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Clara Stecher (née Frensdorff) * 1877

Mühlendamm 61 (Hamburg-Nord, Hohenfelde)

HIER WOHNTE
CLARA STECHER
GEB. FRENSDORFF
JG. 1877
VERHAFTET 1935
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
ENTLASSEN 1941
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
11.7.1941

Clara Helene Stecher, née Frensdorff, born 26 Feb. 1877 in Hamburg, 26 Oct. to 12 Dec. 1935 in Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, took her own life on 11 July 1941

Mühlendamm 61

Clara was the eldest of the four children born to the Jewish businessman Michael Eduard Frensdorff and his Jewish wife Bertha, née Löwenstein. Almost exactly one year after her birth, her brother Albert Arthur was born on 26 Feb. 1878. Another boy followed three years later on 4 Mar. 1881. He was named Martin Hans Wilhelm, and they called him Willy. One more sibling was to come: When Victor August Helmuth was born on 2 Oct. 1893, Clara was nearly 16 years old.

Their parents had wed in Hamburg on 4 Mar. 1876. Bertha Löwenstein, born on 30 Apr. 1854, came from Soest in North Rhine Westphalia. Eduard Frensdorff, born on 30 May 1846, was a native of Hamburg. His family can be traced back to the mid 18th century in Hamburg. Around that time, Rabbi Meyer Frensdorff left a Bavarian village called Frensdorff and moved to the River Elbe; his son Michael was born in Hamburg. He too became a rabbi and left Hamburg to settle in Hanover. He died there in 1810. Their second son Aron Salomon Moses Frensdorff stayed in Hamburg where he continued the family line. Eduard Frensdorff’s parents were Hirsch Frensdorff and Friederike, née Susmann.

Like his father before him, Eduard Frensdorff bought and sold paper. When Clara and Arthur were born, the family lived in Eimsbüttel on Meißnerstraße. From there they moved to Verbindungsbahn and later to Hallerstraße before ultimately moving into a villa at Hansastraße 16 in Harvestehude in 1887 – a sign of Eduard Frensdorff’s growing success in business and accompanying wealth.

In Hamburg on 22 Jan. 1898, at the age of 20, Clara Frensdorff married the bank representative Viggo Morits Bloch from Copenhagen. He had been born to the high court procurator Bernhard Bloch and his wife Marianne on 13 Nov. 1860, hence he was considerably older than his wife. He had two siblings, Johanne Louise, two years his senior, and Willybald who was four years younger. His parents were well off, they employed both a cook and a maid. At the time of their wedding, however, Viggo Bloch’s father Bernhard, who also came from Copenhagen, was no longer alive. He had died in 1887. His mother Marianne was a descendent of the Hanover branch of the Frensdorff Family, therefore it is likely that Clara and Viggo Block met through family connections. Since Viggo Morits Bloch lived and worked in Kopenhagen, Clara will have joined him there.

The year after their wedding, Clara’s father Eduard Frensdorff took over his father’s company Paper Supplier and Warehouse H. Frensdorff & Co. About two years later, around 1900, he gave up the business, however, and opened an agency. Apparently that business did not take off for he and Bertha soon left Hansastraße and moved, first to Hochallee 27, then two years later to Grindelhof 37, at the time a lower-middle-class neighborhood. He had his office in their apartment, while Bertha Frensdorff rented rooms in their home to a boarding school. The couple would eventually move once more: From 1905 they lived at Magdalenenstraße 46/47 in Pöseldorf. There too Clara’s father ran an agency and her mother took in boarders. On 26 Aug. 1908 Eduard Frensdorff died in Hamburg at the age of 62. At that his widow found new accommodation at Schlüterstraße 22 where she again took in boarders.

The next traces of Clara Bloch do not turn up in Hamburg until 1911. She and her husband had divorced, and she returned to the city of her birth. Under the name Clara Bloch-Frensdorff she opened a jam shop at Großen Reichenstraße 23. The following year she moved her shop to the commercial building called Die Hanse at Mönckebergstraße 15/19. After that all trace of her is lost once again.

