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Ferdinand Isenberg * 1875

Maria-Louisen-Straße 122 (Hamburg-Nord, Winterhude)

HIER WOHNTE
FERDINAND
ISENBERG
JG. 1875
VERHAFTET 15.2.1939
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
GEDEMÜTIGT / ENTRECHTET
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
18.2.1939

Ferdinand Isenberg, born on 21 Mar. 1875, died on 18 Feb. 1939 in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison

The ancestors of Ferdinand Isenberg were Jewish linen traders based in Cracow. His father Hermann, born in 1846, emigrated to the USA while still a young man, working as a hawker. In 1872, he married Sophie Wassermann. Soon afterward, the couple returned to Europe. They left a son, Rudolf, to grow up in the United States.

Ferdinand Isenberg was born in Hamburg and grew up as one of the couple’s eight additional children on Rutschbahn. As a young man, he was initially a lottery vendor and commercial agent for a women’s lingerie producer. Probably assisted by the latter, he opened his first store, the "Corsethaus Gazelle” at Steindamm 13. From there, he also supplied the elaborate corsages, colorfully ornamented with glass beads or plumes, for the revues performed at the time in the St. Georg quarter. A woman acting as an intermediary and employing several seamstresses did his groundwork. The company quickly expanded, and soon there were "Gazelle” branches in the "bourgeois” neighborhoods as well, e.g., in the city center, in Wandsbek, Barmbek, the Hoheluft quarter, and in Harburg. The stores sold women’s lingerie and corsages. A relative described Ferdinand Isenberg as a very charming and generous person, who loved to live and let live. His wife Sophie, née Beck, whom he had married in Apr. 1914, converted to Judaism for his sake. They lived together at Maria-Louisen-Strasse 122.

The year 1938 marked for Ferdinand Isenberg, as for many other Jewish businesspeople, the beginning of the process of plundering by the Nazi state and its beneficiaries. In July 1938, his assets were place under "security order” ("Sicherungsanordnung”). With the Pogrom of November 1938, the commercial end of the "Gazelle” branches was initiated as well. The windows of one branch store – at Lüneburger Strasse 44 – were destroyed. After the pogrom, a "trustee” was appointed to sell the enterprise. Some of the branches were liquidated immediately; eleven of the "Gazelle” stores were sold to former female salesclerks (including the branch at Lüneburger Strasse 44), for whom in at least four cases the sale price – set extremely low to begin with – was financed by financial backers from another line of business. They probably served rather as "front women” than as independent entrepreneurs. The last branches still operating disappeared from Hamburg’s economic life at the end of the 1940s, and on 11 Feb. 1950, the entry in the company register was deleted for good. (Further details on "Gazelle” in: Astrid Louven, Ursula Pietsch, Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Wandsbek, Hamburg 2008, p. 81ff)

Ferdinand Isenberg was arrested even before the end of 1938 on charges of "racial defilement” ("Rassenschande”) and detained in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison. He took his own life there on 18 Feb. 1939. The records office documented the cause of death as "hanging/suicide.” In the Hamburger Tageblatt, this was celebrated as "The end of a haggling Jew.”

After his death, in Mar. 1939, his wife left the Jewish Community, thus preventing the businessman’s personal assets, which had gone to her as heiress, from being placed under "security order” by the Nazi state.

Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Ulrike Sparr

Quellen: 1; 4; Mail-Auskunft von Fr. Dr. Renate Bielefeld am 13. und 28.9.07; Standesamt Hamburg-Nord, Personenstandsbuch; Archiv Handelskammer, Akte 56/50; Hamburger Fremdenblatt, 20.2.1939; Adressbuch für Harburg und Wilhelmsburg 1 und den Landkreis 1934, Harburg 1934; dto. 1935; Einwohnerbuch für Harburg-Wilhelmsburg 1 und den Landkreis 1938, Harburg 1938; Frank Bajohr, "Arisierung" in Hamburg, Die Verdrängung der jüdischen Unternehmer 1933–1945, Hamburg 1997, S. 249; Herbert Diercks, Gedenkbuch Kola-Fu. Hamburg 1987, S. 25; Jürgen Sielemann, "Fragen und Antworten zur ‚Reichskristallnacht’ in Hamburg", in: Bewahren und Berichten. Festschrift für Hans-Dieter Loose zum 60. Geburtstag, S. 492 [Zeitschr. des Vereins f. Hamburgische Geschichte 83/1]; "Das Verschwinden der jüdischen Unternehmen" (‚Arisierung" in St. Georg Teil 2). In: Der lachende Drache, März 2006, S. 12.