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Gertrud Seidl (née Gräfenberg) * 1883

Isestraße 23 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

HIER WOHNTE
GERTRUD SEIDL
GEB. GRÄFENBERG
JG. 1883
FLUCHT 1939 HOLLAND
INTERNIERT WESTERBORK
DEPORTIERT 1943
SOBIBOR
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Isestraße 23:
Hedwig Augenstern, Gracia Gretchen Bachrach, Ingeborg Mirjam Bachrach, Hermann Bachrach, Georg Fränkel, Henriette Fränkel, Alice Maschke, Erich Wilhelm Maschke, Dr. Herbert Michaelis

Gertrud Seidl, née Gräfenberg, born on 18 June 1883 in Adelebsen, emigrated in 1938/1939, deported on 25 May 1943 from the Netherlands, murdered on 28 May 1943 in Sobibor

Gertrud Gräfenberg was born in 1883 in the small town of Adelebsen (1,200 residents) near Göttingen. Her father, Salomon Gräfenberg (1834–1918), operated a hardware store there. He was among the more well-to-do Jewish residents in town. From 1868 until 1882, he was the head of the Adelebsen Synagogue Community (Synagogengemeinde) and from 1889 until 1893, he served as chair of the Adelebsen municipal council. In 1893, the family moved to Göttingen. Two sons, Selly Gräfenberg (1863–1921) and Ernst Gräfenberg (1881–1957), attended high school in Göttingen. Selly Gräfenberg studied Spanish and later taught as a Ph.D. at the University of Frankfurt/Main. Ernst Gräfenberg studied medicine in Göttingen and Munich, obtaining his doctorate in 1905 and operating his own practice as a gynecologist in Berlin-Schöneberg, as well as holding a position as a chief physician at the hospital in Berlin-Britz. He was dismissed from this post in 1933 and sentenced to three years in prison on charges of currency smuggling in 1937. After his dismissal, he managed, with assistance from friends and through selling his property, to emigrate to the USA. His brother, Hans Gräfenberg (1877–1956), managed the Michaelis & Gräfenberg women’s coats factory in Berlin.

In Oct. 1909, the 33-year-old sister, Martha Gräfenberg, had moved to Göttingen. Several years later, she married the Hamburg gynecologist Dr. Max Münden (1865–1936) and took up residence with him in the Hanseatic city.

In about 1913, Gertrud Gräfenberg married Paul Seidl (1846–1929), the general manager of Segelcke & Co. GmbH on Spaldingstrasse, a company specializing in butcher’s products founded in 1913. Paul Seidl was a native of Zerbst in Saxony-Anhalt and a member of the Hamburg German-Israelitic Community. He seems to have died of the delayed after-effects of a war injury. Since 1913 at the latest, the family resided at Isestrasse 23.

Daughter Annemarie Seidl, born in 1915, attended the school on Tesdorpstrasse (1921–1926), the girls’ Realschule [a practice-oriented secondary school up to grade 10] run by Dr. Jacob Löwenberg (1927–1930), and subsequently, business school.

Following the death of her husband on 14 Sept. 1929, Gertrud Seidl, née Gräfenberg, moved with her daughter to Rothenbaumchaussee 47 in about 1932. This place already accommodated relatives, the widowed Gertrud Seidl, née Siegfeld, (1875–1943), and her son Hans Seidl (1899–1968), who after his high school graduation (Abitur) from the renowned Wilhelm-Gymnasium had studied law. Hans Seidl worked as a lawyer in a joint law firm with Dr. Kurt Rosenberg and Dr. Ernst Rappolt (at Mönckebergstrasse 29–31).

From the beginning of 1933 until the summer of 1934, Gertrud Seidl stayed with her daughter in Italy, subsequently spending three quarters of a year in Czechoslovakia, from where they returned to Hamburg only in early 1935. Daughter Annemarie Seidl found employment with Hugo Hartig, a cellulose and pulp company located at Burchardstrasse 1, and in 1936, she worked for the renowned M. M. Warburg & Co. banking house at Ferdinandstrasse 75.

