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Lucie Steinhardt * 1887

Palmerstraße 29 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamm)

1941 Riga
ermordet

further stumbling stones in Palmerstraße 29:
Ella Steinhardt, Eva Steinhardt

Lucie Steinhardt, born on 16 June 1887 in Hamburg, deported on 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga
Ella Steinhardt, born on 29 Aug. 1890 in Hamburg, deported on 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga
Eva Steinhardt, born on 26 Oct. 1893 in Hamburg, deported on 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga

Palmerstrasse 29 (formerly Ritterstrasse 110)

"Person sharing ownership in the property are: with a 7/24 share each Lucie, Eva, and Ella Steinhardt; with a 3/24 share the Aryan August Müller, as a portion of the estate of the deceased wife by the name of Steinhardt,” as the Chief Finance Administrator (Oberfinanzpräsident) formulate it when the "Aryanization” of the family property belonging to the three Steinhardt sisters took place in Apr. 1939. The estate was the plot of land featuring an urban villa at Ritterstrasse 110 in Hamburg-Hamm, which after the separation of the Eilbek section of Ritterstrasse by the newly developed Sievekingsallee was assigned the address of Plamerstrasse 29 in about 1965. In 1903, Max Steinhardt had acquired the already built-up piece of real estate, moving there with his wife Fanny Elisabeth and the four daughters, Ottilie Susette, Lucie Henriette, Ella Franziska, and Eva Bernhardine. The deceased wife by the last name of Steinhardt mentioned earlier referred to Ottilie.

Max Steinhardt, born on 11 July 1853 in Hamburg, was a merchant and became the co-owner of the shipping company of his father Julius. His grandfather, Michael Steinhardt, had moved to Hamburg from the Kassel area, established himself as a cigar and tobacco dealer on Bäckerbreitergang in the "Gängeviertel” of Hamburg-Neustadt, and judging from his will dating from 1852, achieved considerably prosperity. He married Jette Schramm, four years his senior and a native of the Upper Franconian town of Reckendorf. At the time of the wedding, she was 38 years old. Their marriage produced two children, Emma and Julius, who at the time of his birth on 12 June 1826 was named after his grandfather, "Zacharias,” a first name he later changed to "Julius.” In 1851, he obtained Hamburg civic rights and founded the "Julius Steinhardt” shipping company, which was doing business in Central and South America. He relocated the business and residential address to the St. Georg suburb. His wife Susschen, called Susette, was the oldest of three children of Gumprecht Simon Warburg from Altona, the very Warburgs that would later gain significance as artistically inclined Hamburg bankers. Susschen Steinhardt gave birth to three children: son and heir Max in 1853; three years later, daughter Helena, who only reached the age of ten; and in 1860, Otto. She did not live to witness her sons’ weddings, as she already passed away in 1882, at the age of 56.

On 6 June 1884, Max Steinhardt got married in Lüneburg, after having obtained the certificate of Hamburg civic rights (Bürgerbrief) the week before, on 28 May 1884. His wife, Fanny Elisabeth Behrens, born on 16 Mar. 1856 in Lüneburg, was a cousin, the daughter of the merchant Bernhard Behrens and his wife Recha, called Emma, née Warburg, a sister of Susschen Steinhardt. The married couple initially moved to Lange Reihe 44, where Fanny Elisabeth gave birth to the first of their four daughters, Ottilie, in 1885. She was followed in 1887 by Lucie and, after relocation to Hühnerposten, in 1890 by Ella and in 1893 by Eva. Eva was the only child not yet of school age in 1898 when the family moved to Borgfelde 16, an imposing multi-family home on the Geest slope, from where the view stretched for miles and miles across the Elbe marshes.

It is not known which schools the daughters attended. As was common for upper-class daughters in those days, they also received instruction in artistic subjects. The social advancement of Max Steinhardt continued with the acquisition of the urban villa at Ritterstrasse 110. Julius Steinhardt and his sons along with their families belonged to the Hamburg German-Israelitic Community. In 1892, Otto, who had become an import and export merchant, married Olga Hammerschlag, also a native of Lüneburg, and purchased an urban villa at Hochallee 84 before the turn of the century. In 1893, their son Walter was born, and in 1897, Edgar followed.

In 1886, Max Steinhardt joined his father’s company as a partner. After the death of the Lüneburg Behrens grandparents in the 1890s, the last one of this generation to pass away was Julius Steinhardt on 22 Aug. 1907. He had reached the age of 81. His son Max continued to manage the company, by then established in the cloth trade with Britain, as the sole owner but during the First World War, business came to a virtual standstill.

Three of Fanny Elisabeth and Max Steinhardt’s daughters received training in the fine arts: Ottilie became a pianist; Lucie attended trade school in Hamburg with the goal of becoming a draftswoman and art teacher; Ella went to the Academy of Arts in Munich, where she studied painting. Only Eva did a commercial apprenticeship.

In contrast to Otto Steinhardt and his family, Max and Fanny Elisabeth Steinhardt as well as their daughters left the Jewish Community in 1918 and joined the Lutheran Church.

