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Jacob Seligmann * 1884
Bärenallee 30 (Wandsbek, Marienthal)
1943 aus NL nach Sobibor
further stumbling stones in Bärenallee 30:
Helene Seligmann
Helene Seligmann, née Kallmes, born on 5 Apr. 1861, deported to the Westerbork/ Netherlands transit camp, died there on 23 June 1943
Jacob Seligmann, born on 25 July 1884, deported from the Westerbork/Netherlands transit camp to the Sobibor extermination camp from Mar. 1943 onward, murdered there on 21 May 1943
Bärenallee 30 (Bärenallee 16)
Once Bärenallee featured an imposing villa, a typical building of the Gründerzeit, serving as the Seligmann family’s domicile for decades. The real estate agent for houses Moritz Seligmann (born in 1852) had purchased the property in 1892. The transfer of ownership had materialized through Helene Seligmann’s twin brother, Julius Kallmes, and the J. & S. Hirsch real estate agency for houses.
Helene Kallmes was born in Wandsbek. She was 21 years old when she married Moritz Seligmann, a resident of Wandsbek, in 1882, living with him at, among other places, Schlossstrasse 37. On 25 July 1884, she gave birth to their first child and only son, Jacob Moritz, also called Maurice. Four daughters followed: the twins Regina and Henny (born in 1886), Olga (born in 1890), and Erna (born in 1892).
The center of the well-off family’s life was and remained – even after a one-year stay in Königsberg (today Kaliningrad in Russia) in 1904/05 – the house and garden on Bärenallee. Later, daughter Olga and her family also called this place home for some time. Their lifestyle was oriented on the habits of the upper Jewish middle class: culturally and religiously rooted in Judaism – the children received private religious instruction from Rabbi Bamberger – open and moderate in terms of modern contemporary trends. Jacob Seligmann attended high school at the Matthias-Claudius-Gymnasium, took part as a volunteer in the First World War, sustaining an injury. His sister Olga became a teacher and worked in her profession until getting married and while her husband served as a soldier. Sister Henny had a job as an office worker. She passed away in 1917, at the age of 31.
Involvement in the Jewish Community tended to be reserved for the parents. Apart from her husband, Helene Seligmann was also active in the Community, specifically in the Unterstützungsverein von 1876, a women’s association whose goal was to support Jewish women fallen on hard times. In the year 1910, she served as a treasurer, going by the name of "Frau Moritz Seligmann,” and in the 1930s, she assumed the position of association chairwoman. Following the death of her husband in 1911, she paid Community taxes on a regular basis until 1923, subsequently making only modest (voluntary) contributions or none at all.
After his father’s death, Jacob Seligmann had taken over his real estate agency located at Hamburgerstrasse 14, establishing himself as a real estate agent for houses and a mortgage broker. Everything pointed to a comfortable middle-class future, especially since Jacob Seligmann’s private life also developed in a positive way. In 1923, he married Frieda, née Lüttmann (born in 1894), who was welcomed in the family not only because of her engaging personality and attractive appearance. She had converted to Judaism and managed a kosher household. The married couple moved into a house of their own at Schillerstrasse 23, a street called Schlossgarten today. The marriage remained childless. At the end of the 1920s, Jacob Seligmann donated to the Wandsbek Synagogue the curtain and the ceiling in honor of his deceased father. In 1929, Seligmann acted as a real estate agent for houses on his own behalf. He sold the family villa on Bärenallee on the instructions of his mother, who had joint property with her children, to the real estate agent for houses Josef Beith, who needed a more spacious residence for his family. The sale contract stipulated that he [Josef Beith] would make his vacated home at Jüthornstrasse 1 available to Helene Seligmann. However, two years later the transfer of ownership had to be rescinded because the purchaser was unable to honor his financial commitments and a foreclosure sale was looming. The house was transferred to Helene Seligmann again, and shortly afterward, another owner was found; the transfer of ownership was registered at the end of 1931.
In his capacity of a mortgage broker, Jacob Seligmann had also taken over the general agency of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Boden-Credit-Bank, a land mortgage bank located in Cologne. His agency in Hamburg was located at Ernst-Merck-Strasse 12–14 in 1926 and five years later, at Mönckebergstrasse 17; in Wandsbek, he operated another office at Hamburgerstrasse 22.
His most prominent customer was probably the boxer Max Schmeling. When he met up with Schmeling in Berlin in 1933, he sent his nephew Heinz Haller a postcard that Schmeling signed as well. The autograph of the well-known athlete considerably increased the boy’s standing among his classmates in the Paulinum, the school of the Rauhe Haus in Hamm, a charitable foundation.
