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Meta Rosenthal (née Fries) * 1875

Reeperbahn 149 (Ecke Lincolnstraße) (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Pauli)

HIER WOHNTE
META ROSENTHAL
GEB. FRIES
JG. 1875
GEDEMÜTIGT / ENTRECHTET
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
28.11.1935

Meta Rosenthal, née Fries, born on 12 July 1875 in Ahrensburg, suicide on 28 Nov. 1935

Intersection of Reeperbahn/Lincolnstrasse (Reeperbahn 149)

The sources that mention Meta Rosenthal reveal only very little about her person. Her husband and children are at the center. Perhaps she will become somewhat more recognizable if fragments of her relatives’ paths through life are described.

Meta was the wife of the physician Dr. Emil Rosenthal, who was born in 1863 in Belgard – today Polish Bialogard – in what was then Pomerania. In 1888, he established himself with his medical practice at Reeperbahn 1. On 25 Jan. 1900, daughter Trude-Fritzi was born, son Martin Werner on 25 Oct. 1902. Trude attended the Sieg’sche Oberlyceum, a secondary school for girls, which she finished with the teacher’s diploma in home economics. Werner studied medicine in Hamburg, Frankfurt/Main, and Freiburg. In 1926/27, he worked at the Harbor Hospital, in 1927 at the Altona Hospital. Afterward, he practiced with his father on Reeperbahn. Emil Rosenthal passed away in 1929.

After his father’s death, Werner resigned from the German-Israelitic Community and took over the medical practice. Trude became his doctor’s assistant. She married Hermann Martens in 1930. On the evening of 30 Jan. 1933, the latter was threatened by SA men at gunpoint in front of the Haus der Jugend in Altona. He had held a lecture at the adult education center (Volkshochschule) there. Shortly afterward, on 1 Apr. 1933, the day of boycotts against businesses owned by Jews, Trude found the doctor’s signs smeared with red paint upon entering the practice.

Hermann Martens, too, was persecuted. In the restitution proceedings, the lawyer representing Trude gave the following account: "At the beginning of May 1933, the husband of the plaintiff was arrested by SA men and police for the first time, and in the middle of the night, a house search took place, ending in confiscation of numerous books, writings, manuscripts, etc. Her husband had headed a resistance group and lost all of his positions and revenues.”

Since 1 July 1933, treating statutory health insurance patients in Jewish doctor’s practices was no longer allowed. Thus, Trude and Werner’s incomes also dropped considerably. On 23 Nov. 1935, Werner fled to Edinburgh in Scotland. Meta Rosenthal eluded further persecution. In his application for restitution, her son wrote about the death of his mother that "for grief and fear of persecution, caused by the events at the time, [she] committed suicide by throwing herself from the sixth floor of the building at Reeperbahn 149 five days after I had fled, on 28 Nov. 1935.”

After the closing of the medical practice, Trude did not earn any income for more than seven years. From Apr. 1943 until Dec. 1944, she was enlisted for compulsory labor duties at minimal pay at the Bommelmann poison plant. Her health was seriously harmed by the work with poisonous substances. In 1951, her sister-in-law indicated to the Restitution Office (Amt für Wiedergutmachung) that Trude "[found out] through the Gestapo officer Willibald Schallert that she had to expect deportation to Theresienstadt. She was absolutely determined to evade being transported by staying in hiding.” Trude Martens survived in a walled-in staircase.


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

Stand: October 2018
© Christiane Jungblut

Quellen: 1; 4; StaH 351-11 AfW, Abl. 2008/1, 250100 Martens, Trude; StaH 351-11 AfW, Abl. 2008/1, 251001 Rosenthal, Werner; Verein zur Erforschung der Geschichte der Juden in Blankenese, Viermal Leben: http://www.viermalleben.de/4xleben/namensliste.htm (27.01.2009).

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