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Adolf Robertson * 1862

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

HIER WOHNTE
ADOLF ROBERTSON
JG. 1862
GEDEMÜTIGT / ENTRECHTET
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
14.7.1942

further stumbling stones in Lübecker Straße 13-15:
Marikita Lindenheim

Adolf Robertson, born 20 May 1862 in Hamburg, took his own life 14 July 1942 in Hamburg

Lübecker Straße 13–15


Ottilie Robertson, née Liebmann, born 2 Sept. 1871 in Stuttgart, lived in Hamburg, attempted suicide 17 July 1942, died 22 July 1942 in Hamburg

Uhlenhorster Weg 46, Uhlenhorst

"At 10 a.m. Adolf Robertson’s son informed me that the door to his father’s room was locked. Since there was suspicion of suicide, we had the master locksmith Kabel, residing at Rappstraße 40, open the door. Robertson lay lifeless on the floor. I immediately notified the police.” Thus reads the file note the crime inspection assistant "on duty for unnatural deaths” at the Hamburg Police wrote following the statement of Wilhelmine Annemarie Sorth, caretaker of the building on Heinrich-Barth-Straße where Adolf Robertson had lived. The statement given by Adolf Robertson’s son Hans is also in the file: "The deceased is my father. The last time I saw him was yesterday. He was very agitated because he had received notification that he would have to leave Hamburg today at eleven in the morning. […] My father said yesterday he would have liked to have been buried next to his wife at Ohlsdorfer Cemetery.”

While the housekeeper with her sparse, dispassionate sentences only allows us to guess the drama that must have played out on 14 July 1942, the son’s words betray the anguish underlying what happened. "That he would have to leave Hamburg today at eleven in the morning” – these words conceal the deportation order that the eighty-year-old Adolf Robertson had received the day before. And he knew precisely that he would not be returning alive. His words that he would have like to have been buried next to his wife seem full of sorrow. Eugenie Robertson, née Liebmann, had died two years earlier on 25 June 1940. She was 69 years old. The couple had celebrated their golden wedding anniversary the previous year.

They had married on 6 Aug. 1889 in Stuttgart, the birthplace of Eugenie Robertson. She had been born there on 29 July 1868. Her parents were Louis Liebmann and Jettchen, née Krailsheimer. Adolf Robertson, on the other hand, came from Hamburg, was the son of the merchant Isaac Jonas Robertson from Lemgo and his wife Johanne "Hannchen” Moses, née Ballin from Aurich, and had two brothers, Eduard and Julius. After their wedding, Eugenie Robertson and her husband lived in Hamburg where she gave birth to a son on 27 July 1890. His parents named him Hans Siegfried, and he remained their only child.

Adolf Robertson’s father Isaac began running a "Tobacco and Cigar Wholesale Business” in 1847 in Neustadt, and around 1870 its offices moved to Neustädter Fuhlentwiete 85. His family also lived in the same building. By and by, Isaac Robertson expanded his business and not only traded cigars, he also manufactured them in his own factory from imported tobacco leaves. In 1882 Adolf Robertson also founded an enterprise, an "export agency”. In 1884 he had it entered into the Hamburg Trade Registry. On 1 May 1885 Isaac Robertson moved his company to Hohen Bleichen 16, and once again the entire family moved into an apartment in the same building.

In the meantime, Eduard Robertson had joined his father’s company. At roughly the same time, Adolf Robertson took two business partners into his company, his former cigar employee Wilhelm Peters and the merchant Hermann Spiegel. Under the name Adolf Robertson & Co. they now ran a cigar factory together. The manufacture of cigars was a lucrative branch of industry during the 19th century as the smoking of cigars was very popular and widespread throughout Europe back then. Wilhelm Peters left the company Adolf Robertson & Co. in 1889. That same year Isaac Robertson transferred management of the business he founded to his two sons Eduard and Julius. In 1892 Hermann Spiegel also left Adolf Robertson’s company so from then on he ran the business as its sole owner. Isaac Robertson died in 1894. From then on Adolf’s brother Eduard and their mother Hannchen lived alone in the apartment on Hohen Bleichen. Adolf Robertson and his family first lived on Graumannsweg, then on Langen Reihe. His brother Julius had found an apartment on Lohmühlenstraße.

