memoir of Survival and the Holocaust. Thomas Dunn Books, 2000.

POST 107: HARRO WUNDSCH (HAROLD POWELL), A “DUNERA BOY” INTERNED IN THE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK

 

Note: In this post, I examine a previously unknown to me episode of English “enemy aliens” interned in the Australian Outback during WWII. The principal character of this post was born Harro Hans Carl Paul Wundsch, who following his release from detention and his return to England changed his name to Harold John Powell. He is a distant ancestor related by marriage through the Pauly branch of my family. Under the Nuremberg Laws Harro was considered a mischling of the second degree because one of his grandparents was Jewish; his mother, who has appeared in two earlier Blog posts, was half-Jewish. This publication allows me to bring together various strands of family history to make what I consider some fascinating connections that span several continents.

 

Related Posts:

POST 25: DEATH IN THE SHANGHAI GHETTO

POST 48: DR. ERNST NEISSER’S FINAL DAYS IN 1942 IN THE WORDS OF HIS DAUGHTER

POST 49: GUIDE TO THE “LANDESARCHIV BERLIN” (BERLIN STATE ARCHIVE) CIVIL REGISTRY RECORDS

POST 50: DR. ADOLF GUTTENTAG’S 1942 DIARY

 

 

Figure 1. Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch and Dr. Maria Wundsch née Pauly as a young married couple (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

This story is inspired by a reader of my Blog, an English lady by the name of Katherine “Kathy” York née Powell, granddaughter of Dr. Maria Wundsch née Pauly (1891-1978) and Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch (1887-1972). (Figure 1) Kathy stumbled on my Blog when she found reference to her grandmother. Maria’s name has appeared in two previous Blog posts, Posts 48 and 50, and she is someone I hold in high regard because of her courage during WWII. There are several threads I will follow as I relate a story about Kathy’s father, born Harro Wundsch (1920-2006) (Figure 2), who changed his name to Harold Powell when he returned to England following his internment in Australia. He apparently selected the name Powell because it was easy to remember and sounded like “Pauly,” his mother’s maiden name. Maria Wundsch is the person that links much of the following story together.

 

 

Figure 2. Harro Wundsch, later Harold Powell (1920-2006), on his 85th birthday

 

Let me begin this account on the 22nd of August 1942 in Berlin.

 

Figure 3. Helene & Adolf Guttentag, Christmas 1938, at their apartment on Kaiser Wilhelmstraße 9 in Stettin

 

In Post 50, I chronicled in his own words Dr. Adolf Guttentag’s (1868-1942) and his wife Helene Guttentag née Pauly’s (1873-1942) (Figure 3) final few months in Berlin before they committed suicide together on the 16th of October 1942 after being told by the Nazis to report to an “old age transport,” effectively, a concentration camp. For context, Helene Pauly was my first cousin twice removed. Having seen many of their friends and family deported or commit suicide, there was no doubt what fate awaited them as the Nazis accelerated their pace of deportation of Jews to extermination camps in 1942. As detailed in Post 50, Dr. Guttentag decided to document those final months and reflect on his life. Beginning on the 22nd of August 1942, Dr. Guttentag recorded the following: 

“. . . Rather large transports now occur at a rapid pace. A farewell letter to Otto and Dorothee [NOTE: his son and daughter-in-law], which I have deposited with Maria Wundsch, describes in two notebooks, the general development of my family.  In addition, I have decided to start making diary-type entries which show how we are, i.e., how our health is, how we spend our time, what else is going on, what we must expect, and what our plans are.”

It is clear from this opening paragraph that Dr. Guttentag trusted Dr. Maria Wundsch to do what she could to ensure that his diary got into the hands of his son in America, Otto Guttentag (Figure 4), after he and his wife died. Maria is mentioned several times in Adolf’s diary, as is her husband, Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch, though he is never identified by name. Because Maria Wundsch’s father, Carl Pauly (1854-1918), was from a Jewish family, according to the Nuremberg Laws Maria was considered a mischling of the first degree (i.e., half-Jewish), though there is no evidence she was raised Jewish. Her husband was not Jewish, and this may have afforded her some level of “protection.” More on this later.

 

Figure 4. Dr. Otto Ernst Guttentag in April 1935 from his U.S. Naturalization Petition

 

On the 23rd of August 1942, Dr. Guttentag noted the following about Hans Helmut Wundsch: 

“Maria Wundsch’s husband had sent us a number of papers concerning his fishery work. They are of zoological as well as economic importance. I have read them carefully because I had no idea what there is in the world outside of medicine. We have sent those papers to Mutti’s brother [NOTE: Helene Guttentag’s brother, Wilhelm Pauly] who, like another friend, is very much interested in the development and utilization of fish in the lakes of the Havel River in the province of Brandenburg. A few days from now Maria’s husband will inspect a lake there. As for us, we cannot initiate any such contacts because they would endanger others and ourselves.”

Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch was a German fisheries scientist and professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin and director at the Prussian State Institute for Fisheries in Berlin-Friedrichshagen from 1925 until 1937; from 1947 to 1958, he was director at predecessor institutes to today’s Institut für Gewässerökologie und Binnenfischerei (IGB), Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries. (Figure 5)

 

Figure 5. Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch in 1956 at the “Institut für Gewässerökologie und Binnenfischerei (IGB),” Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries

 

It so happens that my uncle Dr. Franz Müller (1871-1945) (Figure 6), married to my aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck (1904-1942) (Figure 7) who was murdered in Auschwitz, was also a professor at Humboldt University at the same time as Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch. My uncle, who converted to Christianity on the 25th of November 1901, nonetheless was fired from the university in 1933 because of his Jewish ancestry. Though Franz and Hans Helmut worked in different departments, Kathy and I surmise they may have known one another. According to Kathy, her grandfather lost his job at Humboldt University in 1937 for making jokes about Hitler to his students.

 

Figure 6. My uncle Dr. Franz Müller (1871-1945) as a young professor at Humboldt University in Berlin
Figure 7. My aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck (1904-1942) who was murdered in Auschwitz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the 22nd of September 1942, Dr. Guttentag again mentions Maria Wundsch giving us some slight insight into her religious convictions: 

“Yesterday Maria Wundsch was here for almost the entire day in order to help Mutti [NOTE: Helene Guttentag] She is the only person who has been of help and assistance to Mutti in our many moves: 1. From Stettin to Hirschberg; 2. H(irschberg) move from No. 70 to No. 32; 3. From H. to Berlin-Kurfürstendamm; 4. from there to here; and 5. now for the evacuation. What a person! Other friends or relatives had failed us. Her convictions are strange, but one must respect her. Details of her religious point of view perhaps at some later time. Incomprehensible to me: even though she cannot adopt the Christian dogma, she nevertheless does not have to conform to certain rules of the Jewish religion, as for instance the total, 24-hour fasting on their highest holiday, Yom Kippur. So, she had come to discuss with Mutti how best to pack the modest number of authorized articles for the transport.”

It is clear from this entry that while other of Adolf and Helene Guttentag’s friends and family had largely abandoned them during the Nazi era, Maria Wundsch continued to stand by them, probably at great personal risk. Her religious views, though not altogether clear to me, seem to meld Christian and Jewish values.

Respectively, on the 1st through the 3rd of October, then again on the 10th of October, Dr. Guttentag noted his brother-in-law Dr. Adolf Neisser’s (Figure 8) suicide attempt, eventual death, and memorial service:

 

 

Figure 8. Dr. Ernst Neisser (1863-1942) towards the end of his life

 

October 1: 

“Now fate has caught up with Uncle Ernst [Ernst Neisser]. Yesterday afternoon he was informed that he was to be ready tomorrow morning from 8:00 a.m. on; he would be picked up and evacuated, together with his relative, Miss. Lise Neisser (who has kept house for him). It is never divulged where they are going, probably somewhere in Bohemia. He had always been determined not to go; he wanted to end his life because of his more and more frequent and painful heart troubles that can only be interpreted as angina pectoris.” 

October 2-3: 

“Miss Neisser had already died last night, but Uncle Ernst had not. He was taken to the hospital (we may be taken only to the Jewish Hospital) and was still alive this morning. He had injected himself with 2% morphine and taken 5 tablets of Veronal. . . He died on October 3, 1942.” 

October 10: 

“Yesterday was the memorial service for Uncle Ernst. As Mutti reported it was very dignified through the music of a quartet, which at first . . .[sentence not finished]. We stayed together for a while: Susel and Hans [NOTE: Dr. Ernst Neisser’s daughter and son-in-law], Uncle Willi [NOTE: Willy Pauly, Dr. Ernst Neisser’s brother-in-law], Maria Wundsch, Mutti and I. . . .(whom the family reached?).” 

Adolf and Helene Guttentag too committed suicide barely two weeks later, on October 16th.

In Post 48, I discussed the final days of Dr. Ernst Neisser (1863-1942). As noted in Dr. Guttentag’s diary, Luise Neisser died immediately, but Ernst Neisser lingered in a coma for three or four days before succumbing to his trauma.

Because Luise died immediately her death was recorded in the Charlottenburg borough of Berlin (Figures 9a-b) where she lived with her cousin. Ernst Neisser, however, was taken to the Krankenhaus der Jüdischen Gemeinde, the Hospital of the Jewish Community, the only hospital in Berlin where Jews could be admitted and cured, if possible, during WWII, before once again being thrown into the maws of death. For the Nazis, it was not enough for Jews to die but they had to die on Nazi terms, in extermination camps. Regardless, Ernst Neisser denied the Nazis this satisfaction and he passed away on the 3rd or 4th of October 1942 at the Jüdische Krankenhaus, located in Wedding, a neighborhood in the borough of Berlin-Mitte. His death was therefore recorded here. (Figures 10a-b)

 

Figure 9a. Cover of Landesarchiv Berlin civil register book, “Standesamt-Charlottenburg Nr. 713 (Namensverzeichnis Sterberegister 1942),” with Luise “Sara” Neisser’s death recorded in October 1942
Figure 9b. Luise “Sara” Neisser’s name circled in Landesarchiv Berlin civil register book, “Standesamt-Charlottenburg Nr. 713 (Namensverzeichnis Sterberegister 1942),” listing her death in October and the death certificate number as 4325

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 10a. Cover of Landesarchiv Berlin civil register book, “Standesamt-Wedding Nr. 5 (Namensverzeichnis Sterberegister 1942),” with Richard Ernst “Israel” Neißer’s death recorded in October 1942
Figure 10b. Richard Ernst “Israel” Neißer’s name circled in Landesarchiv Berlin civil register book, “Standesamt-Wedding Nr. 5 (Namensverzeichnis Sterberegister 1942),” listing his death in October and the death certificate number illegible

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So much for the lengthy background which partly covers material discussed in earlier posts.

Kathy York initially contacted me through my Blog on the 26th of August 2021, and between this email and ensuing ones, several things she said grabbed my attention. The first was that, according to Kathy, throughout the war, her grandmother Dr. Maria Wundsch worked as a chemist at the Jüdische Krankenhaus, the Jewish Community Hospital, where Dr. Ernst Neisser died. As a related aside, Maria studied for her PhD. in Berlin at the “Royal Friedrich-Wilhelms University” from 1910 to 1914,  and was awarded her PhD. in 1915. The title of her thesis “Der Mundwerkzeuge der Caraboidea,” that’s to say, the working mouthparts of caraboides, a group of ground beetles.

The concern among family of Jews who attempted suicide and didn’t immediately succumb was that they would be revived only later to be deported to a concentration camp. Dr. Guttentag’s diary entry recorded on the 1st of October 1942 voices this concern: 

“Since it has been 15 hours since he [NOTE: Dr. Ernst Neisser] took the medicines, it can be assumed the result will be absolutely fatal, and any revival, which everybody fears, is impossible.”

The unanswerable question I have is whether Dr. Maria Wundsch, by dint of working at the Jewish Hospital where Dr. Neisser was a dying patient, made sure he was never revived following his suicide attempt since, clearly, they knew one another?

Kathy York assures me a letter exists among the family papers in which Maria Wundsch describes her time working at the Jewish Hospital in Berlin, and her efforts trying to protect fellow Jews during WWII. If Kathy can locate this item of family memorabilia, I hope to discuss it in a future post.

Kathy theorizes that because her grandfather’s family included Prussian military men this may have saved her grandmother from the fate of some of her relatives. A much more controversial explanation may be that because Maria was married to a non-Jew, this may have contributed to her survival during the Holocaust.

The story of how the Jüdische Krankenhaus survived relatively unscathed during the entire war is compelling and fascinating. It has been the subject of a book by Daniel B. Silver, the former general counsel to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, entitled “Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis.” I refer any readers interested in the topic to this book.

Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch and Maria Wundsch had four children born between 1919 and 1929, Renate (1919-1997), Harro (1920-2006), Josef (1922-1989) (Figures 11-12), and Stefan (1929-1967). Not wanting the children to grow up under the Nazi regime, and likely also fearing their children’s status as mischlinge of the second degree (i.e., one-quarter Jewish) would endanger them, they sent the three oldest ones to the United Kingdom, respectively, in 1933, 1935, and 1937; the youngest one, Stefan, was sent to Switzerland but sent back to Germany at the outbreak of hostilities. This was a fateful decision. Harro Wundsch, Kathy York’s father, would see his father at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, then not again until 1958 (Figure 13), since his parents were stuck in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) following the war and were unable to emigrate. And, sadly, Stefan, the youngest of Hans Helmut and Maria Wundsch’s children, was never able to join his siblings in the United Kingdom, so grew up apart from them and died relatively young. Maria Wundsch was only able to rejoin her surviving children in England following her husband’s death in 1972 when she was allowed to emigrate from the GDR; Maria died on the 14th of January 1978 and is buried in Leicester, England. (Figure 14)

 

Figure 11. Kathy York’s father, Harro Wundsch (left), with his older sister Renate (center), and younger brother Josef (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

Figure 12. Kathy’s grandfather and father, Hans and Harro Wundsch (photo courtesy of Kathy York)
Figure 13. From left to right, Kathy’s half-brother Thomas Waugh (1943-2015), her uncle Stefan Wundsch (1929-1967), and her grandfather Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch (1887-1972) in 1958 (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 14. Maria Wundsch née Pauly’s (1891-1978) headstone in Leicester, England (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

Almost as an afterthought, Kathy mentioned that her father Harro Wundsch had been a “Dunera Boy.” This was the second thing that caught my attention during my conversations with Kathy. Having no idea what Dunera Boys were, I did a Google query, which I will briefly summarize for readers as it represented to me an entirely unknown episode of WWII history.

At the time Britain declared war on Germany on the 3rd of September 1939, more than 70,000 Germans and Austrians living there became “enemy aliens.” According to tribunals established to determine the threat these people posed to Britain three classifications of aliens were decided on: “Class C” consisted of approximately 66,000 people who were deemed to pose the least danger and were exempt from internment or restrictions; “Class B” included about 6,600 people, and these people were carefully monitored by the police; and “Class A” was made up of 569 people classified and interned as enemy aliens.

By May 1940, with Germany advancing through Belgium and France and the increasing possibility that Britain would be invaded, the British Government reassessed the enemy alien population and incarcerated an additional 12,000 Germans, Austrians, and Italians.

The dramatic increase in the number of detainees led to severe overcrowding causing the British Government to ship 7,500 internees to Australia and Canada between the 24th of June and the 10th of July 1940. Tragically, the transport bound for Canada, the Arandora Star, carrying more than 1,000 internees and 300 crew, was torpedoed and sunk, resulting in the death of 835 people.

The detainees bound for Australia left England on the 10th of July 1940 aboard the Hired Military Transport (HMT) Dunera; they consisted of 2,542 internees, including Harro Wundsch. While the group included about 450 German and Italian prisoners of war and a few dozen fascist sympathizers, most of the deportees were anti-fascist and two-thirds were Jewish; it also included some survivors from the Arandora Star. Conditions and treatment of the deportees aboard the Dunera were appalling, so much so that that the British Government eventually agreed to pay £35,000 to the group.

Harro Wundsch would occasionally joke to his family that he was on the last convict ship to Australia without ever mentioning that it was the Dunera.

After a 57-day journey under ghastly conditions, on the 3rd of September, the Dunera docked in Port Melbourne where 344 internees disembarked. The remainder of the detainees were taken to Sydney, arriving there on the 6th of September. (Figure 15) From there they boarded trains bound for the central New South Wales town of Hay, in the Australian Outback.  The Hay camp held most of the internees. As many of them consisted of Jewish inmates who’d been forced to leave successful careers in Germany, Austria, and England, the group included a high percentage of professionals, tradesmen, and artists. Remarkably, the internees established an unofficial university, library, and orchestra, and even minted a currency for use inside the camp.

