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Elsa Philipp (née Laski) * 1878

Wandsbeker Chaussee 81 (Wandsbek, Eilbek)

HIER WOHNTE
ELSA PHILIPP
GEB. LASKI
JG. 1878
GEDEMÜTIGT / ENTRECHTET
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
2.11.1941

further stumbling stones in Wandsbeker Chaussee 81:
Herbert Philipp, Hermann Philipp

Hermann Philipp, born 6/15/1870 in Anklam, Western Pomerania, died 11/2/1941 (suicide)
Elsa Philipp, née. Laski, born 8/19/1878 in Hamburg, died 11/2/1941 (suicide)
Johann Herbert Philipp, born 2/16/1903 in Hamburg, died 11/2/1941 (suicide)

Wandsbeker Chaussee, building opposite no. 19 (formerly Wandsbeckerchaussee 71/73)

"At 10:10 a.m. of 11/2/41 the 50th Police Precinct was notified by E.-F. D., a tenant of the house Wandsbeckerchaussee no. 73, that the Philipp family, living at W. 73, 3rd floor, had committed suicide by gas poisoning." (From the daily bulletin of the Criminal Police)

The merchant Hermann Philipp, his wife Elsa, née Laski and their son Hermann were the persons concerned. Two further sons, Werner and Kurt, had already gone abroad.

Hermann Philipp's father Joseph, married to Bertha, née Wollfleff (also Wolfleff, Wulfleff), was one of the Jewish merchants who had the major part of Anklam's business life in their hands. Hermann Philipp had a twin sister, Henriette, and a brother, Bernhard, ten years his junior. Whereas his siblings remained single and stayed in Anklam, their place of birth, Hermann Philipp left town and married for the first time. Nothing is known about his first wife, who in Breslau on March 20th, 1897 gave birth to a son, who was named Werner. Apparently, no relationship existed between Hermann Philipp and his first son Werner. Werner is known to have studied at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts and with Oskar Kokoschka in Dresden. At the end of the 1930s, he fled to San Francisco. Originally, he had wanted to become a singer. In San Francisco, he became patron of the opera house and painted portraits of the opera's star performers.

Hermann Philipp came to Hamburg at the turn from the 19th to the 20th century. On May 23rd, 1902, he married his second wife Elsa Laski.

Elsa was the daughter of the well-to-do Hamburg real estate agent Harry Laski and his wife Ida, née Wulffsohn. Harry Laski belonged to the second generation of the large family of an immigrant from what is now central Poland, the merchant Abram Blum Laski from Lubraniec. He came to Hamburg in the first half of the 19th century and started selling tobacco products at Valentinskamp 30. Later, he ran a finery shop at Spitalerstrasse 82 and finally, in 1855, founded a company as real estate and insurance broker. His son Harry entered his father's company in 1874, whereas his elder brother Joseph Magnus became a grain trader, and the younger brother, Meyer Martin Laski, ran a pulse trading business. All three brothers had their businesses entered into the company register and had their permanent places at the stock market.

In 1877, Harry Laski married Ida Wulffsohn, born in Hamburg as the daughter of Henriette Wulffsohn, née Elas, and the late Jeannot Wulffsohn. Ida and Harry Laski had five children: Elsa, born 1878, Alice, born 1880, Walter, born 1882, and the twins Wera and Reinhard, born 1887. Reinhard had a bad accident when he was six months old, suffering a fracture of the skull that severely impaired his mental development. Wera only lived to be five years old and died in 1892.

On September 19th, 1895, Elsa's 17th birthday, a tragedy struck the family: Elsa's uncle and five of his children and the fiancée of his son Max Laski drowned in the Elbe River off Falkenstein; they had followed the invitation of their friend Alexander Beckmann, owner of a business and grain examination agency, to a cruise down the river to Schulau aboard his launch with relatives and friends. On the return stretch back to Hamburg, the launch collided with the paddle wheel steamer Concordia from Stade that was returning home from Hamburg. The launch got underneath the paddle wheel housing and was pushed under water. Four people of the 24 aboard managed to jump overboard and were saved, including Elsa Laski's aunt Rosalie Laski, the wife of Joseph Magnus Laski, who drowned.

The recovery of the bodies that had been swept downriver to Finkenwerder and as far away as Twielenfleth took several days. The members of the Laski family were buried side by side with further victims at the Jewish Cemetery in Ohlsdorf opened two years before.

