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Max Weinthal * 1892

Schloßmühlendamm 11 (Harburg, Harburg)

HIER WOHNTE
MAX WEINTHAL
JG. 1892
VERHAFTET 1937
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
ENTLASSEN 1938
1942 KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
DEPORTIERT 1943
ERMORDET IN
AUSCHWITZ

further stumbling stones in Schloßmühlendamm 11:
Fri(e)da Weinthal, Günther Weinthal

Frieda Weinthal, née Mindus, born on 22.7.1870 in Schwerin, suicide on 19.7.1942
Günther Weinthal, born on 11.7.1923 in Hamburg, 1942 Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, deported to Auschwitz on 28.1.1943, murdered on 22.2.1943
Max (Denny) Weinthal, born on 10.8.1892 in Harburg, 1937, 1938 and 1942 concentration camp Fuhlsbüttel, deported to Auschwitz on 28.1.1943, murdered on 22.2.1943

Schlossmühlendamm 11 (formerly: Lüneburger Straße 28), Harburg

The Jewish couple Josua (25.8.1861-1.7.1936) and Frieda Weinthal were among the many people who moved to the flourishing industrial town of Harburg at river Elbe in the 2nd half of the 19th century in the hope of better times. It was here that their son Max - their first and only child - was born. Soon after, Joshua Weinthal opened a men's clothing store in the heart of the city, on the corner of Lüneburger Strasse and Sand, right next to the Stadtsparkasse, which quickly became one of the best addresses in the city on the Elbe.

Josua Weinthal sold the business in 1912 at a price of 150,000 RM to a successor, who kept the old company name for a long time. The family then settled in Hamburg, where they experienced the beginning of the First World War. As a front-line soldier, Max Weinthal soon had to bid farewell to all hopes of a quick victory. He returned home as a war-disabled man. His father, too, was not unaffected by the events of the war. On behalf of the army command, he was "active in the occupied territories".

After the collapse of the Empire, Joshua Weinthal founded a leather dyeing factory in Hamburg, which he had to close eight years later due to a lack of income in view of the poor economic situation. In the meantime, many shoemakers had switched to dyeing shoe leather themselves.

Things were not much better for his son Max, under whose name a paper import and export company was entered in the commercial register of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce in 1920. His earnings also fell far short of expectations. His financial situation soon deteriorated even further, as his marriage to Gertrud Wulf did not last long and he was only able to meet the maintenance costs due for his son Günther with great effort. At times, his father also had to stand in for him. When he was less and less able to meet his payment obligations in 1926, he transferred the company to his father. One year later it was deleted from the commercial register. Max Weinthal became an employee in his father's company. When this company also had to close two years later, the family was left with nothing.

Joshua Weinthal then turned to the municipal welfare office for support, which was granted to him in weekly installments of RM 17 until November 1929. In addition, he tried his luck as a representative of companies, for which he mostly worked only for a short time, and then went looking for employment again. The rental costs could be reduced by taking in a subtenant. And when there was nothing left of the last nest egg, which was often the case, Frieda Weinthal had no choice but to part with some of her jewelry or apartment furnishings. In the following years, the Weinthal family slowly recovered from these blows.

Together with his son, Joshua Weinthal founded a new company. Weinthal's linen business supplied its customers with bedding and tablecloths. All business affairs were conducted in the home. The income was limited, but it fed the family. When Günther Weinthal moved in with his father after the death of his mother, the previous alimony payments also ceased. After attending elementary school on Humboldtstrasse, the boy began an apprenticeship with master baker Schwanbeck in Hamburg-Rahlstedt.

But these years of modest happiness were over when Joshua Weinthal died on July 1, 1936, at the age of almost 75. A year later, Max Weinthal was imprisoned for alleged "racial defilement." After the accusations proved to be groundless, he was finally released on May 24, 1938, but ruined mentally and financially.

In the meantime, his mother had again turned to the Welfare Office for support and had to accept further restrictions. She had taken in a second lodger and, in her distress, had again sold parts of her jewelry and household effects. This time the Welfare Office assessed the need for assistance according to even stricter and then also racial-biological criteria. The review board initially took exception to the fact that Frieda Weinthal had been seen drinking coffee at the Alsterpavillon and that there was still a telephone in her household, and left no doubt that her son would have to provide for her livelihood again after his release from prison.

Their supply situation became even more critical when Max Weinthal, who in the meantime had adopted the first name Denny, which was permitted to Jews, was arrested again on November 14, 1938, after the Nazi government's Reich-wide pogrom, and held for two weeks in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison. His release, as with many other arbitrarily arrested fellow believers, took place only on the condition that he would subsequently pursue his emigration by the fastest possible means. The Welfare Office also assumed this and in this context stated that Max Weinthal did not yet have the necessary "money for the crossing".

