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Hermann Selig * 1875

Schlegelsweg 12 (Wandsbek, Eilbek)

HIER WOHNTE
HERMANN SELIG
JG. 1875
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
ERMORDET 14.2.1943

Hermann Selig, born on 4 Jan. 1875 in Reichelsheim/Erbach in the Odenwald, deported on 19 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, died there on 14 Feb. 1943

Schlegelsweg 12

Gertrud Lorenzen, the oldest daughter of Hermann Selig, indicated the following to the Restitution Office (Amt für Wiedergutmachung): "My father was not a wealthy man. Except for his apartment furnishings, nothing was taken from him in terms of material values and for that which he had to suffer and endure as a human being until his death, there is no restitution. My father’s home was sealed and the furniture confiscated.” The landlord had not given notice to Hermann Selig, enabling him to reside in his familiar surroundings until his deportation. His daughter and her three younger siblings survived the Nazi regime as "Jewish crossbreeds of the first degree” ("Mischlinge 1. Grades”).

Hermann Selig was born on 4 Jan. 1875 in Reichelsheim, a small town in the Odenwald near Erbach, as the third child of Gustel, née Marx, and Meier Selig. The parents belonged to the Jewish Community, most of whose members lived from the cattle trade, as did Meier Selig. The life stories of the older siblings, Betti, born on 12 Oct. 1868, and Levi, born on 14 Oct. 1872, are not known.

Hermann Selig went to London working as a butcher. There he met Elise Prüter, born in 1874 in Meierstorf (Mecklenburg). She belonged to the Lutheran Church. In 1897, Hermann Selig moved to Hamburg, though apparently returning to London for a visit during the following year. Elise Prüter became pregnant. Despite Hermann Selig’s membership in the Jewish Community, the wedding was administered according to Christian rites in St. Gabriel’s Church in London’s Pimlico area on 20 Dec. 1898. The following day, son Richard was born. Afterward, the Selig family moved to Hamburg. Daughter Gertrud was born in Hamburg in 1903.

Hermann Selig worked successfully as a "hirer of servants and job agent” based at Spitaler Strasse 94. His annual taxable income was 2,000 marks, one of the prerequisites enabling him to apply for "admission to the Hamburg Federation (Staatsverband Hamburg).” On 10 Aug. 1904, he was admitted along with his family. He changed occupations once again, henceforth working as a property man. In 1907, Elise Selig gave birth to their third child, second son Alfred, probably at Angerstrasse 46, as one can surmise from the entry in the 1908 Hamburg directory. The family did not live there for long. On the evening of 10 June 1910, Elise Selig passed away in their apartment at Marienthaler Strasse 13 in Hamburg-Hamm. We do not know why the police authority and not her husband notified the records office of her death, nor who cared for the three children aged three to eight until Hermann Selig remarried ten months later.

Hermann Selig’s second wife was Emilie Budach. Emilie’s mother, born in 1840, was a native of Warsaw, Russian at the time. Emilie’s father, Hellmuth, came from Neusalz/Oder (today Nowa Sol in Poland). Of their five known children, two were born in Warsaw, Johanna in 1870 and Wilhelm in 1872; the three youngest daughters, Hedwig, Emilie, and Clara after the family’s relocation to Hamburg. Like Hermann Selig’s first wife, Emilie Budach came from a Christian family. When Emilie married Hermann Selig on 8 Apr. 1911, her siblings were already married: Johanna to a relative, the future merchant Rudolf Budach from Brinkow in the Oderbruch, and Wilhelm, after having spent some time in Palermo on Sicily, to Gertrud Blaumann, the daughter of a Hamburg master potter. Later, the couple lived in Lübeck. Hedwig had become a kindergarten teacher. She married the marine engineer Carl Emil Koch, born in Trieste, and moved to Dresden. In 1910, the youngest sister, Clara, married the sales assistant Emile Théodore Frédéric Jules Sommer, born in 1877 in Paris, and resided as a comtesse in France. Hellmuth Budach had lived to see the wedding of his oldest daughter Johanna, but he passed away in 1897. For the following marriage ceremonies, Rudolf Budach, Johanna’s husband, took his position as the marriage witness. In all of the weddings, a neighbor, a teacher by the name of Heinrich Schmidt, participated as an additional witness. The family residence was located on Banksstrasse in the St. Georg quarter for several years before being relocated to Jungmannstrasse 1 (today Ruckteschellweg) in Eilbek. Emilie Budach lived there as well when she got married.

