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Margarethe Kron
© Privatbesitz

Margarethe Krohn * 1895

Rantzaustraße 94 (Wandsbek, Marienthal)

HIER WOHNTE
MARGARETHE KROHN
'COHN'
JG. 1895
DEPORTIERT 1941
RIGA
???

further stumbling stones in Rantzaustraße 94:
Ida Krohn

Ida Krohn (Cohn), née Scheuer, born 29 Aug. 1858, died 16 June 1942 in Hamburg
Margarethe Krohn (Cohn), born 30 Dec. 1895, deported 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga

Rantzaustraße 94 (Löwenstraße 48)

The two women who are the subjects of this chapter were members of a well-known and respected Wandsbek family – the mother- and sister-in-law of Bernhard Bothmann, pastor of the Wandsbek Kreuzkirche (Church of the Cross).

Margarethe Sophie Auguste Krohn was born on 30 December 1895 in Oldesloe. Her parents were the banker Julius Cohn and his wife Ida, née Scheuer. The couple, who had married in 1884, had four children, including Margarethe and her elder sister Emmy (1886–1979). The family were Christians.

On 14 September 1897, Julius Cohn moved from Hamburg to Löwenstraße 48 in Marienthal. One week later his family joined him from Oldesloe. The family’s Wandsbek period ended when Julius Cohn, the head of the family, died on 14 February 1904. At the end of March of that year his widow and the children moved to Papenstraße 99 I in Eilbek.

Emmy Cohn, the elder daughter, became a teacher at the Hübner private school in Wandsbek, until she married Pastor Bernhard Bothmann in 1913. They had four children.

Her sister Margarethe lived with their mother, and never married or had children. She worked as an office clerk, and supported herself and her mother with her income.

Whether it was to improve their chances of getting a job, or to live unobtrusively in the neighborhood and avoid harassment, the family changed its name to Krohn. Changing Jewish-sounding family names was subject to specific rules – the new name should be as neutral as possible, and also not sound particularly Christian. Krohn fulfilled all the requirements. It is unclear exactly when the name-change took place, but it must have been before 1933. After the Nazis came to power a change to an "unsuspicious” name was still possible, but the advantages of doing so were made redundant at the latest on 1 January 1939, when "Jews” were legally required to add Sara or Israel to their names so that their "full-Jewish” heritage was evident.

But as the example of the Bothmann family shows, not even a Christian husband or father provided protection from persecution, when this husband and father was married to a "Jewess.” Bothmann was pressured to give up his office because he refused to divorce his wife Emmy. The family finally felt that it had to leave Wandsbek. Their daughter Ingeborg, as a "first-degree Mischling,” was under Gestapo observation, and was not allowed to marry her non-Jewish fiancé. The fact that she was pregnant was, in the eyes of the Gestapo, not a reason for marriage, but rather proof of an impermissible sexual relationship, although the crime of "racial defilement” did not apply to Mischlinge. Their other daughter Ruth, after having met an "Aryan” at a dance and had relations with him, had to spend a night in jail.

In 1937 and 1938, Ida and Margarethe Krohn lived in a ground floor apartment at Kibitzstraße 10 in Eilbek. They were registered as the "widow Ida Krohn” and "Fräulein M. Krohn,” office clerk.

In 1940, Ida Krohn, who was nearly destitute, was audited by the Foreign Currency Office. This audit was occasioned by a notice from the Reich Debt Administration in Berlin to the Berlin Foreign Currency Office. It contained the information that she was receiving a pension of 165 Reichsmarks per month. The Berlin office inquired with the Hamburg office as to whether the sum was to be paid to the "recipient Krohn” or into a secured account. On 14 November the Hamburg Foreign Currency Office issued a security order and sent a questionnaire to Ida Krohn, who was now living at Flüggestraße 14 II in Winterhude with the Sommer family. She was instructed to fill out the questionnaire and to return it by mail. "Personal inquiries will not be entertained.” She completed it with the information: "no bank balance/assets, one war bond, pension of 165 RM/year.” It was signed "Ida Sara Krohn.”

Her daughter added a hand-written note at the bottom of the page: "My mother is 83 years old and has no income other than her pension. I, Margarethe Sara Krohn, pay her living expenses and am head of the household.”