In 1935, Gertrud Seidl moved with her daughter, as yet unmarried, to Eppendorfer Landstrasse 36 (on the second floor), into a two-and-a-half-bedroom apartment, where her widowed sister Martha Münden, née Gräfenberg (1876–1941?), also occupied a room starting on 15 June 1937. Not far away, the brother-in-law of her sister, Anton Münden, resided with his family at Beim Andreasbrunnen 3.

In May 1937, Annemarie Seidl married in Hamburg the Dutch merchant Carel Marcus (born in 1901 in Groningen). When Carel Marcus, a Jewish man, was threatened by arrest in Germany, his heavily pregnant wife fled with him to Groningen in the Netherlands on 21 June 1938. Four days later, their son Robert was born there. They managed to build a new life for themselves, even though during their hurried escape from Germany, they had been forced to leave behind almost all of their possessions.

After the Pogrom of November 1938 in Germany, they agreed by phone that the mother, too, should depart for Groningen. Sometime between the end of 1938 and Mar. 1939, Gertrud Seidl traveled to Groningen; she also left behind her entire furnishings in Hamburg.

Following the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, Gertrud Seidl faced reprisals there as well. Upon the systematic recording of all Jews and their property ensued the stigmatization through the compulsory wearing of the "Jews’ star” ("Judenstern”) as of May 1942.

Completely deprived of their rights, the Jews were arrested and committed to the Dutch Westerbork transit camp. Carel Marcus was interned on 10 July 1942; Annemarie Marcus, née Seidl, along with their two children, was committed to the camp on 2 Oct. 1942. Eventually, in early 1943, Gertrud Seidl was also sent to the transit camp. On 25 May 1943, she was deported along with 2,861 other Jews to the Sobibor extermination camp, where she was probably murdered immediately upon arrival on 28 May 1943.

The Marcus couple was deported with their children to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Apr. 1944. One year later, just before the evacuation of Bergen-Belsen, they were scheduled for transport to Theresienstadt in one of three large-scale railway transports. On 11 Apr. 1945, the train, whose occupants included the Marcus family, started to move but after a 12-day odyssey through Germany, it was liberated by the Red Army in Tröbitz/Brandenburg (see biography on Claire Oettinger, Isestrasse 113).

In July 1945, Carel and Annemarie Marcus returned with their three sons to Groningen.

Gertrud Seidl’s nephew, the lawyer Hans Seidl, returned to Hamburg in Nov. 1948; after serving as a senior government councilor (Oberregierungsrat) for two years, starting in 1950, he worked as a lawyer together with Dr. Morris Samson (1878–1959) in a law firm of his own.


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

Stand: January 2019
© Björn Eggert

Quellen: 1; StaHH 351-11 (AfW), 210515 (Annemarie Marcus, geb. Seidl); Amtliche Fernsprechbücher Hamburg 1931–1933, 1935–1937 (Seidl); wikipedia (Ernst Gräfenberg), eingesehen am 5.1.2009; Stadtarchiv Göttingen, Einwohnermeldekarte (Gräfenberg) und Stammbaumblätter der Familie Gräfenberg, gesammelt von Dr. Selly Gräfenberg, revisted 1975 by Carl H. Grafenberg; (Göttinger ?) Tageblatt spezial, 27.10.2007 (Ernst Gräfenberg); Adressbuch Berlin 1904, 1910 (Michaelis & Gräfenberg); Briefwechsel von Franz Rappolt (Hamburg) und seinem Sohn Ernst Rappolt (USA), 1940–1941, Brief vom 30.1.1940, Privatbesitz (Hinweis auf Familie Seidl); Wilhelm Gymnasium Hamburg 1881–1956, Hamburg ohne Datum, S.122 (Hans Seidl); Heiko Morisse, Jüdische Rechtsanwälte in Hamburg. Ausgrenzung und Verfolgung im NS-Staat, Hamburg 2003, S.160 (Hans Seidl); Martin Gilbert, Endlösung – Die Vertreibung und Vernichtung der Juden. Ein Atlas, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1982, S.160 (Holland); www.joodsmonument.nl (Gertrud Seidl, eingesehen 2.8.2009); Hamburger Börsenfirmen, 36. Auflage, Hamburg 1935, S. 789 (Segelcke & Co. GmbH).
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