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Links: Margarethe (Greta) Pniower (verh. Herrmann), mit ihren Schwestern Franziska und Edith (Zuordnung der beiden Schwestern ist nicht bekannt)
© Privatbesitz

Margarethe Hermann / Herrmann (née Pniower) * 1892

Mittelweg 162 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

1942 Theresienstadt
ermordet am 17.10.1942

further stumbling stones in Mittelweg 162:
Rosalie Pniower, Franziska Riess

Rosalie Pniower, née Wolff, born 10.1.1868 in Hamburg, deported to Theresienstadt on 19.7.1942, died there on 26.1.1944
Franziska Dorothea Riess, née Pniower, born 16.5.1889 in Beuthen/Upper Silesia (now Bytów/Poland), deported to Auschwitz on 11.7.1942, murdered
Margarethe Adolfine Herrmann, née Pniower, born on 28.9.1892 in Beuthen/Upper Silesia (today Bytów/Poland), deported on 19.7.1942 to Theresienstadt, died there on 17.10.1942

Mittelweg 162, Rotherbaum

Rosalie Pniower, née Wolff, born on January 10, 1868, was the eldest of six children of Levy and Hanna Wolff. The parents, both of Jewish denomination, lived at Eimsbüttelerstraße 53 in the St. Pauli district (today Eimsbütteler Straße, Altona-Nord). At this time, Levy Wolff ran the L. Wolff cigar factory at Alte Gröningerstraße 27 in Hamburg's old city centre. This developed into a very successful family business.

One of Rosalie's brothers, Eduard Wolff, who was born on December 5, 1870 and later became a manufacturer and Turkish vice-consul, ran his father's cigar company very successfully, initially with several brothers and then alone. In 1935, under great pressure, he sold it to a long-time employee. He feared that, as a Jew, his company or his share in it would one day be taken away from him. Degraded by constant anti-Semitic humiliation, he took his own life on February 26, 1938. (Stumbling stones commemorate him at Schöne Aussicht 22 in Uhlenhorst and Spaldingstraße 160 in Hammerbrook (for his biography, see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de).

Of Rosalie Pniower's childhood and youth, née Wolff, we only know her family circumstances, described in detail in Eduard Wolff's biography.

On January 28, 1888, Rosalie married Max Pniower, who was born on March 27, 1855, and later became a landlord and restorer. He came from Beuthen/Upper Silesia (now Bytow, Polish Pomeranian Voivodeship) and, according to the marriage register entry, considered himself Jewish. His mother, the Jewish domestic servant Ernestine Roth, born on July 19, 1823, had entered him as her son in the birth register for Jews of the former "Royal Prussian District Court" in Beuthen.

At the time of their marriage, Max Pniower lived in Beuthen, Rosalie Wolff lived with her parents at Eimsbüttelerstraße 53 in Hamburg. The couple initially settled in Beuthen. Their three daughters were born there: Franziska Dorothea on May 16, 1889, Edith Maria on March 21, 1891, and Margarethe Adolfine on September 28, 1892. A short time later, the family moved to Hamburg. From 1894, they lived at Neue Gröningerstraße 17 in the old city centre. In 1906, they moved to Alsterglacis 10, situated at the south-west corner of the Outer Alster. Max Pniower no longer worked as a restorer, but ran an agency whose field of activity we do not know, and soon afterwards an export-import trade with a warehouse at Pickhuben 6 in Hamburg's customs free port. Apparently, this business activity enabled a high standard of living.

On August 5, 1911, the Pniower couple travelled to the North Sea island of Norderney for a seaside holiday. They stayed at the Hotel Germania in Kaiserstraße, where their daughters Edith and Margarethe Adolfine had arrived two days earlier. The holiday ended tragically: Max Pniower died there on August 14, 1911 at the age of 56. Instead of a religious affiliation, "Dissident" was now noted on the death certificate.

Shortly afterwards, his widow Rosalie Pniower and her three daughters rented a flat in Hamburg, Mittelweg 162 (first floor). There also lived the unmarried Sophie Chr. Schildt, who worked as a domestic servant for Rosalie Pniower and also for Margarethe Adolfine Herrmann, née Pniower, after her divorce.

