UPDATED MAY 18, 2021
(UPDATES IN RED)
“I should like someone to remember that there once lived a person named David Berger.” (David Berger in his last letter, Vilna 1941, quoted from www.yadvashem.org brochure)
NOTE: This post examines the fate of some of the Jewish residents and guests who stayed at the Villa Primavera in Fiesole, Italy, between roughly March 1937 and September 1938, the period during which my aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck co-managed the property as a bed-and-breakfast with a Jewish emigrant formerly from Austria and Germany, Ms. Lucia von Jacobi. Investigating what became of the guests who stayed at the Villa Primavera during this time wound up upending my preconceived notion that the boarders were all Jewish emigrés permanently fleeing Germany.
Related Post: Post 21: Aunt Susanne & Dr. Franz Müller, The Fiesole Years
Surviving historic records archived at the “Archivio Storico Comunale,” the “Municipal Historic Archive,” in Fiesole, place my aunt Susanne and my uncle Dr. Franz Müller’s arrival there in about March 1936, and their departure in mid-September 1938. Beginning approximately a year after their arrival, that’s to say, in March 1937, and continuing until they left for France in mid-September 1938, registration logs from the Villa Primavera record numerous guests. I was surprised at the large number of visitors who stayed there, mostly Jewish, and just assumed my aunt and uncle hosted them as they tried to escape Europe and Nazi persecution. While I eventually came across a reference indicating my aunt and Ms. Jacobi had run the Villa Primavera as a bed-and-breakfast, explaining the multiple boarders, this did not initially alter my view that the Jewish guests had already permanently fled Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland, never to return.
To remind readers, during Italy’s Fascist era, all out-of-town visitors to Fiesole and elsewhere were required to appear with their hosts at the Municipio, or City Hall, provide their names and those of their parents, declare their occupation, state when and where they were born, show their identity papers, give their passport numbers, divulge their anticipated length of stay, and complete what was called a “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia,” or “Stay of Foreigners in Italy.” (Figure 1) As readers will rightly conclude, collecting this information represented a vast invasion of privacy, although forensic genealogists can glean an enormous amount of useful ancestral data. While virtually all the Soggiorno forms state the reason for the guest’s visit as “turismo,” tourism, I concluded this was a “cover” for their real purpose, planning their escape to America or elsewhere. There can be little doubt in examining the Soggiorno forms that most guests were educated and accomplished people of means, likely with good personal and professional contacts elsewhere in the world who could sponsor them and help them obtain travel visas. That said, this did not ensure that Jews were able to obtain such outside help or even intended to leave Europe.
With the Soggiorno forms and Fiesole registration ledgers in hand, using ancestry.com, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem Holocaust victims’ databases, as well as general Internet queries, I set out to try and determine the fate of as many of the guests of the Villa Primavera as possible. With respect to my own family, I already knew what had happened to them, in particular that my beloved aunt Susanne (Figure 2) and my great-aunt Franziska Bruck (Figure 3) had both died in the Holocaust; similarly, I already knew that one of my first cousins twice-removed, Auguste “Gusti” Schueck (Figure 4), had died in the Theresienstadt Ghetto in Czechoslovakia on May 28, 1943. But, I was very curious whether other individuals who had passed through the Villa Primavera suffered a similar fate or managed to find sanctuary elsewhere. The findings upended my preconceived notion that the guests at the Villa Primavera were on a one-way journey out of Europe at the time they stayed in Fiesole.
Below is a table, alphabetically-arranged, of the Jewish residents and boarders who stayed at the Villa Primavera between March 1937 and September 1938, with comments as to their destiny, where discovered. Below the table, I highlight a few individuals, discussing some interesting things I’ve learned about them, including pictures, where found.