Probably under pressure from Nazi persecution – in 1933, Jacob Seligmann had been taken into police custody, and in 1935, he was publicly denounced as a real estate agent for houses on the Nazi flyer that the authorities had circulated – he changed his domicile from Wandsbek to Hamburg in late 1935, residing there at Colonnaden 25/27 on the third floor. His office was henceforth located at Speersort 8 on the third floor. Due to his relocation, he switched from the Jewish Community in Wandsbek to that in Hamburg, where he joined the "Neue Dammtor Synagoge.” However, in 1936, he returned to his parental home on Bärenallee for a short time, where his mother was still registered with the authorities. Jacob Seligmann was regarded as sociable and generous, and even under pressure from persecution, he did not shed these qualities. During his commutes from Wandsbek to Hamburg, he often took the streetcar. In doing so, he would frequently run into acquaintances, one day, for instance, into the kiosk operator based on Marktplatz, from whom he used to buy his newspapers, as well as his daughter. She was also known in the Wandsbek business world as a papergirl. Jacob Seligmann joined the two standing on the platform and gave the girl five marks. "That was a lot of money back then,” as the contemporary witness recalls her experience today.
Seligmann’s sisters were married and had already emigrated with their families to Palestine. Jacob Seligmann was also planning emigration with his wife. Amsterdam was to be the destination, and he set out to look for suitable accommodation there.
In 1935, his mother had traveled to Palestine to visit her daughters Olga and Regina de Haas and Erna Haller and to celebrate her seventy-fifth birthday there. Helene Seligmann felt comfortable in the warm climate, which was good for her limbs. Her granddaughter Alisa remembers a momentous decision that is ever-present in the family’s recollection to this day: "All of a sudden, her son and daughter-in-law, Jacob and Friedchen Seligmann, came to visit us here. He related that he had moved to Amsterdam and furnished an additional room for my grandmother – and that he wished to take her back to the Netherlands at all cost. All of us were very much against it but we could not do anything about it. In 1936, she returned with her son and daughter-in-law.”
Thus, Helene Seligmann followed her son whom she believed capable of taking care of her even in difficult times. Despite all of the positive impressions in Palestine, she had likely realized that the daughters and their husbands had not yet gained a foothold sufficiently firm to take in an additional person without any problems. For instance, her son-in-law Alfons de Haas had managed only under great strain to build up a cigar production. In order to stave off bankruptcy, he returned to Europe for a few years, resuming his tobacco wholesale business und using its revenues to support the factory in Palestine. From 1938 until their return to Palestine in 1940, the family lived with their youngest son in Amsterdam, while the two older sons held the position in Palestine. When they arrived in Amsterdam, they already encountered relatives there.
As it stood, Seligmann and his wife had departed Germany in 1937. Helene Seligmann, too, moved away from Wandsbek. However, for the time being she remained registered with the authorities as residing in Hamburg, living until her emigration in June 1939 at Parkallee 7 with Baruch and having joined the religious society of the "Neue Dammtor-Synagoge.”
Upon the occupation of the Netherlands by the German Wehrmacht in May 1940, not only the local Dutch Jews but also the immigrants from Germany were caught in the machinery of persecution measures. Probably, the Seligmanns were forced to move to the Amsterdam Jewish quarter. In Feb. 1941, they lived at Haringvlietstraat 15 on the fourth floor. The last sign of life was a Red Cross message from Helene Seligmann to her daughter Erna Haller in Jerusalem, a form letter sent on 8 Mar. 1943. It contained the words, "We are healthy…” with greetings and signatures.
Soon afterward, Helene and Jacob Seligmann had to report to the Westerbork transit camp. As an "Aryan” Jew by religion (Glaubensjüdin), Frieda Seligmann remained behind in the apartment.
Jacob Seligmann was deported from Westerbork to the Sobibor extermination camp in Mar. 1943. The date of death entered is 21 May 1943.
Helene Seligmann survived her son by about one month, perishing in Westerbork on 23 June 1943. Her granddaughter Alisa went to see her grave: "I visited the cemetery near Amsterdam and saw her grave. It was one in a row of graves … In retrospect, however, it was still a stroke of luck that she did not end in Auschwitz or (a) similar, horrible extermination camp.” Helene Seligmann is certainly buried in a grave but her death in a transit camp, a kind of waiting station for the transport to "horrible extermination camps” was not a "natural” death by any means. Therefore, a Stolperstein was laid for her, too.
Frieda Seligmann remarried after the war, according to her nephew Chaim’s recollection, "a devoutly religious Dutch Jew who somehow survived. We repeatedly visited the two in Amsterdam.” However, she did not talk about the events of Mar. 1943. "She was unable (or unwilling) to tell us more than the date of the deportation.”
Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.
Stand: January 2019
© Astrid Louven
Quellen: 1; StaHH 332-8 Meldewesen K 4553; In Memoriam, 1995, S. 671; Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands: Helene und Jacob Moritz Seligmann, Ausdruck vom 19.02.2007; AB 1910 VI, 1913 VI, 1933 II; Grundbuch Wandsbek Band 2, Bl.5 121/2533; Auskunft von Chaim Haller vom 12.1.1990; Auskunft von Alisa Levy-Marmor, geb. Haller, vom 29.7.2007; Auskunft von Frau Ruland vom 14.1.2008; Astrid Louven, Juden, S. 34, 64, 75, 77, 131, 135, 153ff., 201.
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