Rosalie Laski and her eldest son Cäsar continued the business founded by their husband father.

At the wedding of Elsa Laski and Hermann Philipp in 1902, the fathers of the bride and the groom acted as best men, according to Jewish tradition. Two days after the civil ceremony, Paul Rieger, Preacher at the Israelitic Temple, married the couple "pursuant to the rules of the Mosaic Faith." Elsa and Hermann Philipp's sons Herbert and Kurt were born in the two following years. At the age of six, Herbert Philipp, born February 16th, 1903, entered the neighborhood elementary and secondary school in Averhoffstrasse. Half a year later, he switched to the Thedsen private school in Jungfrauenthal in Rotherbaum, where he remained until the third grade.

Hermann Philipp was a wholesale trader of sausage casings and in 1906 became a partner Darmhandlung Biberfeld & Co. that had its headquarters in Schwabenstrasse in Hammerbrook. The family moved to Mundsburger Damm 63 in Hamburg-Uhlenhorst. In 1909, he applied for a passport valid for one year, "to Russia and back", presumably for business purposes. According to his travel document, he was a stately man "of more than average-sized stature." In 1911 or 1912, he left Biberfeld & Co. and moved to Berlin with his family.

At that time, Hermann Philipp noticed for the first time that his son Herbert's emotional state varied greatly and that, especially in spring, his mood was depressed. This, however, did not affect his performance at school, and Herbert acquired his secondary school level certificate at the age of fifteen.

Elsa Laski's mother Ida died on October 31st, 1918. On October 6th, 1919, Elsa's son Kurt, who had been living abroad, returned to Hamburg for two and a half years, staying with his grandfather Harry Laski at Maria-Louisenstrasse 90.

At an unknown date, the Philipp family moved from Berlin to Halle, where Herbert Laski prepared to study engineering by entering a two-year internship at a company manufacturing agricultural machinery. During this training period, his boss apparently seduced Herbert to engage in sexual activities he had never known before and experienced as very disturbing. Repeatedly, he accused himself of despicable behavior, considered himself the worst sinner on earth and thought he should be shot.

Herbert Philipp studied for eight semesters at the Köthen School of engineering. Before entering his final exams, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was treated at the Halle Psychiatric Clinic for six weeks. In the following years, he was repeatedly admitted to various mental hospitals in Halle, Berlin and Leipzig, where he was usually released after a month. These hospitalizations occurred when he felt "overwhelmed" by guilt and delusions of guilt because he had killed people or was even responsible for all the crimes committed in the worlds since his birth. When this state of mind subsided, he urged to be discharged and was then inconspicuous. These calm phases usually lasted a year. As a student, he had, besides his technical studies, created a logically structured "family tree of the sciences" comprising the humanities as well as the social sciences. In 1929, he passed his engineering exam with honors. Subsequently, he worked for a construction company for a few months, later as a heating technician in Halle and Hamburg, and then went to Berlin to work for the AEG and Löwe electric companies.

Hermann and Elsa Philipp and their son Kurt returned to Berlin from Halle. Hermann and Kurt Philipp worked for Croner, Rosenthal & Co. a wholesaler and sorting plant for sausage casings. As the company almost exclusively dealt with imported casings, they got into trouble when the currency licenses started being denied in 1935. Unlike his son Kurt, Hermann Philipp was dismissed. At the age of 65, he moved back to Hamburg that same year. He and his wife again joined the German-Israelitic Community. Because he was unemployed, he did not have to pay contributions. His attempts to find work as a salesman on a commission basis failed. The family lived from their savings.

On May 19th, 1936, Herbert Philipp was admitted to the State Mental Hospital in Langenhorn after a short detention in the remand jail. Two boys had reported him to the police, accusing him of having "indecently approached" them. The alleged homosexual actions could not be proven, but the hospital diagnosed him with "schizophrenia" and took him into institutional care as a potentially suicidal person. On July 2nd, he wrote a 16-page-letter to the Hamburg District Court. "When I was arrested a couple of weeks ago, suspected of having violated art. 175 of the Penal Code", it begins, "I stood under the anacasm of a periodically recurring provoked state of mind that did not allow me to sufficiently concentrate on my defense. Now that, thanks to the calm of the Langenhorn Hospital, I have recovered my psychic balance, and I request to start criminal proceedings against me. I am now able to defend myself; I am now again able to think clearly.”

