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Ehepaar Loeser
© Wiechmann

Bruno Loeser * 1882

Isestraße 13 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

1944 Theresienstadt
ermordet in Auschwitz

Bruno Loeser, born on 3 Aug. 1882, deported on 19 Jan. 1944 to Theresienstadt, deported further on 26 Oct. 1944 to Auschwitz and murdered there

Isestrasse 13

Bruno Loeser’s father was a merchant in Berlin. He had his son attend high school (Gymnasium). After reaching the level of the intermediate secondary school certificate (mittlere Reife), the money ran out for continued school attendance. Bruno Loeser started an apprenticeship in the textiles business, which he had to stop, however, because he fell ill with tuberculosis. After a two-year stay in a sanatorium, he was considered cured and began editorial work. He worked for a newspaper in Leipzig for three years.

In 1908, he moved to Hamburg, hoping for an extended field of work. He now worked as an advertising agent for publishers with whom he was friends, contributing to various magazines and programs for cinemas and theaters.

In 1909, he got married to Clausine Embke, a non-Jewish woman. Three years later, daughter Luise was born. The family lived at Isestrasse 13 in those days.

From 1920 until 1921, Bruno Loeser was employed as a commercial manager at the Altona City Theater, but the work did not satisfy him; he resumed his old job after a year.

In the spacious apartment on Isestrasse, the family spent the happiest years. On the occasion of social gatherings and festivities, for instance, on New Year’s Eve, a large circle of friends got together, including many artists, some of whom were prominent.

In 1932, the family had to move to a more affordable apartment at Schlankreye 21. That year, Bruno Loeser left the Jewish Community. Perhaps this already happened in anticipation of what was about to come.

That same year, the daughter started studies in geology, which the father managed to finance up to her exam in the year 1937. She found a position in Königsberg (today Kaliningrad in Russia). Despite the pain of parting, her parents felt great relief because in this way, she lived far away from the threatened family.
In 1936, Bruno Loeser had himself baptized a Catholic, probably doing so also to protect himself and his family. It helped him just a little as his departure from the Jewish Community. After 1939, he was compelled to join the "Reich Association of Jews in Germany” ("Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland”) because it was no longer the religious affiliation that counted but, according to the definition of the Nuremberg Laws, the "belonging to a race.”

After the Nazi assumption of power, Bruno Loeser lost contracts, with revenues declining steadily, until his business license was revoked in 1938. After this, he had to live on welfare assistance. From 1940 onward, his wife earned an income. She did sewing in private and also worked, initially part-time and from 1941 to 1949 full-time, in the office of the same company. Having attended business school and having gathered three years of work experience before the marriage came in useful for her. In 1939, the Loeser couple moved to another yet smaller apartment. The new address was Beim Schlump 3.

On 25 June 1943, the marriage of the Loesers ended in divorce. Probably the married couple heeded false information. Constant pressure from neighbors or the Gestapo toward an "Aryan woman” married to a Jew do not seem to have been the reason, but instead the advice, also dispensed by influential Jewish representatives based on false information from the Gestapo, that a divorce might prevent the worst consequences for the Jewish partner in marriage: Instead of Auschwitz, this information indicated, deportation to Theresienstadt was the worst thing looming.

In reality, Bruno Loeser lost the meager protection that a "mixed marriage” ("Mischehe”) still afforded, and he had to spend the three years leading up to the divorce living separate from his wife in order to document the "breakdown of the marriage.” Both during this period of separation and after the divorce, an intimate relationship between them continued to exist, even though they were no longer allowed to meet in public. Bruno Loeser was quartered in the "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”) at Bornstrasse 16 with Saalfeld. Later he found shelter with the former Regional Court Director (Landgerichtsdirektor) Alfred Islar in Langenhorn, who was also Jewish and living in a "mixed marriage.” After the war, the latter and the divorce lawyer Harm testified that Bruno and Clausine Loeser had not broken off their relationship and that they had spent the last days before the deportation together, well hidden.

After the war, in the context of the restitution proceedings, the authorities recognized the relationship of the spouses as a "free marriage of racially and politically persecuted persons.” The basis for this was offered by the "Law on the Recognition of Free Marriages of Racially and Politically Persecuted Persons” ("Gesetz über die Anerkennung freier Ehen rassisch und politisch Verfolgter”) dated 23 June 1950. The new marriage certificate records the day of the divorce, 25 June 1943, as the date of this second marriage ceremony.

In the summer of 1943, during an air raid, Clausine Loeser lost the apartment on Beim Schlump and all of her belongings. She only rescued the most important papers and documents in her "emergency suitcase.” This happened at a time when Bruno Loeser was still living in Hamburg.

Initially, he was taken to Theresienstadt in Jan. 1944. A postcard he wrote from there to his wife has been preserved. It testifies to the great love and care toward his wife and daughter. Ten months later, on 26 Oct. 1944, he was murdered in Auschwitz.

Fate had it that after being bombed out, Clausine Loeser was again quartered in one of the spacious apartments on Isestrasse, this time with several other "air raid victims,” and together with her daughter, who managed to escape from the "Eastern Zone” via the Harz Mountains in 1947, as well as the granddaughter, who was born in 1948.


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

Stand: March 2017
© Christa Fladhammer/Christa Wiemann

Quellen: 1; AfW 170388, darin Postkarte aus Theresienstadt; StAH 332-4 Nr. 176; Mündliche Auskunft der Enkeltochter Christa Wiemann, geb. Loeser.
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