Sometime during the following year, Clara met her second husband in Hamburg, the Evangelical Protestant reserve officer with the 20th Ulanen Regiment and First Lieutenant of the Landwehr Cavalry Franz Karl August Stecher, born in Triest on 4 Feb. 1853. The two wed on 15 Sept. 1928. It was his third marriage, and he already had two grown sons, Franz Joseph (born in 1884) and Paul (born in 1887). Clara was 51 at the time, 26 years younger than her husband. As she later would say, she married to ensure she was provided for and would have a secure future, for she had known periods of poverty.

Yet Franz Stecher, who worked as an export merchant since leaving his military career, did not possess the secure position he pretended to have. Instead he was pretentious and extravagant and never told the truth, Clara told a caregiver soon after her wedding, depressed about her husband. Friends loaned him money because he persuaded them he was certain to be the beneficiary of two inheritances sooner or later. Three months before they were married, Clara had moved into his 6-room apartment at Mühlendamm 61 in Hohenfelde. The first problems arose shortly after the wedding regarding the rent payment, and as a consequence Franz Stecher sublet three rooms to a seamstress with three children. His income still was not enough to cover the rest of the rent and living expenses for him and his wife. His sons were not willing to help him out because he had fallen out with them. Clara Stecher spontaneously asked their tenant if she could help her with the tailoring work. She only received 50 cents per hour, but at least she was able to earn a little money.

Clara Stecher’s three brothers had also married in the meantime. Wilhelm Frensdorff had wed Melitta "Melly” Josephine Marholz in the autumn of 1912. She, the daughter of a developer born in Vienna in 1887, was originally Catholic but had converted to Protestantism. Wilhelm Frensdorff also became an Evangelical Protestant. Six weeks before their wedding, he was baptized at St. Johannis Church in Hamburg-Harvestehude. His brother Arthur was his godfather. Melitta and Wilhelm’s daughter Lore Maria was born on 31 Mar. 1920. She too was baptized Evangelical Protestant and later confirmed. Their family moved to Bremen where Wilhelm Frendsdorff found a job as an electrical engineer with the company AG Weser, a shipyard founded in 1872 that merged with seven other shipyards in 1872 to become the Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau Aktiengesellschaft (Deschimag). He was successful in his profession, patenting some of his inventions. He had deployed as an x-ray technician during World War I.

Just like his sister Clara, Arthur Frensdorff had already been married once, and in 1929 he celebrated his second wedding, this time to Thea Ella Wilhelmine, née Roedel, born in Lübeck on 20 Oct. 1901. They had a son around 1935.

Victor August Helmuth Frensdorff also got married in 1929, in Berlin-Charlottenburg. He traveled from Berlin to Hamburg to be a witness at his brother Arthur’s second wedding.

Faced with the bleak situation regarding her husband, Clara Stecher visited her mother Bertha Frensdorff with increasing frequency. Following the death of her husband, Bertha Frensdorff initially moved several times, but by now had lived in a 3-room apartment at Cäcilienstraße 8 since 1921. She had given up her boarders in 1912. Evidently she was not financially secure after her husband’s death. Her three sons had to support her, and she also received a small monthly sum from the legacy of a sister who had died in Chicago. As of May 1930, Clara Stecher visited her mother every day from morning till evening. Her husband had in the meantime rented a smaller, cheaper apartment on Krohnskamp in Winterhude. Yet he was still spending money that he did not have and lived on credit. Clara wanted her mother to move in with her. Thanks to a relative’s intervention, Franz Stecher was able to find an apartment for the three of them in a newly built building near St. Matthew’s Church in Winterhude. Once again he was not able to pay the rent nor the building cost subsidy required for the apartment. Clara and he had been reliant on government welfare since 1928.

