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Max Sommer * 1899

Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße ggü. Nr. 115 (vormals Haus Nr. 116) (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
MAX SOMMER
JG. 1899
DEPORTIERT 1941
ERMORDET IN
MINSK

further stumbling stones in Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße ggü. Nr. 115 (vormals Haus Nr. 116):
Edith Sommer

Edith Luise Sommer, née Metzger, born 14 May 1913 in Hamburg, deported 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk
Max Sommer, born 26 July 1899 in Altona, deported 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk

Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße across from building number 115 (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße 116)

Edith Metzger and Max Sommer married in Hamburg on 12 Oct. 1938. They did not set up their own household because they hoped they would be leaving Germany in the foreseeable future. The couple lived with Edith’s mother at Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße 116. Max Sommer had opened a radio store and the adjoining apartment at Eidelstedter Weg 107 in 1933 but had to give it up as a Jewish business owner. Edith was still working as an office clerk, but lost her job at the end of May 1939 when her company Siegfried Halberstadt at Hohe Bleichen 31/32 was "Aryanized”. That same month the couple was issued a "clearance certificate”, permitting them to leave the country. Thus they had fulfilled all the necessary formalities for emigration, but their emigration plans collapsed, probably because the war started on 1 Sept. 1939. The word "England” was crossed out on Max Sommer’s religion tax card. One further note provided information: "no religion”. This meant that Edith and Max Sommer were not originally members of the Jewish Community, they were forced to become members of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany in 1939.

Max Sommer had two sisters, Helene von Lange (born 28 July 1897) and Frieda Sommer (born 8 Nov. 1903). His father Isidor Sommer (born 6 Dec. 1870) had run a scrap iron and metal business since 1914 at Eimsbütteler Chaussee 23, where his family also lived. He was originally a master shoemaker and native of Königsteele Hatting on the Ruhr River. He married the cook Pauline Asser (born 2 Aug. 1873) in Altona on 22 Nov. 1896, the daughter of Moritz Asser and Henriette, née Lewin (see Mathilde Cossmann). Isidor Sommer died on 28 Aug. 1931 from the late effects of a war injury – he had sustained a shot to the kidney during World War I.

Max Sommer had worked as a carriage driver in earlier times, perhaps for his father’s business. He had been married once before: In 1929 he wed Dorothea Dahle, who was not Jewish. The couple divorced around 1936.

Edith Sommer’s mother Auguste Caroline, née Bernigau (born 25 Feb. 1881), grew up in a non-Jewish home. Her parents, the foundry worker (manufactured objects in brass) Carl Friedrich Bernigau (born 13 Mar. 1843) and Margaretha Clara, née Meyer (born 6 Sept. 1849), had married in Hamburg on 5 June 1877. They also had a son, Carl Bernigau (born 25 Jan. 1885), who later worked for a government agency.

Auguste had converted to the Jewish faith before marrying Julius Metzger (born 25 Mar. 1879) in Hamburg on 29 Dec. 1904, the son of the Hochheim shoemaker Moses Metzger (born 1844, died 22 Aug. 1913) and Rosette, née Jacobsohn (died 20 Oct. 1905). Yet the Metzgers could not find a Jewish community they felt comfortable with. Their first son Richard was born on 23 Oct. 1905. Edith did not follow until much later on 14 May 1913. Their father Julius Metzger was drafted into the military and did not return from World War I. He was considered missing until Hamburg Local Court declared him dead on 20 Oct. 1920.

Auguste Metzger remarried on 16 Oct. 1922, wedding the typesetter and printer Selig Siegfried Schild (born 27 Feb. 1878). She and her children left Winterhuderweg 16 to move in with her husband at Peterstraße 2. It was also a second marriage for Selig Siegfried Schild. He had married Helene Maria Holm (born 11 Dec. 1889) on 19 Aug. 1911. The couple was divorced at the end of 1920.

Auguste and Siegfried Schild had to give up their apartment at Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße 116 early in 1939. For the interim, they moved in with her daughter Edith and son-in-law Max Sommer as lodgers of Wolff at Grabenstraße 41, which today is the Karolinen district, until an apartment became available for them at the Lazarus-Gumpel Foundation, Schlachterstraße 46/47. Edith and Max Sommer lived the last two years in a guesthouse run by Louise Simon (see her entry) at Peterstraße 33b. It was there that they received their deportation orders for 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk Ghetto. The group of people who had to report to the collection camp at the lodge on Moorweidenstraße included the younger brother of Edith’s stepfather, August Sally Schild (born 11 Feb. 1879). All three perished in Minsk.

The parents of August Sally and Selig Siegfried Schild were the "cigar manufacturer” Karl Friedrich Schild (born 10 Aug. 1837) and Jenny, née Josel (born 26 Aug. 1858) who were not Jewish. The couple was divorced on 17 Mar. 1882.

August Sally Schild had trained as a case maker (packaging manufacturer) but worked until 1935 as an assistant at Post Office I at the corner of Münzstraße and Hühnerposten. After he was dismissed from that job due to his Jewish heritage, he occasionally found work as a messenger or shop assistant. He was single and lived in his mother Jenny’s household at Schlachterstraße 40/42 in the Marcus-Nordheim Foundation. When his mother died on 21 Apr. 1937, he moved to Spielbudenplatz 18 as a lodger. Sally Schild’s last residence was in a sublet from Pfeiffer at Bernhard-Nocht-Straße 77b.

