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Ernst Meinhardt * 1886

Binderstraße 18 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
ERNST
MEINHARDT
JG. 1886
DEPORTIERT 1941
ERMORDET IN
MINSK

further stumbling stones in Binderstraße 18:
Jeanette Meinhardt

Ernst Meinhardt, born 2.12.1886 in Schwedt/Oder, deported to Minsk Ghetto on 8.11.1941
Jeanette Meinhardt, née Katz, born 12.4.1893 in Janowitz/ Posen, deported to Minsk Ghetto on 8.11.1941

Binderstraße 18 (Rotherbaum)

Ernst Meinhardt was born in Schwedt at river Oder as the son of the Jewish horse dealer Gustav Meinhardt (born 1848 in Vierraden, died 1923 in Schwedt) and Bertha Meinhardt, née Salinger (1863-1929). He was preceded in birth by his brother Alfred Meinhardt (1885-1943), and after him by his siblings Hans Meinhardt (1888-1904), Berthold Meinhardt (1890-1917), Grethe Meinhardt, later married Michelson (1893-1943), Ella Meinhardt, later married Landshut (1898-1980) and Dorothea "Thea" Meinhardt, later maried Kahn (1902-1981).

The family lived in Schwedt in Vierradenerstraße (among others 1885-1886) and in Viehmarktstraße (among others 1893). Gustav A. Meinhardt's horse shop, founded in 1875, was located at Bahnhofstraße 16, where, among other jobs, his eldest son presumably worked in 1911.

Gustav Meinhardt, who was 66 years old, was too old for the mobilization of World War I. He had fought in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 with the Infantry Regiment 64 and had been awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class. His three sons now had to go to war "for Kaiser, people and fatherland".
The 27-year-old Berthold Meinhardt died on July 1, 1917, as a member of Medical Company 516.
It is not known in which unit Ernst Meinhardt served at the front, but he is said to have received various war decorations.
Fritz Meinhardt (born 30.7.1895 in Schwedt), who was also killed in action in World War I, may also have been a member of the family or at least a relative; he belonged to the 3rd Company of Reserve Infantry Regiment 20 and was declared dead on July 18, 1916.

Two and a half years after the end of the First World War, Ernst Meinhardt married Jeanette "Jenny", née Katz (born 12.4.1893 in Janowitz/Poznan), also Jewish, in March 1921, whose birthplace on the river Welna, with a population of around 2,000, had belonged to Poland since 1920. The couple had a son together: Hans Berthold Meinhardt (born 23.7.1923 in Stettin). His birth in Stettin, about 40 km north of Schwedt, seems to have had medical reasons and was not due to a move of the parents there. Only a few weeks after his birth, in August 1923, Ernst Meinhardt was listed on his father's death certificate as a merchant living in Schwedt (Lindenallee 15). This address was also in the Schwedt address book of 1926, it showed Ernst Meinhardt as a commercial agent.

After the death of their father and company owner Gustav Meinhardt, Alfred and Ernst Meinhardt continued his horse and livestock business and expanded the business to include the fur and tobacco trade as well as real estate trading.

On May 14, 1926, Ernst and Jeanette Meinhardt moved to Hamburg with their three-year-old son. There Ernst Meinhardt worked as a drugstore assistant from May 1926 on. Since 1928 he had belonged to the Jewish Community of Hamburg and the cultural association "Neue Dammtorsynagoge" (NDS), the smallest of the three Jewish religious associations in Hamburg, which was moderately conservative.

In 1928, he is said to have taken over a drugstore at Kohlhöfen 32 (Neustadt) and in 1933 moved with it to Marcusstraße 13 (Neustadt), where the monthly rent was RM 40. However, the Hamburg address book from 1927 to 1933 listed only the drugstore of Waldemar Hanssen at Kohlhöfen 32, who was mentioned in the commercial register from November 1919 with a pharmacy at Pferdemarkt 12 (the drugstore was deleted from the commercial register in 1951). And at Marcusstraße 13, in turn, only the basement store there was listed for the years 1934 to 1936, but not the first floor rooms, where presumably Ernst Meinhardt operated his drugstore as successor to Joh. Schmidt Kolonialwaren.