Herbert Philipp then describes his situation at the time and his approach to art. 175 of the penal code that had been initially formed by the pursuit by his apprentice employer, but later also by his scientific research. He called his Weltanschauung "Natural Scientific Socialism” and started explaining this philosophy by mentioning the celebrated around-the-world flight of the dirigible Graf Zeppelin in August 1939 that in his opinion marked the beginning of a new technological and economic age and the end of the humiliation of the German nation. He said he had lectured about physics and geology to jurists and physicians, who, however, had not understood him. In his opinion, the development of a circular energy flow economy was the logical result of his scientific Natural National Socialism. "The cyclic processes in nature’s economy are the models for our technological processes… If the demands outlined by the keywords are fulfilled, the survival and the well-being of our fatherland and the world will be assured”, he concluded. The hospital management did not mail this letter, depositing it in Herbert Philipp’s medical record instead, so that is was preserved.

After a three months’ stay, Herbert Philipp was discharged from Langenhorn with a favorable prognosis. He was attested a good capacity of discernment, and his parents were advised to admit him to an institution in due time whenever a flare-up of his disease recurred.

However, Herbert Philipp caught the flu that eventually led to an inflammation of the spinal cord. He was treated at the Israelitic Hospital for nine months, but the resulting paralysis of both legs could not be cured; he remained incapacitated for work. After returning from Berlin to Hamburg, Herbert Philipp, like his parents, joined the Jewish Community; all of them were exempt from tax payments.

In October 1938, Hermann Philipp came down with a depression so severe that he had to be tended by a nurse at home. On November 6th, 1938, this caregiver, on orders of the family doctor, took Hermann Philipp’s son Herbert to the Langenhorn Mental Hospital. Herbert’s mood was very depressed, he kept accusing himself and repeatedly said he was a hopeless case. In the ward to which he was admitted, he met his blind uncle Reinhard Laski and kept talking to him until he was transferred to another department.

This was the situation in which Hermann Philipp’s twin sister Henriette from Anklam came to visit her family in Hamburg in the first half of 1939. Henriette was recorded in Hamburg in the census of May 1939. It was the last time the twins saw each other. Hermann Philipp’s twin sister and his brother Bernhard belonged to the group of "Reich Jews” who were among the first to be deported from Anklam to Stettin at the beginning of February 1940; on February 12th, they were deported to the ghetto of Glusk near Lublin, Poland. Both died in the Lublin district, Bernhard in February 194, Henriette in February 1942.

On September 20th, 1940, Herbert Philipp was discharged from Langenhorn against a letter of indemnity following an urgent request from his parents. Three days later, all Jewish patients of that hospital were transferred to the killing facility in the town of Brandenburg in line with auf Nazi government’s "T4 Euthanasia Program” and murdered with carbon monoxide gas. Herbert’s parents had saved him from that.

Elsa and Hermann Philipp had already experienced many acts of discrimination and wantonness against their widespread family when a further blow struck them on October 25th, 1941: Mathilde Laski, a mentally ill sister-in-law in need of care, and grandnephew Cäsar Laski were among the first 1,000 Hamburg Jews to be transported to the Lodz ghetto.

Elsa, Herbert and Hermann Philipp now feared they, too, were to be deported. They blinded the windows and sealed all openings of their kitchen. Fully dressed, they sat down before the gas stove, Herbert between his parents, and turned on the gas. Herbert was still alive when the family was found at 10.10 a.m. of November 2nd, 1941. He was treated with oxygen and taken to Barmbek General Hospital, where he nonetheless died of carbon monoxide poisoning two days later.

The subsequent auctioning of the Philipp family’s furniture by the Krohn Company yielded almost 5,000 RM for the benefit of the Reich Treasury.