| NAME (NATIONALITY) | DATE & PLACE OF BIRTH | DATE & PLACE OF DEATH | COMMENT |
| Argudinsky née Fleischer, Elisabetta (UNKNOWN) | 11/24/1873 Reichenbach, Germany | Unknown | Destiny: Unknown |
| Bachrach née Bachmann, Elvire (SWISS) | 9/15/1872 Karstein | Unknown | Destiny: Unknown |
| Baerwald née Lewino, Charlotte Victoria (GERMAN) | 8/6/1870 Mainz, Germany | 3/16/1966 St. Gallen, Switzerland | Destiny: Immigrated to America, died in Switzerland (Figure 5) |
| Berend, Eduard (GERMAN) | 12/5/1883 Hannover, Germany | 1973 Marbach, Germany | Destiny: Left Germany in 1939, returned after WWII |
| Bergmann née Neufeld, Amalie (GERMAN) | 4/16/1881 Posen, Germany | Unknown | Destiny: Unknown |
| Brieger née Elias, Else (GERMAN) | 2/19/1888 Posen, Germany | Unknown | Destiny: Unknown |
| Bruck née Berliner, Else (GERMAN)(Figure 6) | 3/3/1873 Ratibor, Germany | 2/16/1957 New York, NY | Destiny: Immigrated to America |
| Bruck, Eva (GERMAN) (Figure 7) | 8/19/1906 Barcelona, Spain | 8/15/1977 Ainring, Germany | Destiny: Immigrated to Spain, died in Germany (Figure 8) |
| Bruck, Franziska (GERMAN) | 12/29/1866 Ratibor, Germany | 1/2/1942 Berlin, Germany | Destiny: Suicide victim of the Holocaust |
| Bruck, Otto (GERMAN) (Figure 42) |
4/16/1907 Ratibor, Germany | 9/13/1994 New York, NY | Destiny: Immigrated to America |
| Cohn née Pollack, Caroline (GERMAN) | Unknown | Unknown | Destiny: Unknown |
| Cypres, Jacques (BELGIAN) | 10/29/1904 Antwerp, Belgium | Unknown | Destiny: Immigrated to America (Figure 9) |
| Donath, Ludwig (GERMAN) | 3/6/1900 Vienna, Austria | 9/29/1967 New York, NY | Destiny: Immigrated to America |
| Donath née Camsky, Maria Josefa (GERMAN) | 8/20/1902 Vienna, Austria | 4/21/1975 Vienna, Austria | Destiny: Immigrated to America, returned to Austria after her husband’s death |
| Elias, Dr. Carl Ludwig (GERMAN) | 9/19/1891 Berlin, Germany | 1942 Auschwitz, Poland | Destiny: Murdered in Auschwitz |
| Fleischner née Schoenfeld, Gabriele Ann Sophie (AUSTRIAN)(Figures 10a &b) | 10/12/1895 Vienna, Austria | 9/22/58 Massachusetts | Destiny: Immigrated to America, died Gabriele Anna Fleischner-Lawrence |
| Fleischner, Dr. Konrad George (AUSTRIAN)(Figures 11a& b) | 10/12/1891 Vienna, Austria | 9/1963 Massachusetts | Destiny: Immigrated to America, died Conrad Lawrence |
| Goldenring, Eva (GERMAN) | 10/29/1906 Berlin, Germany | 12/1969 Wilmington, DE | Destiny: Left Germany for France & Spain; eventually immigrated to America |
| Goldenring, Fritz (GERMAN) | 9/11/1902 | 12/15/1943 Shanghai, China | Destiny: Left for Shanghai where he died in the Shanghai Ghetto |
| Goldenring née Hirsch, Helene (GERMAN) | 3/25/1880 Ratibor, Germany
|
1/12/1968 Newark, NJ | Destiny: Left for Chile & eventually immigrated to America |
| Grödel, Emilie (GERMAN) | Unknown | Unknown | Destiny: Unknown |
| Hayoth HAYDT, Dr. Eugen (GERMAN)
|
4/19/1906
Metz, France |
Unknown
1/17/1973 Sydney, Australia |
Destiny: Unknown
Arrived in Sydney, Australia on 2/6/1939 aboard the ship “NIEUW HOLLAND”; Died as Alvin Eugene Werner Haydt or A.E.W Haydt |
| Hayoth HAYDT née Winternitz, Lilly (GERMAN) | 8/12/1908
Vienna, Austria |
Unknown
2/4/1997 Sydney |
Destiny: Unknown
Arrived in Sydney, Australia on 2/6/1939 aboard the ship “NIEUW HOLLAND”
|
| Heilbronner, Dr. Paul Milton (GERMAN) (Figures 12 & b) | 11/22/1904 Munich, Germany | 4/6/1980 Santa Barbara, CA | Destiny: Immigrated to America, died as Paul Milton Laporte |
| Heilbronner née Wimpfheimer, Sofie (GERMAN) (Figures 13a & b) | 3/18/1876 Augsburg, Germany | 3/26/1965 Los Angeles, CA | Destiny: Immigrated to America, died as Sofie Broner |
| Herz, Dr. Phil. Emanuel Emil (GERMAN) | 4/5/1877 Essen, Germany | 7/8/1971 Rochester, NY | Destiny: Immigrated to America (Figure 14) |
