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Ilse Herta Zachmann
© Yad Vashem

Herta Ilse Zachmann (née Samson) * 1887

Böttgerstraße 14 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
HERTA ILSE ZACHMANN
GEB. SAMSON
JG. 1887
EINGEWIESEN 1940
HEILANSTALT LANGENORN
"VERLEGT" 23.9.1940
HEILANSTALT BENDORF-SAYN
DEPORTIERT 1942
IZBICA
"AKTION T4"

Ilse Herta Zachmann née Samson, born 5/22/1887 in Hamburg, murdered in Izbica or Sobibor

Stumbling Stone in Hamburg-Rotherbaum, Böttgerstrasse 14

Ilse Herta Zachmann, née Samson, belonged to the group of 136 psychiatric patients of Jewish origin who were transported from the Hamburg-Langenhorn mental hospital to the killing institution in Brandenburg on the Havel on September 23, 1940. She was the only one allowed to leave the transport train in Berlin, whereas the others were murdered that same day by carbon monoxide gas after their arrival at the former prison in Brandenburg converted into a gas killing facility. Ilse Herta Zachmann was taken to the Jewish mental hospital in Bendorf-Sayn near Koblenz on the Rhine.

Ilse Herta’s father Alfred Samson came from the family of the banker Daniel Samson (born circa 1821 in Hannover) and his wife Mathilde, née Schwerin. Daniel Samson ran his bank business at Paulstrasse 38 in Hamburg’s old town until his death in 1877. His sons Alfred and Paul continued the business as partners.

Alfred Samson married Hortensia Rubin, born May 1, 1860. In Mainz. The couple had five children, all born in Hamburg: Johanna Martha, born March 29, 1883; Lucie Alice Irma, born April 24, 1884; Kurt Richard, born September 19, 1885; Ilse Herta, born May 22, 1887; and Paula Nelly, born February 8, 1889.

Alfred Samson died on March 11, 1935. We do not know the fate of his brother Paul.

On April 16, 1920, Ilse Herta Samson married the Jewish merchant Fritz Zachmann, born September 30, 1879 in Hamburg. Groomsmen were Fritz Zachmann’ s brother Philipp and David Aufhäuser, manager and owner of the "Thermo-Chemical Assay and Testing Institute” in Hamburg and from 1927 to 1934 honorary professor at the Technical University of Berlin. David Aufhäuser belonged to the gamily since his marriage to Paula Nelly Zachmann in 1909. At that time, Fritz Zachmann lived with his parents at Rothenbaumchaussee 36, Ilse Herta Samson with her parents at Wartenau 23 in Hamburg-Hohenfelde. Soon after their wedding, the Zachmanns moved to their own apartment at Böttgerstrasse 14 in Harvestehude, where they lived until 1932.

Herta und Fritz Zachmann had two children, Peter Harald Zachmann, born January 9, 1912, and Marianne Ruth, born June 21, 1922. In 1875, two years before he married Cäcilie Levysohn (born February 17, 1855) Fritz Zachmann‘s father Samuel, called Sally, had started a very successful skin export business in Hamburg, which Fritz und Philipp Zachmann entered as shareholders. Fritz Zachmann travelled to the USA several times die USA. Five crossings are documented before 1913, which he presumably undertook on behalf of his father’s export company. Samuel (Sally) Zachmann died on April 25, 1914, and his two sons carried on the business. Fritz Zachmann later left the company and worked for the Mercantile Bank of America as a director from 1916 to 1922.

After Fritz left the family enterprise – we do not know why the brothers separated – Philipp Zachmann ran the company that had its headquarters at Rothenbaumchaussee 36 on his own. The address was also the residence of Philipp Zachmann, who had remained single and lived there with his mother Cäcilie, who had been widowed in 1920, until she died in 1935.

Philipp Zachmann died on My 5, 1937, so that Emil Harald, born May 9, 1893, was the only survivor of the three Zachmann brothers. Philipp had run his own im- and export business at Catharinenstrasse 18. The property at Rothenbaumchaussee 36 was sold in 1937, the fur and skin company liquidated on December 31, 1937.

Ilse Herta’s "increased nervousness” had caused problems in the relationship to her husband, so that they separated on September 1, 1931, and later divorced. Fritz Zachmann lived at Rothenbaumchaussee 36 the following years, with his mother and his brother Philipp.