The Meinhardt family lived at Hallerplatz 2 (1927-1928), where Georg Rosenthal's Schwan drugstore was located on the first floor. Subsequently, Meinhardts moved to the adjoining building at Hallerplatz 4, I. floor (1929-1930). For the longest time they lived at Binderstraße 18 (1931-1940), where they initially occupied a 3 ½-room apartment for a monthly rent of RM 55, of which they sublet 2 rooms furnished to save money. From April 1936, they were subtenants themselves in two rooms at Schultz's at Binderstraße 18 and had to pay RM 35 for this as well as bathroom and kitchen use.

The Jewish Community's tax card recorded, slightly deviating from the Hamburg address book, the following residential addresses: Hallerplatz 2 for subletting from Levetzow (who, however, lived at Hallerplatz 4), Binderstraße 18, Kohlhöfen 6 (as of June 1938) and Binderstraße 18 with (Lizzie) Schultz (as of August 1938).

The son Hans Meinhardt attended the elementary school Binderstraße (1929-1933) at Binderstraße 34 and then the directly adjacent Talmud Tora School (1933-1936), for which a monthly school fee of 2 RM had to be paid. After graduating from school, he was trained in a tree nursery (1936-1938).

Jenny Meinhardt was unable to work due to her poor health. She was repeatedly in medical treatment at the doctor Moritz Joel (Grindelhof 19) and in the hospital.

Ernst Meinhardt's drugstore was run as a "medical drugstore". This means that it carried hardly any paints, varnishes, soda, etc., but instead products for oral and dental hygiene, hair care and main care, as well as remedies for gout and rheumatism such as rubbing alcohol, gout absorbent cotton, turpentine spirit, camphor spirit, amol, etc. The store's equipment was, according to a note, "very small". The business equipment, as noted by the Hamburg Welfare Department, was simple.

The anti-Jewish boycott measures from 1933 onward also increasingly affected Ernst Meinhardt's drugstore. From November 1935, he applied to the welfare office for financial support, because with a monthly turnover of RM 300, only RM 80 net remained. The welfare office noted in April 1936: "M.'s drugstore continues to decline. The stock of goods is limited to the utmost (...). The best customers were leaving because M. was Jewish. Due to the ever decreasing turnover, M. is no longer able to meet his most urgent obligations (...)."

In November 1936, Ernst Meinhardt received a goods purchase loan of 250 RM through the Jewish Mittelstandshilfe. In the wake of the economic crisis of the late 1920s/early 1930s, this organization had changed from a professional organization to a welfare institution for Jewish entrepreneurs; the Jewish Community of Hamburg granted annual subsidies of around 30,000 Reichsmark for this purpose in order to stop the economic decline of Jewish businesses, which the National Socialist state was relentlessly pursuing.

Against this background, the welfare file tersely noted: Ernst Meinhardt "earns his living from his drugstore at Marcusstraße 13. On December 31, 1938, the drugstore had to be abandoned, (...) since January 26, 1939 (...) as an unskilled worker."

Ernst Meinhardt now had to perform assigned and controlled, mostly heavy work, such as in Hoisbüttel on a construction site (from February 1939), in Niendorf at farmer Heinrich Timm (from May 1939), in Lokstedt at Zibuha (?) (among others, June 1940 - September 1941), and in the Hemp Factory and Spinning Mill of Steen & Co. in Lokstedt (Stresemannallee 104, renamed Horst-Wessel-Allee 104) for a final weekly wage of 25 RM.