Franziska Dorothea, Rosalie's eldest daughter, had left the Jewish community on November 7, 1911. On January 29, 1912, the now non-denominational young woman married Max Carl Riess, also non-denominational, who was born in Hamburg on June 30, 1875, and moved in with him at Klein Fontenay 1 in the Rotherbaum district. The marriage remained childless. Franziska Dorothea Riess worked as a teacher at a school in St. Georg from 1915 to 1918. Max Carl Riess died on January 5, 1929, and his widow continued to live at Klein Fontenay 1, until she had to vacate the house in the first half of 1939 by order of the National Socialist authorities in accordance with the Law on Tenancies with Jews of April 30, 1939. Until then, she had earned her living by subletting the two-storey house she rented, mostly furnished. As a Jew, she was now forbidden to enter into subletting agreements with non-Jews. She therefore moved in with her mother at Mittelweg 162. Her art objects and household effects in the Fontenay were, she assumed, "confiscated by executors of the German Reich" after she moved out. Other objects that Franziska Riess had stored in the Keim & Kraut warehouse were auctioned off in favour of the German Reich.

Edith Maria Pniower, the second daughter of Rosalie Pniower, married the banker Robert Guillaume Schriever from Liège (Belgium), born on September 29, 1884, who belonged to the Protestant denomination, on May 10, 1913. Edith Pniower was also a Protestant when she married. The couple had a daughter in 1920, whom they also named Edith Maria. The family emigrated to South Africa in 1924.

Margarethe Adolfine Pniower, the third daughter of Max and Rosalie Pniower, married the Protestant merchant Richard Ludwig Johannes Herrmann in a civil and church wedding at the end of September 1921. The couple had a daughter, Ellen Margarethe, called Elma. She was born in Hamburg on March 9, 1923. After separating in 1924, the marriage was formally divorced at the beginning of 1926. Richard Ludwig Johannes Herrmann, found guilty of adultery, had already emigrated to Venezuela at the time of the divorce.

After the National Socialists seized power in the German Reich, living conditions for Jewish people became more and more difficult. Discriminated, and very soon ousted from their previous professions, they found themselves increasingly deprived of their economic foundations and civil rights. Jews living in mixed marriages were slightly better off. Children from mixed marriages who were verifiably raised non-Jewish, such as Ellen Margarethe Herrmann, categorised as a "first-degree half-breed", were subject to special rights. Her fate is described below.

Here follows the fate of their relatives at Mittelweg 162.
Many Jews hoped in vain to be exempted from the radical discrimination by referring to their conversion to Christianity. Franziska Dorothea Riess and Margarethe Adolfine Herrmann went one step further: the family law amended by the National Socialists enabled a so-called status action, i.e. someone could "sue away" a Jewish parent. The arguments of those who took this way usually referred to the father. With the support of their mother Rosalie Pniower, the two women attempted to retrospectively change the status of their father. Contrary to the information in the family's civil status documents he was not Jewish. They themselves must therefore have to be given the status 1st degree mongrel ("Mischling 1. Grades") and Ellen Margarethe, the daughter of Margarethe Adolfine Hermann, the status 2nd degree mongel ("Mischling 2").

This claim was based on the following story: Rosalie Pniower allegedly remembered a "secret" about the origins of her deceased husband Max Pniower, which his mother Ernestine Pniower had confided to her daughter-in-law on her deathbed in 1894. Max Pniower's parents, the Jewish Ernestine, née Roth, and Adolph (Abraham) Pniower, also a Jewish restorer, had married on June 12, 1855, in Beuthen. Although Adolph (Abraham) Pniower was not the biological father, he acknowleged paternity for Max after the marriage. Ernestine and Adolph Pniower declared Max to be their biological son in July 1855. Max Pniower was therefore considered the legitimate child of two Jewish parents and four Jewish grandparents.

According to her daughter-in-law's report, however, it was not she, the then Ernestine Roth, who was Max Pniower's biological mother, but a non-Jewish young woman from a "good family" in which Ernestine had been employed as a domestic servant. In order to spare the biological mother the "shame" of having an illegitimate child, Ernestine was offered a considerable sum of money if she would pass the child off as her own. Ernestine, meanwhile 32 years old, had agreed to the "deal" as she believed that she could no longer expect to have children of her own at her advanced age. Max Pniower thus became a Jewish child.