 

Figure 15. The HMT Dunera at the Sydney Wharf with the train for Hay, New South Wales train (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

Within weeks of the Dunera’s departure, the British Government altered their alien classification system once again. They acknowledged that under the revised system, most of the Dunera deportees would not have been interned. In early 1941, the British Home Office sent Major Julian Layton to Australia to investigate the situation and study possible repatriation; he recommended the internees be reclassified as “refugee aliens,” so that by the end of 1941 most of them had been released. About 900 of the original “Dunera Boys” remained in Australia, many joining the Australian army’s 8th Employment Company. Those who stayed in Australia wound up making enormous contributions to the cultural, academic, and economic life of the country. (Figure 16)

 

Figure 16. The Dunera Boys reunion in Melbourne, Australia in 1963 (National Museum of Australia)

 

Harro Wundsch was among the group of Dunera Boys who decided to return to England. He arrived in the United Kingdom two days before his 21st birthday and was allowed to enlist in the British Army. He had intended to join the Parachute Regiment but broke his ankle so wound up in the Royal Engineers. He was involved in the D-Day landings and spent some time in Japan. According to his wife’s niece, Harold Powell, as he was by then known, was enroute to Japan when the war in the Pacific ended. It turns out he was aboard the SS Missouri in Tokyo Bay with the British Army on the 2nd of September 1945, when Emperor Hirohito signed the peace treaty. Following the war, Harold Powell went on to obtain a degree in Civil Engineering.

The final thing Kathy mentioned that attracted my attention was that her grandmother’s sister and brother-in-law, Elisabeth “Lily” Kretschmer née Pauly and Fritz Kretschmer (Figures 17-18), escaped to the Shanghai Ghetto, living in the Jewish community there. (Figures 19a-b, 20-22) Unlike my father’s first cousin, Fritz Goldenring, subject of Post 25, who also escaped to Shanghai but perished there, Kathy’s great-aunt and -uncle survived and wound up in San Francisco after the war.

 

Figure 17. Elisabeth Kretschmer née Pauly (1889-1984) (photo courtesy of Kathy York)
Figure 18. Fritz & Elisabeth Kretschmer with Friedrich Seidel in Kleinmachnow, Berlin in 1939 soon before the Kretschmers emigrated to Shanghai (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 19a. Cover of “Emigranten Adressbuch,” Emigrants Address Book, for Shanghai containing Fritz Kretschmer’s name and address (photo courtesy of Kathy York)
Figure 19b. Page from “Emigranten Adressbuch” for Shanghai listing Fritz Kretschmer’s name and address (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 20. The Jewish Shanghai Ghetto (photo courtesy of Kathy York)
Figure 21. The house in the Shanghai Ghetto where Fritz & Elisabeth Kretschmer lived (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 22. The interpretive sign for the Shanghai Ghetto, euphemistically referred to as “The Designated Area for Stateless Refugees” (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

So, it can be no accident that Kathy discovered my family Blog, and we find that our family’s histories overlap across the European, Asian, Australian, and North American continents.

REFERENCES

National Museum of Australia. “Dunera Boys.” 2006, https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/dunera-boys

Sherman, Suzan. “How a Jewish Hospital Survived the Holocaust.” The Forward, October 31, 2003, https://forward.com/articles/6972/how-a-jewish-hospital-survived-the-holocaust/

Silver, Daniel B. Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

York, Katherine. “Harro Wundsch – Harry Powell.” Dunera News, No. 106, p. 12-15, July 2019.

POST 106: EVIDENCE OF CONVERSION FROM JUDAISM IN MY FAMILY

 

Note: In this post, I discuss the proof I have found for conversions from Judaism for German family members, some of which unavoidably consists of indirect evidence. This topic naturally involves touching on the political, economic, and social context under which such conversions took place.

Related Posts:

POST 38: THE EVIDENCE OF MY FATHER’S CONVERSION TO CHRISTIANITY

POST 56: REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND FAMILY BY THE PATERFAMILIAS, DR. JOSEF PAULY

 

 

There is a long history of Jewish conversion to Christianity, both voluntary and forced conversion. Forced conversions of Jews go back to Late Antiquity, the boundaries of which are a continuing matter of debate, but the period between roughly the 3rd and 8th centuries A.D. Royal persecutions of Jews from the 11th century onward typically took the form of expulsions with exceptions. Jews were forced to convert to Christianity before and during the First Crusade (1096-1099) including in parts of what are today France, Germany, and the Czech Republic.

The mass conversion event which took place on the Iberian Peninsula in A.D. 1391 when tens of thousands of Spain’s Jews converted to Christianity because of pogroms is the one readers will be most familiar with. Practicing Jews who refused to convert were expelled by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella in the Alhambra Decree of 1492, following the Christian Reconquest of Spain. The net effect of the Alhambra Decree and persecutions carried out in earlier periods is that over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism and between 40,000 and 100,000 were expelled. In adjoining Portugal, by contrast, where an edict for Jewish expulsions was also ordered four years later in A.D. 1496, most Jews were not allowed to leave but were forced to convert.

Though conversions continued over time across many other parts of Eastern, Central, and Western Europe, forced conversions were apparently less common in the 20th century and were later more often the result of Jews choosing to convert to integrate into secular society. In Germany, which is the focus of this Blog post as it relates to my family, conversions occurred in three main periods. The first began during the Mendelssohnian era, named after Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), the German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the Haskalah, the “Jewish Enlightenment” of the 18th and 19th centuries, is attributed. A second wave occurred during the first half of the 19th century. And the third and longest period of conversions was a result of antisemitism and began roughly in 1880.

Conversion among German Jews was not an uncommon phenomenon in the 19th century owing to the myriad restrictions and myths that confronted them, and stymied their hopes, ambitions, dreams, and careers. In a sense, conversion to Christianity was the easy way out. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), the noted German poet, writer, and literary critic, who himself converted, was reputed to have said conversion was his “ticket of admission into European culture.” Across most of the German states that united to create “modern” Germany in 1871, dominated by the state of Prussia, Jews were often rewarded for renouncing Judaism by being given influential positions and financial incentives. Whereas, during the 17th century, most converts were poor, by the middle of the 18th century, the converts were richer. The departure of the wealthier converts deprived the Jewish community of part of its operating budget. In any event, it is estimated that by the 20th century, close to one million Christians in Germany were of Jewish origin. According to Deborah Hertz’s book, “How Jews Became Germans: The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin,” the majority of converts were infants whose parents wanted to spare them “conflicts” as adults. She notes that 60 percent of converts between 1800 and 1874 were under five years of age.

Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933.  The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums), which excluded Jews and other political opponents of the Nazis from all civil service positions, was one of the first anti-Semitic and racist laws to be passed by the Third Reich, enacted on the 7th of April 1933. The law initially exempted those who had worked in the civil service since August 1, 1914, those who were veterans of World War I, or those with a father or son killed in action in World War I. The Civil Service immediately impacted the education system because university professors, for example, were classified as civil servants.

With the seizure of power by the Nazis, the new government enacted laws that required all citizens to document their genealogy in full. The regime sought to identify Jews who had converted to Christianity over the preceding centuries. With the help of church officials, a vast system of conversion and intermarriage records was created in Berlin, the country’s foremost Jewish city. These records, the Judenkartei, the Jewish Register or File, begin in 1645. Work on creating this file had started before the Nazis even came to power under a private initiative which sought to uncover proof of the Jewish ancestry of university and college professors and judges. By 1932, this file had already collected 400,000 genealogical records of Jews in Germany. The constantly expanding file was taken over and expanded in 1933 by the Reichsstelle für Sippenforschung (RfS), renamed Reichssippenamt on the 12th of November 1940, the Reich Office for Clan Research.

Readers who have accessed ancestral records for their German Jewish relatives may have noticed notations in the upper left- or right-hand corners or along the margins of vital documents. Beginning August 17, 1938, Jews had to add “Israel” (males) (Figure 1) or “Sara” (females) (Figure 2) as their middle name. Similarly, on passports, which allowed German Jews to leave Germany, when they still could, but not return, a large “J” was imprinted. (Figure 3) These and other measures instituted by the Nazis were intended to officially separate Jews from the German populace. While German Jews still converted after the Nazis seized power, as I will illustrate in the case of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, readers can easily surmise this was futile.

 

Figure 1. Birth certificate for my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck showing he was born on the 17th of August 1895 in Leobschutz, Germany [today: Głubczyce, Poland], with a notation added by the Nazis on the 31st of January 1939 in the upper righthand corner adding the middle name “Israel” to identify him as Jewish
Figure 2. Birth certificate for my second cousin once removed Susanne Dorothea Neisser showing she was born in Stettin, Germany [today: Szczecin, Poland] on the 30th of July 1899, with a notation dated the 10th of January 1939 adding “Sara” to her name to identify her as Jewish
Figure 3. 1939 passport for one of my distant relatives Fritz Hirsch with a big red “J” and “Israel” added to his name, both indicating he was Jewish (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

As I contemplated the question of conversion from Judaism among my immediate and extended ancestors, I began to wonder what evidence I could find in the ancestral records proving my relatives’ “alienation” from their Jewish roots. In my limited experience, finding such documents is not easy. In the case of some of my ancestors but not all of them, conversion was a “pragmatic” decision, as I’ve alluded to. Again, citing the poet Heinrich Heine, he declared that he was “merely baptized, not converted.” Quoting from a letter he once wrote: 

“From my way of thinking you can well imagine that baptism is an indifferent affair. I do not regard it as important even symbolically, and I shall devote myself all the more to the emancipation of the unhappy members of our race. Still I hold it as a disgrace and a stain upon my honor that in order to obtain an office in Prussia—in beloved Prussia—I should allow myself to be baptized.”

 

Figure 4. My great-great-uncle Dr. Josef Pauly (1843-1916)

 

In re-reading the memoirs of Dr. Josef Pauly (Figure 4), husband of my great-great-aunt, who had likely been baptized Catholic as a child and whose recollections I discussed in Post 56, I wonder whether he may not have been implying the same sentiment when he wrote:

“I believe in God as the creative force of the universe, to an immanent [NOTE: (of God) permanently pervading or sustaining the universe] consciousness, to a moral world order, to the invisible God of the world as the Jewish religion has revealed it first, whose goodness is identical with the eternal laws.”

As I began to search through my files and recollect what evidence for conversion I had found for my ancestors, I initially concluded that most of the “proof” was indirect, such as in the case of my father which I discussed in Post 38. However, upon further consideration, I realize I have found considerably more direct validation than I initially thought. Beyond the obvious instances where the graves or burial records of my forefathers interred in existing and destroyed Jewish cemeteries survive, proving they did not convert, I found corroboration for several ancestors confirming they were baptized.

The earliest instance is the case of my great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer (1834-1918). (Figure 5) On ancestry, I uncovered a record showing she was baptized in Dresden, Germany, 21 years after her birth, on the 13th of April 1855. (Figure 6) This was undoubtedly in anticipation of her marriage to Leopold Julius Wolf von Koschembahr (Figure 7) later that year on the 26th of September 1855 in Saint Clement Danes, Westminster, London, England, an Anglican church. (Figure 8)

 

Figure 5. My great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer (1834-1918) in 1904, the earliest of my ancestors for whom I could find evidence of conversion from Judaism

 

Figure 6. My great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer’s baptismal record showing she was born on the 9th of September 1834 in Leschnitz, Germany [today: Leśnica, Poland] and was baptized on the 13th of April 1855 in Dresden, Germany
Figure 7. My great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer’s husband Leopold von Koschembahr (1829-1874) in Halberstadt, Germany in approximately 1860

 

 

Figure 8. Cover page from ancestry.com proving my great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer married her husband Leopold von Koschembahr on the 26th of September 1855 in Saint Clements Danes, Westminister, London, England, several months after she was baptized in Dresden

 

Initially, I thought Leopold von Koschembahr was also of Jewish origin because his grandson, Gerhard Bruck von Koschembahr (i.e., Gerhard’s father, Wilhelm Bruck, took his baroness wife’s surname) (Figure 9), departed Germany for the United States via Switzerland in 1938 with his 12 children. However, I learned from a New York Times article dated the 2nd of October 1938 that Gerhard departed Germany NOT on account of his grandfather’s Jewish roots but because his great-grandmother, on his mother’s side, was non-Aryan. (Figure 10) This gives credence to the concern descendants of Jews whose ancestors had long ago converted or had never converted felt when the Nazis started tracing their ancestral origins. In the case of Leopold von Koschembahr, I found his baptismal record showing he was baptized on the 5th of December 1829 (Figures 11a-b), proving he was not Jewish at birth. As readers can discern from this example, confirming or refuting the Jewish origins of one’s ancestors can be like solving a complex puzzle.

 

Figure 9. Amalie and Leopold von Koschembahr’s grandson, Gerhard Bruck-von Koschembahr (1885-1961), who I initially thought was a converted Jew
Figure 10. New York Times article dated the 2nd of October 1938 confirming that Gerhard von Koschembahr left Germany because his great-grandmother on his mother’s side, Therese Graetzer (1809-1883), was non-Aryan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 11a. Cover page from ancestry.com of Leopold von Koschembahr’s baptismal record, showing he was baptized on the 5th of December 1829 in Magdeburg, Germany

 

 

Figure 11b. Leopold von Koschembahr’s baptismal record, showing he was baptized on the 5th of December 1829 in Magdeburg, Germany

 

Moving on to other family members, let me briefly discuss the evidence for conversion for my uncle by marriage Dr. Franz Müller, my uncle by blood Dr. Fedor Bruck, my father Dr. Otto Bruck, and Dr. Adalbert Bruck, the great-grandfather of a fourth cousin.

The Centrum Judaicum Foundation is housed in the New Synagogue Berlin which was consecrated on the Jewish New Year in 1866, at which time it became the largest Jewish house of worship with its 3,200 seats. While the synagogue was spared major damage on “Kristallnacht,” it was severely damaged by Allied bombing during WWII. In 1958, the main room of the synagogue was demolished, so that today only the parts of the building closest to the street remain structurally intact.

Documents addressing the history of Jews in and around Berlin are archived there, including surviving records on conversions that took place in the city. In the case of my uncle by marriage Dr. Franz Müller, married to my aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck murdered in Auschwitz, the Centrum Judaicum has an index card on file indicating he converted on the 25th of November 1901. This did not prevent him being dismissed from his position as Humboldt University professor when the Nazis came to power in 1933 in accordance with their Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.

In the instance of my fourth cousin’s great-grandfather, Dr. Adalbert Bruck, the Centrum Judaicum could find nothing in their archives about him, so referred my cousin to the Evangelische Zentralarchiv in Berlin, the Protestant Central Archive in Berlin. In principle records of all Jewish conversions to Christianity in Berlin are kept here, though many did not survive WWII. According to a letter sent to my cousin, Dr. Adalabert Bruck’s record survives indicating he converted on the 27th of November 1890; however, his wife Anna Bruck née Flatow’s information survives only indirectly in the form of a 1930 document showing she supposedly converted on the 17th of February 1900. (Figures 12a-b)

 

Figure 12a. Letter to my fourth cousin from the Protestant Central Archive confirming the conversion information they have in their archives on his ancestor, Dr. Adalbert Bruck and his wife, Anna Bruck née Flatow

 

 

Figure 12b. Translation of letter from the Protestant Central Archive

 

 

The conversion of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, who has been the subject of several Blog posts because of his incredible tale of survival in Berlin during the entirety of WWII thanks to family and “silent heroes,” adds another element to my uncle’s compelling story. The register documenting his conversion survives and indicates he was baptized in Berlin on the 11th of June 1939 at the Messias Kapelle, a Lutheran Church. (Figures 13a-b, 14) Two godparents are named in the register, a “Herr Engelbert Helwig” and a “Herr Roderich von Roy.” Ancestry shows Englebert Helwig to have been a Holocaust survivor, and Roderich von Roy to have been born on the 3rd of August 1895, exactly two weeks before my uncle. Did my uncle know these people beforehand, or were they just random parishioners who attended the Messias Kappelle selected to be his godparents? We may never know.