For April/May 1940, the Meinhardt family apparently planned to emigrate to Palestine. Two notations on the tax card of the Jewish Community indicate this: "Palestine April 40, N.B. (...) 18.4.40" in the column of remarks and "Palestine May 40, N.B. (...) 18.4.40" under the son's name. The deletion of these notes is the only indication of the failure of their emigration attempt. The British Mandate's entry quotas for Palestine were reduced until 1939 and were mainly reserved for the Zionist settlement pioneers, which, however, increased the number of illegal emigrants. In addition, the travel costs to the emigration country (and for some countries, additionally the proof of financial means and guarantors) may have been an insurmountable hurdle for the Meinhardt family. The abbreviation N.B. probably indicates that the clearance certificate (U.B.) required for emigration had not been issued by the authorities of the Nazi regime.

Hans Meinhardt is said to have been employed, among other things, in June 1940 as an agricultural apprentice in a business of the Jewish Community near Berlin and, among other things, in March 1941 in Ellgau/Upper Silesia. Whether it was a teaching material and the work served as preparation for emigration to Palestine is not proven, but can be assumed. In the spring of 1941, the Nazi Reich Minister of Labor ordered the compulsory employment of Jews, and by mid-1941 the further vocational training of Jews had been banned. In September 1941, Hans Meinhardt was obliged to work at Gustav Sundermann's tree nursery and market garden in Hamburg-Niendorf (Hauptstraße 13) and received 16 to 18 RM per week. From September 19, 1941, he had to wear a yellow "Jewish star" clearly visible on his clothing.

On November 8, 1941, the Meinhardt family of three was deported to the Minsk ghetto in occupied Belarus. The Jewish Community had been obliged by the Gestapo to provide food, clothing, tools and also medicine for the deportation transports. The SS appointed Edgar Franck, a World War II veteran and banker, as the "Judenälteste" (Jewish elder) of the ghetto, who had to implement the SS's instructions. Only meager food rations for the ghetto, in which an emergency kitchen had been set up, came from the city administration of the occupied and heavily destroyed city of Minsk. Medical care was provided by the doctors deported to the ghetto, who, however, lacked almost any medical equipment. The German occupation forces had to be provided with a contingent of laborers from the ghetto every day. They were employed, among other things, in the Daimler Benz repair store for motor vehicles in the southeast of the city.

Many of those interned in the Minsk ghetto died of malnutrition and infectious diseases (hunger dysentery, influenza, pneumonia). The hygienic conditions of the hopelessly overcrowded ghetto were catastrophic. In May 1943, almost all of Hamburg's Jews were murdered in firing squads, not even a dozen of them survived; the ghetto was "cleared" in the fall of 1943 by members of the Security Police and the Security Service of the SS. As the son later learned, his father Ernst Meinhardt is said to have taken his own life in the ghetto with pills. His mother also died there. The exact dates of death of Ernst and Jeanette Meinhardt are not known neither in the memorial book of the German Bundesarchiv nor to the International Tracing Service ITS in Bad Arolsen.

Hans Meinhardt suffered through a 3 ½-year camp odyssey: according to his recollection, he was deported from the Minsk ghetto to the Lublin forced labor camp in the summer of 1942 and then had to perform work as a gravedigger in the Budzyn forced labor camp. The Budzyn camp, 5 km northwest of Krasnik, was set up in September 1942 for Heinkel-Werke aircraft production and was considered a war-important armaments plant. This is also where his former neighbor Martin Stock was deported to in mid-September 1943. Whether the neighbors from Hamburg's Binderstraße recognized each other here is not known (Martin Stock survived 16 ghettos and camps).

According to Hans Meinhardt's statements, he was deported to the Radom concentration camp in the winter of 1943 and then transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and on to Vaihingen/Enz near Stuttgart. This was followed by stations in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace (from July 1944), in the Hessental subcamp of the Natzweiler concentration camp (from October 14, 1944 to January 1945), and in the Dachau concentration camp (April 1945), during which he was temporarily employed as a metal worker in aircraft factories. In Staltach near Munich, 21-year-old Hans Meinhardt was liberated and taken to a Displaced Persons (DP) camp in Feldafing near Munich, from where he emigrated to Palestine in May 1946. In 1958 he emigrated to the USA.