Auguste and Siegfried Schild stayed behind in Hamburg after their family members were deported. They were bombed out of Schlachterstraße during the heavy air raids in July/Aug. 1943 in Operation Gomorrha. They found emergency shelter in a courtyard building at Kohlhöfen 6 where Siegfried Schild worked at Hugo Lüder’s print shop. They both died there during the last air raid of the year on 13 Dec. 1943.

Max Sommer’s mother Pauline Sommer was still registered after her husband’s death at Eimsbütteler Chaussee, where she lived until 1935 before moving to a smaller apartment at Lorenzengasse 12 which she had to give up in 1939. When she was "expelled” from her apartment at Flüggestraße 14 in Hamburg-Barmbek in 1941, her household goods stayed behind. A former neighbor recalled that her belongings were later collected from her apartment by people with swastikas. Pauline Sommer spent the last months before her deportation at the former Samuel-Levy Foundation at Bundesstraße 35, a so-called Jewish house. On 15 July 1942 she was transported to Theresienstadt Ghetto where she perished on 14 Jan. 1944, at the age of 71. A Stumbling Stone was placed at Eimsbütteler Chaussee 23 for Pauline Sommer.

Her daughter Frieda Sommer survived Auschwitz and heavy forced labor. After a failed marriage with the furrier Henri Brunstein, Frieda took back her maiden name, left Hamburg in the mid 1920s and moved to Paris. Her daughter Senta (born 12 July 1921) stayed behind in the care of her grandparents at Eimsbütteler Chaussee 23. From Paris Frieda moved to Barcelona in 1929. During the Spanish Civil War, she returned to Paris in 1936. On 20 Nov. 1943 Frieda Sommer was arrested in Orléans and taken to Drancy collection camp. From there she was deported to Auschwitz on 20 Jan. 1944 where she was deemed fit to work during a selection. Frieda Sommer was assigned to the "Canada squad”, meaning work in the warehouse of effects where she had to sort the luggage and clothing of prisoners who had been killed in the gas chambers. One day she believed she was holding her family’s belongings in her hands and she suffered a nervous breakdown.

In Nov. 1944 she was transferred to a subcamp of Flossenbürg concentration camp in Zschopau where she had to perform heavy forced labor in the ammunition factory of the company Auto Union AG. In the course of clearing out the camp, she was assigned to a prisoner transport on 13 Apr. 1945 and loaded onto cattle cars, destination unknown. Frieda Sommer managed to flee. During the journey, she jumped from the train, badly injured her leg, but was able to hide in a section of forest over several weeks until she ran into French troops in the vicinity of Karlsruhe on 25 May 1945. After the war, Frieda Sommer never fully recovered from the damage to her health she had sustained during her time in prison. She suffered from hearing impairment, a stomach disorder and the injury to her leg. Her redress of wrongs proceedings dragged on until 1961. Frieda Sommer died in Paris on 29 Apr. 1999 at the age of 97.

Frieda’s daughter Senta, who lived with relatives in Madrid following her formal education in Hamburg, moved to Belgium to live with her father Henri Brunstein in 1935. She survived the end of the war there in hiding with the help of Renatus Onsea and the family of Jeanne Bulte.

Edith’s brother Richard went to the Netherlands in 1928 as a correspondence clerk for a Hamburg company, married Mathilde Elias (see the family of David and Theresia Elias) in Hamburg on 21 June 1932, and lived with her in the western part of the Netherlands in Den Haag at Trompstraat 93. The two of them survived the National Socialist occupation in hiding in the Netherlands.

Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: June 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; 4; StaH 351-11 AfW 21897 (Sommer, Edith); StaH 351-11 AfW 30183 (Metzger, Richard); StaH 351-11 AfW 2220 (Sommer, Pauline); StaH 351-11 AfW 280797 (von Lange, Helene); StaH 351-11 AfW 18265 (von Lange, Erwin); StaH 351-11 AfW 27072 (Sommer, Frieda); StaH 351-11 AfW 27073 (Sommer, Frieda); StaH 351-11 AfW 44573 (Martiny, Senta); StaH 351-11 AfW 5449 (Schild, Auguste); StaH 351-11 AfW 1644 (Sommer, Isidor); StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde 628c; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2568 u 723/1877; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2579 u 1568/1877; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1929 u 1030/1878; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1952 u 1475/1879; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 5938 u 1142/1896; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13004 u 2250/1899; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8634 u 834/1904; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 14501 u 1806/1905; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 6000 u 827/1911; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3430 u 895/1922; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13844 u 364/1932; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8109 u 352/1931; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1070 u 177/1937; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1202 u 85/1943/44; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1202 u 84/1943/44; StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde – Unnatürliche Sterbefälle 8 Akte Sch/1320; StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde – Unnatürliche Sterbefälle 8 Akte Sch/2283; StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge Abl. 1999/2 Sommer, Isidor; diverse Hamburger Adressbücher; Brunswig: Feuersturm, S. 306.
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