 

Figure 13a. Left page of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s record showing he was baptized on the 11th of June 1939 in the Messias Kapelle

 

Figure 13b. Right page of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s baptismal record

 

 

Figure 14. Entrance to the Messias Kapelle today

 

Lutheran is a denomination among the Protestant, in fact it is the oldest of the denominations to break away from Catholicism and is traced to the founder of the movement, Martin Luther of Germany. (Figure 15)

 

Figure 15. Visual depiction of the denominations of Christianity

 

Hoping to find a picture of the Messias Kapelle, I did a Google query and stumbled upon a fascinating article written by Christiane Jurik, Editor-in-Chief of Ariel Ministries, discussing the origins of the Messias Kapelle and its role in German Jewish baptisms. I quote:

 

“Historically, most baptized Jews in Germany joined the Lutheran Church. There, even those who were true believers in Yeshua were mostly met with indifference; sometimes with suspicion; or worst, with anti-Semitism. In order to avoid this treatment, some Jewish believers started looking for places of worship where they could stay among themselves. In 1901, the Berlin Society purchased a property in one of the most urban boroughs of the city, called Prenzlauer Berg. The ministry not only moved its headquarters to the building but soon started construction work of what became known as the Messias Kapelle (‘Messiah Chapel’). Three days before Christmas of 1902, the chapel opened its doors to the Jewish believers of Berlin.

While the goal of the Berlin Society had been to offer a haven for Jewish believers, its work was closely affiliated with the Lutheran Church. In fact, the chapel officially belonged to the union of Protestant churches that also included the Confessing Church, whose most famous member was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. However, in 1930, the Lutheran Church revoked its support of the work of the Berlin Society and withdrew its pastors from the chapel. From then on, the Messias Kapelle was run by laymen.

In 1935, the Lutheran Synod forbade the baptizing of Jewish people. One of the pastors in Berlin expressed the general sentiment: ‘I am convinced that the family who told me it would be a horrible thought for them that the hand that baptized a Jew would touch their child is not alone.’

Yet not everyone obeyed the new directives of the Synod. The Messias Kapelle at this point separated itself completely from any state-run institution and in turn became the most important place of Messianic baptism in Berlin. According to the baptismal records of the time, over 700 German Jews got baptized there in the years between 1933 and 1940.

On November 11, 1938, during the Kristallnacht, the Messias Kapelle and the seat of the Berlin Society were trashed by the Nazis. Still, it would take until January of 1941 for the ministry and the chapel to be officially closed permanently. Ten months later, the first deportation of Jewish people began in Berlin. Records prove that of the 700 Jewish believers who had been baptized in the Messias Kapelle after 1933, 86 were hauled off to the ghettos of Lodz, Riga, Minsk, and Warsaw. Only two of them survived the Holocaust. It is unknown what happened to the rest of the congregation.”

A few observations. Among the survivors baptized in the Messias Kapelle was my uncle who lived until 1982. Beyond the obvious interest in self-preservation for the 700 or so Jews who got baptized in the Messias Kapelle during the Nazi era, the fact they could be baptized here as late as 1939, worship among other Jewish converts, and be told about the Jewish Messiah may have had appeal. While it’s unclear whether the chapel has been deconsecrated, the author of the above quote tells us that a marketing and public relations firm now owns it and that the worship hall, altar, and a marble relief resembling a Temple survive. It’s sad this is not a recognized historic monument.

Growing up my father never spoke about religion and religion was never part of my upbringing. In fact, I was baptized as a Catholic by my grandparents at six years of age in Lyon, France, at the request of my parents almost as an afterthought, hoping it might protect me in the event of another Holocaust. However, as most readers will surmise, as a half-Jew, I would have been considered a mischlinge of the first degree according to the Nuremberg Laws. Not good enough to survive being murdered.

Aware my father had attended dental school in Berlin, I checked with the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin to ascertain whether they might have a record of my father’s conversion, but they do not. Knowing my father’s penchant for procrastinating, I have always suspected my father never placed a high priority on getting baptized and converting until it became an absolute necessity. And, in my opinion, that only became necessary after he moved to the town of Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] in the Free State of Danzig where he opened his dental practice in 1932. As I discussed in Post 38, the evidence for my father’s conversion comes in the form of a receipt for payment of quarterly church taxes to the Evangelische Kirche in Tiegenhof. (Figure 16)

 

Figure 16. Document found among my father’s papers initially thought to be a dental invoice later determined to be a receipt for payment in 1936 of Church Tax to the Evangelische Kirche in Tiegenhof

 

Figure 17. My second cousin twice removed, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), in his WWI military dress uniform

 

My second cousin twice-removed, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) (Figure 17), subject of several recent Blog posts is thought to have converted in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland]. Dr. Barbara Bruziewicz-Mikłaszewska, professor of dentistry at the University of Wrocław, who has written about Dr. Bruck, cites a file from the University’s archives saying he converted in 1916 (i.e., University file: sygn. S99, s. 62, nr sprawy AU – 481/46/2001). As we speak, I am working with one of Dr. Bruziewicz-Mikłaszewska’s colleagues to obtain verification of the date of Dr. Bruck’s baptism. Unlike his father and grandfather, who are buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Walter’s place of internment in Wrocław is unknown but was undoubtedly in a Christian cemetery that likely no longer exists.

As I mentioned above, in principle all surviving records of Jewish conversions to Christianity in Berlin are archived at the Evangelische Zentralarchiv. For conversions that took place outside of Berlin, however, there is no central repository of this information that I am aware of. Thus, the only possibility of tracking down comparable information for one’s Jewish ancestors is to know the town and parish church where the baptism occurred, and then hope the registers have survived.

 

REFERENCES

Bruziewicz Mikłaszewska, Barbara. Outline of the history of university dentistry in Breslau/Wrocław. [Polish: Zarys dziejów uniwersyteckiej stomatologii we Wrocławiu]. 2010, University of Wrocław, PhD.

Hertz, Deborah. How Jews Became Germans: The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin. Yale University Press, 2009.

Jurik, Christiane. “In the Eye of the Storm: Messianic Believers in Nazi Germany.” Ariel Magazine, Winter 2019, www.ariel.org/magazine/a/in-the-eye-of-the-storm-messianic-believers-in-nazi-germany

Kirshner, Sheldon. “Historian Studies Phenomenon of Conversion in Germany.” Canadian Jewish News, 17 January 2008.

 

POST 105: FEDOR LÖWENSTEIN’S NAZI-CONFISCATED ART: RESTITUTION DENIED

Note: In this post, I discuss my own attempt to obtain compensation and damages from the French government on behalf of my family for works of art seized by the Nazis in December 1940 from my father’s first cousin, Fedor Löwenstein, a noted painter. I also touch on the multiple occasions France has wronged my family during WWII, following WWII, and continuing to the present.

Related Posts:

POST 15: BERLIN & MY GREAT-AUNTS FRANZISKA & ELSBETH BRUCK

POST 16: TRACKING MY GREAT-AUNT HEDWIG LÖWENSTEIN, NÉE BRUCK, & HER FAMILY THROUGH FIVE COUNTRIES

POST 71: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF MY FATHER, DR. OTTO BRUCK–22ND OF AUGUST 1930

 

Figure 1. My great-aunt Franziska Bruck (1866-1942)
Figure 2. My great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck (1874-1970)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This story begins in 2014. This is the year my wife and I took a 13-week trip to Europe traveling from northeastern Poland to southeastern Spain following the path of my Jewish family’s diaspora. It included a stop at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, on the outskirts of Berlin, where the personal papers of two of my accomplished and unmarried great-aunts, Franziska Bruck (Figure 1) and Elsbeth Bruck (Figure 2), are archived. The family items at the Statdtmuseum include academic papers, diaries, numerous professional and personal letters, family photographs, awards, and miscellaneous belongings. (Figures 3a-b) During my visit, I photographed all the articles and artifacts for later study.

 

Figure 3a. Entrance to the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, Berlin, Germany where my great-aunts’ personal papers are archived
Figure 3b. Archival boxes at the Stadtmuseum containing my great-aunts’ personal papers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The letters and photographs turned out to be most informative. The letters were written in four forms, Old German Script (known as die Kurrentschrift or Kurrent for short in German); an updated version of Kurrent called Sütterlin developed in the early 20th Century; normal German script (deutsche Normalschrift); and typed normal German. Suffice it to say, that the three forms of German script are completely indecipherable to me, so I depended on German-speaking friends and relatives to translate these letters. However, in the case of letters typed in German, using a good on-line translator, called DeepL, I was able to make sense of the content of some of these missives.

One letter I translated provides the basis of much of this Blog post. (Figures 4a-c) It contains astonishing information that led to the seven-year odyssey I embarked upon to obtain redress from the French government for an injustice perpetrated upon my father’s first cousin, Fedor Löwenstein, by the Nazis. The letter was written by Fedor’s younger sister, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein, to her aunt, my great-aunt, Elsbeth Bruck. It is dated the 30th of October 1946, and was sent from Nice, France to Berlin, Germany. What makes the letter so astounding is not that it mentions both my paternal grandmother ELSE Bruck and my father OTTO Bruck, since both had connections to Nice and France in 1946, but rather to Hansi’s declaration that one of her brother Fedya’s (named Fedor but also called “Fidel”) paintings had sold posthumously in 1946 for 90,000 French Francs. Using a Historic Currency Converter, I determined this would be worth more than $16,000 as of 2015, obviously even more today. Given the enormous amount that one of Fedor Lowenstein’s paintings had fetched in 1946 convinced me that he was no run-of-the-mill painter and that I needed to learn more about him.

 

Figure 4a. First page of typed letter dated the 30th of October 1946 sent by my father’s first cousin, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein, to her aunt, my great-aunt, Elsbeth Bruck
Figure 4b. Second page of typed letter dated the 30th of October 1946 sent by my father’s first cousin, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein, to her aunt, my great-aunt, Elsbeth Bruck

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4c. Translation of letter

 

One place my wife and I visited in 2014 attempting to obtain copies of original death certificates for ancestors who had died in Nice was la Mairie de Nice, City Hall. There, I was able to obtain death certificates not only for Fedor Lowenstein (Figure 5) and his mother, Hedwig Löwenstein née Bruck (Figure 6), but also for his sister, Jeanne Goff née Löwenstein. (Figure 7) I was fortunate to even find Fedor Lowenstein’s name in the death register. In German, his surname was spelled “Löwenstein,” with the “ö,” that’s to say with an umlaugh over the “o,” transcribed in English as “oe”; in the French death register, Fedor’s surname was spelled simply as “Lowenstein” (Figure 8), so I nearly missed finding his name among the 1946 deaths. I would later discover that Fedor’s surname was variously spelled “Lowenstein,” “Löwenstein,” and even “Loevenstein.”

 

Figure 5. Fedor Lowenstein’s death certificate from Nice, France indicating he died there on the 4th of August 1946
Figure 6. Fedor Löwenstein’s mother’s death certificate from Nice, France showing Hedwig Löwenstein née Bruck died there on the 15th of January 1949; the name on her death certificate is “Edwige Bruck”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 7. Fedor Löwenstein’s sister’s death certificate from Nice, France showing Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein died there on the 5th of May 1986; the name on her death certificate is “Jeanne Loewenstein”
Figure 8. Death register listing dated the 5th of August 1946 for Fedor Löwenstein listing his name as “Fedor Lowenstein”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having obtained the death certificates, I was dispatched to a different administrative office in Nice, le Service Administration Funéraire, the Funeral Administration Office, to locate their tombs. While Fedor’s sister I learned had been cremated, the Funeral Administration Office directed me to the Cimetière Caucade, the Caucade Communal Cemetery (Figure 9), on the outskirts of Nice to find Fedor and Hedwig’s tombstones. (Figures 10-11) It was providential that I was assisted at the Funeral Administration Office by a Mme. Jöelle Saramito (Figure 12), who would later render me a great service.

 

Figure 9. Reception Bureau at Cimitiere Caucade where Fedor Löwenstein and his mother were once interred

 

Figure 10. Hedwig Löwenstein née Bruck’s surviving headstone though her bones were removed to a charnel house
Figure 11. Fedor Loewenstein’s headstone correctly transcribing the “ö” as “oe”; the headstone survives though his bones were also removed to a charnel house

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 12. In 2015, me standing alongside Mme. Jöelle Saramito from Nice’s Funeral Administration Office, who helped track down valuable information about Fedor Löwenstein

 

 

Jeanne Goff née Löwenstein’s translated 1946 letter convinced me her brother was no ordinary painter. Knowing this, I became curious whether I could obtain an obituary from a contemporary newspaper that might lead me to living descendants. Hoping Mme. Saramito might be able to track it down for me, or at least point me in the right direction, I contacted her. What she provided surpassed my expectations.

In what can only be characterized as a fortunate occurrence of serendipity, Mme. Saramito sent me links to several articles about an exposition featuring three of Fedor Löwenstein’s paintings seized by the Nazis that had been displayed at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux. Unbeknownst to my wife and me, this exhibit had taken place there between the 16th of May and the 24th of August 2014, overlapping our extended stay in Europe that year; needless to say, had we known about this exposition, we would have detoured there.

Among the links Mme. Saramito sent me was an article naming the art curator for the exhibition held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, a lady named Florence Saragoza; the article also mentioned the French government was looking for legitimate family members to whom Fedor Loewenstein’s artworks could be returned.

 

Figure 13. March 1946 photo of Fedor Loewenstein (seated) with his sister Hansi, his brother Heinz, and his mother Hedwig in Nice, France, taken several months before his death in August 1946
Figure 14. Photo of Fedor Loewenstein with his brother Heinz in military uniform taken in Nice, France on the 24th of October 1945

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While I had several photographs of Fedor Löwenstein with his family in Nice (Figurse 13-14) found at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, and a copy of his acte de décès, death certificate, obtained from la Mairie de Nice, there was much I did not know about my father’s first cousin. Hoping to learn more, I tried to contact Mme. Saragoza, and quickly discovered she was affiliated with the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication as a conservatrice du patrimoine, curator of heritage. My initial email to her at the Ministère de la Culture “bounced.” I eventually learned that she was also the then-Director of the Musée Crozatier in le Puy-en-Velay, France (Figure 15), where my subsequent email reached her. I will always remember her response dated the 16th of September 2014, “What a surprise to read your e-mail! (To be honest I cried) . . .I’m so glad to read about someone from Lowenstein’s family!” Logically, Mme. Saragoza had assumed that Fedor’s family had been murdered in the Holocaust, emigrated, or would be unlikely to learn about the exhibition in Bordeaux and the resurfaced paintings. More on this later.

 

Figure 15. Mme. Florence Saragoza, former Director of Musée Crozatier in le Puy-en-Velay, France

 

 

Almost immediately after connecting with Mme. Saragoza, she sent me the Journal d’exposition, the exhibition catalog, for the Fédor Löwenstein (1901-1946) trois œuvres martyres exposition. (Figure 16) Most of Fedor Löwenstein’s biography and the history behind the works of art confiscated by the Nazis is drawn from this reference.

 

Figure 16. Cover page of the 2014 exhibition catalog from the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux that featured Fedor Löwenstein’s three orphaned paintings

 

 

Wilhelm Fédor Löwenstein was born in Munich, Germany on the 13th of April 1901, and is often characterized as a Czech painter because this was his family’s country of origin. He first studied at the School of Decorative Arts in Berlin and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden. In 1923, Fédor Löwenstein settled in Paris (Figures 17a-b), attracted by the artistic influence of the capital. An artistic movement dominated there, designated in 1925 as the École de Paris, the School of Paris; in reality, this name does not refer to any school that really existed, but rather to the École de Paris, which brought together artists who contributed to making Paris the focus of artistic creation between the two world wars. It was in this rich artistic context that Löwenstein painted and drew.

 

Figure 17a. Undated photo of Fedor Löwenstein as a young man
Figure 17b. Back of undated photo of Fedor Löwenstein indicating he was the first cousin of my aunt Susanne Müller-Bruck, my uncle Fedor Bruck, and my father Otto Bruck

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Paris he mixed with and became a student of the painter André Lhote from Bordeaux and joined the “Groupe des Surindépendants” in 1936. Löwenstein’s early works were marked by the influence of cubism, whose main representatives worked in Paris, although his subsequent productions evolved towards abstraction, probably under the influence of André Lhote. In 1938, he painted “La Chute” (The Fall), inspired by the signing of the Munich Agreement that dismantled the Czechoslovakia that had been created in 1918. As is noted in the 2014 Bordeaux retrospective exhibition catalog, “The composition and iconographic vocabulary of the work are reminiscent of the convulsed and screaming silhouettes of Picasso’s Guernica, exhibited a year earlier in the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris World’s Fair.” The comparison to Picasso’s famed work speaks volumes about Löwenstein’s remarkable talent. 

