Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Ehepaar Rosenbaum
© Stadtteilarchiv Hamm

Dr. Else Emma Rosenbaum (née Philip) * 1879

Hammer Landstraße 59 (Aufgang Krugtwiete) (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamm)

1941 Lodz

further stumbling stones in Hammer Landstraße 59 (Aufgang Krugtwiete):
Bertha Lobatz, Max Mendel, Ida Mendel, Marianne Rendsburg, Dr. Max Rosenbaum, Gertrud Sachs, Julius Sachs

Else Emma Rosenbaum, MD, née Philip, born on 12 Mar. 1879, deported on 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz
Max Rosenbaum, MD, born on 7 May 1882, deported on 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz

Max Rosenbaum was born on 7 May 1882 in Grebenstein. In 1912, he officially received a citizenship document as a Prussian citizen in Kassel. Even before 1914, he started a medical practice. In the First World War, he volunteered for military service, serving as a senior medical officer in the army. He became a member of the German-Israelitic Community Hamburg (DIGH – Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeinde Hamburg).

Else Emma Rosenbaum was born on 12 Mar. 1879 as Else Emma Philip in Hamburg into a Protestant family. She received the education common then for a daughter of a well-to-do family: Ten years of private school, subsequently four years of training in home economics, with an academic job not planned for her. In 1900 – at the age of 21 – she attended high school in Hannover, passing her high school graduation exam (Reifeprüfung) in Hameln on 28 Feb. 1905. Meanwhile her father had passed away.

Else Emma Philip studied in Munich, Berlin, Freiburg/Br., and Würzburg, where she founded an "Association of Studying Women” ("Verein studierender Frauen”). She completed her medical internship in Kassel, probably meeting Max Rosenbaum in the course of it. In 1911, she obtained her doctorate in Leipzig, received her license to practice medicine, and married soon thereafter. She was among the first medical doctors in the German Empire. On 1 Oct. 1911, she set herself up as a general practitioner at Hammer Landstrasse 69. Shortly after the start of World War I, on 16 Oct. 1914, daughter Gertrud was born, followed on 24 May 1920 by a second daughter, Marianne.

Apparently, Max and Else Emma Rosenbaum belonged to the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and deliberately settled in the working-class area of Hamm. It seems also that Else Emma Rosenbaum was a women’s rights activist. She was particularly concerned with being able to help working-class women and their families.

The family moved to Hammer Landstrasse 143, where the living quarters and the medical practice were next to each other. By this time, Max Rosenbaum worked as a lung specialist, his wife as a general practitioner and pediatrician. The couple operated the doctor’s practice jointly. Max Rosenbaum was also an independent examining doctor for the statutory health insurance company (AOK).

In the 1930 electoral register of the DIGH, Max Rosenbaum was listed as having "withdrawn.” The family home was open to the daughters’ male and female friends. Even decades later, E. M. remembers the generous furnishings of the children’s room, the dinner invitations, and Max Rosenbaum’s humor, which he used to make even unpopular vegetables palatable to the daughters.

In 1933, the Rosenbaums moved to Hammer Landstrasse 59, further toward the city center. One possible reason: Based on the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” ("Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums”), Max Rosenbaum was dismissed from his post at the AOK. To be sure, as a former frontline soldier and doctor in private practice registered before 1914, he was allowed to continue practicing medicine, but he lost one of his sources of income. However, rather than a financial bottleneck, perhaps convenience prompted the Rosenbaums to move: The new home was part of a so-called "comfort house” with central heating and warm water supply, something that constituted an asset as compared to the old apartment.

Like all Jewish physicians, the Rosenbaums were deprived of their license to practice medicine as of 30 Sept. 1938. In 1939, in connection with the German national census, all four member of the Rosenbaum family had to realize for good that neither membership in the Protestant Church nor withdrawal from the DIGH spared them the classification as Jews. They pushed ahead with emigration, but in all four cases, this endeavor failed.

The Rosenbaum still got to witness the wedding of their daughter Marianne and Manfred Rendsburg on 13 Mar.1939 according to Jewish rites and that of their daughter Gertrud and Julius Sachs in 1940, as well as the birth of their granddaughter Tana Sachs on 8 Oct. 1941. On 25 Oct. 1941, the entire family was scheduled to report to the Masonic Lodge on Moorweide for deportation to the east. The Sachs family was deferred because of their baby.

In the Lodz Ghetto, the Rosenbaum couple and the Rendsburg couple were assigned a room with a kitchen at Franzstrasse 30/20. Officially, this place even accommodated six occupants. The Rosenbaum parents worked in the profession for which they had been trained at the hospital of the Lodz Ghetto; Marianne sewed uniforms for the German Wehrmacht as a tailor; and Manfred worked for the fire department. Since they were working, they received food ration coupons, obtaining additional food items by means of bartering. In this way, the four survived until the evacuation of the ghetto in the summer of 1944. The whereabouts of Max and Else Emma Rosenbaum after this are unknown.

The Rendsburg couple was transported to Auschwitz, where they parted ways definitively. Marianne Rendsburg was murdered in the Stutthof concentration camp, Manfred Rendsburg survived several concentration camps and the dangerous return migration to Hamburg.


Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2018
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: 1; 2; 4; 5; 8; StaH, 522-1, Jüdische Gemeinden, o. Sign. Mitgliederzählung der DIGH 1928; 390 Wählerverzeichnis 1930; 992 e 2 Deportationslisten Bd. 1; BA Bln., Volkszählung 1939; Archivum Panstwowe, Lodz; HA 1911 und 1916; Persönliche Mitteilungen von Angehörigen; Stadtteilarchiv Hamm: Schriftliche Mitteilungen von E. M.; Wir zogen in die Hammer Landstraße. Leben und Sterben einer jüdischen Familie. Hrsg. vom Stadtteilarchiv Hamm. 2001, pass.; Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für die Geschichte der Medizin: Dokumentation, Ärztinnen im Kaiserreich, 2007.
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".