Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Bertha Jacobson, geb. Lehmann
© Privatbesitz

Bertha Jacobson (née Lehmann) * 1897

Hagedornstraße 47 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

1938 Flucht nach Holland
deportiert 1944
Theresienstadt
Auschwitz
ermordet 07.12.1944
KZ Stutthof

further stumbling stones in Hagedornstraße 47:
Ellen Henriette Jacobson, Ernst Jacobson

Ernst Jacobson, born Dec. 1, 1891 in Hamburg, died as a result of mistreatment during imprisonment in Amsterdam on Jan. 4, 1939
Ellen Henriette Jacobson, born Oct. 6, 1927, deported from the Westerbork transit camp via the Theresienstadt ghetto to Auschwitz, murdered in the Stutthof concentration camp on Feb. 28, 1945
Bertha Jacobson, née Lehmann, born 4.8.1897 in Cologne, deported from the Westerbork transit camp via the Theresienstadt ghetto to Auschwitz, murdered in the Stutthof concentration camp on 7.12.1944

Hagedornstraße 47

Ernst John Martin Jacobson was born in Hamburg on December 1, 1891. His father was the Jewish merchant John Jacobson, his mother Henriette, née Wulff, was also Jewish. He had two other siblings: Olga Marianne, born in 1893, and Ludwig Leopold, born in 1895. His father was co-owner of the Meyer & Jacobson raw tobacco company based in Hamburg's Speicherstadt. The Jacobson family of five had lived at Leinpfad 20 in Hamburg-Winterhude since 1909. The house had been built by the renowned architect Ernst Friedheim, who had designed Hamburg's Bornplatz Synagogue a few years earlier.

Ernst also acquired commercial knowledge and joined his father's company, which he later took over completely. From 1917 he belonged to the Jewish community. Through the acquaintance of their fathers, their children Ernst Jacobson and Paula Friedheim, eight years younger, probably met. In the summer of 1923 they married and Paula moved in with her husband in Leinpfad. The following year, on July 23, 1924, Ursula, called Ulla, was born.

With her birth, the couple moved to Paula Jacobson's now widowed mother Hedwig Friedheim at Heimhuderstraße 26, in Hamburg-Rotherbaum. There, three years later, on October 6, 1927, Ellen Henriette was born. The family cultivated an upper-middle-class lifestyle, and the furnishings included a Bechstein grand piano. In 1929, they moved again, this time to Hamburg-Harvestehude. They had found a spacious apartment in the "Belle Etage", the 1st floor, at Hagedornstraße 47.

In the late summer of 1934 – the National Socialists had been in power for more than a year and a half by then – Paula Jacobson went to a psychiatric clinic in Königstein im Taunus for a cure. Her husband had sent her there because, in his opinion, she was suffering from depression. The real reason for her despair, however, was a profound conflict between the couple. Ernst Jacobson felt himself to be German through and through. As a front-line fighter in World War I, he had been seriously wounded and lost a kidney. Only in 1920, after five years as a prisoner of war in Russia, had he returned to Hamburg – decorated with the Iron Cross. Like so many assimilated Jewish Germans, he did not think of fleeing the terror of the Nazi state. "I am a good German, they will not harm us," he was deeply convinced. But Paula Jacobson did not share his optimism and suffered greatly from the increasing anti-semitism. She wanted to emigrate to the USA, but her husband could not be persuaded to do so.

The doctors in Königstein could not help her in her despair. On the afternoon of September 19, 1934, she was found dead in the Königstein castle ruins. She had thrown herself from the castle tower, only 35 years old. Her daughters Ulla and Ellen were 10 and 7 years old at the time.

The following year, on November 26, 1935, Ernst Jacobson married a second time in Hamburg: Bertha Lehmann, then 38 years old and from Cologne. Her parents Isidor and Amalie Lehmann had moved to Hamburg with her and her siblings Selma, Aurelie and Alfred around 1913. Her father had founded an agency for men's fabrics here. After their marriage, Bertha moved in with her husband and his two daughters on Hagedornstraße.

In March 1938, Ernst Jacobson's company was "aryanized" and he was thus expropriated. From now on, the Jacobsons had considerably less money to live on. Although they were able to fall back on savings, they had to give up their apartment in Hagedornstraße and from then on lived as subtenants – from July 1938 in Hamburg-Blankenese, in Manteuffelstraße. Now Ernst Jacobson also realized that there was no future for him and his family in Germany. He vigorously pursued his escape to the Netherlands, where his brother-in-law Alfred Lehmann had already been living in Amsterdam since 1933.

Ernst Jacobson submitted the necessary application for emigration to the foreign exchange office of the Hamburg tax office, prepared extensive lists of removal goods requiring approval, as required, and organized their transport abroad. After receiving the emigration application, the foreign exchange office immediately issued a "security order" against Ernst Jacobson. This meant that bank accounts, securities and life insurance policies were now also blocked. These measures, along with the expropriations, formed another part of the systematic robbery of the Jewish population by the Nazi regime. Finally, however, Ernst Jacobson received an immigration permit for himself and his family for the Netherlands. But then Bertha Jacobson fell seriously ill and the departure was delayed.