When France entered the war in September 1939, Löwenstein, like many artists, had to leave the capital. As a foreigner, he had to hide to escape France’s exclusion laws. He went to Mirmande (Drôme) on the advice of Marcelle Rivier, a friend and another of André Lhote’s students. The two artists probably met in Paris shortly before France entered the war. At that time, Mirmande, a village in ruins, welcomed a few painters who lived there. But most of them came there to work alongside André Lhote during his summer academy. The village became a place of refuge for many Parisian artists of foreign origin, all of whom led a relatively peaceful life, free from military operations and repression, contending mostly with the difficulty of obtaining art supplies.

This ended abruptly when the Germans occupied the whole of Metropolitan France in November 1942. Until then, the French Demarcation line marked the boundary between the occupied part of France administered by the German Army in the northern and western part of France and the Zone libre in the south. The suppression of the Demarcation line marked by the invasion of the southern zone by the Germans put an end to the peaceful life the artists in Miramande had enjoyed.  This caused the group gathered there to break up.

From then on, it was the French Resistance network that worked to protect the refugees of Mirmande, thus allowing many Jewish painters to flee. Marcelle Rivier, Fedor Löwenstein’s friend who had enticed him to move there, somewhat amusingly described her involvement in his evacuation in 1943 from Miramande: “That night I put on Lowenstein one of these vast peasant skirts that we wore then and by a night of full moon in this month of February 1943, we left for Cliousclat. . .With his skirt, Lowenstein had the air of a horse disguised and the ground left no other means than to take the traced road. There I entrusted him to Ména Loopuyt, a Dutch painter living in Cliousclat. Charles Caillet had gone by bicycle to the abbey of Aiguebelle to get along with the abbot and gave us an appointment at his house. The next day at midnight, Doctor Debanne disguised the Jews as wounded, and they were taken to Aiguebelle.”

As the exposition catalog goes on to describe, “They [the Jews] were in possession of false identity cards made by Maurice Caillet, the curator of the Valence Museum. In agreement with the bishopric and the superior of the community, the monks of the abbey of Aiguebelle in the Drôme welcomed refugees at the end of 1942 and sheltered Jews whom they employed in the various works of the abbey. Löwenstein decorated tiles without enthusiasm.”

In the fall of 1943, ill, Fedor went to Paris, under the pseudonym of Lauriston, to consult at the Curie Institute and at the Broussais Hospital in the south of Paris, where Dr. Paul Chevallier, a French pioneer in hematology, was practicing. However, his disease was not diagnosed, and he continued to deteriorate. Löwenstein would eventually return to his family in Nice, where he was hospitalized and would die on the 4th of August 1946. It was determined he died of Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Fedor’s association with the “Groupe des Surindépendants” from 1936 onward resulted in him exhibiting regularly with them until the outbreak of WWII. The group even organized a personal exhibition for him in 1939. At some point in 1940 during his stay in Miramande, Fedor returned to Paris where he selected small format works as well as six watercolors that he brought to be shipped to New York City. There is little information about the circumstances surrounding this project, but the paintings were sent to a harbor warehouse in Bordeaux for shipment to an American gallery. Unfortunately, the crates never left Bordeaux but were instead “requisitioned” by German military authorities on the 5th of December 1940, the date of a major seizure operation.

A special commando unit affiliated with the “Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR)” (Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce) raided the warehouse where Fedor’s crates were stored, seized them, and had them shipped to Paris where they were stored at the “Jeu de Paume.” The ERR was a Nazi Party organization dedicated to appropriating cultural property during WWII and was led by the chief ideologue of the Nazi Party, Alfred Rosenberg, ergo its name. The Jeu de Paume was the seat of ERR’s processing of looted art objects confiscated from Jewish-owned collections.

Owing to the abstract cubist nature of Löwenstein’s works, the ERR staff at the Jeu de Paume deemed them as “degenerate” and consigned them to the store room for condemned art, the “Salles des Martyrs,” Martyrs’ Hall. They were marked for destruction, in German “vernichet.” In total, 25 paintings by Fedor were seized and brought to the Jeu de Paume to be disposed of for ideological reasons.

Almost seventy years after the Liberation of Paris in August 1944 three of the purportedly destroyed Löwenstein paintings resurfaced in French museum collections. French Ministry of Culture officials were able to match the resurrected paintings with information contained in the ERR database for three works labeled by the Germans as Löwenstein 4 (“Paysage” or Landscape), Löwenstein 15 (“Peupliers” or Poplars), and Löwenstein 19 (“Les Arbes” or The Trees). In the official catalogue of unclaimed works and objects of art known as “Musée Nationaux Récupération (MNR),” the works are assigned MNR numbers R26, R27, and R28. These three paintings correspond to Löwenstein’s works of art that were displayed at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux in 2014 for which I would later file a claim for restitution. As an aside, all three paintings were signed “Fedor Loevenstein.” I would later learn from a French reader of my Blog, who purchased several of his works at auction, that Löwenstein also signed some with his initials in reverse, “LF.”

In connection with researching and writing the catalog for the 2014 exhibit of Fedor Löwenstein’s three resurrected paintings, Florence Saragoza and her colleagues uncovered the notes of the curator at the Jeu de Paume, Rose Valland. Her notes from July 20, 1943, confirm the fate of artworks destined for destruction: “Scholz and his team continue to choose from among the paintings in the Louvre’s escrow and stab the paintings they do not want to keep. This is how they destroyed almost all of Masson’s works, all of Dalí’s. The paintings in the Loewenstein, Esmont (sic), M[ichel]-G[eorges] Michel collections are almost all shredded. . .” On July 23rd, she added “The paintings massacred in the Louvre’s sequestration were brought back to the Jeu de Paume. Five or six hundred were burned under German surveillance in the museum garden from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. . . . The paintings that remained in the Louvre were classified by category. . .”. It appears that Löwenstein’s three works that escaped destruction had been classified by the Louvre as “paintings of lesser importance,” while the remaining works were likely stabbed, shredded and/or incinerated.

As a side note, since virtually all the images of Fedor Löwenstein’s paintings as well as the historic images of the Martyrs’ Hall at the Jeu de Paume are copyrighted, I refer readers to the hyperlinks to view photos.

As a mildly interesting aside, Florence Saragoza and her colleagues, using the notes left behind by Rose Valland, then curatorial attaché at the Jeu de Paume, were able to attribute most of the paintings exhibited there. They did this using a detailed digitization of the negatives, work by work, accompanied by anamorphosis. This was a new term to me and is defined as: “. . .a distorted projection requiring the viewer to occupy a specific vantage point, use special devices, or both to view a recognizable image. It is used in painting, photography, sculpture and installation, toys, and film special effects. The word is derived from the Greek prefix ana-, meaning ‘back’ or ‘again’, and the word morphe, meaning ‘shape’ or ‘form.’ Extreme anamorphosis has been used by artists to disguise caricatures, erotic and scatological scenes, and other furtive images from a casual spectator, while revealing an undistorted image to the knowledgeable viewer.” In the case of the historic photos on display in the Martyrs’ Hall, I take this to mean that since the paintings in the photos look somewhat distorted, some digital manipulation was required to identify and attribute the works of art.

As previously mentioned, Fedor Löwenstein’s 25 paintings were seized from État-major administratif du port, hangar H, Bordeaux, the “Port Administration Headquarters, Hanger H, Bordeaux.” They were seized at the same time as a set of Dali’s works were taken from another collector, which were described under the acronym “unbekannt,” “unknown.” This was intended to indicate that the history of the works had been lost during the various transfers from their seizure in Bordeaux to their shipment to Paris, the inventories being drawn up only belatedly by the historians of the ERR. Again quoting from the exhibition catalog, “But the fact that these collections were made anonymous was also part of the ideological policy of the Third Reich, which aimed at cultural appropriation, an affirmation of superiority inscribed in a historical connection and a rewriting of art history.” As in the case of Dali’s works, the provenance of the three orphan paintings by Löwenstein was lost and they were described as having been donated anonymously in 1973. Only in 2011 were they were reclassified as stolen works. This brings me to where things stood when I learned all the above.

Soon after connecting with Florence Saragoza, she asked me whether I wanted to file a claim with the Commission pour l’indemnisation des victimes de spoliations (CIVS) for the return of Fedor Löwenstein’s three orphan paintings, as well as payment of damages. CIVS is the commission established in 1999 under the French Prime Minister to implement the policy of the State regarding the reparation of the damages suffered by the Jews of France whose property was looted during the Occupation, because of the anti-Semitic measures taken by the German occupier or by the Vichy regime. This seemed like a logical next step. Given my intimate familiarity with my father and his first cousins’ family tree, I immediately realized that I am Fedor’s closest living relative. (Figure 18) That’s to say, because neither Fedor nor either of his two siblings had any children or surviving spouses, as a first cousin once removed, I am their closest surviving blood relative.

 

Figure 18. My father Dr. Otto Bruck (1907-1994) standing alongside his first cousin and the sister of Fedor Löwenstein, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein, on the 2nd of March 1947 in Fayence, France, the town from where my aunt Susanne Müller-Bruck was deported to Auschwitz

 

 

With Mme. Saragoza’s gracious assistance, I filed a claim with CIVS in October 2014. CIVS acknowledged receipt of my claim in November 2014, assigning it a case number, “Requête 24005 BROOK,” noting that considering the numerous claims pending before their office and the multiple archives and offices that would need to be consulted, it could take some time to render a decision. In fact, it took more than 6 ½ years.

In June 2015, my wife and I met with the staff at the CIVS in Paris (Figure 19) to discuss my claim, whereupon I provided them with a written account of the chronology detailed above and my ancestral connection to Fedor Löwenstein. In February 2017, I was eventually contacted by a genealogist contracted by CIVS to investigate my claim. I shared an updated written account of what I had sent to CIVS in 2015, and included an extensive array of historic documents, photos, and exhibits, along with a detailed family tree. In essence, I did the genealogist’s work for him.

 

Figure 19. In June 2015, meeting in Paris with Mme. Muriel De Bastier and Mlle. Eleonore Claret from CIVS, the Premier Ministre’s office handling my restitution claim

 

Between February 2017 and June 2021, when CIVS rendered their written decision, I was never contacted by the Premier Ministre’s office. The decision letter from the Premier Ministre along with the attached report by Le Rapporteur Generale arrived on the 17th of June 2021. It included much of the same information discussed above. The final decision is that my claim was rejected.

Beyond the disappointment and anger I feel about this determination, I was curious about the merits and legal basis of this ruling. Inasmuch as I can ascertain, it appears that because France is governed by principles of civil law rather than common law, my rights have been supplanted. Civil law has its features compiled and codified into a collection for ready reference. It is inspired by the Roman law. Common law, on the other hand, has its rules and regulations administered by judges and vary on a case-to-case basis. Civil law was framed in France. Common law was started in England. Common law varies from case to case depending upon the customs of the society whereas civil law has a predefined written set of statutes and codes for reference. Judgment in common law varies whereas in civil law, the judges must strictly follow the codification written in the book.

In the case of my claim for restitution, CIVS concluded there are what are called “universal legatees,” an element of civil law, whose claim to Löwenstein’s property and damages supersede my own. France considers property left in a will a “universal legacy,” so the person who inherits the rights, obligations, possession, and debts of an ancestor’s title in property through a testamentary disposition is called a “universal legatee.”

These universal legatees in the case of Fedor Löwenstein’s estate are descendants of individuals, merely friends, who inherited from his brother and sister. They and their descendants were not and are not related by blood to Fedor Löwenstein, as I am. Were it not for my efforts to uncover information about Fedor’s orphaned works and file a claim for repatriation and damages, these individuals would have no knowledge of their existence. Furthermore, had it not been for my own extensive genealogical research into Fedor Löwenstein’s spoliated works and ancestry, the CIVS genealogist contracted to undertake the forensic investigation into my claim likely would not have uncovered all the information I provided in 2017. Notwithstanding the stated wishes of CIVS and the Musée National d’Art Moderne housed in the Centre Pompidou in Paris to restore Fedor Löwenstein’s to his family, this is emphatically not happening.

Figure 20. My father Dr. Otto Bruck standing on la Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France in 1946

In retrospect, I would say I should not be surprised by this outcome. France has a long-standing tradition of having wronged my family going back to when the French were complicit in helping the Germans deport my aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck in August 1942, from Fayence, France to Auschwitz, where she was ultimately murdered. Then, following the war, in 1948, they arrested my father, Dr. Otto Bruck (Figure 20), in Nice, France for allegedly practicing dentistry illegally, simply for managing the practice of a dentist who had no interest in her business. My father was arrested only because he was “apatride,” stateless. Rather than offer French citizenry to a man who spoke fluent French and who offered a service much-in-need following WWII, they detained and intended to prosecute him had he not decamped for America. And this although my father served France nobly and honorably for five years during the war as a soldier in the French Foreign Legion. Arguably, France may have met its legal obligation with its decision regarding my claim, but they most assuredly have not fulfilled their moral obligation by handing over my ancestor’s paintings and awarding damages to so-called “universal legatees.” Family of Fedor Löwenstein they are decidedly NOT!!

 

 

REFERENCE

 

Fédor Löwenstein (1901-1946) trois œuvres martyres. 16 May-24 Aug. 2014. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, Bordeaux.

 

 

VITAL STATISTICS OF WILHELM FÉDOR LÖWENSTEIN & HIS IMMEDIATE FAMILY

 

NAME EVENT DATE PLACE SOURCE
         
Wilhelm Fédor Löwenstein (self) Birth 13 April 1901 Munich, Germany Munich Birth Certificate
  Death 4 August 1946 Nice, France Nice Death Certificate
Rudolf Löwenstein (father) Birth 17 January 1872 Kuttenplan, Czechoslovakia [today: Chodová Planá, Czech Republic] Kuttenplan, Czechoslovakia Birth Register Listing
  Marriage (to Hedwig Bruck) 17 September 1899 Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] LDS Family History Center Microfilm Roll 1184449 (Ratibor)
  Death 22 August 1930 Iglau, Czechoslovakia [today: Jihlava, Czech Republic] LDS Family History Center Microfilm Roll 1184408 (Danzig)
Hedwig Löwenstein Bruck (mother) Birth 22 March 1870 Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] LDS Family History Center Microfilm Roll 1184449 (Ratibor)
  Marriage (to Rudolf Löwenstein) 17 September 1899 Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] Ratibor Marriage Certificate
  Death 15 January 1949 Nice, France Nice Death Certificate
Elsbeth Bruck (aunt) Birth 17 November 1874 Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland German Democratic Republic Passport
  Death 20 February 1970 East Berlin, German Democratic Republic  
Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein (sister) Birth 9 September 1902 Danzig, Free State [today: Gdansk, Poland] Danzig Birth Certificate
  Marriage (to Georges Goff) UNKNOWN    
  Death 5 May 1986 Nice, France Nice Death Certificate
Heinz Löwenstein (brother) (died as “Hanoch Avneri”) Birth 8 March 1905 Danzig, Free State [today: Gdansk, Poland] LDS Family History Center Microfilm Roll 1184407 (Danzig)
  Marriage (to Rose Bloch) 22 October 1931 Danzig, Free State [today: Gdansk, Poland] Danzig Marriage Certificate
  Death 10 August 1979 Haifa, Israel Haifa Burial Certificate
Otto Bruck (first cousin) (died as Gary Otto Brook) Birth 16 April 1907 Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] Ratibor Birth Certificate
  Marriage 22 October 1949 Manhattan, New York  
  Death 14 September 1994 Queens, New York New York City Death Certificate
Richard Alan Brook (first cousin once removed) Birth 27 December 1950 Manhattan, New York  

 

 

 

POST 104: THE WOINOWITZ ZUCKERFABRIK (SUGAR FACTORY) OUTSIDE RATIBOR (PART VI-COMPENSATION DENIED)

 

Note: In what I anticipate will be the last installment about the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) located outside Ratibor, Germany, the town where my father Dr. Otto Bruck was born in 1907, I review the background and explore the German law that resulted in compensation being denied to descendants of the original co-owners of the factory. Readers will be disappointed because I am unable to clearly explain this. I will end this sequence of articles about the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik with a series of questions that remain unanswered. This post allows readers to understand the twisted path sometimes involved in retrieving and reconstructing ancestral information for one’s family, resulting in both satisfactory and unsatisfactory outcomes.

