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Frieda Kohn (née Wiener) * 1871

Hallerstraße 42 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
FRIEDA KOHN
GEB. WIENER
JG. 1871
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
1942 TREBLINKA
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Hallerstraße 42:
Clara Kaiser, Johanna Kohn, Ella Lange

Frieda Kohn, née Wiener, born 5 Aug. 1871 in Regensburg, deported 19 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, deported 21 Sept. 1942 onward to Treblinka extermination camp and killed

Hallerstraße 42

In Dec. 1939, Frieda Kohn moved at the age of 68 from Regensburg to Hamburg. She came from an old Jewish family of wholesalers who ran their businesses in Bavaria.

Her parents Moritz Moses and Ida Wiener, née Wiener, came from Floß near Weiden in Upper Palatinate where there was a well-established Jewish community. They received "permission to marry on 15th June 1869 by official resolution” in Regensburg and wed there that same year. Moritz Wiener became a "trading associate” when he entered the wholesale business run by his father Abraham and his father-in-law Jakob Wiener in Regensburg. According to the "Address Book for the Royal Bavarian Regional Capital Regensburg of 1868,” Jakob Wiener bought and sold "long goods” or fabrics measured with a yard stick or cubit, as opposed to sewing notions which were "short”. The family record shows Moritz Wiener as "wholesaler and citizen” as of 5 Oct. 1899.

Frieda Kohn’s father died on 6 Oct. 1902, her mother on 2 Nov. 1925.

Frieda was the second of five children quickly born one after the other. Her brother Joseph, one year older than herself, died a mere six months after his birth, thus making Frieda the oldest child. Regensburg family records note that Frieda’s sister Marie, two years younger than Frieda, was repeatedly admitted to "Karthaus Lunatic Asylum” starting in the summer of 1900 for being "mentally ill”. Upon her release, she lived at home with her parents. By that time Frieda was already married and had moved into her own apartment in her parents’ house at Haidplatz 4, one flight up.

The fourth sibling was Frieda’s sister Hedwig, born on 21 Oct. 1874. She married a merchant in 1898 who came from Pomerania and lived in Cannstatt in Württemberg.

Frieda’s youngest brother, Jakob, was born on 8 May 1879. Following his military service, he lived with his mother at Haidplatz 4/I, as of Dec. 1918. After the National Socialists came to power, the family record contains some notes about stays in Freiburg im Breisgau (6 Sept. 1934), Cologne (19 Feb. 1936) and Kiel (31 Dec. 1938). Hamburg’s Jewish Community recorded a payment from him for the years 1933 and 1934. They may have been exploratory trips in his search for a place to live outside of Bavaria. In any event, Jakob Wiener married Channa Niessengart from Odessa in Mar. 1940 in Hamburg who had a 20-year-old son named Gregor, born in Altona (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de).

Shortly before her 23rd birthday, Frieda Wiener had married the businessman Gustav Kohn, the son of a cattle trader from Ebelsbach in Hassfurt District where a Jewish community also existed. The bridal couple wed on 10 July 1894 in Nuremberg. They never had children. Travel documents "for the national territory” were issued to Frieda and her husband in Regensburg in 1916 and extended several times as travel documents had become required for all residents of Germany since the start of World War I for identification purposes. Frieda and her husband lived in her family’s old home, Haidplatz 4/II, at a particularly beautiful square in the center of Regensburg.

It was there that her father received his citizenship, based on an edict issued by the Bavarian reformer Graf Montegelas in 1813. And she was living there when the German Empire ended and Jews finally received equal rights under the Weimar Republic. Yet those rights did little for the Jews in Bavaria since protections from liberal princes fell away, moreover Jews were being made scapegoats for the lost war by growing nationalist forces and held responsible for all evils of the time after the "Jewish” soviet republic failed in Munich.

With Hitler’s rise and the accompanying rise of the National-Socialist movement, antisemitic agitation grew ever more crude in Bavaria. Julius Streicher, a teacher recently arrived from Nuremberg who would later publish the newspaper Der Stürmer, was able, for instance, to disparage Prime Minister Kurt Eisner, murdered in 1919, as a "lousy pig” in front of an audience of 250, some very enthusiastic, in Regensburg as early as Dec. 1927 and call for Jews as well as members of other parties to be lynched, a deed which went unpunished.