| Herz née Berl, Gabriele (GERMAN) | 4/26/1886 Vienna, Austria | 1957 Rochester, NY | Destiny: Immigrated to America |
| Hirschfeldt née Wolff, Katharina (GERMAN) | 4/16/1866 Berlin, Germany | Unknown | Destiny: Unknown |
| Jacobi née Goldberg, Lucia von (GERMAN) | 9/8/1887 Vienna, Austria | 4/24/1956 Locarno, Switzerland | Destiny: Fled to Switzerland where she died after WWII |
| Kleinmann née Lewensohn, Gretchen (GERMAN) | 12/31/1894 Hamburg, Germany | Unknown | Destiny: Unknown |
| Kleinmann, Dr. Phil & Med. Hans (GERMAN) | 9/28/1895 Berlin, Germany | Unknown | Destiny: Unknown |
| Kleinmann née Luvic, Sophie (GERMAN) | 11/27/1863 Memel, East Prussia | Unknown | Destiny: Unknown |
| Kuhnemund née Goldschmidt, Helene Ida (GERMAN) | 3/15/1901 Berlin, Germany | Unknown | Destiny: Unknown |
| Leven née Levÿ, Johanna (GERMAN) | 6/25/1866 Koenigshoeven, Germany | 7/2/1942 Theresienstadt Ghetto, Czechoslovakia | Destiny: Murdered in Theresienstadt Ghetto |
| Leyser née Schueck, Auguste (GERMAN) | 1/26/1872 Ratibor, Germany | 10/5/1943 Theresienstadt Ghetto, Czechoslovakia | Destiny: Murdered in Theresienstadt Ghetto |
| Locker, Dine Martha (POLISH) | Unknown | Unknown | Destiny: Unknown |
| Maass, Margarete (GERMAN) | 2/16/1880 Friedberg, Germany | Unknown | Destiny: Unknown |
| Matthias, Julius (GERMAN) | 5/15/1857 Hamburg, Germany | 5/16/1942 Hamburg, Germany | Destiny: Died in Germany during WWII |
| Müller, Dr. Franz (GERMAN) (Figure 15) | 12/31/1871 Berlin, Germany |
10/1/1945 Fayence, France | Destiny: Left for Italy & France, where he died |
| Müller née Bruck, Susanne (GERMAN) (Figure 42) |
4/20/1904 Ratibor, Germany | ~9/7/1942 Auschwitz, Poland | Destiny: Murdered in Auschwitz |
| Nienburg née Niess, Emmy (GERMAN) | 8/16/1885 Berlin, Germany | Unknown | Destiny: Appears to have died in Germany after WWII |
| Oppler née Pinoff, Gertrude (GERMAN) | 1/13/1876 Görlitz, Germany | 3/9/1952 Frankfurt, Germany | Destiny: Died in Germany after WWII; (granddaughter of Marcus Braun, subject of Post 14) |
| Rosendorff, Friederike Elfriede (GERMAN) | 11/28/1872 Berlin, Germany | Unknown | Destiny: Appears to have died in Germany after WWII |
| Sakheim née Plotkin, Anuta (PALESTINIAN)(Figure 16) | 2/15/1896 Lodz, Poland | 8/1939 Tel Aviv, Palestine | Destiny: Suicide |
| Schoop, Paul (SWISS) | 7/31/1907 Zurich, Switzerland | 1/1/1976 Van Nuys, CA | Destiny: Immigrated to America |
| Steinfeld née Blum, Jenny (GERMAN) | 10/24/1865 Deutsch Eylau, West Prussia | 8/27/1942 Berlin, Germany | Destiny: Suicide victim of the Holocaust |
In the case of several people associated with the Villa Primavera, including my aunt and uncle (Figure 17), Lucia von Jacobi (Figure 18), and Charlotte Baerwald, their intent had been to stay in Fiesole “per sempre,” forever. In the case of most guests, however, their anticipated length of stay typically varied between a few weeks and two months.
Eduard Berend
Eduard Berend (Figure 19) was an eminent editor of the works of Jean Paul (1763-1825), a German Romantic writer. After fighting in WWI, Berend pursued an academic career, but on account of anti-Semitism, he was rejected as a teacher at three German universities. In 1927, the Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Prussian Academy of Sciences, eventually commissioned him with the historic-critical edition of the works of Jean Paul. By 1938, he had completed 20 of the 32 planned volumes, works that established Jean Paul as one of the most important writers of German classicism, alongside Goethe and Schiller. Still, he was dismissed by the Prussian Academy in 1938. Soon thereafter he was sent to the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen, and was only released on the condition that he leave Germany immediately.