Related Posts:

Post 25: Death in The Shanghai Ghetto

Post 36: The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part I-Background)

Post 36, Postscript: The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part I-Maps)

Post 55: The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part II-Restitution for Forced Sale by The Nazis)

Post 59: The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part III—Heirs)

Post 61: The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part IV-Grundbuch (Land Register))

Post 98, Part 1 (Stories): The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part V-Chilean Descendants)

Post 98, Part 2 (Documents): The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part V-Chilean Descendants)

 

At the outset, I need to apologize to readers for the exhaustive background of how the heirs of Adolph Schück (1840-1916) (Figure 1) and his brother-in-law Sigmund Hirsch (1848-1920) (Figure 2), the original co-owners of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Figure 3), attempted to obtain compensation from the German government for the forced sale of the plant by the Nazis in 1936. Regular readers know I am not only a stickler for accuracy but also for sourcing my information. Unfortunately, this sometimes leads to tedious detail.

 

Figure 1. Adolph Schück (1840-1916), co-owner of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik
Figure 2. Sigmund Hirsch, Adolph Schück’s brother-in-law and partner in the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3. A postcard of the Woinowitz sugar factory as it looked in the early 1900’s

 

In Post 25, I discussed the fate of one of my father’s first cousins, Fritz Goldenring, who perished in the Shanghai Ghetto on the 15th of December 1943. As I explained to readers at the time, I contacted one of the Chabad centers in Shanghai hoping to obtain a copy of Mr. Goldenring’s death certificate; Chabad is one of the largest Hasidic groups and Jewish religious organizations in the world promoting Judaism and providing daily Torah lectures and Jewish insights.  Almost immediately after sending emails to three centers, I received a reply from Rabbi Shalom Greenberg.  He had forwarded my request to Mr. Dvir Bar-Gal, who leads “Tours of Jewish Shanghai” and has become known as Shanghai’s “gravestone sleuth” because of his tireless work tracking down Jewish tombstones scattered around the city’s outlying villages following the demolition of the Jewish cemeteries there.

While unable to provide a death certificate for Mr. Goldenring, Mr. Bar-Gal offered useful information.  He told me that before being expelled from Germany, Fritz had last worked in Darmstadt, Germany as a journalist.  He suggested I contact the Rathaus (City Hall) there by email.  My question to them about Fritz Goldenring was forwarded to the Stadtarchiv, or City Archive, in Darmstadt, and in October 2017 they responded. They too could not find his death certificate nor evidence Fritz Goldenring had lived in Darmstadt, but they did provide a valuable clue to an on-line directory mentioning him kept at the Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, the Hesse Central State Archive, in Wiesbaden. They also told me Fritz had been born in Berlin, and I was subsequently able to locate his birth certificate showing he was born there on the 11th of September 1902. (Figure 4)

 

Figure 4. Fritz Hermann Goldenring’s birth certificate showing he was born in the Berlin borough of Wilmersdorf on the 11th of September 1902

 

Based on what the Stadtarchiv in Darmstadt told me, I next contacted the Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, hoping to finally obtain Mr. Goldenring’s death certificate there.  While they too were unable to track it down, the archivist told me about an Entschädigungsakte, a claim for compensation file, submitted by his mother Helene Goldenring née Hirsch (Figure 5), as the heir of her son’s estate. Presumably, this was the document the Stadtarchiv in Darmstadt found mention of. After paying a fee, I was able to obtain a copy of this 160-page file, a document that ultimately filled in some holes.

 

Figure 5. Helene “Lene” Goldenring née Hirsch (1880-1968), in New York at Christmas 1950

 

The review above provides the necessary context for where this led me in March of this year. While working on a Blog post unrelated to the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, I took the opportunity to reexamine the 160-page file the Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv had sent me in December 2017. Something I had previously deemed inconsequential caught my attention this time, namely, a reference to a file about the sugar factory numbered “Reg. Nr. 40 672.” (Figure 6)

 

Figure 6. Page from Helene Goldenring née Hirsch’s compensation file mentioning case number “Reg. Nr. 40 672” dealing with the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik that I eventually obtained from the “Landesamt für Bürger- und Organisationsangelegenheiten (LABO)” in Berlin

 

Having no idea what this might contain or where to obtain a copy, I asked Mr. Achim Stavenhagen-Bucher, a Swiss acquaintance with greater familiarity deciphering German documents, if he could help. He suggested I contact the “Bezirksregierung Düsseldorf.” Achim explained this office was responsible for handling claims from Nazi victims of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia as well as those regions that belonged to Germany until the 31st of December 1937, based on the Bundesentschädigungsgesetz (BEG), the Federal Compensation Act; this Act encompasses three separate German laws that were adopted in 1953, 1956, and 1965. I will return to these later as it gets to the heart of why the lineal heirs of the owners of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik were denied compensation for the forced sale by the Nazis of the sugar factory in 1936.

As the source of Helene Goldenring née Hirsch’s original 160-page compensation package, I again contacted the Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv asking them how I might obtain the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik file. They referred me to the Landesarchiv Berlin, though the response from the Bezirksregierung Düsseldorf is ultimately how I tracked down and obtained the document. They told me to contact the Landesamt für Bürger- und Organisationsangelegenheiten (LABO) in Berlin, specifically their Compensation Office, the Entschädigungsbehörde. Their website describes their function:

“The compensation authority in the State Office for Citizens’ and Regulatory Affairs implements the Federal Law on Compensation for Victims of National Socialist Persecution (BEG), the Law on Compensation for Victims of National Socialism (BerlEG), the Law on the Recognition and Provision for Victims of Political, Racial or Religious Persecution under National Socialism (PrVG) as part of its responsibility for the State of Berlin.

According to the will of the federal legislature, initial applications under the BEG for recognition and provision of National Socialist injustice have not been admissible since 1969. Persons recognized as victims of persecution generally receive monthly pension benefits and ongoing, case-by-case health care benefits (curative proceedings) for established health damage because of National Socialist injustice. Each western federal state has its own compensation authority. Section 185 of the Federal Compensation Act regulates which of the compensation authorities is responsible in each individual case.

All benefits are granted only upon application. The exclusion of compensation benefits to former members of the NSDAP [National Socialist German Workers’ Party] or one of its branches goes without saying.”

I contacted LABO and had the good fortune to land upon a very helpful lady, Ms. Angela Sponholz, who sent me “Reg. Nr. 40 672” related to the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik at no charge. I will get into some of the contents of this file below.

At this point, let me briefly digress and identify Adolph Schück’s and Sigmund Hirsch’s heirs and provide some observations as to their rights to shares of the sugar factory. Except as noted below, the following analysis assumes that, upon the death of an individual, his or her share goes to the individual’s spouse; if there is no spouse upon death, it would be divided among the individual’s children; and if there is no spouse and there are no children, it would be divided among the individual’s siblings. The analysis assumes this order of distribution either under applicable intestacy laws or under the provisions of any applicable wills or trusts.

 

ADOLPH SCHÜCK AND SIGMUND HIRSCH’S HEIRS 

 

POST-1920 OWNERS FIRST TIER HEIRS SECOND TIER HEIRS THIRD TIER HEIRS **
       
Auguste Leyser née Schück (1872-1943) (1/6th) (Adolph Schück’s daughter) Friedrich Leyser (1898-1959) (1/12th) (Auguste Schück’s son)

 

 Katerina Leyser née Rosenthal (1903-1992) (Friedrich Leyser’s wife)  
  Margot Leyser née Leyser (1893-1982) (1/12th) (Auguste Schück’s daughter)    
Elly Kayser née Schück

(1874-1911) (1/6th) (Adolph Schück’s daughter)

 Franz Kayser (1897-1983) (1/6th) (Elly Schück’s son)    
Erich Schück (1878-1938) (1/6th) (Adolph Schück’s son)

 

 Hedwig Schück née Jendricke (1/6th) (1890-1960) (Erich Schück’s wife) Anna Johannsen née Brügge (1897-?) (half-sister of Hedwig Schück née Jendricke)

 

Sophia Dalstrand née Brügge (1900-1980)

(half-sister of Hedwig Schück née Jendricke)

 

Christian Brügge II (1902-?) (half-brother of Hedwig Schück née Jendricke)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 
Christian Brügge III (~1927-?) (son of Christian Brügge II)

 

Helmuth Brügge (~1930-?) (son of Christian Brügge II)

 
Helene Goldenring née Hirsch (1880-1968) (1/6th) (Sigmund Hirsch’s daughter) ## Eva Zernick née Goldenring (1/6th) (1906-1969) (Helene Goldenring née Hirsch’s daughter)    
Robert Hirsch (1881-1943) (1/6th) (Sigmund Hirsch’s son) Helene Goldenring née Hirsch (1/12th) (1880-1968) (Robert Hirsch’s sister) ##

 

Frieda Mamlok née Hirsch (1883-1955) (1/12th) (Robert Hirsch’s sister)

   
Frieda Mamlok née Hirsch (1883-1955) (1/6th) (Sigmund Hirsch’s daughter)

 

 Alfred Mamlok (1874-~1960) (1/12th) (Frieda Mamlok née Hirsch’s husband)

 

 

 

 

Hans Walter Mamlok (1908-1956) (1/24th) (Frieda Mamlok née Hirsch’s son) ++

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Erich Mamlok (1913-1991) (1/24th) (Frieda Mamlok née Hirsch’s son)

 

 

 

 

 

  
Erich Mamlok (1913-1991) (1/48th) (Hans Mamlok’s brother)

 

Helene Goldenring née Hirsch (1880-1968) (1/72nd) (Hans Mamlok’s aunt) ##

 

Alfred Mamlok (1874-~1960) (1/144th) Hans Mamlok’s father)

 
 

 

** Only those third-tier heirs who are known to have received “damages” from the German government in connection with the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik are shown.

++ When Hans Mamlok died in 1956, he left ½ of his shares to his brother Erich Mamlok, 1/3rd to his aunt Helene Goldenring née Hirsch, and 1/6th to his father Alfred Mamlok

## Helene Goldenring née Hirsch was an owner in her own right, as well as a first-tier heir as inheritor of a one-half interest in her brother’s 1/6th share in the sugar factory, as well as a second-tier heir of 1/3rd of her nephew Hans Mamlok’s 1/24th share

A few observations.

Adolph Schück (Figure 7) and Sigmund Hirsch (Figures 8-9) each had three children, each of whom was a shareholder with a 1/6th share of the sugar factory. Assuming the German government paid compensation or damages, each owner would have been eligible for 1/6th of the amount paid out.

 

Figure 7. Screen shot from my family tree showing Adolph Schück and his heirs

 

Figure 8. Screen shot from my family tree showing Sigmund Hirsch and his heirs

 

Figure 9. Co-owner of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik Sigmund Hirsch with his wife Selma Hirsch née Braun and their three children, Frieda, Robert, and Helene

 

In the case of Frieda Mamlok née Hirsch who pre-deceased her husband Dr. Alfred Mamlok, I would later learn ½ of her 1/6th share went to her husband while each of her two sons, Hans and Erich, received one-quarter of her 1/6th share. Hans pre-deceased both his brother and his father, and he divided what amounted to his 1/24th share among his brother (one-half), his aunt (one-third), and his father (one-sixth). My apologies if I’ve confused readers.

Figure 10 is a screen shot from my family tree on ancestry.com with Erich and Hedwig Schück née Jendricke and their heirs.

 

Figure 10. Screen shot from my family tree showing Dr. Erich Schück and his wife’s heirs

 

Readers can see on Figure 6 there is another file at LABO with a different number, namely, “Reg. Nr. 160 800,” for Robert Hirsch (Figure 11), one of the six heirs of the sugar factory. I would later learn there exist multiple files with unique identifiers for the various claimants.

 

Figure 11. Robert Hirsch (1881-1943) in Chile in 1942 with his cousin’s daughter-in-law, Margarete Hirsch née Janzen (1914-1992), and her daughter (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

 

In Post 55, I discussed at length the documentation I received from Mr. Allan Grutt Hansen, a gentleman from Denmark related to the wife of Dr. Erich Schück (1878-1938) (Figure 12), Hedwig Schück née Jendricke. (Figure 13) I refer readers to that post for details. Suffice it to say that according to the documentation I received from Mr. Hansen, several of Hedwig’s relatives in fact received some monies from the German government in connection with sale of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik in 1966. Figure 14 gives their names and their presumed inherited ownership shares of the sugar factory.

 

Figure 12. Dr. Erich Schück (1878-1938), an heir of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, who supposedly committed suicide in Berlin after the forced sale of the sugar plant

 

 

Figure 13. May 1930 stage photograph of Hedwig Schück née Jendricke, an aspiring actress

 

Anna Johannsen née Brügge and Sophia Dalstrand née Brügge were Hedwig Schück’s half-sisters, Christian Brügge II was her half-brother, and Christian Brügge III and Helmuth Brügge were his sons. None of the documents I’ve obtained show Hedwig’s half-brother receiving any monies in connection with the sale of the sugar factory, so he may have been deceased by 1966. The names in red text in the table above are the four heirs who each were awarded damages through their kinship to Hedwig Schück. In the aggregate, Hedwig Schück’s heirs should have inherited her 1/6th share in the sugar factory but according to the figures shown in Figure 14, the amounts total 1/4th (i.e., 1/12th + 1/12th + 1/24th +1/24th =6/24th), so something is amiss.

 

Figure 14. Page from 1966 West German compensation agreement for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik listing Erich and Hedwig Schück’s four heirs, and the fraction they owned of the sugar factory

 

I naturally assumed that if Hedwig Schück’s heirs had received damages for the forced sale of the sugar factory, so too had heirs of the other shareholders. To date, I have not been able to confirm from third- or fourth-tier heirs that this ever occurred.

Readers will note in the table above that one of Sigmund Hirsch’s daughters is Helene Goldenring née Hirsch, the very same person who did receive compensation from the German government because of her son’s premature death in the Shanghai Ghetto. This was indirectly a result of Nazi pressure on the Japanese to eliminate Jews living in this occupied part of China. Rather than exterminate them, however, the Japanese incarcerated them in a ghetto under deplorable living conditions causing many to die.

Hoping to round out my understanding of how the reparations claims were handled by the then West German government, I contacted Dr. Robert Mamlok (Figure 15), the grandson of Dr. Alfred Mamlok (1874-~1960) (Figure 16), the spouse of one of the six original shareholders. Robert generously shared copies of numerous letters penned by his grandfather, the other heirs, and the multiple attorneys involved in the compensation case. Most usefully, Robert sent me a summary in English of the contents of the various documents, which precluded my having to tediously retype and translate the original German documents. With this synopsis, I came away with a much more in-depth and nuanced understanding of the years-long effort undertaken by the various claimants to obtain compensation for the forced sale of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik.

 

Figure 15. Dr. Alfred Mamlok’s grandson, Dr. Robert Mamlok
Figure 16. Dr. Alfred Mamlok, born 1874 in Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland]

 

 

 

 

 

 

I cannot do justice to all that is contained in the correspondence Robert Mamlok shared, but I want to highlight a few things. There were some administrative challenges faced by the claimants. As alluded to above, the Berlin Compensation Office, the Entschädigungsamt Berlin, assigned unique case numbers to each claim. Each claimant had their own attorney, at times interfering or working at cross-purposes to one another. Several attorneys died over the course of the multi-year effort requiring aging and ailing litigants to begin anew with different lawyers. The claimants themselves could not agree on the amount of lost income they’d incurred because of the forced sale of the sugar factory; widely divergent estimates of annual proceeds were proffered by the shareholders (i.e., ranging between 20,000 Reichmark (RM) and 100,000 RM annually with a RM having an estimated nominal exchange rate during WWII of $2.50). Without surviving documents to bolster claims of lost income, including the sales documents of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, lawyers repeatedly questioned the estimates and asked for less inflated figures. This further delayed the adjudication process and allowed claimants to be played off against each another. There were seemingly endless requests for supporting evidence such as powers of attorney, proof of Jewish origins, proof of residency, attestations of one’s professional practice, estimates on the value of the business and the annual profits, etc., some of which could only be recreated from fading memories.

From a cursory examination of the summary papers forwarded by Robert Mamlok, the requests for compensation were based on several considerations, namely, forced sale of the sugar factory at less than fair market value (taking into account “goodwill”); loss of professional wages; and loss of income based on the boycotting of the Jewish-owned Zuckerfabrik. (Goodwill is a marketplace advantage of customer patronage and loyalty developed with continuous business under the same name over a period. It may be bought and sold in connection with a business, and the valuation is a subjective one.) Interestingly, yet another recompense that could be claimed was the travel costs of being forced to flee Germany.

At some point, it appears lawyers representing some of the claimants made the decision it would be easier to argue loss of income due to the boycott of the Jewish-owned sugar factory by Aryan-owned businesses rather than the losses due to forced sale of the business at a discounted price. Possibly, the lawyers felt it would be easier to compare the decline in the estimated annual profits from before to after the boycott was implemented than estimate the fair market value of the business in 1936.

