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Anna Böttcher (née Stock) * 1884

Graumannsweg 32 (Hamburg-Nord, Hohenfelde)

HIER WOHNTE
ANNA BÖTTCHER
GEB. STOCK
JG. 1884
ENTRECHTET / GEDEMÜTIGT
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
11.7.1942

Anna Elisabeth Henrietta Böttcher, née Stock, born on 24 June 1884 in Altona, suicide on 13 July 1942

Graumannsweg 32

On 11 July 1942, Anna Böttcher wanted to put an end to her life at the grave of her husband August in the Ohlsdorf cemetery. She took a high dose of sleeping pills, but she was found alive and taken to the hospital in Barmbek. Her agony lasted for two days. Then she died, just after her fifty-eight birthday.

Anna Elisabeth Henrietta Böttcher was the daughter of the Jewish couple Alexander and Emilia Stock, née Sonnenberg. Both were from Hamburg. Alexander Stock was the owner of "Fabrik für Gummi- und Lederwaaren A. Sonnenberg & Sohn,” a factory producing rubber and leather goods in the Ottensen quarter, first based at Bahrenfelder Strasse 125, and after 1892 on Holländische Reihe. Among other things, it produced suspenders, belts and leather wallets, so-called porte-trésors. The company had originally belonged to Emilia’s father Wilhelm alone; her brother Alexander had joined as a partner in 1881. In 1883, Alexander Stock, whose family had once owned a leather shop on Bahrenfelder Strasse, joined the company as a second partner. From 1886 onward, he headed the business on his own.

Alexander and Emilia Stock also lived in Ottensen. From 1883, they were registered with the authorities as residing at Grosse Brunnenstrasse 24. Apart from Anna, who was called Anni, they had seven additional children, all of whom were baptized as Protestants: Amalie (born in 1882), Emmi Arline (born in 1883), Martin Albert (born in 1886), Sophia Auguste (born in 1887), Albertine (born in 1888), Alwine Minna (born in 1893), and Otto Alexander (born in 1896). It is conspicuous that each child was given a first name that began with "A,” just as the father’s first name.

In 1902, at the age of about 18, Anni Stock left her parents’ apartment on Grosse Brunnenstrasse to move to Papenburg. In the following year, she returned and lived again with her parents, who meanwhile resided on the first and second floor of the house at Holländische Reihe 103. It was right next to Alexander Stock’s leather goods factory. Around 1905, Anni moved to Artern in Thuringia and about two years later, in 1907, to Friedenau. At the time, today’s Berlin quarter was still an independent rural community within the Teltow administrative district. In the same year, notified the authorities that she was moving to Braunschweig, and in 1908, she stayed with her parents again.

One year later, on 24 Apr. 1909, Anni Stock married in Ottensen Karl Heinrich August Böttcher, who was about six years her senior. He came from Bölhorst near Minden, and his parents were the retired senior gendarmerie sergeant (Gendarmerie-Oberwachtmeister) Wilhelm Böttcher and his wife Emilie, née Homann. At the time of the wedding, August Böttcher still lived with his parents in Münster, Westphalia. Like Anni, he belonged to the Protestant Church and served as a Vizewachtmeister [a rank approx. equivalent to deputy sergeant major] in the 2nd Westphalian Field Artillery Regiment No. 22. After his marriage, he moved to Hamburg and began a career as a customs officer.

Anni and August Böttcher first lived at Billwerder Steindamm 34 in Hammerbrook. This quarter, which today is dominated almost exclusively by industrial and commercial buildings, was a densely populated residential area until the bombing in July/August 1943. Around 1913, they moved within Hammerbrook, to Sonninstrasse 2. They had no children. From 1932 onward, there were no traces of the couple for some time. August Böttcher passed away in Wiesbaden on 1 Mar. 1939, which possibly meant Anni and he lived there for several years. However, he was buried in Hamburg, where his wife also demonstrably lived again from then on. Thus, she joined the Hamburg Jewish Community in 1939. The Community had become a district branch of the compulsory organization called "Reich Association of Jews [of Jews in Germany]” ("Reichsvereinigung der Juden [in Deutschland]”), and all "full Jews” defined as such in "racial” terms had to join it – as did Anni, although she had been baptized as a Protestant.

The last known residence of her own choosing was Graumannsweg 24, where she had rented a room from Irmgard Körner in 1942. From there, she was committed to a residential building at Kielortallee 24 in early Mar. 1942. Together with house no. 22, this had once formed the Oppenheimer-Stift, which gave free apartments to needy members of the German-Israelitic Community. Since 1941, it had been under the control of the Gestapo as a "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”).

Anni Böttcher did not want to wait for her deportation and ended her own life. Two of her seven siblings – Amalie and Otto Alexander – escaped the Nazi terror regime and emigrated to Britain and the Netherlands. Otto Alexander Stock died in Gouda in 1974.

Martin Albert Stock was committed to the former "Schleswig-Stadtfeld Provincial Lunatic Asylum” ("Provinzial-Irrenanstalt, Schleswig-Stadtfeld”; today’s successor institution is the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine of the Helios Klinikum Schleswig). All traces of him disappear in the "Provinzial-Irrenanstalt.” The subsequent lives of Emmi Arline and Albertine Stock are also unknown. Anni’s sister Sophia Auguste, who had moved to Berlin, and her sister Alwine were deported to Auschwitz and murdered there. For Alwine Grahmann, née Stock, a Stolperstein is located in Hamburg-St. Georg, at Lange Reihe 102.


Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: December 2019
© Frauke Steinhäuser

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 8; StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde, Unnatürliche Sterbefälle, 1942/1095; StaH 332-5 Standesämter: 7264 u. 1217/1942, 5800 u. 134/1909, 5798 u. 69/1908, 5798 u. 83/1908, 718 u. 1104/1915, 5104 u. 33/1941, 5799 u. 391/1908, 5810 u. 318/1913; StaH 332-8 Meldewesen Altona K 7392 (Stock, Alexander); StaH 351-11 AfW 52523; StaH 424-111 Amtsgericht Altona D a 4 Bd 2, Nr. 1646, Nr. 1662, Nr. 1676; StaH 424-111 Amtsgericht Altona D a 4 Bd 1, Nr. 364; StaH 522-1 Jüd. Gemeinden 992 d Steuerakten Bd. 4; Standesamt Berlin I, II Nr. 240 u. 469/1917; Standesamt Dresden I, 22 u. 74/1900; Hamburger Adressbücher; umfangreiche E-Mail-Auskunft von Cornelia Jacob am 14.8.2018; E-Mail-Auskunft von Herrn Erich Koch am 20.8.2015; Stadtteilarchiv Ottensen (Hrsg.), Mitten durch Ottensen. Die Bahrenfelder Straße, Geschichte u. Geschichten einer Straße, Hamburg, 2015, S. 139; Susanne Lohmeyer, Jüdische Wohnstifte, in dies., Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel und Hamburg-Hoheluft-West S. 563 ff.; Rassismus: Auguste Lubisch geb. Stock, in: Brandenburgische Genealogische Gesellschaft Roter Adler (Hrsg.), Brandenburgische Genealogische Nachrichten 6. Jg., Ausg. 2/2011, Bd 3, Heft 2, S. 46 (mit Dank an Gerd-Christian Treutler und Günther Lubisch); Online Begraafplaatsen 3.0, online-begraafplaatsen.nl/zerken.asp?command=showgraf&gra- fid=438308 (Otto Alexander Stock, letzter Zugriff 10.12.2013); stolpersteine-hamburg.de (Alwine Grahmann, geb. Stock, letzter Zugriff 10.1.2014).
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