From the start of the 20th century, cigarettes gradually replaced cigars in terms of their economic importance. Adolf Robertson may have seen this coming because in 1901 he gave up his work as manufacturer of cigars and dedicated himself exclusively to his commercial activity: He became a specialized "bank-finance insurance broker”. His office was on Ferdinandstraße in downtown Hamburg. By then he and his family had moved to Lübecker Straße 139. Eduard and Julius remained in the cigar industry, however their professional paths soon parted. Also in 1901 Eduard had married Ida Engelmann in Leipzig. She originally came from Bavaria, and their son was called Herbert. Their mother Hannchen Robertson died in 1910, at the age of 84. She had survived her husband by 14 years. That same year Eduard Robertson made his wife Ida the owner of his cigar import company.

Adolf Robertson only paid tax on a small income from 1913 to 1917, accordingly the religious tax he paid to the Hamburg Jewish community was very low. Yet as of 1918, his annual turnover grew steadily. By and by he amassed assets that he invested in securities both domestic and foreign and in property. In 1921 his son Hans joined his company. Hans had trained as a merchant and afterwards run an export business on his own. That same year he paid religious tax to the Jewish community for the first time.
Adolf Robertson’s parents did not give him a Hebrew first name, instead choosing a name popular in Germany at the time of his birth – an indication that Isaac and Hannchen Robertson did not live according to Jewish tradition, or at least were not orthodox. That was also true of Adolf himself – he left Hamburg’s Jewish community in 1925, and henceforth the community considered him a "dissident” because he did not change to another religious community.

His son also left the community in 1925. Two years later on 19 May 1927, Hans Robertson married the Evangelical Christian and Hamburg native Elisabeth Minna Magdalena Hintz. A year later on 13 July 1928, the couple had son who they named Helmuth.

Julius Robertson also finally celebrated his wedding in 1926. His wife Ottilie, née Liebmann, came from Stuttgart and was the younger sister, by three years, of Adolf Robertson’s wife Eugenie. Thus the two brothers married two sisters. Their wedding took place in Freiburg im Breisgau. At the time Ottilie was already 55 years old and did not go on to have any children with her husband.

The transition of power to the National Socialists in 1933 did not at first have any major economic consequences for Adolf Robertson. From Nov. 1938 however, he quickly became a victim of the NS regime’s looting of Jews several times over which nearly ruined his livelihood and that of his wife Eugenie. First he was forced to pay the "Reich flight tax” which was 25 percent of his assets. In addition, the Hamburg customs investigation office issued a "security order” against him and his wife on 1 Nov. 1938. Effective immediately they were only allowed to dispose of their securities (totaling about 14,000 Reich Marks at the time), their properties (eleven properties in various Hamburg neighborhoods) and the money on their accounts at the Reich Bank and Deutsche Bank by permission of the foreign currency office of Hamburg’s regional tax office. Without special permission they were only allowed to spend 3,000 Reich Marks each month. That had to cover their living expenses and, initially, the salaries of their employees and all other company-related expenditures like taxes and other fees. 600 Reich Marks were earmarked for their living expenses, business expenses ran to not more than 400 Reich Marks, excluding salaries. The reasoning behind these measures was the typical wording given by the customs investigation office: "Mr. Robertson and his wife are Jews. They are under suspicion of wanting to leave the country. Due to the increasing numbers of Jews leaving the country lately and our ensuing experiences, it is necessary to safeguard their assets.”

From Dec. 1938 Adolf and Hans Robertson were also forced to liquidate their joint enterprise in accordance with the "Ordinance on Action to Be Taken with Jewish Assets”. For that purpose they engaged the services of one of their former authorized representatives. His fee of 400 Reich Marks was paid out of their allowance of 3,000 Reich Marks. The liquidation was completed in late 1939, and by mid 1940 the company had been struck from the trade registry, 56 years after it had been entered there. Adolf Robertson was also forced to liquidate the D. M. Hennigsen Mortgage Broker and Estate Agent which he had owned since around 1910.

In accordance with the "Ordinance on Action to Be Taken with Jewish Assets”, he furthermore had to sell off his properties. A number of non-Jewish citizens of Hamburg profited directly from those sales in a variety of ways. The property at Lübecker Straße 35/37 along with its residential building went to a Helena Rebattu, née Berckemeyer, in Klein Flottbek. She was the wife of the notary public Hermann Rebattu whose law practice on Bergstraße handled the sale. Adolf Robertson received 58,000 Reich Marks for the land and the building, 35,500 Reich Marks of which were deducted to pay off mortgages. Helena Rebattu had to pay a "compensation charge” of initially 10,000 Reich Marks, shortly thereafter reduced to 7,000 Reich Marks, into a special account at the Administration for Trade, Shipping and Industry in support of the German Reich because that made it possible for the government to also profit from the "Aryanization yields”. Of the remaining 22,500 Reich Marks, Adolf Robertson had to pay 14,500 Reich Marks, one fifth of the "levy on Jewish assets” demanded of him, a further coercive measure intended to destroy the economic livelihood of German Jews to benefit the German Reich. That left 8,000 Reich Marks from which he had to pay taxes and other fees in connection with the sale – including an increased processing fee for permission granted by the "next level up administrative authority”. In Hamburg that was the Reich Governor and NSDAP Regional Head Karl Kaufmann. The fee was to be paid either into an account belonging to the Administration for Trade, Shipping and Industry or into an account of the Hamburgischen Grundstücksverwaltungsgesellschaft von 1938 mbH (Hamburg Property Administration Society of 1938) which the Hamburg Regional Direction hat set up expressly for the expropriation of Jewish real estate owners. The small amount left remaining to Adolf Robertson was deposited into his frozen account at Deutsche Bank.