While the compensation claim based on the forced sale of the sugar factory continued, this was never successfully adjudicated by any of Adolph Schück or Sigmund Hirsch’s heirs. Dr. Alfred Mamlok eventually did receive some recompense for professional damages in connection with the loss of his medical practice in Gleiwitz, Germany [today: Gliwice, Poland], including possibly for the loss of goodwill, as well as payment for his costs to flee Germany. However, Dr. Mamlok did not receive payments for the loss of goodwill in connection with the sugar factory. Additionally, Dr. Mamlok, his son Erich Mamlok, and his sister-in-law Helene Goldenring received monies in 1957 but the basis for these payments is also unclear.

The summary sent to me by Robert Mamlok provided further background on the sale of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik.  Following Hitler’s attainment of power in March 1933, the responsibility for oversight of businesses like the sugar factory was transferred from the Reich Ministry of Economics to the auspices of the more stringent Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture, making ownership and management of exclusively Jewish-owned enterprises more difficult.

Additionally, according to Dr. Alfred Mamlok’s correspondence, Upper Silesia, where the factory, was located was deemed to be an “animal welfare area.” This is a particularly interesting provision I needed to ask one of my German cousins about since I could not understand how animal welfare related to the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik. On page 256 of the 1997 German edition of the book entitled “German-Jewish History in Modern Times, vol. 4: Renewal and Destruction, 1918-1945,” my cousin found the following explanation:

“Only in Upper Silesia, on the basis of a German-Polish agreement of 1922, did the approximately 10,000 Jews living there succeed in securing special status of a protected religious and ‘racial’ minority under the protection of the League of Nations Commission until July 1937. This was the only case in which a Jewish representative body, the Upper Silesian Synagogue Association, concluded agreements with the German government in open negotiations and before an international body. As a result, discriminatory measures against Jewish gainful employment or against kosher slaughter were not implemented here until July 14, 1937.”

Thus, ostensibly under the guise of safeguarding animal welfare, the Nazis were really targeting kosher slaughter of farm animals, and limiting, where possible, Jewish economic activities including at the sugar factory. Not only did the Nazis strive to expel Jews and deprive them of their economic existence, but according to their twisted logic expropriation of Jewish businesses served animal welfare. However, it is not apparent to this author the connection between animal welfare and the manufacture and sale of sugar.

As to the sale of the sugar factory, the owners eventually found a buyer in the form of an East German sugar company which obtained the necessary approvals clandestinely. The sale papers were presented to the Reich Ministry of Agriculture when key officials there attended a congress in Nuremberg in 1936, making it easier for the buyers to obtain approval. According to one letter found among Dr. Alfred Mamlok’s papers, the sugar factory was sold for approximately 800,000 RM though the writer estimates the fair market value of the business was several million RM. As a quick aside, this figure does not comport with the number I found in the papers sent to me by Allan Hansen which based damages on a sales price of 450,000 RM.

Let me turn now to a discussion of the act which guided the compensation claims for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik. Compensation for the victims of National Socialist injustice was governed in principle by the Federal Act for the Compensation of the Victims of National Socialist Persecution (Bundesentschädigungsgesetz or BEG) as amended by the Final Federal Compensation Act of the 14th of September 1965.

Below is a succinct description of this act from the Wollheim Memorial (www.wollheim-memorial.de/de/bundesentschaedigungsgesetz_1956):

“In July 1953, using the term Bundesergänzungsgesetz (Federal Supplementary Law), the German Bundestag passed the first national-level compensation law for people who were forced to undergo expropriation, forced labor, deportation, and imprisonment in camps during the Nazi era. In 1956, it was amended and renamed the Bundesentschädigungsgesetz (BEG, Federal Compensation Law), owing to numerous interventions by the Western Allies and the Claims Conference, which were directed primarily at the meagerness of the benefits intended for victims of the Nazis and at the exclusion of foreign victims of Nazi persecution. But the BEG held fast to the so-called subjective and personal territoriality principle, according to which benefits could be claimed only by victims of the Nazis who were residents of the FRG [Federal Republic of Germany] or West Berlin on the effective date of December 31, 1952 (originally, January 1, 1947), or had lived within the 1937 borders of the German Reich and taken up residence in the FRG or West Berlin by the effective date. From the outset, therefore, the provisions excluded from compensation all those people in the countries occupied by Germany during World War II who had been hunted by the death squads of the Wehrmacht and the SS and had not left their home countries.”

The Claims Conference refers to the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany founded in 1951 as a coalition of several Jewish organizations to represent the compensation claims of Jewish victims of National Socialism and Holocaust survivors.

A 2009 paper prepared by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Finance, entitled “Compensation for National Socialist Injustice,” provides more detail:

“The first compensation act covering the entire [German] Federation was the Additional Federal Compensation Act which was adopted on 18 September 1953 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 1,387) and entered into force on 1 October 1953. Although this was much more than an addition to the Act on the Treatment of the Victims of National Socialist Persecution in the Area of Social Security and in particular created legal equality and security on federal territory, its provisions also proved inadequate. Following very detailed and careful preparation, the Federal Compensation Act (Federal Law Gazette I p. 562) was adopted on 29 June 1956 and entered into force with retroactive effect from 1 October 1953. This Act fundamentally changed compensation for the victims of National Socialism and introduced a number of amendments improving their situation. At the outset, the Federal Compensation Act only provided for applications to be submitted until 1 April 1958.”

The Act on the Treatment of the Victims of National Socialist Persecution in the Area of Social Security was an act adopted by the Southern German Länder Council for all Allied occupation zones. This was promulgated by Land laws in Bavaria, Bremen, Baden-Württemberg, and Hesse in August 1949.

The Federal Compensation Act was amended in 1965. Quoting again from the paper by the Ministry of Finance:

“In applying the Federal Compensation Act, further need for amendment became clear. There was an awareness that the new piece of legislation would not be able to take account of all the demands of those eligible for compensation and that, given the high number of settled cases, these could not be re-opened. The amendment was thus to constitute the final piece of legislation in this field. After four years of intense negotiations in the competent committees of the German Bundestag and Bundesrat, the Final Federal Compensation Act was adopted on 14 September 1965 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 1,315), its very name emphasizing that it was to be the last.”

A few comments.

The Final Federal Compensation Act extended the original deadline of the 1st of April 1958, though no claims could be filed after the 31st of December 1969.

Numerous provisions of the Federal Compensation Act were complicated. One decisive criterion was the residence requirement. Those eligible to apply were persecutees of the Nazi regime who had resided in the Federal Republic of Germany or West Berlin by December 31, 1952 (previously January 1, 1947), or who had lived there prior to their deaths or emigrations. Except for Dr. Alfred Mamlok, who was a doctor in Gleiwitz in Upper Silesia, all the other heirs had lived in Berlin or what became the Federal Republic of Germany prior to emigrating or being murdered, so this would not seem to have been an exclusionary criterion for receiving compensation.

As an aside, for people persecuted because of so-called “antisocial” behavior, including the Sinti and Roma, “. . .the latter, the Federal Supreme Court (BGH) claimed in a decision in principle on January 7, 1956, had been persecuted not for ‘reasons of race, religious belief, or worldview’ (§ 1 BEG) but for their ‘antisocial traits.’ The BEG believed race-based persecution occurred only from 1943 on, when the Sinti and Roma began to be sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.”

Communists also could not receive compensation because they were perceived as alleged enemies of the “liberal-democratic basic order.” Homosexuality was a criminal offense in the Federal Republic of Germany until 1973 so for this reason persecuted homosexuals similarly were ineligible to receive payments.

After the enormity of the crimes the National Socialists had perpetrated against humanity came into the public eye and shocked the world, the willingness of Germans to accept political and moral responsibility waned. Over time, and against the backdrop of post-war reconstruction, the Cold War, and the suffering the Germans had also experienced during and after the war, many began to see themselves as the victims. Feeling they had been manipulated and terrorized by the Nazis and Adolf Hitler allowed many Germans to displace any complicity in Nazi crimes. Consequently, as German Wikiwand notes: “People began to offset their own suffering against the persecution of Nazi victims—the cliché of well-off Nazi victims became a kind of political myth—and along with the integration of former Nazi officials into postwar German society, it was not the perpetrators but the victims who were perceived as a burden on the new society.” How rich.

Given the complexity of the Federal Compensation Law, it is not clear that if the compensation cases were being adjudicated today the decisions would be rendered any differently. But readers should know that many claims were being handled by former Nazi officials, such as judges and district attorneys, who had been integrated back into German society following WWII, officials who seemingly had little interest in compensating Jews they had once so avidly been an integral part of persecuting.

File Reg. Nr. 40 672 obtained from LABO was the restitution claim refiled for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik by Dr. Alfred Mamlok’s lawyers, Dr. Hans Zilesch and Ms. Gisela Maresch-Zilesch, for him as an individual. Contained within this file is a decision letter dated the 30th of January 1962 to his lawyers, ostensibly from the Berlin Compensation Office, laying out the reason his compensation claim vis a vis the sugar factory was denied. Followers can read the original and translated versions of this 1962 letter below. (Figures 17a-b)

 

Figure 17a. Letter from the Berlin Restitution Office dated the 30th of January 1962 to Dr. Alfred Mamlok’s lawyers rendering their decision on his Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik compensation claim

 

Figure 17b. Translation of letter from the Berlin Restitution Office to Dr. Alfred Mamlok’s lawyers rendering their decision on his Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik compensation claim

 

In citing § 143 and § 146 of the BEG, the Berlin Compensation Office makes it abundantly clear that the claims were rejected because the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik had its registered office in Woinowitz in Upper Silesia in an area they declared was decidedly outside the scope of the BEG. I include the language of both subsections below: 

§ 143

(1) The right to compensation exists only if the legal person, establishment, or association of persons

1. on 31 December 1952 had its seat within the scope of this Act or the place of its administration was situated there,

2.before 31 December 1952, for the reasons of persecution under § 1, had transferred its seat or its administration from the territory of the Reich to a foreign country in accordance with the state of 31 December 1937 or the territory of the Free City of Gdansk.

(2) If a legal person, institution or association of persons no longer exists, the claim for compensation shall only exist if it had its registered office or the place of its administration in the territory of the Reich in accordance with the status on 31 December 1937 or in the territory of the Free City of Gdansk and if the registered office or the place of administration of a legal successor or successor to a purpose was in the area of application of this Act on 31 December 1952. 

§ 146 

(1) The right to compensation exists only for damage to property and for damage to property and only to the extent that the damage occurred within the scope of this Act. In the case of non-legally capable commercial companies whose all partners were natural persons at the time of the persecution, the claim for compensation also exists if the damage to property or assets in the Reich territory occurred as of 31 December 1937 or in the territory of the Free City of Gdansk.

(2) Communities which are institutions of or recognized by religious communities and whose members have undertaken to acquire through their work not for themselves but for the community may also claim as damage to property the damage caused to the community by the loss of the working activities of their members. A Community national shall not be entitled to compensation for loss of professional progress in respect of any work carried out by him on behalf of the Community if the Community has received compensation in accordance with the first sentence.

(3) No compensation shall be paid for losses of contributions, donations, and similar income.

Woinowitz was part of the German Reich in 1937. In a referendum held in Upper Silesia on the 20th of March 1921, people there voted to remain part of the German Reich. On this basis, I would have assumed that Woinowitz met the seat requirements under BEG as of 31 December 1937. Whether its location inside Poland by 31 December 1952 is relevant is not clear. Regardless of my understanding of the provisions and exclusions of the complicated Federal Compensation Law, the Berlin Compensation Office determined the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik was outside the seat requirements of the act and for this reason denied compensation to heirs of the shareholders.

A separate page in File Reg. Nr. 40 672, dated the 27th of January 1964, gives the Berlin Compensation Office claim number, “Reg. Nr. 21 879,” for Erich and Hedwig Schück’s heirs, identifying them by name. (Figure 18) Attached to this cover page is the decision letter rendered by this office. Like the one sent to Dr. Alfred Mamlok’s attorneys it comes to the same conclusion, namely, that the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik is outside the seat requirements of the Federal Compensation Law. This letter came as a surprise to me. Whereas I had assumed the monies Hedwig Schück’s heirs had received were the result of a different decision rendered by the Berlin Compensation Office under the authority of the Federal Compensation Law, this letter made clear this was not so.

 

Figure 18. Cover page of decision letter from the Berlin Restitution Office dated 27th of January 1964 addressed to Hedwig Schück’s half-sister, Ms. Anna Johannsen née Brügge, rejecting her and her relatives’ claim for compensation. Case number is circled along with the names of Erich and Hedwig’s heirs

 

With this new information in hand, I returned to the eight pages sent to me by Mr. Hansen for his ancestors discussing monies paid out to them in 1966. After translating these documents, I realized there was no mention of the Federal Compensation Law and instead payments made in 1966 to Hedwig Schück’s heirs were for “damages” paid out under what I eventually learned was the “Equalisation of Burdens Act (Lastenausgleichsgesetz)” of 1952 and decided by an order from a Federal Administrative Court. Suffice it to say, at the risk of further overwhelming readers with more detail, that the difference between what Dr. Erich Schück received from the September 1936 forced sale of the sugar factory, estimated to be 75,000 RM (i.e., calculated by the Ratibor Tax Office for each 100 RM of share capital at 190 RM, thus totaling 140,000 RM), and what he should have received (i.e., 142,500 RM), his wife’s heirs were in aggregate eligible for only 2,500 RM or whatever the 1966 equivalent was in German Marks. (Figures 19a-b)

 

Figure 19a. Page from 1966 West German compensation agreement for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik indicating how individual shares of 75,000 RM were “adjusted” by the Ratibor Tax Office to 142,500 RM but showing only 2,500 RM was disbursed in 1966 to Hedwig Schück’s heirs

 

Figure 19b. Rough translation of Figure 19a

 

At long last, I conclude my series on the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik saga with some questions or issues still unresolved: 

1). While I assume ALL six shareholders received equal portions of the 450,000 RM (i.e., 75,000 RM each) for which the sugar factory sold for in 1936, no documentation survives to know whether this was the case.

2). While we know that Hedwig Schück’s four heirs in the aggregate divided 2,500 RM in damages in 1966, we don’t know whether the heirs of the other shareholders received equal amounts. The office in Lübeck, Germany that handled the case has no documentation on file to answer this question.

3) And, finally, given that Woinowitz was part of the German Reich in 1937, why was it deemed that it was outside the scope of the Federal Compensation Act?

 

REFERENCES

Barkai, Avahram, Paul Mendes-Flohr, and Steven M. Lowenstein. German-Jewish History in Modern Times. Vierter Band 1918-1945. Munich, 1997.

Federal Ministry of Finance (Germany), Public Relations Division. Compensation for National Socialist Injustice. 2009, canada.diplo.de/blob/1106528/becf2995e860c6348a1efe7b3367ce51/information-on-compensation-federalministryoffinance-download-data.pdf

 

 

 

POST 103: RENATE BRUCK: A TALE OF TWO GODMOTHERS

Note: In this Blog post, I discuss Renate Bruck’s two prominent godmothers, images of whom exist among Dr. Walter Bruck’s surviving papers and photographs.

Related Posts:

POST 68: DR. JULIUS BRUCK AND HIS INFLUENCE ON MODERN ENDOSCOPY

POST 68, POSTSCRIPT: DR. JULIUS BRUCK, ENGINEER OF MODERN ENDOSCOPY-TRACKING SOME OF HIS DESCENDANTS

POST 99: THE ASTONISHING DISCOVERY OF SOME OF DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK’S PERSONAL EFFECTS

POST 100: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK, DENTIST TO GERMANY’S LAST IMPERIAL FAMILY

POST 101: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK: HIS DAUGHTER RENATE’S FIRST HUSBAND, A “SILENT HERO”

POST 102: DR. WALTER BRUCK, HIS SECOND WIFE JOHANNA GRÄBSCH & HER FAMILY

 

 

The Nuremberg Laws consisted of two race-based measures which deprived Jews of their rights. They were designed by Adolf Hitler and approved by the Nazi Party at a convention in Nuremberg on September 15, 1935. The first of these measures, termed the “Reichsbürgergesetz,” the “Reich Citizenship Law,” declared that only those of “German or kindred blood” were eligible to be Reich citizens; the remainder were designated as “subjects of the state” without any citizenship rights. The second provision, the “Gesetz zum Schutze des Deutschen Blutes und der Deutschen Ehre,” the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour,” usually simply called the “Blutschutzgesetz” or “Blood Protection Law,” forbade marriage or extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans. These measures were among the first of the racist Nazi laws that culminated in the Holocaust.