Their living situation must have seemed hopeless to Clara Stecher. Out of desperation, she attempted to kill herself in Aug. 1930 by cutting open the varicose veins in her legs. However she was found in time, and her doctor wanted to admit her to the hospital so that she could recover. Yet Franz Stecher insisted on caring for his wife himself. By that time he was already 77 years old and "mentally fragile”, as the nurse who regularly checked in on the couple wrote in her notes.

In the summer of 1932, Clara’s mother Bertha Frensdorff moved to Berlin where her son Victor lived with his wife. At that Clara and Franz Stecher moved into the Jenisch Foundation at Tarpenbekstraße 93 – allegedly arranged by Mayor Schröder who also arranged for their rent to be covered by various foundations and other agencies.

Clara Stecher’s religious affiliation had never mattered to her, but then the National Socialists came to power on 30 Jan. 1933. According to their racial ideology, Clara Stecher was Jewish through her Jewish parents and grandparents, even though she had never practiced the religion. Her mother Bertha Frensdorff died on 9 Oct. 1934 at the age of 80. Almost exactly one year later on 23 Oct. 1935, Clara was arrested by the police and taken to Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, without any judicial review. Inhuman conditions prevailed at the prison, terror and brutal mistreatment were part of daily life. Clara Stecher had to remain at Fuhlsbüttel in "protective custody” until 12 Dec. 1935. The reasons for her detention are not known. There is no indication of any connection to circles of political opponents to the National Socialists, nor was she a Jehovah ’s Witness. She was probably held as a "socially undesirable” person.

Franz Stecher died on 28 May 1938 at the age of 85. Clara Stecher was allowed to continue living at the Jenisch Foundation without paying rent until the end of June, then she had to move out because she was Jewish. It seemed impossible to find new accommodation since she had almost no money, but she managed it: On 1 July 1938 she moved into one and a half rooms sublet from the Josef Family at Haynstraße 5 in Eppendorf. She paid 25 Reich Marks for the rooms. Since the Jewish community could not help her and she was not in contact with her stepsons, she continued to receive a little financial support from the welfare office. As of 15 Sept. 1939 she took care of a sick elderly man on an hourly basis and was paid 20 Reich Marks each month for her work.

Clara’s brother Wilhelm Frensdorff was arrested by the Gestapo during the pogrom in Bremen in Nov. 1938 and held for a short time at a concentration camp. Until then he had been employed at the company AG Weser which was receiving ever larger contracts from the navy. At the start of 1939 Wilhelm Frensdorff still believed his persecution and arrest for being Jewish was a misunderstanding. He even approached Herman Göring through his boss Franz Stapelfeldt as Göring was responsible for the four-year plan to prepare the German economy for war, and he applied to be allowed to remain at AG Weser as a "reserve Jew” due to a shortage of qualified staff at the shipyard. The response was negative.

In July 1939 Wilhelm Frensdorff fled to Shanghai on the last German ship leaving Europe for that destination. At that time Shanghai was the last place Jews persecuted by the National Socialists could flee because no visa was required to enter.

His brother Arthur and Arthur’s family were also on the ship to Shanghai. Wilhelm Frensdorff could only bring his wife and daughter to Shanghai once he had found work there. They left Bremen on 25 May 1940 and traveled over land by train via Moscow and Harbin in Manchuria. Their journey lasted two weeks. Melitta Frensdorff was not able to adapt to life in Shanghai. Six weeks after her arrival, she left her husband and child and returned to Germany.

A short time later on 8 July 1940, Clara’s brother Arthur Frensdorff died in Shanghai. He was only 62 years old.

Clara herself felt the space around her in Hamburg growing ever tighter. On 11 July 1941 she took her own life under dramatic circumstances in her apartment at Haynstraße 5. She chose an especially cruel way to die, she ate food mixed with hydrochloric acid. Her landlady called a doctor who immediately called an ambulance, but Clara Stecher died on the way to the hospital. She was buried eleven days later on 22 July 1941 at Ohlsdorfer Cemetery, chapel 8.

