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Hedwig Pohl * 1896

Claudiusstieg 6 (Wandsbek, Marienthal)

HIER WOHNTE
HEDWIG POHL
JG. 1896
DEPORTIERT 1942
ERMORDET 1943 IN
AUSCHWITZ

further stumbling stones in Claudiusstieg 6:
Hermine Leib, Julius Pohl

Hedwig Pohl, b. 2.15.1896, deported to Auschwitz on 11.7.1942
Prof. Dr. Julius Pohl, b. 1.11.1861, died on 9.29.1942 in Hamburg

Claudiusstieg 6 (Klopstockstrasse 6)

Julius Pohl was a pharmacologist who carried out tobacco research. Unlike today when government and employers attempt to curb it, smoking was gaining ground, promoted by the cigarette industry and scientifically supported. Julius Pohl had already retired when, with wife and daughter, he moved to Wandsbek, where the tobacco business and cigar making were traditional, and consumer demand for cigarettes was growing. In his new domain, the Hans Neuerburg cigarette factory, Pohl found optimal conditions for his researches in what was one of the industry’s giants. In 1928, he took his labors to the recently built Fritz-Höger-Building at Walddörfer Strasse 103, where the tobacco researcher had a well-appointed laboratory at his disposal. Pohl led this work for six years. He lived with his family in the Marienthal quarter at Klopstockstrasse 6 and, from 1 January 1934, drew a pension from the University of Breslau amounting to 600 RM.

The Pohls originated from Prague and were Roman Catholics. Julius Pohl, the son of Leopold Pohl and his wife Louise, née Kantor, was born in Prague; he studied medicine there and received his doctorate in 1884. In 1892, he qualified to teach at the university level. Three years later he became an associate professor and in 1897 a tenured professor of pharmacology and pharmaceutical biology (in this case: the science of herbal pharmaceuticals). In 1911 he received the call as senior professor at the University of Breslau. Up to this point an Austrian, he and his dependents now became Prussian citizens. Pohl worked in Breslau until he retired in 1928 as Privy Medical Councilor. Since 1926 he was a member of the German Academy of Natural Science Researchers Leopoldina (now the German National Academy of Sciences). Among other works, he published in 1929, with Emil Starkenstein and Eugen Rost, the standard work on toxicology.

Julius Pohl had married Hedwig, née Wien (b. 1867) in 1895. On 15 February 1896 their daughter Hedwig was born, two years later a son, Franz. Franz volunteered in World War I, however, fell ill and died in 1916 at 18 years of age. The Pohls, as newcomers and also as Catholics in a majority Protestant Hamburg, were in an unusual position.

According to the "Nuremberg Laws," they were declared Jews in 1935 and subject to all anti-Jewish measures, without feeling that they belonged to this minority. The father, accustomed to success, broke down. On 7 October 1935, his daughter wrote on his behalf to the Wandsbek mayor Friedrich Ziegler:

To the Lord Mayor Dr. Ziegler

"… Now, as to my inquiry, which I ask you to clarify as soon as possible. The following facts are relevant: My great grandparents are buried in the Catholic cemetery in Prague. Both my parents, born Jewish, were baptized Catholic more than 50 years ago and married in a Catholic ceremony in Prague 40 years ago. I and my deceased brother were born, baptized, and raised Catholic. Accordingly, our household and the direction of its domestic employees was and remains a good Christian one. Political influencing of our domestics, who have worked for us for years, is excluded … All donations for the Party were rendered, it goes without saying, whenever asked for because my father, as a former state official, felt especially obligated to contribute. Given all that is conveyed here, we cannot fathom that the new law of 15 September 1935 has supposedly made us Christians into full Jews, with all the resultant consequences: (no flying of the flag, no domestics under 45 years of age, etc.). At this time and because of this, my father, who was always held in the highest esteem by the world, is in a state of total collapse. The official measures and the new laws they entail will annihilate the twilight of his life, the life of my deathly ill mother in the hospital, and my own future ... Because there is not yet an official interpretation of the laws, I ask your pardon, in my despair, for addressing you Lord Mayor! I implore you to decide this matter in consideration of the aforementioned circumstances in a humane and understanding manner! ... I hope for a speedy resolution to this undeserved and excruciating situation. I do not know whom else among our local officials I should turn to."

The confused legal situation into which the Pohl family, among many others, fell culminated in the question of how one could be simultaneously a Christian and a Jew. That no one at this point in time seemed to have clear answers regarding the implementation of the laws explains the conduct of the Lord Mayor, who sent the letter on to Deputy Mayor Eggers, "with the request as to what information and disclosures I can respond.” Eggers was likely the real power in the Wandsbek city hall and who, as District Leader of the National Socialist Party, understood the intention of the laws from the outset, as his answer to Hedwig Pohl on 26 October showed: "With regard to your letter to Lord Mayor Dr. Ziegler of 7 October of this year and your letter of the 21st of this month directed to me, I inform you that the provisions of the laws issued at Nuremberg on 9.15.1935 apply to you, in that, as you yourself state, both your parents were born Jewish, therewith are reckoned by blood as of the Jewish Race. District Leader.”

