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Manfred (Manfried) Martin Mendel * 1878

Hansaplatz 12 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

HIER WOHNTE
MANFRED MARTIN
MENDEL
JG. 1878
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
ERMORDET 8.8.1942

further stumbling stones in Hansaplatz 12:
Gertrud Mendel

Gertrud Malchen Mendel, née Jacob, born 7/30/1897 in Hamburg, deported to Theresienstadt 7/15/1942, deported on to Auschwitz 5/15/1944, murdered at Stutthof concentration camp on 10/14/1944
Manfried Martin Mendel, born 10/1/1878 in Hamburg, deported to Theresienstadt on 7/15/1942, died there on 8/8/1942

Gertrud Mendel was the daughter of the Jewish Merchant Philipp Jacob and his wife Sophie, née Münster (born 1861 in Hamburg). For several decades, the Jacobs ran a store for Sana brand reform shoes in Brennerstrasse in St. Georg. After Philipp Jacob died in 1919, his widow kept running the shop as an ordinary partnership until her death in 1936, when her daughter Gertrud, who had married the merchant Manfried Mendel in 1929, took over as heir. She ran the family business until its liquidation in April 1939, pursuant to the "Ordinance for the Elimination of Jews from German Economic Life”, passed in the aftermath of the pogrom of November 1938.

Gertrud’s husband Manfried Mendel worked at his wife’s shop since 1930. A native of Hamburg like her, he too was the scion of a long established Jewish merchant family. His parents were Martin Mendel and his wife Minna, née Hess (born 1860). His father owned a menswear store, which his son inherited at Martin’s death in 1919. Manfried had two sisters, Selma and Therese, born 1879 and 1888. Manfried attended junior high school and after graduating seems to have gone into business, at least, he ran his father’s store alone until he married Gertrud Jacob in 1929.

In 1930 at latest, he left his old business and from then on only worked at his wife’s shop. Manfried’s younger sister Therese, who remained single, was a sales representative by trade; in 1928, she inherited and took over her mother’s wholesale underwear business. His elder sister Selma was married and bore her husband’s surname Meyer.

After their marriage, Gertrud and Manfried Mendel seem to have lived above the Jacob family store at Brennerstrasse 8, before moving to nearby Hansaplatz 12 at the beginning of the 1930s. From September 1937, the couple lived at Bremer Reihe 20, which was probably their last freely chosen residence. Like all Jewish business people, they were victims of the wanton actions of the Nazi regime and had to pay more than 19,000 RM in "Levy on Jewish assets” even before the forced liquidation of their store. In addition, stocks and bonds and jewelry with a total value of about 60,000 RM were confiscated, and their contribution of 26,000 RM to the Jewish Religious Association, an entry fee to a retirement home, were also lost.

Thus deprived of all their assets, Gertrud and Manfried Mendel were forced to move into the "Jews’ house” at Kleiner Schäferkamp 32, where they lived up to their deportation to the Theresienstadt ghetto on July 15th, 1942. Manfried Mendel died there only a few weeks later, whereas his wife Gertrud was deported on to Auschwitz after almost two years in May 1944. Her ordeal finally ended at the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig, where she was murdered on October 14th, 1944.

Manfried Mendel’s two sisters escaped the fate of their brother, having succeeded in fleeing to Great Britain in the 1930s. Selma, however, died there already in 1942.

The Stumbling Stone for Gertrud and Manfried Mendel lies at Hansaplatz 12 before the house where the couple lived together for the longest time.


Translated by Peter Hubschmid

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2017
© Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 7; AfW, Entschädigungsakte Therese Mendel; StaH, 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 992 e 2 (Deportationslisten); Bajohr, Frank, "Arisierung" in Hamburg. Die Verdrängung der jüdischen Unternehmer 1933–1945, Hamburg 1997, S. 361.
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