The fate of Ernst Meinhardt's siblings:
Ernst Meinhardt's sister Grethe Michelson, née Meinhardt (born 5.11.1893 in Schwedt), had moved to Hamburg before 1922 and lived there in the Hoheluft-West district at Roonstraße 2. In May 1922 she had married the Hamburg merchant Alfred Joseph Michelson (born 19.5.1887 in Hamburg, who had used the name "Michelson alias Reinbach" since 1902) in Schwedt. Since 1919, the husband had been the owner of the commercial agency firm, N. Michelson (founded in 1883), which had passed from his father (Nathan Michelson, alias Reinbach, 1853-1910) to his mother (Martha Michelson, née Löwenhaupt, born 1859?). Since 1920 he belonged to the Jewish Community of Hamburg, where he was listed under "Michelson alias Reinbach, Alfred". In his passports since 1920, presumably as a result of a war injury, "left leg lame" was noted as a special characteristic.

The private apartment of the childless couple was located at Heidestraße 8 (1922-1928) and Goßlerstraße 65, II. floor in Hoheluft-Ost (among others 1929-1940). In May 1936 the company N. Michelson was deleted from the commercial register. On July 15, 1942, 55-year-old Alfred Michelson and 48-year-old Grethe Michelson were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto from their last assigned quarters at Bornstraße 22, the Louis Levy Stift, which had been declared a "Judenhaus". Six months later, on January 29, 1943, both were further deported to the Auschwitz death camp. It is assumed that they were murdered with gas immediately after their arrival. In the early 1960s, the Berlin-Schöneberg District Court declared Alfred Michelson dead on December 31, 1945. Grethe and Alfred Michelson are commemorated by Stolpersteine at 265 Eppendorfer Weg.

The brother Alfred Meinhardt (born 21.4.1885 in Schwedt) was active as a merchant according to address books of Schwedt of the years 1911 and 1926. In September 1913 he had married Margarethe "Grete" Marcuse (born 5.10.1891), who was also Jewish. She came from Fiddichow/Pomerania, about 10 km northeast of Schwedt. From 1923 to 1926, he continued his father's business together with Ernst Meinhardt; after the latter's retirement in 1926, he remained as the sole owner of the company.

In the house at Bahnhofstraße 15, the childless couple lived in a 4-room apartment , where the company's offices were also located. Margarethe Meinhardt also worked in the business and was responsible in particular for the bookkeeping of the property management (among others for Dresdner Bank and Zentralbodenkreditanstalt).

The National Socialist boycotts in 1933 led to a ruinous decline in business, which forced Alfred Meinhardt to sell the three-story house at Bahnhofstraße 15 (temporarily listed as Bahnhofstraße 23), including horse stables and storehouse, to master potter Karl Grussan (died 1941). Whether he also sold the meadows and fields inherited from his father as well as the company and the motor vehicle is not on recorded. Around 1935, the childless couple moved to Berlin, where he tried to gain a foothold as a real estate agent. His sister-in-law Gertrude Kornfeld, née Marcuse (born 27.2.1896 in Fiddichow/Pomerania) stated to the Berlin Restitution Officearound 1960 that he had been "employed by the Palestine Office in Berlin, Meineckestraße 10, and had been employed as a property manager and Hachscharah leader (training for Palestine)" in Gehringshofen, among other places.

From April 1933 the number of emigrants from the German Reich to Palestine had increased rapidly. The Palestine Office took this into account by setting up a counseling center in Berlin with individual specialized departments. In addition, another 22 branches operated throughout the Reich. In their own agricultural and craft training estates, young Jews in particular were taught the necessary professional skills (hachsharah = training). In the Berlin address book, the entry "Alfred Meinhardt, Immobilien, Berlin N 4, Chausseestr. 121" was found only in 1937 and 1938. The large apartment building with about 30 rental lots was located in the Mitte district and, according to the address book, belonged to Isaac's heirs. In the May 1939 census, he had been recorded at the same address with the name Mechel Meinhardt together with his wife Margarethe Meinhardt. However, the 1939 Berlin address book no longer listed him as the main tenant in this house.

