Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Johanna Meyer um 1900
© Gisela Möllenhoff, Rita Schlautmann-Overmeyer: Jüdische Familien in Münster 1918 bis 1945

Johanna Meyer (née Heimbach) * 1875

Grindelberg 3 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

1942 Theresienstadt
1944 Auschwitz ???

Johanna Meyer, born Heimbach, born on 11 Nov. 1875 in Münster, deported on 19 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, deported further on 15 May 1944 to Auschwitz, murdered

Grindelberg 3

Johanna Meyer’s parents were the butcher and subsequent livestock dealer Isidor Heimbach (1851–1927) and Julie "Julchen” Heimbach, née Löwenstein (1848–1914). Isidor Heimbach had moved from Laer/Steinfurt to Münster in 1875, had acquired a house there in 1877 and citizenship in 1879. In Münster, he belonged to the Abendgesellschaft des Zoologischen Gartens (an association organizing performances for the benefit of the Zoological Garden) and the Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus (Association for Defense against Anti-Semitism) and he represented the interests of the Synagogue Community (Synagogengemeinde). Julchen Heimbach was a member of the Israelite Women’s Association (Israelitischer Frauenverein). In addition to Johanna, the other siblings born in Münster were Mathilde (on 23 Nov. 1876), Louis (on 18 Dec. 1877), David (on 26 Apr. 1879), Sophie (on 14 Nov. 1880), Julius (on 27 Feb. 1882), Henriette "Jettchen” (on 21 Mar. 1883), Bernhard (on 7 Dec. 1884), Paula (born in 1886, died in 1913), Max (on 2 Dec. 1887), Alfred (on 7 May 1889), Else (born in 1891, died in 1892), and Wilhelm (born in 1893, died in 1914).

In May 1898, Johanna Heimbach married in Münster the sculptor Friedrich Carl Nöll (born on 17 June 1874 in Krefeld), who belonged to the Protestant Church. Johanna moved to her husband in Düsseldorf, where their son Ludwig was born in Aug. 1898. The married couple lived at Goebenstrasse 15 since then; for Oct. 1899, the authorities were notified that the family moved to Cologne-Nippes, and a few years later the marriage was divorced. In Apr. 1902, Johanna married Salomon Meyer (born on 20 Apr. 1869 in Richrath/Solingen), a butcher and livestock dealer, and she moved to his native town. The couple had two children, Max (1902–1918) and Henny (born on 30 Apr. 1904 in Diepholz). Salomon Meyer died in 1910 and was buried at the Jewish Cemetery in Münster. In 1918, his 15-year-old son Max was buried alongside him.

In 1919, Johanna Meyer moved to Hamburg with her two children Ludwig and Henny. At the latest since 1925, she resided as a subtenant at Grindelberg 3a in the four-room apartment of the merchant Bruno Ullrich. There she occupied with her daughter two rooms and could also use the kitchen. The monthly rent was 25 RM (reichsmark). Johanna Meyer was not able to pursue gainful employment due to various health problems. Her daughter Henny first worked as a controller at the Dr. W. Pötsch spirits wholesale firm, then at L. Wagner Großhandlung für Kurz-, Weiß- und Wollwaren, Parfüm, Papier und Spielwaren (at Elbstrasse 70-84), a wholesaler of dry goods, linens, woolens, perfume, paper, and toys, for a monthly wage of 90 RM, and later at Einheitspreis AG (Epa) for 78 RM per month net, of which she paid her mother 65 RM in board money. There were no savings, and their financial situation was precarious. Since 1925, Johanna Meyer was dependent on public welfare assistance and partly also on the support by the Jewish Community. In addition to the state benefits amounting to 8 to 12 RM per week, she repeatedly asked for rent allowances, the assumption of hospital costs and new glasses, the provision of blankets, stockings, shirt fabric, slippers and nightgowns; shoe repairs and gas cookers were also financed by state aid. In 1928, the general practitioner Johann Necheles (1896–1979) certified that Johanna Meyer was in need of a pair of winter boots; the rent arrears had grown to 150 RM in that year. In Feb. 1930, the master butcher Caesar Grupe (owner of a factory for meat and sausage products, Grindelberg 10b), who was the honorary welfare worker responsible for her, wrote to the welfare office in Hamburg: "Mrs. M. still lives, as is well known, in poor circumstances, is dependent on our aid, and she would not be able to manage without it.” Due to many illnesses such as "internal disorder,” intestinal bleeding, rheumatism, and diabetes, she was unable to do regular work; in 1925, she underwent treatment in the Israelite Hospital and in 1929, she had a stay at the Sol- and Moorbad Bad Bramstedt, a health spa. However, the welfare office saw other causes for her neediness and in 1926 stated: "A little phlegm and lack of economy seem to be involved here.”