Unlike Herbert Philipp, whose discharge from the Langenhorn Mental Hospital saved him from being transported to his death, his uncle Reinhard Laski was murdered in Brandenburg. He had lived in various institutions for decades, first in a Jewish institution in Schwelm. From 1913 to 1922, he attended Adalbert Wintermann’s school for the "mentally weakly talented” in Huchting (now part of the city of Bremen) and was subsequently accepted at the Alsterdorfer Anstalten in Hamburg on the strength of an expertise by his brother-in-law. In Alsterdorf, he did light house and garden work. However, he lost his eyesight due to an accident and subsequent operations. In 1938, he was admitted to the Langenhorn Mental Hospital by order of the Hamburg social administration. On January 24th, 1940, he was transferred from Langenhorn to the Strecknitz Mental Hospital in Lübeck because of capacity problems in Langenhorn. To be able to visit Reinhard Laski in Strecknitz, Hermann Philipp received 22.60 RM from the blocked account of his brother-in-law Walter Laski, Reinhard Laski’s eldest brother – Hermann Philipp could not afford to pay for the trip himself. To make the trip possible, Elsa and Reinhard Laski’s brother Walter successfully applied to the Chief Finance Administrator to approve the withdrawal of 22.60 RM from the blocked account. On September 16th, 1940, Reinhard Laski returned to Langenhorn from Strecknitz with a group transport of Jewish patients. The Nazi government was now concentrating Jewish patients from all over northern Germany in Langenhorn in order to transfer them from there to the killing facility in Brandenburg. With approval from the Langenhorn Hospital, Reinhard Laski could have been discharged to "family care”; he was blind and no longer able to work, but calm and agreeable; however, there was no one left to take care of him. Thus, Reinhard Laski was put on the death transport to Brandenburg and murdered there.

In May 1940, Elsa Philipp’s brother Walter Laski emigrated to Shanghai. As a young man, he had worked as a clerk, and then joined his father’s company as a partner in 1908. In 1912, he married Mathilde Kallmes, daughter of the real estate agent Julius Kallmes and his wife Cäcilie, née Wolff. The couple had three children, Elfriede, Annemarie and Arnold. In 1925, after his father had died, Walter Laski became sole owner of the business. When Jews were barred from working as real estate and insurance brokers in 1938, Walter Laski chose to close his company to prevent it from being "aryanized” by a member of the Nazi party. It was deleted from the company register on November 4th, 1938.

On that day, Walter Laski was in jail and had appointed a plenipotentiary to represent him. He had been imprisoned because a Christian female employee who had been indicted for another reason had accused him of having had sexual intercourse with her in 1935. Confronted with a Gestapo officer’s threat: "If we can’t prove you committed racial defilement or violated the currency laws, we’ll send you to a concentration camp”, Walter Laski tried to commit suicide. Having slit both of his wrists and almost bled to death, he was admitted to the remand jail hospital and rescued. He pleaded guilty to a crime he had not committed and was sentenced to two years at hard labor. At the beginning of 1940, he was offered the opportunity of being released from prison if he left Germany immediately. His attorney submitted an appeal for clemency together with the necessary emigration documents at the end of April, and on May 1st, Walter Laski was released "on probation”, left Hamburg without delay and managed to catch a boat from Genova to China. His son Arnold and his daughter Annemarie, Elsa Philipp’s nephew and niece, also managed to leave.

Elsa Philipp’s sister Alice had married the Berlin physician Ernst Pollack in 1904 and joined him in Germany’s capital. She emigrated to the USA in April 1939.

Herbert Philipp’s brothers left Germany in 1939; Kurt fled to Shanghai, his above-mentioned half-brother Werner emigrated to the USA. Elsa Laski’s cousin Cäsar also left the country. He applied to have a life annuity paid to his sister and her husband from the assets he was forced to leave behind when he left Germany; the Chief Finance Administrator refused this "pursuant to the applicable currency regulations”; he did, however, allow 200 RM per month to be withdrawn from Cäsar Laski’s emigrant’s account to support Elsa and Hermann Philipp.

Translated by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: February 2018
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 9; StaH 332-3 Zivilstandsaufsicht B Nr. 47, 1954/1872 (Henriette Schumacher, geb. Laski); 332-5 Standesämter 382-42/1895, 3364/1878; 7936-1357/1892, 8620-334/1902, 9768-3578/1918, 8637-690/1904, 6810-382/1901, 8970-3753/1882; 332-8 Meldewesen 1892–1925, K 6729; 331-5 Polizeibehörde Unnat. Todesfälle, 1941/1718; 1941/1733; 332-8 Meldewesen, A 24 Band 104 Nr. 1928/1909; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 1560, 3827, 5955; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn 23154, 2535; 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 710 Trauungsurkunden; 992 e 2, Deportationslisten, Band 1; 992 e Band 1 Deportationslisten; Museum im Steintor, Anklam, Schreiben vom 7.6.2012; Jüd. Friedhof Hamburg-Ohlsdorf, ZZ 12 – 510 bis 521; Hamburger Fremdenblatt, 20. u. 21.8.1895.
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