Mother and daughter were once again forced to move, this time to Bundesstraße 43, a "Jews’ house.” This was Margarethe Krohn’s last address in Hamburg.
Then came the day, in December 1941, that Pastor Bernhard Bothmann had to escort his sister-in-law Margarethe from Bundesstraße to the assembly point at the Moorweide. Other relatives had assembled here at the end of October to be deported to Lodz: the doctors Max and Else Rosenbaum, their daughter Marianne and her husband Manfred Rendsburg. The Rosenbaums’ other daughter, Gertrud Sachs, and her husband Julius were deported to Auschwitz (see the brochure Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Hamm). Margarethe Krohn left Hamburg on 6 December 1941. She was 46 years old.

Ruth Bothmann wrote the following of her aunt: "Aunt Grete once said, ‘When they come for me, I’ll jump out of the window.’ But she didn’t jump. She got on a transport in Hamburg at the Moorweide. The last sign we had from her was a postcard that she threw out of the window of the moving train in Wandsbek. When they brought us the card, I saw my father, who always knew how to comfort us and was full of faith in God, cry bitterly.”

Some of the deportees had in fact thrown postcards to their families or friends from the train, and the railway workers or passers-by had mailed them.

The family didn’t have an explanation for the incident for many years, because it was unclear why a train to Riga would pass through Wandsbek. According to research done many years later, the train was routed through Bad Oldesloe to pick up the Jews from Ahrensburg who were waiting there.

The train with approximately 750 people from Hamburg and Bad Oldesloe arrived in Riga on 9 December. It stopped on the outskirts at the Jungfernhof Estate, where new arrivals were quartered in catastrophic living conditions. All trace of Margarethe Krohn is lost here.

The information about the name change was offered by members of the family. Without it, it would not have been possible to establish the connection between Margarethe Cohn and the Margarethe Krohn listed in the Deportation Memorial Book, and thus to place a Stolperstein for her.

Ida Krohn’s granddaughter Ingeborg Bothmann wrote of her grandmother in her memoirs: "My mother often picked up Oma on Sundays and holidays and brought her to Wandsbek. Oma was already 80 years old. When my mother sat down with her in the tram, the conductor would shout at Oma, who had to wear a yellow star, that she had to stand on the running board. Jews were not allowed to sit down in the tram!” The Jewish Religious Association had to announce this Gestapo edict in March 1942.

Although Ida and Margarethe Krohn did not consider themselves Jewish and did not belong to the Jewish Community, they spent the last years of their lives in "Jews’ houses” or Jewish institutions. Ida Krohn lived for about six months after her daughter was deported. She was moved from the "Jews’ house” on Bundesstraße to the Jewish Home for the Elderly at Schäferkampsallee 29, where she died on 16 June 1942. Because she was cared for there, a file was kept under the name Ida Emilie Sara Krohn, née Scheuer. She was thus, from an administrative point of view, returned to the community of Hamburg Jews. She had been a de facto member of this group during all the years of ostracism and persecution, even at her burial, when the family was prohibited from using the chapel at the Ohlsdorf Cemetery.

If Ida Krohn had not died when she did, she probably would have been on the transport to Theresienstadt one month later. She was probably aware of this, as it was a badly-kept secret that elderly people would be deported to the "Theresienstadt Ghetto for the Elderly.” Ida Krohn died of natural causes in Hamburg, but she was nevertheless a victim of the Nazi regime. For this reason a Stolperstein was placed in her memory.

Translator: Amy Lee

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Astrid Louven

Quellen: 1; 2 R 1940/655; StaHH 522-1 JG 992 l; StaHH 332-8 Meldewesen K 7426; AB 1913 VI, AB 1920 VI, AB 1924 II, AB 1931 II, AB 1937 II, AB 1938 II, AB 1941; Ruth Kupfer, geb. Bothmann, Erinnerungen um 1990 (Manuskript Privatbesitz); Ingeborg Lohmann, geb. Bothmann, Erinnerungen um 1985 (Manuskript Privatbesitz); Auskunft von Petra Kupfer Januar 2008; Hans-Dieter Loose, Wünsche, in: Peter Freimark/Alice Jankowski/Ina S. Lorenz (Hrsg.), Juden, S. 58–80; Astrid Louven, Juden, S. 177ff, S. 185; Martina Moede, Geschichte, S. 378–379.