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Antonie Thiele-Schmal (née Curiel) * 1857

Parkstraße 9 (Altona, Othmarschen)

1943 Theresienstadt
ermordet

Antonie Thiele-Schmahl, née Curiel, born 20 July 1857, deported 5 May 1943 to Theresienstadt, date of death 29 June 1943

Antonie Thiele-Schmahl was of Jewish extraction and came from the Curiel Family in Harburg. She had three children with her first husband, the Jewish Hamburg merchant Eduard Schmahl, their son Alfred, born in 1891, and their two daughters Lilli and Annie. The family lived at Parkstraße 9 in the Altona district called Groß Flottbek. After her husband’s death in 1919, Widow Antonie Schmahl and her three children inherited his estate. Half of the property at Parkstraße 9 in Groß Flottbek belonged to the Schmahl community of heirs, while the other half belonged to the executor of his will, Paul Thiele. Paul Thiele, born in 1862 and co-owner of the company Emil Hauenschild in Hamburg, was not Jewish and had two daughters from his first marriage. He became Antonie Schmahl’s second husband. Antonie Thiele-Schmahl’s daughter Annie died in 1938. Her son Alfred lived with his non-Jewish wife on Elbchaussee. Her daughter Lilli was married with one child and lived in Berlin.

Files from the Foreign Currency and Assets Office of the Chief Finance President show how the family tried to safeguard their assets from being seized by the National-Socialist government in 1939, which she ultimately managed to achieve through a complicated process of gifts and sales to family members. Thus, the house at Parkstraße 9 was "Aryanized”, as Paul Thiele put it to the authorities. Her property at Abendrothsweg 17-19, part of Eduard Schmahl’s estate, was transferred to Antonie Thiele-Schmahl’s under-aged granddaughter who was considered a "half-breed in the first degree”.

Due to her so-called privileged mixed marriage, Antonie Thiele-Schmahl was relatively protected for several years and excluded from the deportations which began in Oct. 1941. However, when Paul Thiele died, she was threatened with deportation to Theresienstadt, like all other Jewish partners in mixed marriages that no longer existed.

According to the Theresienstadt memorial book, the widow Antonie Thiele-Schmahl was deported at the age of 85 from her last address at Parkstraße 9 in Othmarschen, Hamburg to Theresienstadt on 5 May 1943 on transport VI/6.

She was housed there in building L 206, room 15. In Theresienstadt Ghetto, people suffered from catastrophic food shortages and housing conditions, from terrible hygiene, and from a lack of medical care. According to her obituary, Antonie Thiele-Schmahl died several weeks after her arrival on 29 June 1943, allegedly from blood poisoning.


Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: March 2019
© Birgit Gewehr

Quellen: 4; 7; 3 Nr. 246; 2 R 1939/798, R 1939/2567, R 1939/2554; AB Altona 1929, 1937.
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