Ilse Herta Zachmann travelled a lot, e.g. to the USA in 1925. She ran deeply into debt, so that her brother Kurt Richard Samson tried to have her put under guardianship in 1934, but without success at that time. It cannot be determined today when she was actually put under guardianship. Fritz Zachmann died on March 11, 1935, according to his son from a heart attack as a consequence of the excitement caused by the racial persecution by the Nazis. Fritz Zachmanns brother Emil Harald assumed the guardianship for his nephew Peter Harald, probably also for his niece Marianne Ruth. Together with his uncle and guardian, Peter Harald Zachmann emigrated to the USA aboard the steamer Albert Ballin in September 1935. Two years later, they both travelled on to Bogotá, Columbia, but returned to the USA in 1945. According to the entries on her culture tax card at the Jewish Community of Hamburg, Peter Harald’s sister Marianne Ruth was able to flee to Sweden.

After the separation from her husband, Ilse Herta Zachmann lived with her sister Paula Nelly and Nelly’s husband David Aufhäuser at St. Benedictstrasse 29. By request of the Hamburg Guardianship Authority, the neurologist Dr. Heinrich Lottig "supervised” Ilse Herta Zachmann from 1935 to 1938. From 1934 to 1937, Lottig was the senior medical officer of the Hamburg Youth Agency. In this capacity, one of his duties was to render genetic-biological expert opinions on orphan children at the Friedrichsberg state mental hospital, about half of which he classified as "inferior.”

In July 1939, Ilse Herta Zachmann lived with her guardian, attorney Siemers at Kleine Johannisstrasse 4. Bei then, she had run up debts amounting to 6000 RM. On February 13, 1940, Professor Hans Bürger-Prinz admitted her to the psychiatric and neurological clinic on Hamburg-Friedrichsberg. At least one of her sisters, probably Paula Nelly, stayed in touch with her and visited her at the hospital.

According to a letter from Heinrich Lottig to Hans Bürger-Prinz of March 9, 1940, Ilse Herta Zachmann had stayed at various sanitariums (Schloss Fürstenberg, Kuranstalten Westend), and twice in Oberstdorf in the Allgäu. There, she allegedly made critical comments about the course of the war that roused the attention of the Gestapo. She is said to have posed as "Aryan” and made negative comments about the Nazi government. Whereupon she was diagnosed with insufficient sense of judgement, abnormal character traits and a hypomanic personality with "conspicuous eccentricities and idiosyncrasies.” In Heinrich Lottig’s opinion, however, the changes in her personality were not so serious that they should make it impossible for her to emigrate, as she had long planned.

After the end of Nazi rule, the compensation agency argued that her disenfranchisement and subsequent confinement in a mental hospital had been intended to protect her from being sent to a concentration camp. Thus, disenfranchisement was only proposed because Ilse Herta Zachmann, due to her exalted behavior, would inevitably get into trouble with the authorities after the Nazi rise to power. Allegedly, she took a room at a well-known boarding house on the Baltic coast without declaring her Jewish origins according to the regulations. Once, she is said to have taken a seat at the table of Nazi bigshots and talked with them. When her Jewish origins became known, the innkeeper got deeply in trouble. But the summoned Gestapo could not take action against Ilse Herta Zachmann, because she was disenfranchised and therefore could not be held responsible for her actions.

In an expert opinion for the state prosecutors of March 23, 1940, the psychiatrist Bürger-Prinz mentioned that proceedings against Ilse Herta Zachmann had been initiated for a violation of the "law against insidiousness.” That law of December 20, 1934 penalized the unauthorized use of Nazi party emblems and uniforms – it also infringed the right of free speech and criminalized all critical remarks that allegedly severely damaged the welfare of the Reich, the reputation of the government or the Nazi party.

Even though the actual accusations against Ilse Herta Zachmann are not named, Bürger-Prinz’ expertise does make clear that the proceedings were triggered by her previously mentioned negative remarks in Oberstdorf. Bürger-Prinz: "The utterances she is accused of originate from her hypomanic carelessness and lack of good judgement that she cannot realize in any way. The medical requirements of Art. 51 paragraph 1 of the Penal Code [the insanity article] are fulfilled in every respect. As long as the described salience persists, Frau Za. is to be confined to a mental hospital, respectively until her emigration is arranged.”

