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Lucie Kainer (née Wagner) * 1874

Wielandstraße 27 (Wandsbek, Eilbek)

HIER WOHNTE
LUCIE KAINER
GEB. WAGNER
JG. 1874
VERHAFTET 1938
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
DEPORTIERT 1941
LODZ
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Wielandstraße 27:
David Kainer, Erwin Kainer

David/Dagobert Kainer, born on 22 Mar. 1874 in Tarnow/Poland, detained in 1938/1939 in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison, deported on 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz, deported further before 16 Nov. 1942
Lucie Kainer, née Wagner, born on 16 May 1874 in Hamburg, detained in 1938/1940 in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison, deported on 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz, deported further before 16 Nov. 1942
Erwin Kainer, born on 10 Apr. 1914 in Hamburg, detained in 1938/1939 in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison, detained from 1939 to 1943 in the Bremen-Oslebshausen penal institution, deported on 14 Jan. 1943 to Auschwitz

Wielandstrasse 27

On 17 Mar. 1939, David, Lucie, and Erwin Kainer, as well as Georg Ammann, a son-in-law of David and Lucie Kainer, were convicted on charges of racial defilement ("Rassenschande”) and procuration (Kuppelei) and given extraordinarily harsh sentences. The assessment of punishment was not oriented toward their offense but resulted from the indignation of the court that sexual relations between Jewish men and non-Jewish women and non-Jewish men and Jewish women, respectively, were still taking place. "Despite the harsh penalties due to crimes of racial defilement imposed over the first three years after passage of the Nuremberg Laws and constantly published in the newspapers, one cannot detect a decrease of this crime. Therefore, the penalties imposed now have to be even harsher for the simple reason of general deterrence.” Whereas Erwin Kainer’s imprisonment resulted directly in his death, his parents regained freedom one more time, though in a very restricted way, before being deported to the ghetto in Lodz. Lucie and David Kainer were 68 years old at the time of their deaths, Erwin probably 29 years old.

David Kainer had Jewish parents, Adolf Kainer and Anna, née Hauser. The father traded in eggs. David, who also called himself Dagobert later, was born on 22 Mar. 1874 in what was then the Austrian, today Polish, city of Tarnow, and after finishing the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule) at the age of 14, he was taken by his father to Hamburg to commence an apprenticeship in the grain wholesale trade. The father returned to Tarnow while David stayed in the Hanseatic city.

After completing his apprenticeship, David Kainer continued to be employed in the company that had trained him. He joined the Hamburg German-Israelitic Community on 1 Apr. 1895 and became a member of the [Orthodox] Synagogue Association (Synagogenverband). On 2 Feb. 1903, David Kainer was married to Lucie Wagner, of the same age and also Jewish, born on 16 May 1874 in Hamburg.

Lucie Wagner was the daughter of the wardrobe trader Ephraim Wagner, born in Hamburg in 1834, and his wife Bella, called Betty, née Heimannson, from Rostock. The Hamburg grandfather was a tailor by trade. Lucie had two younger brothers, Willy (born in 1886), who became a dental technician, and Arthur (born in 1887), who went into the commercial field. She attended the "Israelite Girls’ School” on Carolinenstrasse and worked as a sales assistant in the milliner’s/hat maker’s industry after leaving school.

The Wagner family had moved several times within the St. Pauli and Hamburg-Neustadt quarters before being registered with the authorities at Wexstrasse 23 in 1903, with David Kainer living six houses away. Apparently, due to poor health, Lucie’s father, Ephraim Wagner, was not able anymore to act as a witness to the marriage at his daughter’s wedding; he died half a year later at the age of 69. In his place, her brother Willy Wagner served as the witness. David Kainer’s family was represented by a young relative from Bottrop in Westphalia, the general manager Salomon Keiner. In the course of their migration to Germany, the relatives of the Kainer/Keiner family used different ways of spelling their name.

After getting married, David and Lucie Kainer moved to Bellealliancestrasse 41 in Eimsbüttel. There, the two daughters Elli and Irma were born in 1906 and 1908. Elli’s enrollment at elementary school on 10 Apr. 1914 coincided with the birth of her brother Erwin, the only son of Lucie Kainer. The First World War was a heavy strain in the family. In 1915, David Kainer and Lucie’s brother Willy Wagner were drafted to do their military service: David Kainer into the Austrian Army. Aged 41 and never having served, he initially received military training and was then deployed in what was then the Russian marshlands of Volhynia. He fell ill and was discharged from the military in Feb. 1916. Willy Wagner was deployed on the Western front. As of 22 May 1916, he was considered missing in action at Verdun but he survived the war and moved to Berlin.