Contrary to their expectations, Ernestine and Adolph Pniower did have biological children: Benno, born in 1860, and Siegfried, born in 1861.

Benno married the Jewish Elsa Pniower, née Koch. The couple had a daughter, Alice Pniower. Alice and her husband Conrad fled to Australia in 1939. Benno and Elsa Pniower were deported from Frankfurt/Main to Theresienstadt on September 1, 1942, and died there.

Siegfried Pniower married Paula Karl. They had two children, Hertha, born on March 5, 1894, in Berlin, and Hans Adolf, born on May 16, 1901, in Berlin. Their fate is not known. Paula Pniower (née Karl) was already a widow when she died in Berlin in 1942.

As said before, in 1941/1942 attempts had been made to clarify Max Pniower's status by legal means. The issue was whether the descendants of Max Pniower and his Jewish wife Rosalie, née Wolff, who later converted, would be considered "full Jews", "half Jews" or "quarter Jews" as defined by the Nuremberg Laws.

The legal dispute could have been of potentially life-saving importance for the fate of Rosalie and her daughters Franziska Dorothea and Margarethe Adolfine. As far as can be seen from the files, however, no decision was made on the status of Max Pniower. The trial in the Hamburg District Court lasted until July 1942 and had no suspensive effect on the impending deportation of Franziska Dorothea Riess and Margarethe Adolfine Herrmann, who both lived with their mother at Mittelweg 162. Rosalie Pniower and her daughter Franziska Riess were moved from this flat to the "Jews' house" at Sonninstraße 14 (now Biernatzkistraße) in Altona around 1941. Margarethe Adolfine Herrmann was allowed to stay at Mittelweg 162 until she was deported.

Franziska Riess had to report to the collection point, the Jewish Community Centre at Hartungstraße 11 (now a theater "Kammerspiele”), for deportation on July 11, 1942. She was deported via the former Hannover railway station to Auschwitz and murdered there. She was declared dead on May 8, 1945.

Rosalie Pniower and Margarethe Adolfine Herrmann were deported to Theresienstadt on July 19, 1942. Their collection point was the school in Schanzenstraße. (In the entrance area of today's Sternschanze all-day primary school, Altonaer Str. 38, name plaques commemorate the deportees). They were transported in lorries to the former Hannover railway station and deported from there, too. The transport train left Hamburg on July 19, 1942. Margarethe Adolfine Herrmann died in the Theresienstadt ghetto on October 17, 1942, Rosalie Pniower on January 26, 1944.

Mittelweg 162 was the last freely chosen address of Rosalie Pniower, Franziska Riess and Margarethe Adolfine Herrmann. That is why Stolpersteine commemorate these three women at this place. (The surname in the inscription on the Stolperstein commemorating Margarethe Adolfine Herrmann is spelled only with one "r". This is due to the fact that the name was misspelled several times in the files).

The persecution of Ellen Margarethe Herrmann, daughter of Margarethe Adolfine Herrmann
Ellen Margarethe Herrmann was baptised in June 1927 in the presence of her great-uncle, the successful Jewish cigar manufacturer Eduard Wolff, at St. Johannis Church in Harvestehude. Due to her non-Jewish father, her mother, who was Jewish according to the National Socialist definition, and her Protestant affiliation, she was considered a "half-breed of the first degree". Together with her mother, she lived from birth with her grandmother Rosalie Pniower at Mittelweg 162. Ellen Margarethe was only informed of her classification as "half-Jewish" when she had to leave the convent school for this reason in 1937. She had been transferred there from the disbanded Lichtwarck reform school and finally attended the Emilie Wüstenfeld School in Bundesstraße in Eimsbüttel since October 1937. At the end of lower secondary in autumn 1939, she also had to leave this school (the reason for this dismission was that individual schools in Hamburg were not allowed to teach more than 5% Jewish pupils).

The leaving certificate was signed by the class teacher Krüger and headmaster Otto Hartleb, who had joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933, and ran the Emilie Wüstenfeld School from August of the same year. Several attempts by her mother to enable Ellen Margarethe to take her Abitur elsewhere were unsuccessful.

