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© Verein zur Erforschung der Geschichte der Juden in Blankenese
Jacob Lurie * 1864
Panzerstraße 14 (Altona, Blankenese)
Freitod 31.12.1938 Hamburg
Jacob (also Jacques or Jasper) Lurie, born on 27 Nov. 1864 in Telsia (German: Telschen)/Russia, suicide on 31 Dec. 1938 in Hamburg
The family of my father, Jacob Lurie, was naturalized by the Royal Prussian Government as early as 1869. My father had an older sister, who died a natural death in 1938 and was buried in Berlin-Weissensee, and a younger brother, who later practiced as a physician in Hamburg-Wandsbek, committing suicide in 1936.
Initially, my father enrolled for pharmacy at the University of Königsberg [today Kaliningrad in Russia)], obtained his medical license there in 1899 and subsequently studied dentistry in Breslau [today Wroclaw in Poland] until his licensing in 1900. In the same year, he also received citizenship in and the business license as a dentist of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. My father set up his practice on Neuer Wall.
Very late in life, only in 1921 (at the age of 57), he married my mother, Else Annie Johanna, née Kobrow, then 25 years old. Very happy years – as my mother always told it, the happiest of his life – followed in the house at Panzerstrasse 14, which he had bought from the widow of a skipper in 1918. There were many close and warm relationships to friends and relatives.
I was born in 1930, and I remained the only child.
Starting in 1933, the discrimination of Jewish doctors, too, intruded on all spheres of life. At his age, my father could not entertain emigration and a new beginning anymore. As of Jan. 1938, all Jewish physicians lost their statutory health insurance licensing and as of 30 Sept. 1938, their licenses to practice medicine – for dentists, this came into effect on 1 Jan. 1939. Jacob Lurie also had to give up his thriving dental practice. My father took his own life on 31 Dec. 1938.
The report of the Hamburg Harbor Hospital states that Jacob Lurie, accompanied by his wife, was admitted on 30 Dec. 1938. An assistant had found him unconscious in his practice. Jacob Lurie had poisoned himself. In a document, he had left his will that no doctor was to be consulted, as he did not wish to be brought back to life. His wife expressed the same wish. However, she had not known anything about his husband’s intention to depart this life. Jacob Lurie died the following day, at the age of 74.
In a farewell letter to his wife, he had given reasons for his decision: "I do not want to have an identification card [Kennkarte], no fingerprints, no Israels in the identity papers of my little daughter and in yours, and I want and have to die before 1 January, as who knows what will come!!”
Only a few months earlier, the family had moved into their newly built house at Fichtenweg 29. After Jacob Lurie’s death, his wife found herself compelled to sell the house for a fraction of its value in Jan. 1940. Anti-Semitism had risen considerably in Blankenese, and her daughter was insulted and treated with hostility on the street by children.
Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.
Stand: March 2017
© Katja Rosemarie Langenbach, geb. Lurie und Birgit Gewehr
Quellen: 4; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung, 18360 (Lurie, Annie); StaH 332-8 Meldewesen, A 50/1 (= 741-4 Fotoarchiv, K 5046); Langenbach, Zur Erinnerung an Jacob Lurie.
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