The daughter, Henny Meyer, married in about 1930 and moved in with her husband. In Aug. 1930, the main tenant Bruno Ullrich tried to set up a lunch restaurant in the apartment, which he operated as an (unskilled) cook and was supported by Johanna Meyer, who "helped to prepare the food.” In 1932, Ullrich turned to the fire department for trials of his invention of fireproof partition walls; however, for him and his subtenant Meyer no appreciable income seems to have resulted from this. Although both persistently denied being involved with each other, the welfare office suspected that they had a relationship. In Mar. 1935 Johanna Meyer applied for discounted food ration cards. In Dec. 1935, the honorary welfare worker Grupe received a negative reply from the "Winter Relief Program of the German People 1935/36” ("Winterhilfswerk [WHW] des deutschen Volkes 1935/36”): "Mrs. Meyer is Jewish and is not supported by the WHW. The boy is Lutheran. Our school assistant will check to see whether the issue of clothing is necessary in this case.” In 1936, the main tenant Ullrich declared that he wanted to give up the apartment and rent a room as a subtenant. Since 1938 at the latest, he lived in Hamburg-Altona at Nachtigallenstrasse 18. According to her Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer) file card, Johanna Meyer also lived as a subtenant at Nachtigallenstrasse 19 for a period.

From 1928 onward, Johanna Meyer’s grandson Ludwig Hermann Nöll (born on 10 Aug. 1924 in Hamburg) – the son of her son Ludwig Nöll – also resided in the apartment. In Nov. 1928, she had applied for the establishment of maintenance care for him. His parents had been separated since Mar. 1928 and were divorced in May 1937. His mother Elisabeth "Lisa,” née Lehmann (born on 24 Oct. 1904 in Hamburg), worked for 40 RM per month as a waiting maid on a manor in Mecklenburg from 1928, and from 1932 to 1938 in Leipzig for a lawyer as a domestic servant for 45 RM per month plus free room and board. She paid 10 RM a month, later 15 RM, in support to Johanna. Due to his own need, Ludwig Nöll paid nothing. Ludwig Nöll Jr. attended the nearby Jahnschule, a school located at the intersection of Bogenstrasse 34-36 and Schlankreye (in the Harvestehude quarter), from where he also received assistance, such as underwear and a free shoe repair in Oct. 1931. At the same time, the nurse in charge at the welfare office wrote, "Ludwig is a delicate child and receives milk by intercession of the independent medical examiner. He is in bed with an ear infection.” In Nov. 1932, he was prescribed a six-week stay at a health spa while suffering from scarlet fever. Ludwig Nöll Jr. was confirmed at the end of Mar. 1939 at St. Andrew’s Church (St. Andreaskirche) on Bogenstrasse, for which occasion his grandmother applied for a suit and a pair of boots, since he had no outerwear other than school clothes. At the end of Mar. 1939, he began an apprenticeship as a mechanic (3 RM in weekly wages). His grandmother applied for the required work clothes (1 blue coat, 1 blue apron, 2 blue linen pants) from the social administration, which approved them after a "house inspection.”

Probably in 1938, Johanna Meyer moved back into a smaller ground floor apartment at Grindelberg 3a (one-and-a-half bedrooms for 41 RM), from which she sublet a furnished room for 22 RM. From 1939 to 1941, she was listed in the Hamburg directory under the address of Grindelberg 3a as "Wwe [widow] J. Meyer” and as the main tenant, but without the additional compulsory first name of "Sara” already prescribed by then. The welfare office described the rooms of the apartment as not very large and some of them as quite dark. The last entry in the file of the authority dates from 1 Apr. 1941 and referred to the weekly support from Ludwig Nöll Sr. amounting to 15.20 RM. At this time, he was used for compulsory labor on Rondenbarg in Hamburg-Bahrenfeld. Even after the deportation of his mother, he was allowed to stay in his apartment, as his son had not yet reached the age of majority. The apartment was completely destroyed by air raids in 1943.