Ellen Margarethe had been an animal lover, especially a horse lover, from an early age. Even when she was a child, she learnt dressage riding at a riding school in Rotherbaum. She spent every spare minute there, watching the horses or learning how to care for them in the stables. However, as a "first degree" mixed breed, she was not allowed to take part in competitions.

Her career ambition to become a veterinarian remained unrealised, partly due to her lack of a school-leaving certificate. She was also denied her second wish to become an advertising illustrator, as she was not allowed to attend a state school and did not have the money for a four-year course at a private drawing school. Later, she was forced to attend a course at the Gewerbeschule Grone and then found a job at the import and export company Behr, Schultz & Co.

At the end of July 1941, Ellen Margarethe Herrmann spent four days in Gestapo custody because she was suspected without a reason of being closely acquainted with the American vice consul Ralph C. Getsinger, who had been expelled on suspicion of espionage. The background can be found in an article in the NSDAP organ "Innsbrucker Nachrichten" from June 20, 1941. Under the headline "Closure of the US consulates in the Reich" it was said: "Vice Consul Ralph C. Getsinger at the American Consulate General in Hamburg engaged in espionage against the German Reich in spring of 1941 by making plans of the railway network and the main access roads of the German Reich." After hours of interrogation, Ellen Margarethe Herrmann was released.

In September, she attracted attention showing sympathy for the Hamburg "Swing Youth". These young people listened to forbidden Swing Music and, as far as possible, dressed in a British style. The criminal secretary Hans Reinhardt interrogated her in the Stadthaus, the Hamburg Gestapo headquarter. After three days of interrogation, she was initially released. During a following house search, documents were found and Getsinger was wrongly suspected to be their owner. This discovery seemed to confirm the suspicion that Ellen Margarethe Herrmann sympathised with the Americans. She was imprisoned in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison (known as KolaFu) on September 12, 1941. After 28 days of questioning, she was released with the ironic and regretful explanation that "because a foreign pig [meaning the Swedish consul general] had lobbied for her release via Kaufmann's adjudant, she would be housed in a 'health resort' until the end of the war - if she lived to see the end of the war there."

Ellen Margarethe Herrmann was taken - now under Gestapo guard - to the Dynamit A.G. gunpowder factories in Düneberg, west of Geesthacht, as an unskilled labourer. Thousands of forced labourers from France, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands were imprisoned there. Ellen Margarethe lived in barracks together with hundreds of French forced female labourers.

Three times she was given permission to go on a Sunday trip to Hamburg. During one of these holidays, she was approached on the street by a distant acquaintance. After she had informed him of her situation, he said he would see what could be done for her. Soon afterwards, a recruitment attempt was made by the counterintelligence service in Düneberg, with the offer that she could return to Hamburg if she spies on foreign consuls and reports when a diplomat was "interested in military facilities in Hamburg". In April 1942, she accepted this offer hoping to remain unmolested by the Gestapo in future. Ellen Margarethe Herrmann was released from Düneberg in April 1942. Her family members were not informed of this.

Back in Hamburg, Ellen Margarethe Herrmann was unable to live in her mother's or grandmother's and aunt's flat on the first floor at Mittelweg 162, as other tenants had moved into the flat in the meantime. As mentioned above, Franziska Riess and Rosalie Pniower meanwhile had been forced to "move" to the "Jews' house" at Sonninstraße 12/14 in Altona. Ellen Margarethe now "lived" in a cellar room that Sophie Schildt, the family's former housekeeper, left to her.

Ellen Margarethe Herrmann was instructed by the liaison officer of the counterintelligence service to observe the Danish diplomat Dr Hans Bertelsen, who would soon rent a room from Sophie Schildt. A very close friendship developed between the Dane and Ellen Margarethe Herrmann. However, the contact did not provide the information expected. Ellen Margarethe Herrmann's activity for the service ended at the end of November 1942; her relationship with Hans Bertelsen lasted until 1943.

