Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Edwin Horowitz * 1881

Loogestieg 10 (Hamburg-Nord, Eppendorf)

Freitod 14.9.1939

further stumbling stones in Loogestieg 10:
Paul Michael Mendel, Anna Mendel

Edwin Horowitz, born on 6 June 1881 in Hamburg, suicide on 14 Sept. 1939

Loogestieg 10

As his father before him, Edwin Horowitz was a merchant by trade. After attending the Stiftungsschule Realschule [a practice-oriented secondary school up to grade 10], he completed an apprenticeship in his father’s paper wholesale business. Under the category of "company and industrial branch,” his Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer) file card of the Jewish Community, which was kept since 1913, lists the Hamburg-based Boysen + H. [Horowitz] laundry detergent plant. He worked there in 1919, after returning from Belgium, where he had been deployed as a member of the military. According to the official Hamburg phone directory, he worked at the "Olindo” Zuckerw. Fabrikate [candy products], Kohlhöfen 30–32, in 1925 and lived on Petkumstrasse. In 1931 and 1932, the residential address entered is Klosterallee 27, with "representative for printed matter and paper processing” indicated as his occupation.

At this time, he perhaps worked together with his brother Felix (born on 18 June 1884), who had taken over the company of their father, Leon Horowitz. His "Papier – Lager und Tüten – Grosshandel” ("Paper – Storage and Bags – Wholesale”), founded in 1875, was located in the middle of the commercial quarter, on Deichstrasse, in 1933, and later on Mühlenstrasse. Leon Horowitz had died in 1925. Concerning Edwin’s mother Henriette, née Prager, we only know that at the time of Edwin’s death she had already passed away. Apart from Felix, who was married to a non-Jewish woman and managed to emigrate to the USA as late as Sept. 1939, Edwin also had a brother by the name of Manfred. Manfred was the oldest of the three, born in Jan. 1880.

A lawyer by profession, he had his own law office at Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse 23–31. In Dec. 1936, he was divorced from his non-Jewish wife Ingeborg, and the seven-year-old daughter stayed with her mother. Ingeborg Horowitz resumed her maiden name and moved to Berlin by the summer of 1937 at the latest. At this time, since Jan. 1937, Manfred Horowitz lived in New York, where he had emigrated with the help of a sponsor. However, apparently he was unable to settle in there and was so unhappy that he returned to Hamburg at the end of July 1937. The desperate man committed suicide by taking pills on 14 Nov. 1937.

Since Nov. 1937 at the latest, Edwin and his wife lived at Klosterallee 9 on the second floor. This address is listed in the police file with respect to the suicide of his brother Manfred. Since 1919, Edwin Horowitz was married to Betty Margaretha Schlu, an "Aryan” born on 9 Sept. 1889. The two had no children. According to his wife, Edwin suffered very much due to the "racial legislation” and had been "weary of life” since passage of the Nuremberg Laws [on race] in 1935. He lost his job several times, the Gestapo harassed the couple with house searches and audits, ordering business partners not "to associate” with Edwin Horowitz. As early as Nov. 1938, he had drafted farewell letters and intended to take his life with an overdose of pills. Back then, his wife hid the pills and subsequently did not think of the fact that they were still in the house, as Betty Horowitz stated to police. Three quarters of a year later, on 14 Sept. 1939, Edwin Horowitz eventually succeeded in committing suicide after all.

His Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer) file card indicates in the "remarks” column: "without any assets.” He had to witness how his brother Felix had struggled for his departure, that exile had not brought the hoped-for rescue for his brother Manfred but instead added inner torment, and by then, the Nazi regime had been boasting about the "lightning victory over Poland” for two weeks. Small wonder that Edwin saw only one way out. After his wife had left the home to go shopping in the morning, he took an overdose of sleeping pills, which caused his death later that afternoon.

Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Sabine Brunotte

Quellen: 1; 4; StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde – unnatürliche Sterbefälle, 1938/483; StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde – unnatürliche Sterbefälle, 1939/1841; StaH 314-15 OFP, F 1120; StaH 351-11 AfW 11189; Amtliches Fernsprechbuch Hamburg 1925, 1931, 1932; AB 1933; Verzeichnis Hamburger Börsenfirmen 1933.
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Recherche und Quellen.