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Max Nathan * 1878

Karlstraße 2 (Hamburg-Nord, Uhlenhorst)

KZ Fuhlsbüttel
ermordet 30.10.1936

further stumbling stones in Karlstraße 2:
Wilhelm Sander

Max Carl Nathan, born 19.3.1878, imprisoned on 10.7.1936 in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, date of death 30.10.1936
Wilhelm Sander (formerly Nathan), born 21.2.1905, imprisoned on 10.7.1936 in Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, deported to Auschwitz, date of death 14.5.1943

Karlstrasse 2

Max Nathan was married in his first marriage to Emma Schürmann, who was Protestant, and founded a family with her. The couple had three children, their son Alfred was born on April 9, 1902, then Wilhelm followed on February 21, 1905, and lastly their daughter Nanni was born on October 9, 1907. The family lived at Rothenbaumchaussee 158.

But the family relationship was disturbed early on, as both parents often quarreled and quickly separated. Nanni moved in with her mother Her brothers Alfred and Wilhelm stayed with their father and their nanny Elna Leopold. Max Nathan moved out of the apartment in Rothenbaumchaussee with his two sons and ran a small farm in Wandsbek-Eichthal.

Even during his school years, son Wilhelm had to put up with derogatory remarks about his family situation, which led to several clashes with schoolmates. As an ambitious student, Wilhelm was at the top of his class, which made him dream of going to university. But he did not realize this dream because his father would probably never have financed the long period of study for him. For although the family was wealthy, Max Nathan was very careful about his money. As a result, the relationship between the siblings and their father was often strained.

At the age of sixteen, Wilhelm Nathan began an apprenticeship at the Kuhlmann company. This apprenticeship was arranged for him by his father. The owner, however, turned out to be a fraud and after only three months Wilhelm broke off his apprenticeship. He began his next apprenticeship, again on the advice of his father, at Commerz und Industrie GmbH in Humboldtstrasse. But this company also turned out to be dubious. Now Wilhelm Nathan independently obtained an apprenticeship with the banking firm Samson & Co.

At first, Wilhelm Nathan was not allowed to work on the stock exchange because his wardrobe was too shabby and his father refused to give him money for a new suit. However, after Wilhelm received his first salary of his own, he was able to get new clothes, rose to the position of arbitrageur (trader who detects and exploits price differences), and managed a branch until the end of his apprenticeship.

By the age of 19, Wilhelm Sander had finished his apprenticeship and joined his father's business. Max Nathan ran a furniture wholesale and retail business at Werderstrasse 38, where his eldest son Alfred was already working, mostly as a chauffeur for his father. Wilhelm Nathan showed some talent for the profession, whereupon a competitive struggle broke out between father and son.

In 1925, Max Nathan married again. His new wife was the now 36-year-old Elna Leopold, the former nanny. She, too, was a Protestant. Elna had a good relationship with the sons, as she had raised them both.

Emma Schürmann often asked her son Wilhelm for money, which he gladly gave her. However, he thought his parents were too interested in material things.
At the age of 21, Wilhelm Nathan decided to emigrate to the United States. Once there, he quickly found work, but could not bear the climate and had to return to Hamburg in the fall of 1926.

After his return, Wilhelm Nathan finally separated from his mother. The two never saw each other again after that. From that point on, he decided to stick forever to his father, who had previously warned him about his mother.

But the year 1926 also brought good things for Wilhelm Nathan. In a café he met Lina Wilhelm, the daughter of the butcher Heinrich Schröder from Bremen. She was Protestant, had married the merchant Wilhelm in 1921 and had a child with him; they divorced in 1927. Wilhelm Nathan and Lina Wilhelm remained a couple until his imprisonment; they were engaged between 1928 and 1933.

After his return from the U.S., Wilhelm Nathan moved back in with his father Max Nathan and started his first business in the motorcycle industry. Since he was quite successful, Max Nathan persuaded him to give him a half share in the business. In return, Wilhelm Nathan was to receive a quarter share in his father's furniture business. In addition, Max Nathan bought out the Sewerin company at this time and officially registered his son Alfred as the owner, although the latter remained merely his father's chauffeur. From now on, most of Max Nathan's financial transactions went through the Sewerin company.

Again and again, Max Nathan got into business with the wrong people and often got into trouble with the law. He passed on some minor proceedings to his sons. As a result, the Nathan name fell into disrepute, which even led to daughter Nanni not getting a job as a cashier when her supervisor learned that she was a native of Nathan. In the end, Wilhelm Nathan had to realize that his father had spent his life chasing money, neglecting his family in the process. Therefore, in 1930, the brothers Alfred and Wilhelm decided to have their last name changed to Sander. This gave them the chance to use an unencumbered name again and to go about their business without any problems.

In 1929 Wilhelm Sander became ill. Due to a heart condition, he had to take the cure twice in Nauheim. The illness accompanied him until the end of his life.
Nanni married in 1930 and Alfred also moved from home. For some time he worked on various patents, but had little success with them. When Wilhelm Sander approached him about it, an argument broke out between the brothers, which led to a rift between the siblings that was not settled until 1935. By this time, Alfred Sander was already married and had children of his own.