At the beginning of her acquaintance with Hans Bertelsen, Ellen Margarethe Herrmann was already three months pregnant. On May 6, 1943, she gave birth to a daughter who, due to her mother's imprisonment, had to grow up most of the following years with relatives.

Hans Bertelsen and his Danish secretary Edith Christensen were arrested by the Gestapo in Copenhagen at the end of April 1944 on suspicion of espionage. He was held prisoner in Germany until the end of the war.

As Ellen Margarethe Herrmann was suspected of having informed the Danish diplomat of her mission, she was arrested on May 9, interrogated daily for several weeks, held in solitary confinement in Fuhlsbüttel police prison for the rest of the time and finally released on July 29. The attempt to force her to testify against Hans Bertelsen was apparently unsuccessful.

Ellen Margarethe Herrmann did not accept any remuneration for the job. She lived from the funds her mother had left her. These funds came from the estate of Eduard Wolff in favour of Rosalie Pniower, which Margarethe Adolfine Herrmann had received as her heir.

At the end of August/beginning of September 1944, Ellen Margarethe Herrmann was taken to the Cottbus women's prison via a transit prison in Berlin Alexanderplatz. The trial planned by the Gestapo before the People's Court was transferred to the Reich Court Martial in Torgau due to lack of jurisdiction. Ellen Margarethe Herrmann was transferred there in October 1944. After six weeks in a small cell with eleven female prisoners with advanced infectious diseases such as pulmonary tuberculosis, syphilis and skin diseases in the court prison, she was transferred to another cell for labour service because she was not yet infected. Shortly after, the interrogation before the Imperial Court Martial began. The prosecutor, Reich War Prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel van de Loo, made it clear to Ellen Margarethe Herrmann that her fate depended on the decision of the Reich Court Martial. As the "protective custody order" was still valid, an acquittal would mean extradition to the Gestapo, i.e. to a concentration camp. Ellen Margarethe Herrmann understood that if she confessed and was imprisoned in a court prison, there would be a chance to survive until the Allies arrived.

On February 28, 1945, the trial took place before the Reich Court Martial. In response to a judge's suggestive question, she admitted that Hans Bertelsen had told her in 1942 that he had evidence of her membership of the Abwehr (counterintelligence service). She had not admitted this and had also refrained from reporting it to the Abwehr. According to Ellen Margarethe’s later in the restitution proceedings, this statement was a purely protective claim that in no way corresponded to the truth. The court considered this to be, if not an intentional, then at least an unintentional breach of the duty of confidentiality. The public prosecutor demanded three year’s imprisonment with credit for her previous prison sentence. The judgement was one year's imprisonment. Taking all the circumstances into account, the court considered a prison sentence of one year to be a necessary, but also a sufficient punishment. As Ellen Margarethe Herrmann was not at fault for the relatively long period of pre-trial detention, the court deducted nine months from the sentence. Ellen Margarethe Herrmann was thus removed from the SS's grasp.

When the Red Army reached the banks of the Elbe and took Torgau under fire, the prison was evacuated. On April 14, 1945, the prisoners received their few civilian belongings back. Ellen Margarethe Herrmann and the other prisoners left the prison in Torgau together through the open main gate.

After Ellen Margarethe Herrmann had survived further dangers and six weeks of solitary confinement in an Allied prison in Wiesbaden, which was due to a mix-up with the first secretary of the Imperial Court Martial and this mistake had been cleared up, she reached Hamburg in November 1945.

Ellen Margarethe left Germany with her daughter in 1948. She lived a new, independent life in Australia. Her grandchildren Sarah and Ben reported that their grandmother had been traumatized by the persecution during the Nazi era. Her daughter Beatrice was largely raised by relatives who had emigrated to Australia before the war. Beatrice is said to have had a wonderful childhood in the care of her relatives.

