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Marikita Lindenheim * 1872

Lübecker Straße 13-15 (Hamburg-Nord, Hohenfelde)

HIER WOHNTE
MARIKITA LINDENHEIM
JG. 1872
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
WEITERDEPORTIERT 1944
AUSCHWITZ
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Lübecker Straße 13-15:
Adolf Robertson

Marikita Lindenheim, b. 12.3.1872 in Hamburg, deported on 7.15.1942 to the Theresienstadt ghetto, deported again on 5.15.1944 to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, murdered there

Lübecker Straße 13–15

The exotic sounding surname Marikita was picked by her mother. The father had left the family even before his daughter was born. The name originally derived from the Spanish; only the spelling was Germanized; out of Mariquita came Marikita. Her mother Jenny chose the name of her second child probably because the maternal side of her family originated in the Iberian Peninsula. Following the family’s flight to Hamburg, it joined the Portuguese Jewish Congregation in the Hanseatic City.

Jenny’s mother was the Jewish housewife Mirjam, née Edreh, and her father was the Jewish businessman Isaac Jacobsen; Jenny was born in Hamburg in May 1848. She grew up there and in October 1969 married Gustav Lindenheim. She was 21 and he 30. Gustav had been born in the little Brandenburg town of Briesen. His parents were also Jewish, named Simon Zander Lindenheim and Jeannette, née Lippmann. Four months before the wedding, in June 1869, Jenny and Gustav’s first daughter, Jane, was born. For this reason, Gustav reported the birth of his daughter in person at the registry office; the official nevertheless recorded Jane as "illegitimate” and Gustav as her "alleged” father. After the marriage, Gustav went a second time to the registry office, whereupon the responsible official now noted: "child legitimated through marriage on 10.14.1869.” At that time, Jenny and Gustav Lindenheim lived in the Hamburg Old City, at Grossen Johannisstrasse 21. Gustav worked as a cigarette dealer and had his business premises close by at Graskeller 3.

Apparently, the marriage was not a happy one, for Gustav left his wife when she became pregnant again. He had already traveled by ship to New York for the first time in 1870. In June 1872, he emigrated there, leaving Jenny behind with the three-year old Jane and their still unborn second child. Yet that was still not the final separation of the married couple. For on 27 January 1875, Jenny Lindenheim gave birth to another daughter in Hanover, whose father was Gustav Lindenheim. The girl received the name Marie Klara and was eventually sent to foster parents in Rendsburg.

On 28 April 1876, the marriage between Jenny and Gustav was "totally dissolved and abrogated,” according to the sentence pronounced by the court at the end of the divorce proceedings. Shortly after the birth of their third child, Jenny Lindenheim asserted herself against her husband. Gustav Lindenheim was found guilty and had to pay the trial costs. In mid-1877, Jenny petitioned the Hamburg Guardianship Authority for the official appointment of two guardians for her now two-year old daughter Marie Klara, because she had heard nothing more, "for a long time,” from her ex-husband. The petition was granted by the Guardianship Authority. The two guardians conscientiously took the trouble to find new foster parents for the child, with whom she could live. The non-Jewish married couple, Carl Heinrich Adolf and Henriette Franzke, of Rendsburg, took in Marie Klara and adopted her in 1889.

Gustav Lindenheim married again in New York in November 1880. His second wife, Hulda Goetz, was 17 years younger than he. Because he no longer had the intention of returning to Germany, he took citizenship in the United States in 1892. He died on 9 January 1909 in New York, at 69 years of age. His grave is in the Mount Zion cemetery in Mapeth, New York. Even before Gustav’s death, Jenny Lindenheim had herself listed as a widow in the Hamburg directory. Perhaps, he was already "dead” to her when they divorced.

In Hamburg on 3 November 1908, Marikita’s older sister, Jane, married, at 39 years of age, the nine-year younger bank official Albert Carl Heinrich Friedrich Theodor Bobzing, who came from Schwerin. He was Protestant and Jane also gave that as her religion at the registry office. In February of that year, Marikita and her mother, Jenny, converted to the Protestant faith and had themselves baptized. Jenny Lindenheim, as a witness at Janes marriage, also informed the registry office that she was a widow. In 1922, Jane and Albert Bobzin had a son, whom they named Hans Georg.

Until the marriage of her sister, Marikita had lived with her mother and sister in the St. Georg district, at Barcastrasse 4. She and her mother remained there another four years, then moved to Mühlendamm 2, in the Hohenfelde district. Jenny Lindenheim died in April 1927, at the age of 79. Marikita managed to stay in the apartment on Mühlendamm for another five years. In 1933, she moved into the fourth floor of a house at Lübecker Strasse 45.

In January 1933, Reich President Hindenburg had named Adolf Hitler Reich Chancellor. With that began the National Socialist terror regime. The Jews living in Germany were economically plundered, harassed, persecuted, and exposed to mob action and acts of violence. Anti-Jewish ordinances and laws limited their lives ever more severely. Although Protestants, Marikita and Jane were declared to be Jewesses by the National Socialists, because at least three of their grandparents were Jewish. Because of her marriage into the Protestant family of Albert Bobzin, Jane was relatively protected from Nazi repression. Even after her husband was found dead in the early morning of 29 December 1937 at his workplace in a savings bank in Wandsbek, she did not lose this protection, because she still had to care after their underage son. She moved with him in the following year to her sister Marikita on Lübecker Strasse.