We do not know how intensively he had thought about emigration beforehand. The decision to emigrate was of fateful significance for all those in distress. The stronger and more closely they were rooted existentially and humanly in their homeland, the more painful it was for them to say goodbye to everything they held dear. And the subsequent journey to another country was an expedition into the unknown - anything but an insurance policy for life. Those who embarked on this journey did not know whether they would succeed in gaining a foothold in a foreign country, finding work and building a new existence. Not everyone had the qualifications to meet these challenges. Many felt too old to start anew in a foreign country whose language they were not familiar with and to settle into a different society. Others, on the other hand, were reluctant to accept the acute threat for a long time.

The first Jewish emigrants had already left the German Reich in the early years of Nazi rule, when the National Socialist rulers were still encouraging emigration. By 1937, about 5,000 Jews had emigrated from Hamburg. However, the longer the oppressed waited for further developments, the more difficult it became for them to put corresponding emigration plans into action, as the Nazi government paradoxically made emigration more and more difficult through numerous measures and laws. Those who lived below the poverty line, like Max Weinthal, were doomed from the start; others forfeited their entire fortune from 1938 onward if they went abroad.

As Jewish citizens were visibly impoverished by special levies, such as the "atonement tax" after the pogrom of November 1938, rigorous foreign exchange restrictions and the Aryanization of their property, soon even many who were initially better off were no longer able to pay the rising Reich Flight Tax and the high travel expenses. Quite apart from the harassment when leaving the country, the quotas of the receiving countries limited the number of immigrants. Despite these major obstacles, an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 more people from this population group fled Hamburg in the years after 1937 until the final ban on Jews leaving the country in October 1941.

For Max Weinthal, family circumstances played an important role in addition to financial problems. He felt responsible for his aged mother and his still minor son.

Both those among those left behind who had hoped that they would somehow be able to save what they had acquired and those who had long believed that the terror would soon come to an end soon realized that they had been mistaken. The situation also worsened for Frieda, Günther and Max Weinthal. In April 1939, welfare support for Frieda Weinthal was discontinued "due to unclear circumstances." The welfare office staff had discovered that her unemployed son had received 25 RM from an uncle in Berlin and thought that he was not only obligated to do so, but - with good will - also capable of supporting his mother. Otherwise, she would have to turn to the Jewish community or reduce her expenses. In the internal parlance of the Hamburg social welfare office, the Weinthal family was considered "inferior. To still provide public funds for this family" was "irresponsible."

Even before the start of World War II, the first step toward forced labor for Jews was taken with "compulsory labor" for welfare recipients, until by 1940/41 all Jews capable of working were in "closed labor service" (forced labor).

When a second wave of deportations began in July 1942 after a six-month break for the city's Jewish population, Frieda Weinthal was also affected. On the eve of her "evacuation" to Theresienstadt, she put an end to her life. She was taken by ambulance to the harbor hospital, where the ward doctors discovered that she had poisoned herself with pills.

Three months later, her son and grandson were arrested for unknown reasons and sent to the Fuhlsbüttel police prison. From there, on January 28, 1943, they were taken to the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz, where both died within 15 minutes of each other three and a half weeks later. According to the official reading, Günther Weinthal died of "cardiac insufficiency due to influenza"; in the case of his father, "cerebral apoplexy" was entered as the cause of death in the death certificate.

On April 20 and 21, 1943, the local bailiff Gerlach auctioned off the family's furnishings and entire household goods on behalf of the Hamburg Chief Finance President. He then transferred the proceeds in the amount of RM 5261.25 to the postal check account of the Hamburg Oberfinanzkasse.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: January 2022
© Klaus Möller

Quellen: Hamburger jüdische Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. Gedenkbuch, Jürgen Sielemann, Paul Flamme (Hrsg.); Hamburg 1995; Gedenkbuch. Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933–1945, Bundesarchiv (Hrsg.), Koblenz 2006; Theresienstädter Gedenkbuch. Die Opfer der Judentransporte aus Deutschland nach Theresienstadt 1942–1945, Prag 2000; Yad Vashem. The Central Database of Shoa Victims´ Names: www.yadvashem.org; Archiwum Muzeum Auschwitz, International Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington; StaH 214-1_169, StaH 331-5, 3 Akte 1942/1140, StaH 351-14_2003, Harburger Adressbücher, Alfred Gottwaldt, Diana Schulle, Die "Judendeportationen" aus dem Deutschen Reich 1941–1945, Wiesbaden 2005; http://www.statistik-des-holocaust.de/stat_ger_emi.html.