To make matters worse, on November 12, 1938, the Hamburg customs investigation office arrested Ernst Jacobson for foreign currency violations. Mediated by his brother-in-law Alfred Lehmann, he had given a relatively large interest-free loan to a non-jewish German merchant. In return, the debtor was to deposit a certain amount as security in an account in the Netherlands. The customs investigation office therefore suspected Ernst Jacobson of wanting to transfer money abroad in this way, which Jews had already been allowed to do in principle since 1934 only via the Deutsche Golddiskont-Bank – with extremely high losses. The Nazi state needed the money for war preparations.

Bertha Jacobson then mustered all her courage and pleaded with the Hamburg Chief Finance President to release her husband – because the entry permit to the Netherlands was only valid until December 1, 1938. On November 23, 1938, Ernst Jacobson was finally released, upon payment of a fine of 25,000 Reichsmark. Almost immediately, Bertha, Ulla, Ellen and he fled Germany. But in prison he had been severely mistreated. The result was an infection that led to kidney poisoning, so that he had to be taken to the hospital immediately after arriving in Amsterdam. There, nothing more could be done for him. Ernst Jacobson died on January 4, 1939, at the age of only 47.

This left Ulla, now 14 years old, and 11 year old Ellen orphans. Their stepmother, however, seems to have taken loving care of them. In May 1940, the Wehrmacht occupied the Netherlands. From April 1942, all Jews were stigmatized by having to wear the "yellow star". Ulla, who had completed an apprenticeship in a textile company in Amsterdam, now worked for the Joodse Raad (Jewish Council). This meant that she was initially exempt from the deportations that began in the summer of 1942. Bertha and Ellen Jacobson were not so lucky. For them, exile became a trap.

Both tried to emigrate with the help of the Committee for Jewish Refugees, but they did not succeed, also because Bertha Jacobson fell ill again. On March 23, 1943, she and Ellen were arrested and interned in the Dutch transit camp Westerbork. From there they were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto on February 26, 1944. Less than three months later, the SS deported them further to the Auschwitz concentration camp and then to the Stutthof concentration camp. Bertha Jacobson was murdered there on December 7, 1944, according to the death certificate from Stutthof, (the death register at the Stadsarchief Amsterdam gives the date of death as July 7, 1944).
Ellen Jacobson was murdered in the concentration camp Stutthof on February 28, 1945.
She and Bertha Jacobson are also remembered by Stolpersteine at Hagedornstraße 47.

Daughter Ulla survived – as the only one of the four-member Jacobson family. After also receiving a deportation order in May 1943, she went into hiding and survived the Shoah under a false name, also because several Dutchmen took the risk and hid her. After the end of the war, she married and was now called Penninkhof. She died in the Netherlands in 1985. Her two sons, her daughter and her grandson came to Hamburg in August 2022 for the dedication of the Stolperstein for Ernst Jacobson.

Ernst Jacobson's first wife Paula is commemorated by a Stolperstein at Leinpfad 20a in Hamburg-Winterhude.

Ernst Jacobson's brother Ludwig Leo was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp. There is a Stolperstein for him at Gustav-Leo-Straße 14 in Hamburg-Eppendorf.

Ernst and Ludwig Leo's sister Olga Loeb, widowed since 1928, was able to flee to the USA and survived there.

Stand: September 2022
© Frauke Steinhäuser

Quellen: 1; 2; 4, 5, 7, 8, 9; Hamburger Adressbücher; StaH: 213-13_3933, 213-13_5901, 314-15_F614, 314-15_F1163, 314-15_FVg 3546, 314-15_R1938_2922, 314-15_Str 0490, 314-15_R1938_3480, 332-5_187 u. 1681/1891, 332-5_169 u. 83/1898, 332-5_411 u. 2401/1899, 332-5_330 u. 326/1919, 332-5_8779 u. 417/1923, 351-11_3415, 351-11_46786; Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Archiefkaarten A01232: 0499_0159, 0499_0164, 0381_1004, 0381_0929; E-Mail-Korrespondenz mit Jan Penninkhof, 2022, und persönliche Gespräche mit Jan, Ernst Jan und Channah Penninkhof, Juli 2022; Tamara Becker/An Huitzing, Op de foto in orrlogstijd. Studio Wolff, 1943, Eindhoven, 2017, S. 120 u. 122; Jürgen Sielemann, Die Architekten der Bornplatzsynagoge und ihre Familien. Ernst Friedheims Familie, in: Liskor – Erinnern. Magazin der Hamburger Gesellschaft für jüdische Genealogie e.V., Nr. 18 (2020), S. 3–15; Taunus-Zeitung, 19.09.1934; Peter Burghardt, Hamburgs verschwundener Stolperstein, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2.12.2021; Olaf Wunder, Gestohlener Stolperstein ist ersetzt, in: Morgenpost, 20.12.2021, S. 8; Bertha Jacobson-Lehmann, in: Joods Monument, joodsmonument.nl/en/page/191246/bertha-jacobson-lehmann (Zugriff 19.09.2022); Ellen Henriette Jacobson, in: Joods Monument, joodsmonument.nl/en/page/191245/ellen-henriette-jacobson (Zugriff 19.09.2022).
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Website "Recherche und Quellen".