Under the Nuremberg laws, Jews could not fly the German flag and were forbidden to employ in domestic service female subjects of German or kindred blood who were under the age of 45 years.

The first supplementary decree elaborating upon the Nuremberg Laws was passed on November 14, 1935. It defined Jews as persons with at least one Jewish grandparent and explicitly declared they could not be citizens of the Reich; it further decreed that Jews could not exercise the right to vote nor occupy public office. This was ultimately one of 13 ordinances that completed the process of Jewish segregation.

One enactment, passed on November 26, 1935, expanded the provisions of the law to include Roma (Gypsies) and Black people. While exact figures cannot be ascertained, historians estimate that the Germans and their allies killed between 250,000 and 500,000 European Roma during World War II. Although the Nazis did not have an organized program to exterminate African Germans, many of them were persecuted, as were other people of African descent. Black people in Germany and German-occupied territories were often isolated, and an unknown number were sterilized, incarcerated, or murdered.

It is important to emphasize that the racial definition of Jews under the Nuremberg Laws meant that Jews were persecuted NOT for their religious beliefs but for their so-called racial identity that was irrevocably transmitted through the blood of their ancestors.

Because the Nuremberg Laws did not define a “Jew” nor the phrase “German or kindred blood,” the critical task of defining their meaning fell to bureaucrats because of the criminal provisions for noncompliance contained within the law. Two basic categories of Jews were recognized. A full Jew referred to anyone with three Jewish grandparents, a rather straight-forward definition. Defining part-Jews, who were referred to as “Mischlinge,” a pejorative term meaning “hybrids, mongrels, or half-breeds,” was more challenging. Eventually they were divided into two classes. First-degree Mischlinge were defined as people who had two Jewish grandparents but did not practice Judaism and did not have a Jewish spouse. Second-degree Mischlinge were those who had only one Jewish grandparent.

Students of history may find it interesting to learn that out of foreign policy concerns, persecutions under the Nuremberg Laws did not begin until after the conclusion of the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin that year.

Also worth noting is one of the effects of the Nuremberg Laws. It gave rise to a horde of purportedly “licensed family researchers” who offered their services to concerned Germans afraid the Nazis would discover Jewish relatives among their ancestors. The Health Ministry as well as church offices were involved in providing birth and baptismal certificates as proof of Aryan origin.

 

Figure 1. Walter and Johanna Bruck with their daughter Renate in Breslau (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

I introduce the Nuremberg Laws in the context of talking about Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck and his wife Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch’s daughter, Renate Bruck. (Figure 1) While Renate’s mother was Protestant, Dr. Bruck’s parents were Jewish, so according to the Nuremberg Laws, Renate was considered a first-degree Mischling. Evidence suggests Walter converted to Protestantism around 1917, confirmation of which I am still trying to track down. The timing of his conversion may have corresponded with the death of Walter’s mother, Bertha Bruck née Vogelsdorf (1843-1917), in 1917 (Figure 2); Walter may have been reluctant to convert from Judaism until his mother passed away. Unlike his parents and paternal grandparents who are buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], the place of Walter’s burial or cremation is unknown. (Figure 3) What is clear is that Walter was not interred in a Jewish cemetery.

 

Figure 2. Walter Bruck’s mother, Bertha Bruck née Vogelsdorf (1843-1917) (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 3. The headstones of Dr. Walter Bruck’s father and grandfather, Dr. Julius Bruck (1840-1902) and Dr. Jonas Bruck (1813-1883), and their respective wives, following restoration of their tombs in 2016

 

As for Renate Bruck, there is no indication she ever set foot in a synagogue or was taught about the Jewish religion, which makes sense if her father converted from Judaism nine years before Renate was even born. On the contrary, a preliminary examination of the five-year Tagebuch, diary, belonging to Renate and her mother covering a critical period from January 1940 through December 1944, makes it clear Renate was attending Confirmation classes throughout 1940 and early 1941, and was confirmed at age 14 in Breslau on the 17th of March 1941. (Figure 4) As far as the Nazis were concerned, however, this would not have altered Renate’s status as a first-degree Mischling. And, in fact, Renate’s lifelong friend Ina Schaesberg (Figure 5) confirms that Renate and the other Jews and half-Jews were expelled from the private school they all attended in Breslau. More will be said in a future Blog post about the contents of Johanna and Renate Bruck’s diary including their attitude towards the Nazis.

 

Figure 4. Page from Johanna and Renate Bruck’s five-year “Tagebuch,” diary, showing Renate was confirmed on the 17th of March 1941 when she was 14 years old

 

Figure 5. Renate Bruck’s lifelong friend, Ms. Ina Schaesberg, born in 1926, the same year as Renate

 

 

Among the pictures in Walter Bruck’s photo album are two showing people Renate identified as her godmothers. I was curious that Renate had two godmothers but learned that traditionally Christian children can have three godparents in total, though they can have as many as the parents want. Usually, girls have two godmothers and one godfather while boys gave two godfathers and one godmother, although there is no hard and fast rule about this. Without access to Renate’s baptismal record, it is unclear whether both godmothers were listed on it at the time of her baptism. There is no indication as to who Renate’s godfather may have been.

Renate provided information on the captions about each of her godmothers which allowed me to make some interesting connections.

Figure 6. One of Renate Bruck’s two godmothers, “Tante ‘Steffa’ Stephanie,” August Josephine Stephanie Erhlich (1884-1966) (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

Renate’s first godmother was named “Tante ‘Steffa’ Stephanie” (Figure 6); as readers can make out from the caption, her father was identified as “Geheimrat Prof. Erhlich,” and her husband was the “Commerzienrat Schwerin.” There was also a cryptic parenthetical notation after Stephanie’s father’s name, “Salvasan,” the significance of which only become apparent to me later. (Figure 7)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 7. Three photos captioned by Renate Bruck related to her godmother, Stephanie Schwerin née Erhlich, showing two elegant homes she owned with her husband, Ernst Louis Schwerin (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

A “Geheimrat” is a Privy Counselor, a member of the government or cabinet minister; in the current context, however, “Geheimrat” refers to an honorary title used in Prussia that was bestowed upon Dr. Erhlich as an accomplished doctor (see below). A “Kommerzienrat,” a Commercial Counselor, also called a commercial attaché, is a commercial expert on the diplomatic staff of a country´s embassy or large consulate.

Based on Renate’s captions, I correctly concluded that Tante Steffa was Stephanie Schwerin née Erhlich. I discovered a substantial amount of information about her on ancestry.com, including her birth certificate. Her birth name was August Josephine Stephanie Erhlich, and she was born on the 19th of October 1884 in Berlin. Her parents’ names are listed on her birth certificate as Paul Simon Erhlich and Hedwig Erhlich née Pinkus. (Figures 8a-b)

 

Figure 8a. Cover page from ancestry.com accompanying Stephanie Erhlich’s 1884 birth certificate
Figure 8b. August Josephine Stephanie Erhlich’s 1884 birth certificate listing her parents’ names as Paul Simon Erhlich and Hedwig Erhlich née Pinkus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I very quickly realized that Tante Steffa’s father was none other than Dr. Paul Erhlich (1854-1915) (Figure 9), the Nobel Prize-winning German Jewish physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology, and antimicrobial chemotherapy. In 1908, Dr. Paul Erhlich was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contributions to immunology. His foremost achievements were discovering a cure for syphilis in 1909 (The First Syphilis Cure Was the First ‘Magic Bullet’ | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine) and inventing the precursor to Gram staining bacteria. The techniques Dr. Erhlich developed for staining tissues made it possible to distinguish between different types of blood cells, which in turn made it possible to diagnose various blood disorders.

 

Figure 9. The noted immunologist and 1908 Nobel Prize recipient, Dr. Paul Erhlich (1854-1915), father of Renate Bruck’s godmother

 

Dr. Erhlich’s laboratory discovered Arsphenamine, the drug introduced in the early 1910s as the first effective treatment against syphilis and African sleeping sickness. Renate Bruck’s cryptic parenthetical reference to “Salvasan” was the mistakenly spelled name for “Salvarsan,” the name under which Arsphenamine was marketed, also known as “compound 606.”

A biographical sketch on Dr. Erhlich to which I link here (Paul Ehrlich – Biographical – NobelPrize.org) makes mention of his two daughters, including Stephanie (Mrs. Ernst Schwerin) and Marianne (Mrs. Edmund Landau).  Both were the result of his marriage in 1883 to Hedwig Pinkus (1864-1948). According to their marriage certificate, Stephanie and Ernst Schwerin got married in Frankfurt, Germany on the 20th of February 1904.

Along with the picture of Stephanie Schwerin née Erhlich among Dr. Walter Bruck’s papers are two showing the elegant homes she and her husband, Ernst Schwerin, owned, a large estate in Breslau, as well as a mountain retreat probably located in the Riesengebirge [today: Krkonoše, Karkonosze, or Giant Mountains in northern Czech Republic and south-west Poland]. (see Figure 7) There can be little doubt Stephanie and Ernst were wealthy, and, likely, lost much of their fortune when they fled Germany after the ascendancy of the Nazis. Primary source documents prove that in accordance with the Nuremberg Laws, both Ernst and Stephanie Schwerin had their German nationalities annulled sometime between 1935 and 1944. (Figures 10-11) Other primary source documents show that Stephanie and her husband made their way to New York City via Switzerland. They emigrated from Switzerland in October 1938. (Figures 12-13)

 

Figure 10. Proof of the annulment of Ernst Schwerin’s German nationality between 1935-1944 on account of him being Jewish

 

Figure 11. Proof of the annulment of Stephanie Schwerin née Erhlich’s German nationality between 1935-1944 on account of her being Jewish

 

Figure 12. Ernst Schwerin’s Swiss Emigration Form showing he left for New York in October 1938
Figure 13. Stephanie Schwerin’s Swiss Emigration Form showing she left for New York in October 1938

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Social Security Death Index indicated Stephanie died in New York in June 1966 (Figure 14) and her husband Ernst passed away on the 25th of November 1946. (Figure 15) I asked a friend with a subscription to Newspapers.com and GenealogyBank if he could track down their obituaries, hoping I might find a living descendant. My friend was unable to locate an obituary for Ernst Schwerin, but his wife’s obituary shows she died a most gruesome death on the 7th of June 1966 at the age of 81 by plunging from her 10th floor apartment at the Hotel Croydon. (Figure 16) According to the obituary, she left two notes in German, confirming she committed suicide. Likely, these notes were intended for her two sons, Hans Wolfgang Schwerin (1906-1987) and Guenther Karl-Joseph Schwerin (1910-1997), neither of whom ever appears to have ever been married. Hans Schwerin, who was an author, lawyer, and psychoanalyst, was a regular fixture on the Society pages during the 1950s. (Figure 17)

 

Figure 14. Stephanie Schwerin’s Social Security Death Index showing she passed away in June 1966 in New York City

 

Figure 15. Cover page from the New York Extracted Death Index showing Ernst Schwerin died on the 25th of November 1946 in Manhattan, New York

 

Figure 16. Stephanie Schwerin’s obituary dated the 8th of June 1966 showing she plunged to her death the previous day (from Newspapers.com)

 

Figure 17. Photo from the Society page of “New York Age” of Ernst and Stephanie Schwerin’s elder son, Hans Schwerin (1906-1987) (from Newspapers.com)

 

 

The second of Renate Bruck’s godmothers, Elfriede Reichelt, turns out to have been another prominent personage. As readers can make out for themselves, Renate Bruck identified her second godmother as a photographer. (Figure 18) Operating under the assumption she was well-known, a Google query confirmed this. She was born Elfriede Klara Emma Reichelt on the 30th of January 1883 in Breslau, and died of bladder cancer on the 22nd of August 1953 in Grünwald , outside Munich. She was a German art photographer, who in her time was one of the best-known professional photographers in Germany.

 

Figure 18. The second of Renate Bruck’s godmothers, noted portrait photographer Elfriede Reichelt (1883-1953), between Johanna Bruck and Elfriede’s husband, Hans Wieland, on the Brionian Islands in April 1927 (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

The photograph of Elfriede Reichelt appears to have been taken in April 1927 in Brioni, Yugoslavia [today: Brijuni, Croatia], when Elfriede and her unidentified husband were vacationing there with Walter and Johanna Bruck. Her unnamed husband I was later able to determine was Hans Wieland, an industrialist from Ulm, Germany, whom Elfriede married in 1927 and separated from in 1936.

In the Deutsche Fotothek 743 of Elfriede Reichelt’s portrait photos are inventoried (Deutsche Fotothek), including multiple self-portraits. Because of copyright issues, I cannot illustrate these images here, but readers are encouraged to peruse them. Allow me to make a few observations about her photos. Reichelt had unprecedented access to Germany’s last Kaiser, Wilhelm II, and his family while they lived in exile in Doorn, Netherlands following WWI, and often photographed them. It is possible that Elfriede also photographed the Kaiser’s wife, Hermine Reuß, when she visited Dr. Walter Bruck in Breslau for dental treatments. It is even conceivable Dr. Bruck introduced the Kaiserin to Elfriede. Not surprisingly, given the friendship that existed between Walter Bruck and Elfriede Reichelt, her images include one of my renowned ancestor. Oddly, the photograph is incorrectly captioned. It is most curious that Walter Bruck’s picture is labeled as Dr. Fedor Bruck, which happens to have been my uncle’s name who was also a Breslau-trained dentist. Could Elfriede have known my uncle? The period my Uncle Fedor Bruck (1895-1982) spent in Breslau following WWI suggests this is possible. (Figure 19)

 

Figure 19. My Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (1895-1982) in his WWI uniform, who later attended dental school in Breslau, Germany

 

Regular readers may remember I have written multiple Blog posts about the Neisser branch of my extended family. Among Elfriede’s pictures are a few she took of Dr. Albert Neisser (1855-1916) (Figure 20) and his wife, Toni Neisser, a patron of the arts. Dr. Neisser was a German physician who discovered the pathogen that caused gonorrhea, a strain of bacteria that was named in his honor (Neisseria gonorrhoeae).

 

Figure 20. Dr. Albert Neisser (1855-1916), a member of my extended family, who along with his wife Toni Neisser, were subjects of Elfriede Reichelt’s photographs

 

Part of the pleasure I derive in doing forensic genealogy are finding connections among the people I research and write about even when the people are not blood relatives. Often these connections are trivial but nonetheless interesting. Case in point. After elementary school, Dr. Paul Erhlich attended the secondary school Maria-Magdalenen-Gymnasium (high school) in Breslau where he became friends with Dr. Alfred Neisser, who would later become a professional colleague. Coincidentally, Dr. Albert Neisser is a remote “link” between both of Renate Bruck’s two godmothers, though there is no evidence to suggest either knew Dr. Neisser. Since Elfriede Reichelt and Stephanie Erhlich were born, respectively, in 1883 and 1884, and Renate’s mother was born in 1884, it seems more likely all were schoolmates and friends growing up.

POST 102: DR. WALTER BRUCK, HIS SECOND WIFE JOHANNA GRÄBSCH & HER FAMILY

 

Note: In this post, I discuss and present a series of photos of Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s second wife, Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Bruck née Gräbsch, and some of her immediate family. While Johanna Bruck was identifiable in most photos, I was aided at times by captions provided by Johanna and Walter’s daughter, Renate Bruck. In a few instances, I arrived at the conclusion of who some of Johanna’s family members were by logical deduction.  

 

Related Posts:

POST 68: DR. JULIUS BRUCK AND HIS INFLUENCE ON MODERN ENDOSCOPY

POST 68, POSTSCRIPT: DR. JULIUS BRUCK, ENGINEER OF MODERN ENDOSCOPY-TRACKING SOME OF HIS DESCENDANTS

POST 99: THE ASTONISHING DISCOVERY OF SOME OF DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK’S PERSONAL EFFECTS

POST 100: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK, DENTIST TO GERMANY’S LAST IMPERIAL FAMILY

POST 101: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK: HIS DAUGHTER RENATE’S FIRST HUSBAND, A “SILENT HERO”

 

 

The seven photo albums left to me by my father, Dr. Otto Bruck (1907-1994), covering the period from his early childhood during the 1910’s until he came to America in 1948, were the inspiration for researching my family and ultimately developing this family history Blog. I distinctly remember a comment from a Jewish audience member when I gave my first translated talk in Tiegenhof, today Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland, the town in the Free State of Danzig where my father had his dental practice between 1932 and 1937, remarking on how fortunate I was to have my father’s collection of photos; he remarked he had only three surviving images of his Jewish ancestors, a not uncommon circumstance among descendants of Holocaust victims. For this reason, I consider it quite fortuitous that Dr. Tilo Wahl, the German doctor who purchased the medals that once belonged to my esteemed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck, chanced upon my Blog and shared pictures of Walter’s personal effects. I have experienced the same thrill and used the same forensic techniques in examining Walter’s pictures and documents as I have in studying my father’s papers, often with comparable success. In the ensuing post, I will discuss one such enthralling find involving Walter and Johanna’s daughter.