Four months after his discharge, on 1 Oct. 1916, David Kainer started work for the war victims’ pension office (Kriegsversorgungsamt) in Hamburg, where he stayed until 28 Feb. 1921. Afterward, he returned to his career as a commercial clerk, in which he worked as a salaried employee without any further interruptions until 1933. In the meantime, the family had moved to Eimsbüttel, living at Margarethenstrasse 4.

Nothing is known about Elli’s school education or vocational training. Later, she was employed as an office worker. Irma attended the Herms girls’ secondary school on Schulweg in Eimsbüttel and afterward the private Schür business school at Weidenallee 31/33. She found a job with Köster & Ramm, a toy wholesale business on Steindamm in Hamburg-St. Georg.

Brother Erwin initially attended the preschool on Wilhelminenstrasse (today: Hein-Hoyer-Strasse in St. Pauli), then the Talmud Tora School in the Grindel quarter, and eventually the Talmud Tora Charity School on Grünestrasse in Altona, from which he was dismissed in 1927 at the age of only 13. That same year, his grandmother Bella Betty Wagner died at the age of 80. Erwin began an apprenticeship in the Walter Bucky Department Store on Hamburger Strasse in Barmbek, and after he had completed his apprenticeship, the training company continued to employ him as a sales assistant and decorator. In 1931, when business declined due to the world economic crisis and some employees were dismissed, he was hit as well. Until 1936, he had jobs with different Jewish companies, including the Hugo Lippmann metal wholesale trader on Rödingsmarkt. Two of his relatives had already emigrated, and Erwin, too, had his hopes set on emigration, without initiating it, however.

In 1931, Elli Kainer entered into a "mixed marriage” ("Mischehe”) with the merchant Georg Ammann, manager of the branch of the Kurt C. Ehrhardt bedding store at Wandsbeker Chaussee 126. He had left the Lutheran Church in 1929. The marriage of Georg and Elli Ammann produced four children. At first, the couple lived in Eppendorf on Frickestrasse and then in Eimsbüttel on Eichenstrasse. In 1932, Elli Ammann and her sister Irma Kainer joined the Hamburg German-Israelitic Community. Corresponding to their modest incomes, they paid low contributions. At the end of 1932, their uncle Arthur Wagner, Lucie Kainer’s brother, emigrated to Brazil.

Apart from the political changes, the year 1933 also brought far-reaching personal turning points: A hearing problem ended David Kainer’s gainful employment. From then on, he received a monthly pension of 50.40 RM (reichsmark), supplemented with 20 RM from the Hamburg German-Israelitic Community. On 1 Oct. 1933, his first grandchild, Elli and Georg Ammann’s daughter, was born.

Irma Kainer lost her job and remained unemployed. Assisted by relatives in the USA, she managed to emigrate there in Mar. 1935. Neither Erwin nor the parents made any preparations at the time to follow her. Irma Kainer supported her family with a cash remittance from time to time.

Georg Ammann had moved with his family to the neighboring Prussian Wandsbek, where a second daughter was born, though returning to Hamburg again in July 1936. The Kainer parents, David and Lucie, who still accommodated their son Erwin, took in the Ammanns until Georg Ammann rented an apartment at Wielandstrasse 27 in Eilbek in Oct. 1936. Georg Ammann also owned a large property with a weekend home in Poppenbüttel. On 1 Jan. 1937, Lucie and David Kainer also moved to Wielandstrasse 27, and in April, Erwin followed as well. Elli Ammann gave birth to her first son in November.

In 1936, Erwin Kainer had lost not only his job but also an "Aryan” girlfriend. The following year, he set out for Berlin and became engaged, in spite of the ban on marriages according to the Nuremberg Laws [on race], to O., also a non-Jewish woman. Without any income, he borrowed money from his former girlfriend. In order to procure more funds, he traveled with O. to her relatives in what was then Czechoslovakia and to Vienna. There he left behind an unpaid hotel bill.

O.’s father fetched his daughter back to Berlin. Due to a denunciation, the police interrogated O. on charges of "racial defilement.” Before Erwin Kainer, too, became the target of police, his mother traveled to Berlin to warn him about the consequences of his behavior. Her brother Willy’s home served her as an initial place to go. Despite her criticism of her son, she did not withdraw her support for him. She sold almost all of her belongings and provided him and O. with food and money for fear that her only son might emigrate to the USA as well – as was recorded in the trial later.