The Wieners were fully integrated into the Jewish community which, as in many places, was split between liberals and conservatives. They argued over "absolute faithful adherence to the Torah”. The 1925 census registered 514 "Israelites” in Regensburg. The list of the 108 men of the Jewish community entitled to vote included the names Gustav Kohn, Frieda’s husband, and her brother Jakob Wiener who lived in the same building. During the elections for the executive committee of the religious community in Dec. 1926 – women were allowed to vote for the first time – Gustav Kohn successfully ran for office for the conservative "Association of the Jewish-Religious Center Party and Rightist Liberal Jews” against the "Jewish Liberal Alliance”. He did not live to see the end of the Regensburg Jewish Community. Gustav Kohn died on 11 Nov. 1928 in Munich.

The siblings Frieda and Jakob experienced first hand the mobs of National Socialists organized to boycott Jewish businesses early in April 1933. According to eyewitness accounts during a trial after the war, an SA leader standing in the courtyard of the fire department at Haidplatz assigned various groups to boycott specific shops of Israelites. "In the process, the brown shirts learned to chant the two words ‘Jews out’ (Juden raus).”

The subsequent period saw advancement in legally stripping Jews of their lawful rights. Business people who associated with Jews no longer received government contracts, restaurants were pressured to stop serving Jews. Jews were driven out of the markets, their houses and business were defaced. The "Aryanization” of private and business property intensified. A pinnacle was reached in Regensburg too during the November pogrom of 1938. Regensburg’s mayor Otto Schottenheim personally stood in the way of the fire department putting out the fire in the synagogue on Schäffnerstraße. The fire department waited a long time at Haidplatz for the order to step into action. They were only permitted to protect neighboring buildings.

Faced with the growing antisemitic mood within the population and the administrative deprivation of rights, the pressure on Regensburg’s remaining Jewish residents became unbearable. The city wanted to become "free of Jews”. So the now 68-year-old wealthy widow Frieda Kohn and her brother left their family home and center of their lives in Regensburg and moved to Hamburg. Both still held out hope of finding better living conditions in northern Germany than in Bavaria.

In Hamburg Frieda Kohn and Jakob Wiener lived at various addresses. Jakob Wiener moved to Eichenstraße 22, Frieda Kohn first to Hansaplatz 8. Like all Jews at the time, they had already been robbed of nearly all their property. In Regensburg they had been forced to take a "security loan” on their house at Haidplatz to be able to pay the high "levy on Jewish assets” after the November pogrom of 1938 and other taxes. The authorities fixed the amount for Frieda Kohn at 25,500 RM and collected it. Her account was frozen. In Hamburg she had to pay 1,000 RM in religious tax each year for 1941 and 1942, a calculation based on her assets.

Jacob Wiener and his wife Channa, like their landlords on Eichenstraße, received their order to be deported on a transport to Minsk Ghetto on 8 Nov. 1941. From there we lose all trace of them. Channa’s son Gregor had been deported from Fuhlsbüttel, where he had been detained since Nov. 1938, to Lodz one month earlier, three days before his 22nd birthday.

During the brief year and a half she lived in Hamburg, Frieda Kohn moved five times. Ultimately she was deported from Schlachterstraße 40, one of the "Jewish houses”. Beforehand she was forced to surrender her remaining wealth of 47,720 RM for a "home purchase contract”, meaning accommodation in Theresienstadt. The 71-year-old survived the first two months in the overcrowded ghetto. On 21 Sept. 1942 she was transported along with thousands of others to Treblinka extermination camp and killed.


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


Stand: September 2019
© Bruno Lowitsch

Quellen: StaH 351-11, 1805; Stadtarchiv Regensburg, Familienbögen Wiener Moritz; Kohn Gustav; Kohn Frieda, Wiener Jakob; Auskünfte und Materialien Dr. Ingrid Dobroschke, Regensburg, v. 19.10.2014; div. Auskünfte Jürgen Sielemann, Hamburg; Wittmer, Regensburger Juden, S. 238–258, 273–277, 314–317; http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Schottenheim (Zugriff 2.1.2015); Halter, Stadt unterm Hakenkreuz, S. 183–198.