Her landlady Änne Goerisch told the police officer who was sent to investigate the circumstances of her death that Clara Stecher was "not doing at all well monetarily”, but she never mentioned that she wanted to end her life. Clara’s sister-in-law Thea Frensdorff later stated, "She often washed laundry for me. On Friday [the day before Clara Stecher’s suicide, author’s note] she had sent me a package of fresh laundry. But I didn’t open it immediately. When I opened it the next day, I realized a broach and a note had been place in between the clothing. The note said, ‘Keep this to remember me, your Clara.’”

Clara Stecher’s brother Wilhelm Frensdorff died of tuberculosis in Shanghai in Sept. 1947, without ever having seen his wife Melitta again. She died in Germany in 1978.

Their daughter Lore, who had become a fashion designer, met the Austrian journalist Walter Wiener in Shanghai. In 1941 they wed in Shanghai where their daughter Claudia also was born in 1948. In 1950 the family immigrated to Vancouver, Canada. Claudia Wiener, married name Cornwall, published the book Letter from Vienna in 1995 in which she tells the story of her parents’ and grandparents’ Jewish past.


Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: December 2019
© Frauke Steinhäuser

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 8; 9; StaH 241-1 I Justizverwaltung I 2911; StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde, – Unnatürliche Sterbefälle 3 Akte 1941/1294; StaH 332-5 Standesämter: 2557 u. 209/1876; 7992 u. 389/1908; 8589 u. 21/1898; 8928 u. 539/1878; 9087 u. 1581/1893; 8920 u. 541/1887; 8954 u. 795/1881; 13232 u. 194/1929; 6671 u. 511/1928; 1137 u. 431/1941; StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge Abl. 1999/2, 1936; StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge Abl. 1999/2, 1937; Cornwall, Letter from Vienna, Peter Kuckuck, Rezension "Cornwall, Claudia: Letter from Vienna", in: Bremisches Jahrbuch, Bd 76 (1997), S. 277ff.; Peter Kuckuck, "Frensdorff, Hans Martin Wilhelm (Willy)", URL: www.chronik-horn-lehe.de/Personen/Frensdorff/frensdorff.htm (letzter Zugriff 22.3.2015); Hamburger Adressbücher; Die MAUS, Gesellschaft für Familienforschung e. V. Bremen, Handelskammer Bremen, Staatsarchiv Bremen: Passagierliste Bremen–Genua Italien, 10. Juli 1939, Archiv Ident. Nr.: AIII15-10.07.1939_N, http://kurzurl.net/vapqE (letzter Zugriff 20.3.2015); www.geni.com/people/Aron-Frensdorff/6000000013124954763 (Aron Moses Frensdorff); www.mytrees.com/newanc/Other/Born-1839/Fr/Frensdorf-family/Marianne-Frensdorf-no000029-330.html; "Marianne Frensdorff", in: Dansk Demografisk Database, www.ddd.dda.dk/asp/vishusstand_en.asp (letzter Zugriff 1.4.2015); Selig Gronemann, Genealogische Studien über die alten jüdischen Familien Hannovers, Berlin, 1913, Onlineausgabe: Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main, 2010, PDF-Download von http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/freimann/content/titleinfo/889973 (letzter Zugriff 1.4.2015), S. 73f.; Volkszählung, Deutschland 17.5.1939, online: http://tracingthepast.org/minority-census; Diercks, Dokumentation Stadthaus, S. 26ff.; Meyer, Verfolgung und Ermordung, S. 192; Verordnung über die öffentliche Fürsorge für Juden vom 19. November 1938, Reichsgesetzblatt 1938 I, S. 1649; Susanne Lohmeyer, Jüdische Wohnstifte, in: Lohmeyer, Stolpersteine in Eimsbüttel und Hoheluft-West, S. 565ff. [darin auch zur Geschichte der Grundstücke Schäferkampsallee 25, 27 u. 29].
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