Hermann Selig, by then converted to Protestantism, married into this family environment, which even included a property man of the Busch Circus. Emilie Selig, who had become a kindergarten teacher just like her sister Hedwig, gave up her gainful employment. The children that Hermann Selig brought into the marriage were joined in 1912 and 1914 by the two daughters Annemarie and Käthe, both of whom were baptized. At first, the family kept Hermann Selig’s apartment at Marienthaler Strasse 13 in Hamburg-Hamm. In 1913, they moved to Schlegelsweg 12 in Eilbek, where Hermann Selig subsequently lived for almost 30 years. Evidently, he worked as a theater prop man at the Deutsche Schauspielhaus from 1910 until 1918, responsible for stage equipment.

In this period, Richard Selig, Hermann Selig’s oldest son from his first marriage, who served as a musketeer in the 2nd Company of the 76th Infantry Regiment, was killed by a shot in the head near Noreuil in Northern France on 21 Mar. 1918.

On 29 Aug. 1922, Emilie Selig, Hermann Selig’s second wife registered with the "Eilbeck District Bureau” ("Bezirksbureau Eilbeck”) a business as the "owner of a commercial store” in her home at Schlegelsweg 12, on the raised ground floor. The company involved retail trading with new job lots. The stamp duty was 200 marks, a price reflecting the rampant inflation.

On 26 Aug. 1933, Hermann and Emilie Selig’s daughter Annemarie married an "Aryan.” In the following two years, two granddaughters were born. Annemarie lived with her family in close vicinity to her parents. Increasingly, the marriage was strained by Annemarie’s Jewish descent. Separation would have resulted in Annemarie’s forced relinquishment of the children, which is why she persevered until the marriage eventually ended in divorce in 1946.

In the course of the German national census of May 1939, the entire family was recorded. As a "full Jew” ("Volljude”), Hermann Selig was compelled to become a member of the Hamburg Jewish Religious Organization (Jüdischer Religionsverband), though he was initially protected from the massive persecution measures against Jews by virtue of his "privileged mixed marriage” ("privilegierte Mischehe”). He voluntarily joined the Reich Association of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland). It is not known when he gave up his gainful employment as a property man.

The youngest daughter, Käthe, lived with her parents. She worked as a commercial clerk and thus contributed to the family income. Hermann Selig received a monthly old-age pension amounting to 33.60 RM (reichsmark), supplemented by a parent pension of 15 RM. This income was below the assessment threshold for Jewish religious [community] taxes (Kultusgemeindesteuer). On 18 Aug. 1939, Gertrud, Hermann Selig’s child from his first marriage, gave birth to a daughter. The child’s father was Max Salomon, a native of Hamburg residing in Berlin and married, whose grandfather was the well-to-do leather wholesaler Isidor Salomon from Blankenese (see brochure on Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Altona, p. 131).

On 5 Apr. 1940, Hermann Selig’s situation changed dramatically when his wife Emilie died of a heart attack. When notifying the records office, the daughter indicated her father’s occupation as being that of a "packer.” This may mean that Hermann Selig was performing compulsory labor, despite the fact that he had turned 65. After the death of his second wife, Hermann Selig was deprived of the protection afforded by the "privileged mixed marriage” ("privilegierte Mischehe”). He was deported to Theresienstadt on the second large-scale transport of the year 1942, departing Hamburg on 19 July 1942.

In Nov. 1942, the Hamburgische Elektrizitäts-Werke, the local utility company, sent its claim of the outstanding electricity bill amounting to 6.63 marks to the asset management office of the Chief Finance Administrator (Vermögensverwertungsstelle beim Oberfinanzpräsidenten), which paid it.

Parallel to Hermann Selig, the leather wholesaler from Blankenese, Isidor Salomon, was also deported. Whereas he was already transported to the Treblinka extermination camp on 21 September, Hermann Selig stayed in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, where he perished due to the lack of nutrition, warmth, and medical care on 14 Feb. 1943, allegedly of enteritis. One month later, Max Salomon died in Auschwitz.

After the war, Alfred Selig, Hermann Selig’s third child from his first marriage, lived in what was the GDR at the time.


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

Stand: January 2019
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: 1, 3, 4, 5, 9; StaH 314-15 OFP Oberfinanzpräsident 29 (HEW); 332-5 Standesämter 641-433/1910, 6982-371/1918, 1926-5098/1878, 1997-4568/1881, 7235-486/1940, 641-433/1910; 332-7 Staatsangehörigkeitsaufsicht B III 1901 Nr. 77599; 332-8 Meldewesen K 6970; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 27907, 27909, 27910; 376-3 Zentralgewerbekartei K 3872; Hamburger Theatersammlung, Bühnenjahrbücher; Archiv der Gemeinde Reichelsheim, durch freundliche Vermittlung von Wolfgang Schwinn.
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