Erwin persuaded O. to come with him to Hamburg in order to flee abroad from there. They spent only a short time on Wielandstrasse with the relatives, went into hiding in Georg Ammann’s garden house in Poppenbüttel, rented rooms they were unable to pay, until they were taken in to stay with David and Lucie Kainer at Elsastrasse 8 in Barmbek-Süd in their only room, which the latter inhabited as subtenants. There, David and Lucie Kainer were taken into "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”) on 6 Sept. 1938 and transported to the Fuhlsbüttel police prison. Erwin, who did illicit work at the office of an automotive body shop, was arrested together with O. six days later. Their relationship had lasted 18 months. O. was taken to the Stadthaus [headquarters of the Gestapo in Hamburg] and transferred to Fuhlsbüttel 14 days later, where Erwin Kainer was detained already. After her acquittal at the end of 1938, she was released from prison. On 16 Sept., Georg Ammann was taken into "protective custody” as well because he had allegedly tolerated the relationship. The fact that she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy protected his wife. She gave birth to their fourth child on 2 Nov. 1938.

On 21 Sept. 1938, all four of them were placed under pretrial detention and put on trial in July 1939.

The charges against Erwin Kainer were "racial defilement,” fraud, embezzlement and misappropriation, for he had not repaid a borrowed amount of 300 RM (reichsmark) and not covered hotel bills and rent arrears. David and Lucie Kainer were accused of a serious case of procuration in combination with acting as accessories to "racial defilement,” Georg Ammann for being an accessory to "racial defilement.” All of them confessed their crimes, as a result of which the periods of pretrial detention were calculated against their sentences. Georg Ammann was sentenced to six months for "tolerating occupancy of his summer house.” He was released early but lost his job. The same sentence was given to David Kainer, since the court had gained the impression that he "[was] an old man without energy, completely under his wife’s control, and unable to get his way vis-à-vis her.” Lucie Kainer was sentenced to one and a half years in prison, "for what mattered to her most was fulfilling her son’s every wish,” putting up for this purpose with the serious offense "against a protective law of the German people.”

Erwin was handed an "exemplary harsh penalty” of 15 years in prison and forfeiture of civic rights for ten years. He was transported to the Bremen-Oslebshausen penitentiary on 15 July 1939.

In the course of the national census in May 1939, David and Lucie Kainer, though in prison, were registered as living at their old address at Wielandstrasse 27 with the Ammanns. Elli Ammann left the Jewish Community on 21 June 1939, and in 1940, her husband Georg was drafted into the German Wehrmacht.

When Lucie Kainer was released from prison on 25 Mar. 1940, she moved with her husband to the unmarried Johanna Steiner (see Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Borgfelde) at Anckelmannstrasse 102 in Borgfelde. Starting in Jan. 1941, the Kainer couple received assistance benefits from the welfare office. They began making efforts toward emigration to New York in Apr. 1941, but it was too late, and the endeavor failed. The former apartment on Wielandstrasse sustained a direct hit and complete destruction in an air raid on 16 Sept. 1941.
Elli Ammann got out of the way with the children and moved to Poppenbüttel.

By this time, David and Lucie Kainer were 67 years old, thus having exceeded the age limit set by the Gestapo for transports of Jewish men and women to work in the "Development in the East” ("Aufbau im Osten”). Nevertheless, they were ordered to report for the first deportation on 25 Oct. 1941, together with their landlady, Johanna Steiner, who was ten years younger. They had to leave the dissolution of their remaining household to others. The transport of 1,034 Hamburg men and women was destined for the ghetto in Lodz, of which no one had been able to form any picture beforehand.

On 10 Nov. 1941, they were both registered in Lodz under number 30,735, after having been quartered together with seven other people in one room without kitchen at Hanseatenstrasse 7 a week prior. They left this accommodation on 16 Jan. 1942, were "resettled” within Hanseatenstrasse and moved into apartment no. 17 at Steinmetzgasse 5 on 4 February.

Elli Ammann supported her parents from Hamburg with cash remittances, whose receipt they confirmed on postcards, only one of which reached their daughter, however.

David and Lucie Kainer were "outmigrated” ("ausgesiedelt”) from the Lodz Ghetto, Lucie Kainer on 2 Sept. 1942, David Kainer on 2 Nov. 1942, i.e., murdered in Chelmno.

Their son Erwin was transferred from the Bremen-Oslebshausen penal institution to Auschwitz on 14 Jan. 1943 and murdered there.

Willy Wagner, Lucie Kainer’s brother, was deported along with his wife Dorothea from Berlin to Theresienstadt on 3 Oct. 1942. From there, they were transported to the Auschwitz extermination camp on 16 May 1944.
Since then, there have not been any traces of the deportees.

Georg Ammann was killed in action in the Second World War. His widow emigrated to the USA later.

Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 7; 9; AB; StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht Strafsachen 1730/40; 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung Abl. 13 und 16; 314-15 OFP Oberfinanzpräsident FVg 8857; 332-5 Standesämter 523-694/1903, 1877-4940/1876, 3001-103/1903, 8091-382/1927; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 2524, 33498, 39729; 332-8 Meldewesen K 6343, K 7123; 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde, 992 e2 Bd. 1 Deportationslisten; Archivum Panstwowe w Lodzi.
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