On July 23, 1940, Ilse Herta Zachmann was compulsorily admitted to the mental hospital in Hamburg-Langenhorn.

In spring and summer of 1940, the Berlin "Euthanasia” agency at Tiergartenstrasse 4 planned a special operation to eliminate all Jewish patients living in public and private mental hospitals in Germany. The agency had all Jewish patients of the institutions registered and then assembled in so-called collecting institutions. In northern Germany, this was the Hamburg-Langenhorn mental hospital. All institutions in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg and Mecklenburg were ordered to transfer all their Jewish patients to Langenhorn before September 18, 1940.

On September 23, 1940, the Jewish patients from all over northern Germany assembled in Langenhorn were transported to the mental hospital in Brandenburg on the Havel and murdered by carbon monoxide gas immediately on arrival in the part of the former prison that had been converted into a killing facility.

Ilse Herta Zachmann was spared this fate – for the time being. On October 7, 1940, her guardian, Herr Siemers, notified the guardianship court that Ilse Herta Zachmann was to have been deported to the east by train with all other Jewish patients; that he, however, had successfully intervened with the Reich ministry of the interior so that she was taken off the train in Berlin and transferred to the Israelitic mental hospital (Jacoby’sche Anstalt) in Bendorf/Sayn near Koblenz on the Rhine. Zachmann’s ongoing efforts to emigrate continued, but without success.

Wilhelm Rosenau, the resident doctor responsible for her treatment from September 1940 to August 1942, reported in 1957: "At Sayn, the treatment succeeded in calming her, but the slightest external irritations often caused relapses. During these relapses, Frau Zachmann behaved so irritably and aggressively that, in those days, it was impossible to discharge her to home care. She felt well with us, had inspired and erudite company and Frau Zachmann and latterly was grateful that she could stay with us. [.....] In calmer times, Frau Zachmann was an erudite and considerate company with whom I often talked about her personal interests.”

Wilhelm Rosenau also supported the idea that Ilse Herta Zachmann had been admitted to the mental hospital to protect her. "In different times”, he said, "we would have got along without hospitalization.”

In August 1942 the guardian Herr Siemers was informed that Ilse Herta Zachmann had been deported from Bendorf-Sayn by the Gestapo and hat not returned. The list of the Jewish men and women deported to the east on June 15, 1942 comprises 342 names, almost all of them patients of the Bendorf-Sayn mental hospital. Ilse Herta Zachmann’s name is next to last on that list.

According to the transport order from the Reich Main Security Office, the people on that transport were to be taken to Izbica near Lublin, Poland. The research by Alfred Gottwaldt and Diana Schulle revealed that that train ended on a sidetrack in Lublin, from where 100 men were taken directly to the Majdanek extermination camp. Then, the train was probably re-routed directly to Sobibor without stopping at the transit ghetto of Izbica.

Ilse Herta Zachmann was never heard of again. She was declared dead after the war. Her personal effects that had remained in Hamburg, i.e. furniture, pictures, books and linen were first stored in a warehouse of the Klingenberg moving and storage company, then auctioned off in 1943 and 1944 for a total of 583 RM. What remained after the deduction of expenses went to the treasury.

Ilse Herta’s sister Johanna Martha had married the Hamburg attorney Alexander Albert Holländer in 1907. Effective November 30, 1938, Albert Holländer was deprived of his status as attorney. On July 11, 1942, Albert and Johanna Martha Holländer were deported to Auschwitz. Both are commemorated by Stumbling Stones at Heimhuder Strasse 14 in the Eimsbüttel district of Hamburg. Their biographies are available on the website www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de.

Ilse Herta Zachmann’s other sister Lucie Alice Irma, had married the lawyer Eugen Baruch Rosenberg from Cologne in 1916. She died on October 10, 1941 at the Langenhorn mental hospital, according the entry in the death registry of endogenous depression and coronary sclerosis. It seems that Lucie Alice Irma had only been admitted to Langenhorn after September 23, 1940 and therefore had not been on the death transport to Brandenburg. The fate of her husband is unknown.