At the beginning of the 1930s, economic competition increased considerably in view of the world economic crisis. Max Nathan increasingly participated in not entirely legal business, granted large loans, but did not account for them properly. Wilhelm Sander founded his own company, Sander & Weiß (Dammthor-Lombard) and established his own trade in new furniture.

In 1931, he traveled to Holland on business for a short time. A year later, the tax office approached him for the first time, suspecting that the books might not be correct and that there were tax arrears. Max Nathan reacted to this with a typical expression that made his attitude to taxes clear: "The old book auditor Gabriel Meyer had told him that one only had to pay when the bailiff was at the door to collect."

Until 1936, Wilhelm Sander alone paid his share of the taxes on the family businesses; only from the summer of 1936 did Max Nathan also participate. Accordingly, Wilhelm Sander's books and tax payments from 1932 onward were carefully controlled.

The sons tried to keep Max Nathan out of the business as much as possible. Wilhelm Sander took over the furniture business and invested some of his assets in real estate. One of these properties was located at the corner of Karlstraße/Schöne Aussicht. Wilhelm Sander also moved his residence there and Max and Elna Nathan moved in with him.

Although Wilhelm and Alfred tried hard to protect the Sander name, Max Nathan began to sign his name Sander regularly in the mid-1930s. In doing so, he also ruined the reputation of this name in a very short time and disputes arose in the family. On a family trip to Copenhagen at Whitsun 1936, the dispute escalated. Since Wilhelm and Elna feared that an illness might be behind Max Nathan's actions, they sent him to Marienbad resort in the summer of 1936 to recuperate.
While Max Nathan was still there, Wilhelm Sander was arrested by the Gestapo on the morning of July 10 and taken to the Fuhlsbüttel police prison. At first it was said that he would only have to remain in custody until Max Nathan returned.

They wanted to rule out the danger of a collision. But just three days later, Wilhelm Sander was taken into "protective custody" and had to wait 14 days for his first interrogation. There he admitted that the books were not quite right, but kept his father completely out of it. In the meantime, his father and brother had also been arrested.

In the prison yard, the three men were forced to run for an hour. Alfred ran in front, behind him Max and finally Wilhelm followed. The latter was suffering from severe pain because of his heart condition. Later he collapsed unconscious in his cell and was then put in irons. He reported about it: "The most terrible time of my life. Hour after hour I walked around in the cell, my nerves shattered, tormented by gloomy thoughts, what had my life been so far. Family quarrels from the very beginning. Then I decided to endure everything, be it what it was, in order to support my father."

Although Wilhelm Sander refused to testify against his father during the interrogations, all efforts were in vain. On July 31, 1936, the Gestapo found cash, jewelry, Wilhelm Sander's passport, and the key to a safe-deposit box in Copenhagen in which Danish foreign currency was deposited in Max Nathan's apartment. The Gestapo thus had enough evidence to indict the family.

On the way back from an interrogation, Wilhelm Sander saw his father for the last time: "I saw my father eating in front of his door, so also in iron! A poor, poor broken old man! Something inside me broke. I was finished, completely, incapable of grasping even a thought. It was the last time I had seen my father. This image of my father in prison clothes, broken, eating in front of the door, is burned into my soul as if with fire! It still haunts me day and night."

That same day, Wilhelm Sander tried to hang himself in his cell. But the suspenders broke and he fell to the ground. In the meantime, he was physically and psychologically at the end of his tether because of his heart condition and the terrible treatment he received in prison. Nevertheless, during interrogations he continued to deny everything that had to do with Max Nathan's finances.
At the beginning of November 1936, Wilhelm Sander was told that all the necessary evidence had been gathered and that he could therefore be released from solitary confinement and transferred to the hall with the other prisoners. Only from other prisoners did Wilhelm Sander learn that his father had already died on October 30 as a result of his imprisonment.

In November, the trial of Wilhelm and Alfred Sander, Elna Nathan and Lina Wilhelm began. The indictment stated that between 1926 and 1936, the Nathan family had withheld around RM 400,000 from the German state through unpaid sales, income, trade and property taxes. Wilhelm Sander was also charged with violating the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor," i.e., with "racial defilement."

The court sentenced Wilhelm Sander to six years and six months in prison, as well as a fine of 150,000 RM. Lina Wilhelm was sentenced to one year in penitentiary and Elna Nathan received a sentence of three months in penitentiary and a RM 600 fine.

After his conviction, Wilhelm Sander was transferred to the Bremen-Oslebshausen prison. In October 1942, a decree determined that Reich German prisons and penitentiaries should become "free of Jews." Wilhelm Sander was deported to Auschwitz, where he met his death in a gas chamber on May 14, 1943.

His siblings Alfred and Nanni, as well as his mother Emma, his stepmother Elna and his fiancée Lina survived the Holocaust.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: January 2022
© Carmen Smiatacz

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 8; StaHH 221-5, Verwaltungsgericht, 219; StaHH 314-15, OFP, R 1936/83; StaHH 314-15, OFP, R 1939/2486; StaHH 351-11, AfW, Abl. 2008/1, 21.2.05 Sander, Wilhelm; Meyer: "Jüdische Mischlinge", S. 248f.