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Max Wolfsohn * 1872

Lange Reihe 39 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

1942 Theresienstadt
1942 Treblinka ermordet

further stumbling stones in Lange Reihe 39:
Margarethe Wolfsohn

Margarethe Wolfsohn, née Cohn, born 15.7.1885 in Ratibor (Silesia), deported on 15.7.1942 to Theresienstadt, further deported on 23.9.1942 to the extermination camp Treblinka
Max Wolfsohn, born 13.6.1872 in Graudenz (West Prussia), deported on 15.7.1942 to Theresienstadt, further deported on 23.9.1942 to the extermination camp Treblinka

last residential address: Brahmsallee 12
place of work (pharmacy): Lange Reihe 39

The couple Margarethe and Max Wolfsohn lived in Hamburg since at least the first decade of the 20th century; their daughter Annemarie was born here in 1908.

Max Wolfsohn was the son of Leo and Rosalie Wolfsohn, née Stein, and a pharmacist by profession.

On April 2, 1907, Max Wolfsohn acquired the pharmacy "Zum Ritter St. Georg" at Lange Reihe 39 from the previous owner, Justus Friedrich Otto Freudenstein. The couple initially lived in the house where the pharmacy was located, but later moved to Mundsburger Damm and in July 1936 to Brahmsallee.

Despite the calls for a boycott and the first state discrimination measures by the Nazi regime since 1933, the Wolfsohns' pharmacy seems to have continued to run well until the forced lease imposed on all Jewish pharmacists in March 1936. The pharmacy was leased by Rudolf Rincker.

According to the Jewish community's religious tax card, the Wolfsohn family paid 192 RM in taxes in 1935, which indicated a fairly high income at the time. From 1936 to 1942, the annual tax paid ranged between RM 88 and RM 56, which seems to prove that the Wolfsohns, unlike many other Jewish persecutees, were able to support themselves through their own, albeit modest, income or property reserves.

The forced lease was followed by the forced sale, and it was obvious that Rudolf Rincker now became the owner of the pharmacy "Zum Ritter St. Georg" together with the property belonging to it by purchase (after the war he settled with the daughter Annemarie within the framework of a reparation procedure and remained the owner of the pharmacy after a compensation payment).

Shortly before their deportation to Theresienstadt on July 15, 1942, the Wolfsohns were forced to move into the former old people's home of the Jewish community at Beneckestraße 6, which had been converted into a "Judenhaus."

From there, the Nazi state deported them along with a total of 926 Hamburg Jews first to Theresienstadt, from where they were further deported to the Treblinka extermination camp as early as September.

The couple's daughter, Annemarie, managed to escape her parents' fate by emigrating to the USA in November 1938.
Two Stolpersteine in Lange Reihe 39 remind us of the Wolfsohn couple, another one is located since 2003 for Max Wolfsohn alone in front of the last voluntary residential address of the couple in Brahmsallee 12.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: January 2022
© Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: 1; 2; 4; 8; StaH, 522-1, Jüd. Gemeinden, 992 e 2 (Deportationslisten); ,Arisierung’ in St. Georg – Teil 2: Das Verschwinden der jüdischen Untenehmen, Artikel in Der Lachende Drache. Stadtteilzeitung in St. Georg 20,3 (2006), S. 12.
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