Not until the middle of November 1935 were the laws refined. As relating to the Pohl family, which probably hoped for exceptional clauses, the refinements yielded no positive changes. "Jews” were defined as all persons who had at least three Jewish grandparents, even if they no longer practiced Judaism.

On 27 October 1935, Hedwig Pohl turned again to Mayor Ziegler and asked him to return her letter. Ziegler sent the note to Eggers "with the request to return the letter given to him.” This was apparently refused, for on 28 October 1935, Ziegler wrote to her: "Regarding your letter card of the 27th of this month, I reply sincerely that I regret the letter sent to me on 10.7.1935 cannot be handed over to you because it is an object subject to the provisions of the law. It can no longer be removed from the files of the city administration. Because your letter has become an integral part of the files of the city administration, the requirement of official secrecy is guaranteed. Office of the Mayor.”

That this answer pacified the Pohl family is to be doubted. Rather, they were left with a bitter feeling of having had their confidences exposed.

Among the consequences of the "Race Laws" was the compulsory membership of the family in the Jewish Religion Association, as of 1939. Father and daughter were obliged to pay communal religion taxes. During 1940, Hedwig Pohl, a single woman, had to pay a so-called head tax of 12 RM; her father, up to and including 1942, paid a communal religion tax less pro rata his church taxes. The amount of his payments reflected his wealthy circumstances.

Nevertheless, the situation in the house on Klopstockstrasse continued to worsen. The parents were in need of care that the daughter had to provide.

Presumably through the mediation of the Jewish Religion Association, Hermine Leib (see her biography) came into the house on 3 September 1941; until this time she had worked in the old people’s home of the Jewish Religion Association. However, a few weeks later, she received her deportation order. On 25 October 1941, she left Hamburg in the direction of Lodz. Hedwig Pohl saw herself as once again alone.

In January 1942, the foreign exchange office issued a Security Ordinance. In an appendix to a questionnaire in which assets were to be registered, Hedwig Pohl described the desolate situation in which the family lived: "At this time I cannot get any household help since Prof. Pohl is 80 years old and paralyzed; Mrs. Pohl is 74, bedridden, with a bleeding gastric ulcer, and in need of constant care. Please … take this into consideration. The daughter is completely alone and responsible for taking care of everything. Because of the illnesses and ages of Mr. and Mrs. Pohl, I cannot move them, both have physicians’ notes attesting to the fact that they are not able to be transported, so please fix the authorized amount as high as possible, because the house rent is indeed so high.”

The basic rent amounted to 275 RM. The monthly expenditures for her and her parents Hedwig Pohl estimated at 650 RM. This sum was granted in the short term; however, from 1 March 1942 it was reduced to 550 RM, possibly because Julius Pohl’s wife had meanwhile died. Father and daughter now had to leave Wandsbek. On 12 February 1942, they moved to Kielerortallee 22 in the Hamburg-Eimsbüttel quarter, into a house built by the Oppenheimer Institute which now served as a "Jew house.” The Pohls belonged to those who left Wandsbek fairly late. Five months later, Hedwig Pohl received her deportation order.

What now should become of her father? Julius Pohl was admitted on 10 July 1942 to the Jewish Nursing home at Laufgraben 37. It was here that the farewell between father and daughter probably took place, just before Hedwig Pohl went to the collection point on the Moorweide. On 11 July 1942, she was deported to Auschwitz where all trace of her vanishes. She was 46 years old. Thus was confirmed what she had apprehensively written seven years earlier in her letter to the mayor, that the Nuremberg Laws and their consequences would totally destroy her future.

Her needy father was offered resettlement in the "Old People’s Homestead in the Theresienstadt Ghetto.” Like many aged Jews, Julius Pohl also signed a contract to sell his home which, along with the rest of his wealth, would go toward his accommodation and board in the supposedly comfortable Theresienstadt Homestead. To that end he also cashed in a mortgage.

Julius Pohl never reached Theresienstadt. He died in the nursing home on 29 September 1942 at the age of 81. Nevertheless, a commemorative stone will be placed for him, for the former privy councilor, although not deported, had to endure for at least seven years all the oppressive measures against Jews.

Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: February 2018
© Astrid Louven

Quellen: 1; 2 R 1942/13, R 1939/491; StaHH 992e-2 Deportationslisten Hamburg; 4; AB 1929 VI; Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie, Bd. 8, S. 19; Astrid Louven, Juden, S. 191–192, 214f., 228; Aleksandar-Sasa Vuletic, Christen, S. 25f., 31.
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