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Alfred Weis * 1889

Hammer Landstraße 227 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamm)

HIER WOHNTE
ALFRED WEIS
JG. 1889
DEPORTIERT 1942
MAUTHAUSEN
ERMORDET 14.10.1942

further stumbling stones in Hammer Landstraße 227:
Libe Taube, Simon Taube, Walter Weis

Alfred Weis, born 30.3.1889 in Prague, arrested in Mauthausen concentration camp on 1.9.1942, death on 14.10.1942

Walter Weis, born 14.12.1922 in Hamburg, death on 27.3.1945 in the concentration camp Mittelbau-Dora

Hammer Landstrasse 227

Alfred Weis, born 30.3.1889 in Prague, came to Hamburg after the First World War and married Anna, née Schnürl, born 13.12.1899 in Teutschenrust in the Sudetenland in 1921. Alfred was Jewish, Anna came from a Protestant-Jewish "mixed marriage". Both possessed and retained Czech citizenship.

Their first son, Walter, was born on December 14, 1922. Due to inflation, the family did not manage to establish itself until 1924, when Alfred Weis became managing director at the import and export company C.F.C. Harte & Co. GmbH, which was located at Große Bleichen 67. Alfred and Anna Weis, occasionally spelled Weiss, moved to Hamburg-Hamm to Hammer Landstrasse 227, where they lived until 1932.

As early as 1925, Alfred Weis left his position as managing director at C.F.C. Harte and went into business for himself as a merchant, with his own telephone line. On May 29, 1926, the second son, Ernst Peter, was born.

Anna Weis joined the Robinsohn women's fashion department store as a clerk in 1929 and at the same time became a member of the Jewish Community of Hamburg. In 1930 Alfred Weis accepted a position as a bookkeeper and also joined the Jewish Community.

A special role in Anna's life played her voice. Without any professional intention, she took singing lessons to train her mezzo-soprano.
Due to marital problems, Alfred and Anna Weis separated temporarily, but then moved together to a flat at 156 Sierichstrasse in Hamburg-Winterhude.

In 1932 Ernst Peter visited the private Bertram School, and in 1933 Walter changed from the elementary school to the reform-oriented Lichtwark School. In the same year, Alfred and Anna Weis' marriage was divorced. The following year, the family went separate ways.

Alfred Weis moved to Berlin in 1934, Anna returned to Czechoslovakia with Ernst Peter. Walter followed her to Prague in 1936. Anna Weis, now Anna Weissova, continued her vocal studies but was unable to perform anywhere. She must have been member of the Reich Chamber of Culture in Germany or in Prague, but as a "half-Jew" this was closed to her. From 1942 to 1944 she earned her living as a secretary.

Walter continued his schooling at the Stephanus Gymnasium in Prague, but then, after the occupation of Prague by the German Wehrmacht in 1939, he took up an apprenticeship as a watchmaker, which he regularly completed after three years in 1942. He was then conscripted into forced labor in road construction.

His brother Ernst Peter, on the other hand, was imprisoned at the age of sixteen in Theresienstadt on August 10, 1942. Nothing is known about contacts with his mother, brother and father. From 1944 to 1945 he was deployed in Wulkow near Trebnitz, Komando Zossen "Dachs", a subcamp of the Theresienstadt concentration camp, in tunnel construction for an alternative Gestapo headquarters. There he experienced the liberation.

Three weeks after the deportation of his youngest son, Alfred Weis was sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp on September 1, 1942, marked as "Jew" and with the occupation "laborer," where he was assigned prisoner number 12624. It is not known from where he was transferred. He died only six weeks later, on October 14, 1942. His whereabouts in "Block 19" in the concentration camp indicate that he was buried in the Jewish cemetery.

Presumably because he was classified as a "Geltungsjude" because of his parents' previous marriage (marriages between "Volljuden" and "Halbjuden" were treated like Jewish marriages), or for reasons unknown to us, Walter Weis was also imprisoned. At the beginning of 1945 he was in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

In the course of its evacuation, he was transferred to Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, a branch of Buchenwald concentration camp that had become independent in the meantime. There he was registered as a Jew with the prison number 106057. The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp was involved in the production of the V 2 rocket. It is not known whether Walter Weis was still used in this work. Already on February 4, he was admitted to the prisoner infirmary of the main camp of Mittelbau-Dora. There, in Block 38, he died on March 27, 1945.
The causes of his death were erysipelas (erysipelas) and phlegmon (purulent, spreading inflammation) on his right lower leg, general physical weakness and enterocolitis (inflammation of the small and large intestines).

Walter Weis was 22 years old, his father Alfred 53.

Epilogue
Anna Weis returned to Hamburg. Here she died in 1974.
Ernst Peter Weis, living in CSSR initially took advantage of permission to attend his mother's funeral in Hamburg to settle in Hamburg, but then returned to Prague.

Translation: Beate Meyer

Stand: June 2021
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: 1; Hamburger Adressbücher; StaH 351-11, Wiedergutmachung, 48237; Gedenkstätte Mauthausen; Totengedenkbücher Mauthausen, Dora; http://www.mybrandenburg.net/book/export/html/469; http://www.tenhumbergreinhard.de/1933-1945-lager-1/1933-1945-lager-w/wulkow-bei-neuruppin.html; http://www.rijo.homepage.t-online.de/pdf/DE_DE_JU_grunwald.pdf.