Translation by Elisabeth Wendland

Stand: September 2024
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9; Hamburger Adressbuch (diverse Jahrgänge); StaH 213-13 Landgericht Hamburg – Wiedergutmachung 6645 Edith Schriewer geb. Pniower, 6646 Pniover, Rosa geb. Wolff (geb. 10.01.1868, gest., 26.01.1944), Herrmann, Elma, Schriewer, Edith geb. Pniover (geb. 21.03.1891), 6647 Schriewer, Edith geb. Pniover (geb. 21.03.1891), Herrmann, Elma. Philipp, Alfred, 6648 Edith Schriewer geb. Pniower, 6648 Elma Herrmann, 6650 Riess, Franziska Dorothea geb. Pniower, 13372 Elma Herrmann, 13383 Pniower, geb. Wolff, Rosalie, 25349 Riess Franziska geb. Pniower, 231-3 Handelsregister B 17279; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 1199 Pniower Rosa, 621-1/84_96 "Status-Klage" von Franziska Dorothea Riess und Adolfine Herrmann gegen Rosalie Pniower wg. Abstammung ("Mischlingseigenschaft"), 45830 Ellen-Margarethe Herrmann; 332-5 Standesämter 2725 Heiratsregister Nr. 95/1888 Max Pniower/Rosalie Wolff; 8682 Heiratsregister Nr. 25/1912 Franziska Dorothea Pniower/Max Carl Riess; 621-1/84_96 "Status-Klage" von Franziska Dorothea Riess und Adolfine Herrmann gegen Rosalie Pniower wg. Abstammung ("Mischlingseigenschaft"); Arolsen Archives: Standesamt, Sterberegister Nr. 410/1956 Margarethe Adolfine Herrmann geb. Pniower; Standesamt Beuthen, Geburtsregister Nr. 594/1889 Franziska Dorothea Pniower, Geburtsregister Nr. 405/1891 Edith Pniower, Geburtsregister Nr. 1333/1892 Margarethe Adolfine Pniower, Sterberegister Nr. 623/1876 Adolph Pniower, Sterberegister Nr. 232/1894 Ernestine Pniower; Erinnerungsort Torgau, Auskunft über Inhaftierung von Ellen Margarethe Herrmann mit Verweis auf alte Signatur des Bundesarchivs BA ZA Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten M 1019 A 56 Eintrag 880; Gedenkstätte "Roter Ochse" Halle (Saale), Kriegsgerichtsurteil über Ellen Margarethe Herrmann, Verweis auf Originalquelle: Militärhistorisches Archiv der Tschechischen Republik, Prag, MHA Prag, Senatsakten, Karton 4:Akte 19. Strafsache 2. Senat ./. HERRMANN, Ellen, geb. 9.3.1923 in Hamburg, (gehört zur Sache Dr. BERTELSEN, Hans, Jg. 1906, Beamter in dän. Außenministerium; Anklageverfügung wg. Spionage, UHaft im WMG Torgau, Zeuge im Verfahren gg. Ellen Herrmann); Beate Meyer, "Jüdische Mischlinge" Rassenpolitik und Verfolgungserfahrung 1933-1945, Hamburg 1999, S. 113 ff.; Ancestry.de, Sammlung Polen: Index jüdischer Aufzeichnungen der Datenbank der Lebensdaten (Heiraten), Bytom 1855, page 29, Film 1271495, Zeile 21 Adolph Pniower/ Abraham Pniower/Ernestine (Esther) Roth; Institut Terezinské iniciativy, Todesfallanzeige Margarethe Adolfine Herrmann; Bundesarchiv Gedenkbuch Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933 – 1945, Einträge: Herrmann Margarethe Adolfine Adolfina geb. Pniower, Pniower Rosalie geb. Wolff, Rieß Franziska geb. Pniower; Hans-Peter de Lorent, Täterprofile, Die Verantwortlichen im Hamburger Bildungswesen unterm Hakenkreuz und die Kontinuität bis in die Zeit nach 1945, Band 3, Hamburg 2019, S. 416 ff.1; Innsbrucker Nachrichten, Parteiamtliches Organ der NSDAP. Gau Tirol-Vorarlberg, vom 20.6.1941 https://diglib.uibk.ac.at/download/pdf/3986391.pdf Zugriff am 2.10.2023; Zu Kriminalsekretär Hans Reinhardt,siehe: Datenbank online, Die Dabeigewesenen (Zugriff am 14.10.2023); www.gedenkstaetten -in-hamburg.de: Namenstafeln an der Ganztagsgrundschule Sternschanze für die Deportationen vom 15. und 19. Juli 1942.
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