 

 

Figure 1. Johanna Gräbsch as a young lady (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 2. Johanna Gräbsch as a debutante (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are only a few pictures among Walter Bruck’s surviving photos showing Johanna Gräbsch prior to his marriage to her (Figures 1-2), and none, insofar as I can tell, that show her as a child or young girl. Prior to obtaining copies of Walter’s papers and photos, I had found Johanna’s marriage certificate to her first husband, Dr. Med. Alfred Friedrich Karl Kurt Renner, showing they had gotten married on the 6th of May 1905 in Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland]. The certificate listed her date and place of birth, the 10th of April 1884 in Breslau. As sometimes occurs on marriage certificates, a notation was added later showing they divorced on the 8th of March 1917. (Figures 3a-c; 4)

 

Figure 3b. Page 2 of Johanna Gräbsch and Dr. Alfred Renner’s April 1905 marriage certificate with the names of witnesses, including Dr. Renner, Johanna Gräbsch, Paul Gräbsch, and Paul Renner
Figure 3a. Page 1 of Johanna Gräbsch and Dr. Alfred Renner’s April 1905 marriage certificate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3c. Notation on Johanna Gräbsch and Dr. Alfred Renner’s April 1905 marriage certificate dated the 28th of March 1918 showing they got divorced on the 8th of March in 1917

 

 

Figure 4. Translation of Johanna Gräbsch and Dr. Alfred Renner’s April 1905 marriage certificate including notation from March 1918

 

There is one particularly joyful picture in Walter Bruck’s photo album that Renate Bruck, who later captioned some photos, rather vaguely titled. (Figure 5) The subjects were identified according to how they were related to her three children rather than herself, which initially confused me. Regardless, while only five people were identified I was eventually able to work out who all six of the people in the photo are likely to have been through logical deduction. (Figures 6a-f) I am convinced the photo was taken at the marriage or celebration of Johanna’s wedding to Dr. Alfred Renner in 1905. Renate Bruck who was the offspring of Johanna’s second marriage in 1923 to Dr. Bruck was born in 1926 and probably never met her mother’s first husband, thus would have been unlikely to recognize him; she in fact has a question mark above his picture. There appears to be a level of intimacy between the unidentified subject and Johanna which suggests to me this was her first husband, Dr. Renner.

 

Figure 5. Joyful photo of Gräbsch family gathering I think may have been taken at the dinner celebrating Johanna Gräbsch and Dr. Alfred Renner’s April 1905 marriage with Renate Bruck’s identifying captions (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 6a. Johanna’s older sister, “Tante Leni,” Helene Emma Clara Gräbsch (b. 1876-d. unknown)
Figure 6b. Johanna’s father, Karl Paul Otto Reinhold Gräbsch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 6c. Johanna’s mother, Friederike Emma Gräbsch née Nerche (b. 1854-d. unknown)
Figure 6d. Johanna’s brother-in-law, “Onkel Willi,” Alfred Wilhelm Kurt Steinberg (1865-1909)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 6e. Unidentified man I think is Johanna’s first husband, Dr. Med. Alfred Friedrich Karl Kurt Renner
Figure 6f. Johanna Gräbsch (1884-1963)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As to the other subjects in this photo, on Johanna’s 1905 marriage certificate her parents, misidentified on the caption as great-grandfather and great-grandmother, are named as Paul Gräbsch and Emma Gräbsch née Nerche. I found their marriage certificate on ancestry.com indicating they got married on the 26th of July 1873 in Dresden, Germany. The “Tante Leni” in the photo was Johanna’s older sister, Helene Emma Clara Gräbsch, born on the 7th of March 1876, and “Onkel Willy” was her husband, Alfred Wilhelm Kurt Steinberg. I found his death certificate showing he was only 43 years old when he died on the 12th of February 1909 in Berlin.

As an aside, I mentioned to readers in Post 99 the existence of old annual periodicals that Dr. Tilo Wahl told me about (e.g., “Handbuch für den Preußischen Hof und Staat” (a printed guide of the Royal Prussian court and administration); “Ranglisten der Königlich Preußischen Armee” (rank lists of the Prussian Army)) that were once published for persons in official positions and/or of higher rank listing the decorations they were awarded. For personalized medal groups Tilo purchases that come without attribution, these handbooks are most useful in identifying the person to whom the medals were awarded. Coincidentally, Tilo found a listing for Alfred Steinberg, Johanna’s brother-in-law, in a 1908 Prussian Ranklist showing he had been given the “Roter Adler Orden Kreuz 4.Klasse (1861-1918) (ehrenzeichen-orden.de)” (Red Eagle Order Cross 4th Class (1861-1918)) that year. (Figures 7a-b) The Order of the Red Eagle was a Prussian order of merit, the second highest Prussian award. It is providential that my research into Johanna’s family members also wound up overlapping with Tilo’s interest in phaleristics.

 

Figure 7a. Cover of the 1908 “Ranglisten der Königlich Preußischen Armee” (rank lists of the Prussian Army) listing Alfred Wilhelm Kurt Steinberg’s name
Figure 7b. Page 46 of the 1908 “Ranglisten der Königlich Preußischen Armee” (rank lists of the Prussian Army) with Alfred Wilhelm Kurt Steinberg’s name, rank, and award

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In studying the picture of Johanna Gräbsch and her immediate family, I realized there appeared to be other pictures in the same folio Dr. Tilo Wahl had not photographed. Knowing Dr. Walter Bruck’s personal papers and photos are now in the possession of his twin granddaughters, Francesca and Michele Newman, following the death of their brother in 2015, I asked them if they could scan and send me the accompanying images. They graciously agreed. While most people in the group pictures they sent are unknown to me, even though several are named (Figure 8), Johanna’s older brother Paul Gräbsch is identified on a separate picture (Figure 9); though not labeled, I think his wife Irene Elisabeth Klar née Gräbsch may be standing next to him in two of the group photos. In all, I now have images of Johanna Gräbsch, her parents, her siblings, and her brother- and sister-in-law. Finding images of people I discuss in my Blog posts is always enormously satisfying as it brings these people to life in some small way.

 

Figure 8. Two group photos of Johanna Gräbsch’s family with marginalia; Johanna’s brother is second from the right on the top picture (dated 2nd of June 1921), and his wife, Irene Elisabeth Klar, all in white, is believed to be to his left (looking at the picture) (photos courtesy of Francesca and Michele Newman)

 

Figure 9. From left to right, Johanna’s parents, Paul and Emma Gräbsch, and her brother, Paul Gräbsch (photo courtesy of Francesca and Michele Newman)

 

 

Another thing that completes the circle, so to speak, is finding primary source documents that substantiate events that may have taken place in the lives of the people I write about. In the case of Johanna Gräbsch, who is the primary subject of this post, I found her listed in a 1919 Breslau Address Book under the name “Johanna Renner née Gräbsch” (Figure 10); clearly, following her divorce from her first husband in 1917, she retained her married name until she remarried my esteemed ancestor.

 

Figure 10. Page from 1919 Breslau Address Book listing Johanna Renner née Gräbsch

 

 

Included in Dr. Walter Bruck’s surviving personal effects is a business card sized document dated the 13th of December 1923 announcing his upcoming marriage to Johanna Gräbsch. (Figure 11) Regular readers know I constantly harp about relying on primary source documents in support of dating vital events but even these are not infallible. Case in point. Included among Dr. Bruck’s surviving papers are two hand-drawn family trees I believe were developed by someone other than Dr. Bruck; one tree states Walter and Johanna got married on the 22nd of December 1922, NOT 1923 as the wedding announcement clearly indicates; obviously, the family tree is in error. (Figure 12) The date of their marriage is interesting for another reason. Walter and Johanna’s first child, Hermine, who died at less than two months of age, was born on the 18th of January 1924, less than a month after her parents got married.

 

Figure 11. Walter Bruck and Johanna Gräbsch’s wedding announcement dated the 13th of December 1923

 

Figure 12. Section of family tree found among Dr. Walter Bruck’s surviving papers erroneously showing he and Johanna married on the 22nd of December 1922 rather than in December 1923 as their wedding announcement suggests

 

Surviving photos show that Johanna and Renate lived a charmed life before the National Socialists came along. (Figures 13-17)

 

Figure 13. Photograph Dr. Walter Bruck took in September 1925 in Doorn, Netherlands of his wife Johanna standing with the last German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, and the Kaiser’s family and entourage (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

Figure 14. Johanna on vacation in Brioni, Croatia in 1927 (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 15. Johanna reading to Renate when she was a young child (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 16. Johanna Bruck at the helm of her Adler automobile with her daughter and husband (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 17. Johanna Bruck with her husband and daughter in Breslau (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Breslau address books following the death of her second husband, Dr. Walter Bruck, in 1937, continue to list Johanna Bruck until 1941 (Figure 18), whereupon her name disappears from the directory. Until I tracked Johanna and Renate Bruck to England relying on documents I obtained through the United Kingdom’s General Register Office, I was uncertain whether they had survived WWII or where they may have landed. I have detailed the results of my forensic investigations in Posts 68 and 68 Postscript so will not repeat them here.

 

Figure 18. Page from 1941 Breslau Address Bruck showing the widow, designated as “wwe,” Johanna Bruck living at Oranienstrasse 4, the last year in which Johanna is listed in Breslau address books

 

Once I determined that Johanna and Renate Bruck survived WWII, I next wondered whether Johanna and Renate had made their way to England before or after the war. This question was eventually answered by Renate Bruck’s lifelong friend, Ms. Ina Schaesberg (Figure 19), born the same year as Renate in 1926, and still alive today.

 

Figure 19. Renate Bruck’s lifelong friend, Ms. Ina Schaesberg, born in 1926, the same year as Renate

 

 

Inadvertently, I never thought to ask Ina this question until Walter and Johanna Bruck’s twin granddaughters, Michele and Francesca Newman, recently told me they had found their grandmother and mother’s Tagebuch, the journal or diary. It was at this moment Ina confirmed that Renate and her mother lived in Berlin after they left Breslau in an apartment building that survived Allied bombing during WWII. Following the war, the Berlin sector they lived in came under British occupation, which is likely how Renate met the Berlin-born British officer, Henry Ernest Graham (1904-1959) (Figure 20), who became her second husband in 1948. Several photos exist of Johanna in England following her immigration there. (Figures 21-23)

 

Figure 20. Renate Bruck with her second husband, Henry Ernest Graham (1904-1959), who was born in Berlin as Heinrich Ernst Gardenwitz and immigrated to England; Renate met him in Berlin when he was deployed there following WWII (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 21. Undated photo of Johanna and Renate Bruck in England (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 22. Johanna Bruck (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)
Figure 23. Johanna Bruck (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The twins have shown great faith in sending and entrusting me with the original of their mother and grandmother’s journal, which I have since converted into a PDF and sent off to one of my cousins for transcription. (Figure 24) The journal covers the five-year period between the 1st of January 1940 and the 24th of December 1944. The memoir confirms that Johanna and Renate Bruck moved from Breslau to Berlin in February 1942. Transcription of the diary is ongoing as we speak and the major contents and findings will be the subject of a future Blog post.

 

Figure 24. Frontispiece of Johanna and Renate Bruck’s 5-Year “Tagebuch,” diary, which I am currently having transcribed and translated

 

Absent the transcription of Johanna and Renate’s years in Berlin, I was still able to learn a little bit about their time there from Ms. Bettina Mehne who I introduced to readers in Post 101. To remind readers, Renate’s first husband was Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne to whom she was only briefly married. Bettina is Matthias Mehne’s daughter by his second marriage. Knowing Matthias had been a “Geigenbauer,” a violin maker, in Berlin and aware Renate and Matthias had met or become reacquainted with him there (i.e., Matthias and Renate may have known one another from Breslau) after her arrival in February 1942, I wondered whether Renate and her mother had lived with his family when Matthias was a British prisoner-of-war during WWII. (It is still not entirely clear to me which year Renate and Matthias got married.) Bettina explained that her Mehne family had no relatives living in Berlin at the time, so as Ina Schaesberg explained, Johanna and Renate lived independently. It was only after Matthias was released that all three briefly lived together. According to Bettina, Johanna was a major drain on her father’s financial resources because of her love of chocolate, which was enormously expensive in the post-war period!

 

VITAL STATISTICS OF JOHANNA BRUCK NÉE GRÄBSCH & SOME IMMEDIATE RELATIVES

 

 

NAME EVENT DATE PLACE SOURCE
         
Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch (self) Birth 10 April 1884 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau marriage certificate
  Marriage (to Dr. Alfred Renner) 6 May 1905 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau marriage certificate
  Divorce (from Dr. Alfred Renner) 8 March 1917 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Notation on 1905 Breslau marriage certificate
  Marriage announcement (to Walter Wolfgang Bruck) 13 December 1923 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Wedding announcement among Walter Bruck’s personal effects
  Marriage (to Walter Wolfgang Bruck) 22 December 1923 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
  Death 5 March 1963 Elstree, Hertfordshire, England United Kingdom death certificate
Alfred Friedrich Karl Kurt Renner (first husband) Birth 20 June 1873 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau 1905 marriage certificate
  Marriage (to Johanna Gräbsch) 6 May 1905 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau marriage certificate
  Divorce (from Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch) 8 March 1917 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Notation on 1905 Breslau marriage certificate
  Death Unknown    
Walter Wolfgang Bruck (second husband) Birth 4 March 1872 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Walter Bruck’s personal biography
  Marriage announcement (to Johanna Gräbsch) 13 December 1923 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Wedding announcement among Walter Bruck’s personal effects
  Marriage (to Johanna Gräbsch) 22 December 1923 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
  Death 31 March 1937 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Walter Bruck’s Breslau death certificate
Hermine Bruck (daughter) Birth 18 January 1924 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
  Death 10 March 1924 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
Renate Stephanie Gertrude Bruck (daughter) Birth 16 June 1926 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Family tree among Walter Bruck’s personal papers
  Death 3 March 2013 Ramsholt, Suffolk, England United Kingdom death certificate
Karl Paul Otto Reinhold Gräbsch (father) Birth UNKNOWN    
  Marriage 26 July 1873 Dresden, Germany Dresden, Germany, Weekly Church Reports of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1685-1879
  Death UNKNOWN    
Friederike Emma Nerche (mother) Birth 2 June 1854 Dresden, Germany Dresden, Germany, Weekly Church Reports of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1685-1879
  Baptism 18 June 1854 Dresden, Germany Dresden, Germany, Weekly Church Reports of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1685-1879
  Marriage 26 July 1873 Dresden, Germany Dresden, Germany, Weekly Church Reports of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1685-1879
  Death UNKNOWN    
Paul Karl Hermann Gräbsch (brother) Birth 28 July 1874 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Hamburg, Germany death certificate
  Marriage (to Irene Elisabeth Klar) 9 April 1920 Belgard (Persante), Pomerania, Germany [today: Białogard, Koszalin, Poland] Eastern Prussian Provinces, Germany (Poland), Selected Civil Vitals, 1874-1945
  Death 31 March 1946 Hamburg, Germany Hamburg, Germany death certificate
Irene Elisabeth Klar (sister-in-law) Birth 17 April 1898 Belgard (Persante), Pomerania, Germany [today: Białogard, Koszalin, Poland] 1920 Belgard, Prussia marriage certificate
  Marriage (to Paul Karl Hermann Gräbsch) 9 April 1920 Belgard (Persante), Pomerania, Germany [today: Białogard, Koszalin, Poland] 1920 Belgard, Prussia marriage certificate
  Death UNKNOWN    
Helene Emma Clara Gräbsch (sister) Birth 7 March 1876 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Breslau birth certificate
  Marriage (to Alfred Wilhelm Kurt Steinberg) UNKNOWN    
  Death UNKNOWN    
Alfred Wilhelm Kurt Steinberg (brother-in-law) Birth 15 September 1865   MyHeritage Germany Deaths & Burials, 1582-1968
  Marriage (to Helene Emma Clara Gräbsch) UNKNOWN    
  Death 12 February 1909 Brandenburg, Berlin, Germany Berlin death certificate
  Burial 17 February 1909 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1500-1971