On Alfred Meinhardt's birth certificate, unlike those of his siblings, the compulsory name "Israel" is not recorded; presumably the change of name from Alfred to "Mechel" replaced the stigmatizing name change. Alfred Meinhardt was last in Ahlem near Hanover in a "Judenhaus". In September 1941, he too had to move into the "Judenhaus" on the grounds of the former Israelite Horticultural School in Ahlem, where Jews had previously prepared for emigration to Palestine. From mid-1941, the Ahlem Horticultural School was no longer allowed to be used as a training center; from August 1942, it served as a deportation collection point for the administrative districts of Hanover and Hildesheim.

From there, Alfred Meinhardt was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto on March 17, 1943, and then on to the Auschwitz death camp on October 12, 1944.
His wife Margarethe Meinhardt, née Marcuse, was deported from Berlin to the Auschwitz extermination camp on March 3, 1943, on the "33rd East Transport."
In Schwedt/ Oder, Stolpersteine at Bahnhofstraße 15 commemorate Alfred and Margarete Meinhardt.

Translation Beate Meyer

Stand: February 2023
© Björn Eggert

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 8; Staatsarchiv Hamburg (StaH) 231-7 (Handelsregister), A 1 Band 13 (N. Michelson HR A 3476); StaH 231-7 (Handelsregister), A 1 Band 93 (Waldemar Hanssen HR A 22246); StaH 332-5 (Meldewesen), 2153 u. 2524/1887 (Geburtsregister 1887, Alfred Reinbach, später Michelson); StaH 332-8 (Meldewesen), Alte Einwohnermeldekartei 1892-1925, K 6612 (Nehemias Michelson alias Reinbach 1807-1901, Rosa Michelson alias Reinbach 1845-1903, Betty Michelson alias Reinbach 1846-1908, Nathan Michelson alias Reinbach 1853-1910, Nehemias Michelson alias Reinbach 1856?-1913); StaH 332-8 (Meldewesen), A 24 Band 100 (Passprotokolle 1908, Nr. 523, Alfred Michelson); StaH 332-8 (Meldewesen), A 24 Band 210 (Passprotokolle 1920, Nr. 5970, Alfred Michelson); StaH 332-8 (Meldewesen), A 24 Band 343 (Passprotokolle 1926, Nr. 21237, Alfred Michelson); StaH 332-8 (Meldewesen), A 24 Band 378 (Passprotokolle 1929, Nr. 21912, Grete Michelson geb. Meinhardt); StaH351-11 (Amt für Wiedergutmachung), 46707 (Rentenakte von Hans Berthold Meinhardt, darin auch Fürsorgeakte von Ernst Meinhardt); StaH 351-11 (AfW), 14531 (Martin Stock); StaH 522-1 (Jüdische Gemeinden), 992b (Kultussteuerkartei der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde Hamburg), Erich Ernst Meinhardt, Alfred Michelson; Handelskammer Hamburg, Handelsregisterinformationen (N. Michelson HR A 3476, Waldemar Hanssen HR A 22246); Stadtarchiv Schwedt/ Oder, Geburtsurkunden von Alfred Meinhardt (1885), Ernst Meinhardt (1886) und Grethe Meinhardt (1893), Heiratsurkunde von Grethe Meinhardt (1922), Sterbeurkunde von Gustav Meinhardt (1923), Adressbuch Schwedt 1911 und 1926; KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau (Hans Meinhardt, Fremdnummer 25278, Zugang April 1945 aus Natzweiler); Landesamt für Bürger- und Ordnungsangelegenheiten (LABO) Berlin, Akte 63.656 (Margarethe Meinhardt geb. Marcuse); Yad Vashem, Page of Testimony (Ernst Meinhardt); Gedenkbuch Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Ernst Meinhardt, Jeanette Meinhardt geb. Katz, Margarethe Meinhardt geb. Marcuse, Mechel Meinhardt, Grete Michelson, Kurt Samson; Adressbuch Hamburg (Meinhardt) 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1935, 1940; Adressbuch Hamburg (A. J. Michelson) 1920, 1924, 1926-1929, 1940; Adressbuch (Kohlhöfen 32) 1927, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1933; Adressbuch Hamburg (Marcusstraße 13) 1930, 1931, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936; Adressbuch Berlin 1937, 1938 (Alfred Meinhardt, Immobilien, Berlin N 4, Chausseestr. 