The sales of his other properties were handled in nearly the same manner, sales that he was forced to conduct from Jan. 1939 to Apr. 1942. The properties at Grindelallee 5 and Bundesstraße 4, for instance, went to the lawyer Friedrich Niebuhr, located at the time at Neuer Wall 10. He paid a "compensation charge” of 13,500 Reich Marks into a special account of the Administration for Trade, Shipping and Industry, and Adolf Robertson had to pay 11,700 Reich Marks of the proceeds as a "levy on Jewish assets”.

The real estate agents involved in all of Adolf Robertson’s property transactions included, among others, Jacob Volckerts, Jungfernstieg 8, and J. Christian Glück, Georgsplatz 1. Various Hamburg notary publics handled the notarizations, including Gustavo Otto Bartels, Gottfried Wäntig and the aforementioned Hermann Rebattu.

Adolf and Eugenie Robertson also had to place all of their securities into an account at Deutsche Bank. While they were allowed to sell them, the proceeds had to be paid into an account also with the Deutsche Bank in Hamburg which they again were only allowed to dispose of with permission from the foreign currency office. Moreover, they were forced to drop off their jewels, precious metals, and art works at a government purchasing office by 31 Mar. 1939. That meant for Adolf Robertson he had to take to the public lending institution of the time at am Bäckerbreitergang silverware for 24, two large five-armed candelabras, several diamond-studded watches and tie pins, jewelry, cufflinks and various gemstones, among other items.

After Adolf Robertson was forced to sell his property at Lübecker Straße 35/37, he and his wife Eugenie were no longer allowed to continue living there. They had, in the meantime, lived in that house for over twenty years. Now they moved into a sublet from a family called Mendel at Hammer Landstraße 59.

Hans Robertson and his family also had to leave their apartment. They moved from Hofweg to Grindelallee. Since Elisabeth Robertson was not Jewish and the couple had a child, the couple lived in a "privileged” mixed marriage, according to the categories of the National Socialists. As such, Hans Robertson was protected from deportation. After the liquidation of the business he and his father had run, he did however have to perform forced labor, like many other men and women living in mixed marriages. Willibald Schallert, director of the "Special Service Office J” of the Hamburg Employment Office, first assigned him to the company Joh. C. Meyer in Blankenese where he was to carry out "excavation work”. In reality he disposed of waste, cleaned sewers and streets. He then had to work for the concentrated feed manufacturer Joh. Bischoff in Harburg, carrying sacks, followed by work as a packer and loader at the footwear wholesaler Ernst Jung on am Großen Burstah.

In 1938 Adolf Robertson’s brother Julius died. He and his wife Ottilie had lived at Uhlenhorster Weg 46 for many years. Now a widow, Ottilie moved in with her sister-in-law Ida, herself a widow for many years, at Eichenallee 4 in Lokstedt.

Over the subsequent years, Adolf Robertson was forced to become a member of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany and had to pay the obligatory fees. Explaining that he had already left the Israelitic Religious Association in 1925, he objected to notifications for payment and applied to be exempt from the payments. A dispute with the Jewish Religious Association ensued over the course of several years, due to which Adolf Robertson periodically consulted the legal advisor Alexander Bachur. He was one of the Jewish lawyers the National Socialist had stripped of their license to practice in 1938 and who now was only allowed to legally advise and represent Jewish clients under the title of "consultant”. Adolf Robertson ultimately accepted a monthly payment of 100 Reich Marks, based on his assets of 117,000 Reich Marks, albeit under protest and without recognizing his legal obligation to do so. Nevertheless, over the course of the following years the Jewish Religious Association had to chase him for outstanding payments time and again, until it even considered having Adolf Robertson’s securities seized. Both the deputy chairperson of the Jewish Religious Association Leo Lippmann and the in-house counsel of the finance department Ludwig Loeffler were skeptical of Adolf Robertson’s assurances that his actual wealth was significantly smaller than what was noted on his earnings statements. However, since Adolf Robertson was forced little by little to lend money on his securities, and his properties no longer yielded any income but were incurring losses, according to his own statements, all parties ultimately agreed upon a smaller monthly payment.