Marikita, on the other hand, was, without protection, delivered to the "racial” persecution and extermination policies of the National Socialists. In June 1941, when she was 69 years old, it came to the notice of the Hamburg reporting and passport police that she had neither an identity card, which Jews were obliged to carry since 23 July 1938, nor the "additional name” Sara which was imposed on Jewesses in general since August 1938. The 51st police precinct summoned her for questioning about this. There she explained that she had attended a Christian school, had never been a member of the Jewish Congregation, but rather had belonged to the Protestant Church since 1908, and that therefore neither of the two regulations applied to her. But this played no role in the racial ideology of the Nazis, and she therefore received a punitive order on 13 November 1942 and had to pay RM 10 for each infraction. At that time she lived on a pension of RM 69 per month, as well as an additional RM 75 she earned by renting out a room.

At the beginning of 1942, Marikita Lindenheim had to leave her home on Lübecker Strasse and move into the Samuel-Levy Foundation at Bundesstrasse 35, which had been declared a "Jew house.” On 15 July 1942, at 70 years of age, she was deported to the "old people’s ghetto” at Theresienstadt. Many of the predominantly old people on the transport arrived at Theresienstadt physically weak, confused, and helpless. Most of them had to sleep on the bare ground, because the ghetto was over-populated. Those who were too old to work or be permitted to do so, faced starvation. Yet, despite the cold, malnourishment, filth, insects, and minimal medical care, Marikita survived Theresienstadt for nearly two years. Perhaps, she was able to do so because of the little food packages sent now and then by her sister Jane.

On 15 May 1944, Marikita was deported again, this time to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. The transport was comprised of 2501 people. By this means and with two further transports on 16 and 18 May 1944, the overpopulated Theresienstadt ghetto was to be "beautified” for the visit by a delegation of the International Red Cross. Only 137 Jews in the transport of 15 May survived Auschwitz. The weak, old, and ill, who were not capable of work, were sent directly upon their arrival to the gas chambers and murdered. Among them was Marikita Lindenheim.

Her sister Jane Bobzin survived the Shoah. From 1943, she lived together with her son Hans Georg on Abendsrothweg and died in the Israelite Hospital of Hamburg on 22 November 1945, at the age of 75.


Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: December 2019
© Frauke Steinhäuser

Quellen: 4; 5; 8; 9; StaH 211-5 Niedergericht B 3796; StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen 488/42; StaH 232-1 Vormundschaftsbehörde Serie II 8162; StaH 332-3 Zivilstandsaufsicht A Nr. 71 u. 3642/1869; StaH 332-3 Zivilstandsaufsicht A Nr. 143 u. 8266/1872; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8198 u. 1000/1945; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 6462 u. 554/1908; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 541/1927; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 512/1937; StaH 373-7 I Auswanderungsamt I, VIII A 1 Band 024, S. 459; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden Nr. 992 e 2 Band 4 Transport nach Theresienstadt am 15. Juli 1941 Listen 1 u. 2; Hamburger Adressbücher; Alfred Gottwaldt, Diana Schulle, Die "Judendeportationen" aus dem Deutschen Reich 1941–1945, Wiesbaden, 2005, S. 430f.; New York City, Sterbeindex 1890–1945, online auf: www.ancestry.com (letzter Zugriff 3.2.2015); New York City Heiratsindizes 1866–1932, online auf: www.ancestry.com (letzter Zugriff 3.2.2015); US-Reisepassanträge 1795–1925, online auf: www.ancestry.com (letzter Zugriff 3.2.2015); National Adress and records Administration (Nara), Washington, D. C., Passport Applications 1795–1905 (letzter Zugriff 3.2.2015); Gustav Lindenheim, Find A Grave Memorial #130274472, Record added 24.5.2014, online auf: www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=lindenheim&GSbyrel=all&GSdyrel=all&GSob=n&GRid=130274472&df=all&m (letzter Zugriff 3.2.2015); Marikita Lindenheim, www.holocaust.cz/de/opferdatenbank/opfer/22163-marikita-lindenheim (letzter Zugriff 4.2.2015); Anna Hajkova, Mutmaßungen über deutsche Juden. Alte Menschen aus Deutschland im Theresienstädter Ghetto, in: Andrea Löw et al (Hrsg), Alltag im Holocaust. Jüdisches Leben im Großdeutschen Reich 1941–1945, Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Bd. 106, München, 2013, PDF-Download von: www.academia.edu/3536642/_Mutma%C3%9Fungen_%C3%BCber_deutsche_Juden_Alte_Menschen_aus_Deutschland_im_Theresienstadt%C3%A4dter_Ghetto_ (letzter Zugriff 10.6.2015); USHMM, Timeline of Events. Deportation from Theresienstadt, online auf: www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1942-1945/deportation-from-theresienstadt (letzter Zugriff 3.3.2015).
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