Certainly, the shipping business regained momentum after the end of the First World War; however, for health reasons, Max Steinhardt was unable to continue managing the company. Since there were no heirs, he sold the enterprise in 1920 to a Leipzig business partner, Otto Jaeger. It was not possible to establish whether the proceeds were lost in the inflation beginning just then. At the same time that Max Steinhardt gave up his company, his brother Otto founded a new import and export firm focusing on East Asian and British trade, with his sons joining as partners and continuing to manage the business very successfully after his death in 1922.

In 1923, Max Steinhardt passed away at the age of 70. His widow stayed with the daughters at Ritterstrasse 110, where Ottilie was registered with her own address as a pianist since 1919. On 23 Dec. 1924, she married August Müller, an engineer born in the Thuringian town of Benshausen and residing in Berlin. Ottilie moved in with him, though she remained registered in Hamburg for some time. The sisters became owners of the property and rented out the top floor of the residential building.

Ella Steinhardt had a hard time making a living. In 1925, she spent several months in the house of a fellow painter of the Academy of Art in Munich, F.X. Spann, and his sisters in Passau. During this time, she created several paintings, which initially remained in the ownership of the Spann family and were sold by the family when it in turn fell on hard times, including the etching of a female nude. Another work known is the drawing of a street scene dating from 1926.

Fanny Elisabeth Steinhardt died on 31 May 1933. Apparently, inheritance conflicts erupted after Ottilie’s death, probably in about 1938. Her widower, August Müller, received only a 3/24 share instead of the 6/24 that had fallen to his deceased wife. He took over the property in 1938 when it was "Aryanized.” Thus, it stayed "in the family” and his sisters-in-law kept the right of residence. After deduction of all costs associated with the sale, each of them received a share of about 2,000 RM.

Based on the Nuremberg laws [on race] dating from 1935, the Steinhardt sisters, though of the Protestant faith, were henceforth considered Jewish. It is not known what kind of reprisals they experienced, but evidently, Ella Steinhardt’s return to Hamburg in 1939 was connected with the fact that she was no longer able to secure her livelihood as a painter.

The three sisters were compelled to re-join the Jewish Community, which by then was called "Jewish Religious Organization” ("Jüdischer Religionsverband”). Initially, their incomes were so small that they were exempted from paying dues. They lived on their inheritance, the rental income, and the earnings Ella Steinhardt had from subcontracted home-based work (Heimarbeit). Their situation improved short-term, when Eva found employment generating a gross salary of 195 RM a month. In 1941, Ella and Lucie Steinhardt paid Community dues of about 18 RM each, which is not more than the basic amount. By this time, Lucie was employed as a worker, Eva as a domestic help without a permanent position. She earned a minimum wage. There is no evidence of any support by wealthy relations. Almost all of the Warburgs had emigrated, and though the cousins Walter and Edgar were able to flee abroad, they were destitute. Olga Steinhardt, suffering from a heart condition, lived in the care of a domestic servant. She was affluent but lost large portions of her assets through compulsory fees and contributions within a short period. She passed away in Mar. 1942.

Eva, Lucie, and Ella Steinhardt, under 60 years of age and thus categorized as fit for work, were ordered to report for the last transport of Hamburg Jews in 1941 "toward the Development in the East” ("zum Aufbau im Osten"), which initially was scheduled for Minsk but then went to Riga. It left Hamburg on 6 Dec. 1941. Since there was no room in the ghetto, the deportees were temporarily quartered on Jungfernhof, a dilapidated farming estate on the Düna (Daugava) River near the Skirotava train station. In Dec. 1941, approx. 4,000 Jews arrived there from Franconia, the Rhineland, Vienna, and Hamburg. The place had no adequate infrastructure, which resulted in about one fifth of the deportees not surviving the winter. When and where Eva, Lucie, and Ella Steinhardt perished is not known. In the 1943 Hamburg directory, they were still listed as residents of Ritterstrasse 110, as were the previous landlords and female tenants. The shipping company established by their grandfather exists to this day (2013).


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

Stand: January 2019
© Hildegard Thevs und Bettina Nathan

Quellen: 1, 2 R 1939/2252, 5, 6; BA VZ 1939; div. AB; StaH, 332-7, A I e 40, Bd. 10, 11.302; 232-3, H 771; 332-5, 115+1356/1882; 583+1419/1907; 872+294/1923; 1013+329/1933; 2095+3988/1885; 2142+2137/1887; 3494+840/1924; 8179+122/1942; 332-8, K 7021; 351-11, 1222 und 1223; 522-1, 992 e 2, Band 3; 622-1/514, 1. Teil 1 u. 2; Stadtarchiv Lüneburg, Heiratsregister 65/1884; Stadtmuseum München; E-Mail Margot Platschka, Januar-März 2013; tel. Mitteilungen von Frau Ursula Kahlke, in Fa. Otto Jaeger Nachf. und Julius Steinhardt (G.m.b.H. & Co. KG), http:/www.otto-jaeger.de/geschichte.php.), 15.3.2013.
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