Prior to WWII, Eduard Berend had developed an unlikely friendship with a Heinrich Meyer, a Goethe scholar at the Rice Institute in Houston with Nazi sympathies. Desperate, Berend turned to Meyer for help in December 1938. In spite of Henrich Meyer’s Nazi leanings, which landed him in prison in Texas in 1943 and ultimately got him fired, Meyer secured an affidavit for Berend to leave Germany for Switzerland where he even supported Berend financially. After the war, Berend continued his work on Jean Paul. He went back to Germany in 1957, and by the time of his death in 1973, had completed twenty-eight volumes.
The passport on which Eduard Berend traveled to Switzerland in 1939 was different than the one on which he traveled to Fiesole in May 1937, comparing the number on the Soggiorno form (Figure 20) with that on his 1939 passport, found on the Internet. (Figure 21)
Franziska Bruck
I was able to procure a copy of my great-aunt Franziska Bruck’s death certificate from the Landesarchiv Berlin. (Figure 22) The certificate states the gruesome way in which she killed herself on January 2, 1942, “selbstmord durch erhängen,” suicide by hanging, no doubt after being told to report to an old-age transport for deportation. (Figure 23)
In previous posts, I’ve explained to readers that beginning in 1937-38, all German Jewish men had to be called “Israel,” and all German Jewish women had to be called “Sarah”; these names were added to official birth, marriage and death certificates. Readers will note that on my great-aunt’s death certificate, the name “Sara” has been added.
My great-aunt Franziska spent two months at the Villa Primavera between September and November 1937. I’ve often wondered what her fate might have been had she not returned to Berlin. I can only surmise that like many Jews, she was either in denial as to what might happen upon her return, or her options for leaving Germany were limited.
Ludwig & Maria Donath
Ludwig Donath (Figures 24a & b) and his wife, Maria Donath née Camsky (Figures 25a & b), were among the last German Jewish guests at the Villa Primavera, staying for no more than a month in July-August 1938. Ludwig Donath was a famous character actor (Figures 26 & 27) who’d had a distinguished career on the stages of Vienna and Berlin, before leaving Nazi Germany in 1933. He and his wife arrived in Hollywood via Switzerland and England, departing from Liverpool for New York in February 1940. Donath appeared in many American films, with at least 84 credits to his name, and was often typecast as a Nazi in films from 1942. (Figure 28) He was briefly blacklisted in the 1950’s for alleged left-wing connections, but resumed steady television work in 1957 for the remainder of his life.
Carl Ludwig Elias
Carl Ludwig Elias was born in 1891 to a distinguished art critic, Dr. Julius Elias, who was instrumental in promoting French Impressionism in Germany. Likely because of his father’s connections with the art world, an oil portrait of “Carl Ludwig Elias 7 ¼” by Lovis Corinth was painted in 1899. (Figure 29) Carl Ludwig was a lawyer in Berlin and immigrated to Norway when the Nazis came to power. Nonetheless, after the Nazis invaded Norway in December 1940, he was captured and deported with 500 other Jews from Denmark to Auschwitz in 1942, where he was murdered.
Helene Goldenring
Helene Goldenring visited the Villa Primavera on two occasions, for about a month between May-June 1937, and, again, between December 1937 and January 1938 for two months. Both of her children, Eva and Fritz Goldenring, who’ve been discussed in earlier posts, were also guests on separate occasions. Helene’s name appears in a Berlin phone directory as late as 1940 (Figure 30), indicating she returned to Germany after her sojourns in Fiesole. At some point, she seems to have joined her brother, Dr. Robert Hirsch, in Chile, before eventually immigrating to America in 1947 after his death, where she reunited with her only surviving child, Eva. (Figure 31)
Eugen & Lillian Haydt
In May 2021, I was contacted by Ms. Tamara Precek, a most delightful Czech lady who has resided in Barcelona, Spain for the past 20 years. She is researching the Winternitz families that lived in Prague around 1850, of whom Lillian Haydt née Winternitz is descended. Tamara asked me to send her the “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia” forms for Eugen (Figure 43) and Lillian (Figure 44), suspecting I had misread their surnames. Indeed, I had mistaken HAYDT as “Hayoth.”