Johanna’s son Ludwig Nöll (1898–1960) had been an independent member of the Hamburg German-Israelitic Community since 1932/33, but he did not pay any contributions from 1934 to 1941. In Dec. 1928, he applied for public assistance, which was granted to him as "crisis support” (a sum of 14.63 RM per week). For a short time, he lived with his mother, then as a subtenant in changing quarters. In Jan. 1929, he was classified as "unfit for work due to illness.” In 1934, he was employed by the Heinrich Bunge Company as a representative for gas cookers and received 16 to 18 RM a week, but was repeatedly sick. After the main tenant Ullrich moved out, Ludwig temporarily lived with his mother again. Ludwig Nöll Sr. was deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in June 1938 and taken into "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”), from which he was released on 21 Sept. 1939. He was unable to fulfill the obligation associated with his release, i.e., to leave Germany, since non-military maritime shipping had come to an almost complete halt as a result of the war and many countries closed their borders to destitute emigrants. His cousin Otto Heimbach, who had already fled to Brussels before 1939, sent him papers that made emigration seem a viable course and thus rendered his release from the concentration camp possible. Ludwig Nöll Sr., according to the Nazi racial criteria a "Jewish crossbreed of the first degree” ("Mischling 1. Grades”), was assigned to perform forced labor in Hamburg, among other places, at the Steen & Co. hemp spinning mill in Lokstedt, together with Belgian forced laborers (from 1941 to1943, and at the Franz Plath company in the St. Georg quarter at Koppel 4 ( from 1944 to 1945).

On 19 July 1942, 67-year-old Johanna Meyer was deported from Hamburg to the Theresienstadt Ghetto, which had been set up by the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt) in Berlin in the former garrison town of Terezin in the fall of 1941. The journey in freight cars of the German Reich Railroad Company (Reichsbahn) took about 48 hours. For almost two years, Johanna Meyer survived the almost unbearable sanitary and medical conditions in the overcrowded ghetto as well as malnutrition.

On 15 May 1944, she was deported together with 2,502 other victims to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in occupied Poland. When and under what circumstances Johanna Meyer died there is not known. Probably shortly after the arrival of the deportation train, she was assigned to the group of prisoners to be killed immediately during the "selection” at the ramp and murdered with gas. The camp bureaucracy did not create file cards in these cases of immediate killing.

The SS confiscated the luggage and the clothes the victims had just been wearing, and stored the items in the camp warehouses. From there, a large part of the clothing was shipped back to the Greater German Reich and distributed to resettlers and air-raid victims via the National Socialist People’s Welfare authority (Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt – NSV). Valuables were delivered via the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (SS-Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt) to a special department of the Reichsbank.

In 1949, the Hamburg District Court (Amtsgericht) declared Johanna Meyer dead as of 8 May 1945.

Johanna Meyer’s ashes were probably scattered, whether in the rivers Ohre (Eger), Vistula (Weichsel), or Sola or in one of the surrounding lakes of the extermination camp is not known. Along with the physical annihilation, the name and any memory were to be erased as well. From Nov. 1944, the evidence in the camp was destroyed: Incriminating files were burned, the crematoria dismantled and blown up, and on 23 Jan. 1945, the SS guards set fire to the 30 warehouse barracks.

Since Feb. 2003, a Stolperstein in Hamburg has been commemorating Johanna Meyer. The maiden name of "Hirsch” mentioned on it derives from the deportation list (1942) and from the Memorial Book of Hamburg (1995), but it is not correct. In Münster, a Stolperstein was laid at Hollenbeckerstrasse 10 in about 2002, bearing her actual maiden name, "Johanna Heimbach,” which is based on a more recent entry in the Memorial Book of the Federal Archives in Koblenz.

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

© Björn Eggert

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 8; StaH 332-5 Standesämter, 3496 u. 257/1924 (Heiratsregister 1924, Ludwig Nöll u. Elisabeth Lehmann); StaH 332-8 Meldewesen K 2429 u. K 2443 (Hausmeldekartei, Grindelberg 3a); StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 20769 (Ludwig Nöll senior); StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozial-Fürsorge 1564 (Johanna Meyer); StaH 351-14 Arbeits- u. Sozial-Fürsorge 1636 (Ludwig Nöll jr.); Stadtarchiv Münster, Geburtsregister 892/1875; Stadtarchiv Düsseldorf, mikroverfilmte Einwohnermeldekartei MF 7-4-1-140 (Friedrich Carl Nöll); Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen, D1A/1024, Blatt 310; Hamburger Adressbuch (Straßenverzeichnis, Grindelberg 3a) 1936, 1939, 1940, 1941; Gilbert: Endlösung, S.196 (Deportation von Theresienstadt nach Auschwitz 15.5.1944); Möllenhoff/Schlautmann-Overmeyer: Jüdische Familien, S. 175–183 (Heimbach); von Villiez: Mit aller Kraft, S. 368 (Johann Necheles).
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".