121); Werner T. Angress, Generation zwischen Furcht und Hoffnung. Jüdische Jugend im Dritten Reich, Hamburg 1985, S. 46, 49 (Auswanderungslehrgüter); Maike Bruhns, Geflohen aus Deutschland, Hamburger Künstler im Exil 1933-1945, Bremen 2007, S. 189 (Palästina); Brita Eckert, Die jüdische Emigration aus Deutschland 1933-1941. Die Geschichte einer Austreibung (Ausstellungskatalog); Frankfurt/ Main 1985, S. 145-147 (Palästina-Amt Berlin), 132 u. 153 (Hachscharah); Volkhard Knigge u.a., Zwangsarbeit. Die Deutschen, die Zwangsarbeiter und der Krieg (Ausstellungskatalog), Weimar 2010, S. 54-56 (Minsk); Ina Lorenz, Die Juden in Hamburg zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik, 2 Bände, Hamburg 1987, S. 288, 293, 298, 1075, 1100 (jüd. Mittelstandshilfe); Ina Lorenz (Hrsg.), Zerstörte Geschichte, Vierhundert Jahre jüdisches Leben in Hamburg, Hamburg 2005, S. 195 (Deportationen 1941), S. 196 (Arbeitseinsatz); Beate Meyer (Hrsg.), Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der Hamburger Juden 1933-1945, Hamburg 2006, S. 62-64 (Deportationsziel Minsk); Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten, Ein Gedenkbuch. Die jüdischen Gefallenen des deutschen Heeres, der deutschen Marine und der deutschen Schutztruppen 1914-1918, Hamburg 1932, S. 333 (Berthold Meinhardt, Fritz Meinhardt); Ursula Randt, Die Talmud Tora Schule in Hamburg 1805 bis 1942, Hamburg 2005, S. 15 (Curt Samson); Petra Rentrop-Koch, Die ‚Sonderghettos‘ für deutsche Jüdinnen und Juden im besetzten Minsk (1941-1943), in: Beate Meyer (Hrsg.), Deutsche Jüdinnen und Juden in Ghettos und Lagern (1941-1945), Hamburg 2016, S. 100 (Ernst Meinhardt); Anna von Villiez, Mitaller Kraft verdrängt. Entrechtung und Verfolgung "nichtarischer" Ärzte in Hamburg 1933 bis 1945, München/ Hamburg 2009, S. 305 (Dr. Moritz Joel); Hamburger Börsenfirmen, Hamburg 1926, S. 706 (N. Michelson); Hamburger Börsenfirmen, Hamburg 1935, S. 576 (N. Michelson); www.geni.com/people/Ernst-Meinhardt/6000000021210298749 (eingesehen am 23.1.2017); https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Au%C3%9Fenlager_des_KZ_Majdanek (eingesehen 7.4.2017); https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahlem-Badenstedt-Davenstedt (eingesehen 1.11.2017); https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israelitische_Gartenbauschule_Ahlem (eingesehen 1.11.2017); www.tracingthepast.org (Volkszählung Mai 1939), Ernst Meinhardt, Jeanette Meinhardt, Grete Michelson, Alfred Michelson, Adresse Binderstr. 18 in Hamburg, Mechel Meinhardt, Margarethe Meinhardt geb. Marcuse, Adresse Chausseestr. 121in Berlin; http://www.aktionsbuendnis-brandenburg.de/stolperstein/alfred-meinhardt (eingesehen 28.6.2017); http://www.schwedt.eu/de/land_bb_boa_01.c.392903.de/ (Stolpersteine Schwedt 2012, eingesehen 28.6.2017); www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de (Johanna Meyer geb. Heimbach).
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