Tamara has recently been able to learn what happened to them after their brief stay at the Villa Primavera. They managed to immigrate to Australia, arriving there on the 6th of February 1939 aboard the ship “NIEUW HOLLAND.” Dr. Eugen Haydt changed his named to Albin (Alvin) Eugene Werner (Warner) Haydt (A.E.W. Haydt) but was still generally known as Eugene Haydt. He was a tradesman, and died on the 17th of January 1973; his wife may have worked with him, and passed away on the 4th of February 1997. They appear not to have had any children.
Ms. Precek even found a picture of the apartment building where they resided in Sydney. (Figure 45)
Lucia von Jacobi
Ms. Jacobi co-managed the Villa Primavera as a bed-and-breakfast with my aunt Susanne. She fled Fiesole in 1938 in favor of Switzerland, leaving everything behind, including her personal papers, which were miraculously found in Florence and saved by a German researcher in 1964, Dr. Irene Below (see Blog Post 21 for the full story).
Johanna Leven
Johanna Leven stayed at the Villa Primavera for the first two months of 1938, but clearly returned to Germany after her stay. She was eventually deported from Mönchengladbach, Germany to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in then-Czechoslovakia, where she perished in 1942. (Figure 32)
Julius Matthias
Julius Matthias was among the oldest guest to have stayed at the Villa Primavera, being almost 80 when he visted there between March and April 1937. After his days in Fiesole, he returned to Hamburg, Germany, where he died on May 16, 1942, seemingly of natural causes (i.e., senility, broncho-pneumonia). His death certificate (Figure 33) states he was a non-practicing Jew, although this fact would not have prevented him from being deported to a concentration camp. His death certificate assigned him the name “Israel” to identify him as a Jew.
Paul Schoop
Paul Schoop was born in 1907 in Zurich, Switzerland, one of four accomplished offspring (with Max Schoop (b. 1902); Trudi Schoop (b. 1903); Hedwig “Hedi” Schoop (b. 1906)) of a prominent family. Paul’s father, Maximilian Schoop, was the editor of Neue Zurcher Zeitung and president of Dolder Hotels. Paul (Figure 34) came to America in September 1939, and eventually joined his three siblings in Van Nuys, California. He was an accomplished composer, concert pianist and conductor, first in Europe and later in America. Paul’s brother-in-law was Frederick Maurice Holländer (Figures 35a & b), the famed composer and torch song writer, who’d once been married to one of Paul’s sister, Hedi Schoop. (Figures 36a & b)
I surmise the reason the Schoop children came to America is because of greater economic and professional opportunities rather than on account of Nazi persecution.
Jenny Steinfeld
Jenny Steinfeld’s tale is a poignant one. Her name appears with that of her son, Paul Steinfeld, on an April 1937 manifest of boat passengers bound from Bremen, Germany to New York. (Figure 37) A scant five months later, between September and November 1937, she is a guest at the Villa Primavera, clearly having come back from America. Jenny eventually returns to Berlin, and on August 27, 1942 commits suicide there, yet another victim of Nazi persecution. (Figure 38) As with my great-aunt Franziska, who too returned to Berlin from Fiesole, one wonders why Jenny walked back into the maws of death.
This post deals only in passing with my immediate and extended Bruck family. For this reason, it involved considerably more forensic research, as most of the guests at the Villa Primavera were previously unknown to me. Still, learning more about these people was important to me. In some small way, as the Holocaust victim David Berger wrote in 1941, I hope I have honored and recognized a few other Jewish victims of Nazi persecution so they are not forgotten.
SIDEBAR
Regular readers will know the enjoyment I derive making connections between people and events related to my family. One of my German first cousins, once-removed, Kay Lutze, is friends with an Anja Holländer, living in Amsterdam, Netherlands. (Figure 39) Anja is related to Frederick Maurice Holländer, the brother-in-law of Paul Schoop, who stayed at the Villa Primavera. In assembling this involved Blog post, I recollected this fact and also that Anja claims a relationship to my Bruck family. I asked Kay whether he knew the relationship, and he could only tell me that the mother of a Holländer named LUDWIG HEINRICH HOLLÄNDER was a Bruck. Curious about this, I researched this man on ancestry.com, and, indeed, discovered various historic documents that confirm the distant relationship of the Holländer family to my Bruck family. Ludwig’s mother was HELENE HOLLÄNDER née BRUCK (1812-1876), who I think is my great-great-great-great-aunt; Helene was married to a BENJAMIN HOLLÄNDER (1809-1884). I discovered his death certificate (Figures 40a & b), along with that of their son Ludwig (1833-1897). (Figures 41a & b)
As we speak, I am trying to learn how Anja is related to Friedrick and Helene Holländer née Bruck. Watch this space!