In addition to all the life-threatening external circumstances, Adolf Robertson had to cope with another personal blow on 25 June 1940, the death of his wife Eugenie following a prolonged illness, just shy of her 72nd birthday. From then on he faced antisemitic attacks on his own on a daily basis. About three weeks later, on 18 July 1940, his sister-in-law Ida also died, the widow of his brother Julius. At that point, of the three Robertson brothers and their wives, only Adolf and his sister-in-law Ottilie were left, Ottilie living in poverty. For nearly two more years, Adolf Robertson lived as a tenant of the Mendel Family in Hamm. On 18 Mar. 1942 he was ordered to move to the "Jewish house” at Heinrich-Barth-Straße 8 in the Grindel District. Apart from himself, two other couples were also housed in the little apartment, each couple a mixed marriage.

About three months later on 9 June 1942, Adolf Robertson’s daughter-in-law Elisabeth Robertson died from the effects of cancer at Gerhard-Wagner Hospital, Friedrichsberger Straße 60, at the age of 46. The facility specialized in natural therapies and was headed by the National-Socialist medical physician Heinrich Kunstmann. Soon after the death of his wife, Hans Robertson had to leave his apartment on am Hofweg and move to Grindelallee with his son Helmuth who by then was 13 years old.

On 14 July 1942 Adolf Robertson was informed that he was to be deported the next day. That evening he went into the kitchen of his fellow lodger Margarethe Steinberg. Frau Steinberg later stated that he was very upset, and his face was unusually red. A little while later he returned to his room and ended his life that night with morphine and sleeping pills. Prior to that he had placed in plain sight on his desk a "Jewish Asset Declaration” form, filled out but unsigned, and his ID card which identified him as a Jew according to the National-Socialist race laws. He was dressed in a gray pinstriped suit, a dress shirt with cufflinks, socks and slippers. And he wore two wedding bands, his and that of his deceased wife Eugenie.

Three days later, his sister-in-law Ottilie Robertson also took her own life with an overdose of morphine. She had received the order for her deportation to Theresienstadt on 19 July 1942.


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

Stand: December 2019
© Frauke Steinhäuser

Quellen: 1; 2; 4; 5; StaH 314-15 Oberfinanzpräsident R 1938/3150; StaH Oberfinanzpräsident R 1940/390; StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde, Unnatürliche Sterbefälle 3 Akte 1942/1314; StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde, Unnatürliche Sterbefälle 3 Akte 1942/1234; StaH 332-5 Standesämter: 6891 u. 876/1910; 7259 u. 881/1942; 8168 u. 384/1940; 1151 u. 512/1942; 363 u. 1218/1894; StaH 332-8 Meldewesen A24 Band 233; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 761; StaH 552-1 Jüdische Gemeinden 992 d Steuerakten Bd. 26; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde 696 f Geburtsregister 1861-1865 u. 189/1862; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde 992 e2 Band 4 (2) Deportationsliste 15.7.1941 Theresienstadt; Hamburger Adressbücher; Bajohr, Arisierung, S. 369; Meyer, Gratwanderung, 2011; Verordnung über eine Sühneleistung der Juden deutscher Staatsangehörigkeit vom 12. November 1938, RGBl I 1938, S. 1579, in: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, ALEX. Historische Rechts- und Gesetzestexte Online, http://kurzurl.net/2cUKJ (letzter Zugriff: 31.3.2015); Verordnung zur Ausschaltung der Juden aus dem deutschen Wirtschaftsleben vom 12. November 1938, RGBl 1938 I, S. 1580, in: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, ALEX. Historische Rechts- und Gesetzestexte Online, http://kurzurl.net/y0exp (letzter Zugriff: 31.3.2015); Verordnung über den Einsatz des jüdischen Vermögens vom 3. Dezember 1938, RGBl I, S. 1709, in: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, ALEX. Historische Rechts- und Gesetzestexte Online, http://kurzurl.net/L0KL3 (letzter Zugriff: 31.3.2015); Zehnte Verordnung zum Reichsbürgergesetz vom 4. Juli 1939, RGBl I 1939, S. 1097; Zweite Durchführungsverordnung über die Sühneleistung der Juden vom 19. Oktober 1939, RGBl I S. 2059, in: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, ALEX. Historische Rechts- und Gesetzestexte Online, http://kurzurl.net/SDZEA (letzter Zugriff: 31.3.2015).
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