Kurt Richard Samson, Ilse Herta Zachmann’s only brother, had taken part in World War I as a cavalryman. He was taken prisoner by the Russians and witnessed the revolution in Omsk. At the beginning of 1918, he escaped from there and made his way back to Germany. In Hamburg, he became the sole proprietor of the Privatbank D. Samson founded by his grandfather Daniel Samson. In 1919, he married Louise Elsa Lewandowsky, a doctor whose first husband had been killed in a robbery during their honeymoon. In 1922, Kurt Richard and Louise Elsa Samson bought the house named Moorfred in Auenweg in Rissen, the town beyond the Hamburg city limits in Blankenese. The house became the family residence in 1928.

Kurt Richard Samson shared his passion for equestrian sports and fine arts with Otto Blumenfeld, who since 1927 ran the big Hamburg company Norddeutsche Kohlen- und Kokswerke AG (coal and coke traders) as well as the Bernhard Blumenfeld KG, a shipping and coal import company. Both were active in the Hamburger Kunstverein (the fine arts association) and major sponsors of culture and the arts in the city. Together with Otto Blumenfeld, Samson owned the racing stable O. Blumenfeld & R. Samson in Hamburg Gross Borstel.

Like Ilse Herta Zachmann, Otto Blumenfeld’s sister Martha suffered from a mental disorder. However, there are no indications that the two women knew each other. Martha Blumenfeld (cf. there) was murdered in Brandenburg on the Havel on September 23, 1940.

Kurt Richard and Louise Elsa Samson had five children. They all were sent to England on a children’s transport in 1939; their parents later managed to join them, travelling via Sweden.

Paula Nelly Samson, Ilse Herta Zachmann’s youngest sister, and her husband David Aufhäuser had three sons. The family succeeded in emigrating to the USA.

A Stumbling Stone in memory of Ilse Herta Zachmann lies at Böttgerstrasse 14 in Hamburg-Rotherbaum.

Translation by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: March 2020
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 9; StaH 133-1 III Staatsarchiv III, 3171-2/4 U.A. 4, Liste psychisch kranker jüdischer Patientinnen und Patienten der psychiatrischen Anstalt Langenhorn, die aufgrund nationalsozialistischer "Euthanasie"-Maßnahmen ermordet wurden, zusammengestellt von Peter von Rönn, Hamburg (Projektgruppe zur Erforschung des Schicksals psychisch Kranker in Langenhorn); 214-1 Gerichtsvollzieherwesen (1933-1956) 732 Zachmann, 733 Zachmann, 734 Zachmann; 241-2 Justizverwaltung – Personalakten A 1727 Dr. Albert Holländer; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung Nr. 44407 Peter Harald Zachmann, Nr. 9721 Peter Harald Zachmann; 424-111 Amtsgericht Altona Nr. 7959 RA Dr. jur. Alexander Albert Holländer, Johanna Martha Holländer geb. Samson; 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden 696 d Heiratsregister Nr. 226/1850 Daniel Samson/Mathilde geb. Schwerin. Landesarchivverwaltung Rheinland-Pfalz, Dokumente des Gedenkens, S. 274ff. Pfäfflin, Friedemann/Appelt Hertha/Krausz, Michael/Mohr, Michael, Der Mensch in der Psychiatrie, Heidelberg 1988, S. 114ff. Gottwaldt, Alfred/Schulle, Diana, Die "Judendeportationen" aus dem Deutschen Reich 1941–1945, S. 217ff., 395. Kopitzsch, Franklin/Brietzke, Dirk, Hamburgische Biographie. Personenlexikon, Bd. 3, Göttingen 2006, S. 69–71. Schabow, Jacoby’sche Anstalt, in: Friedhofen, Barbara/Schabow, Dietrich/Lenz, Birgitta/Elsner, Stefan/Orth, Linda/Klenk, Wolfgang, Die Heil- und Pflegeanstalten für Nerven- und Gemütskranke in Bendorf, Bendorf-Sayn 2008, S. 55, 79ff. Winter, Lorenz, 100 Jahre Blumenfeld in Hamburg, Hamburg 1971. http://www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de/?&MAIN_ID=7&r_name=Holl%E4nder&r_strasse=&r_bezirk=&r_stteil=&r_sort=Nachname_AUF&recherche=recherche&submitter=suchen&BIO_ID=1597 (Zugriff 15.11.2016).
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