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Frieda Seligmann * 1892

Hallerstraße 2 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
FRIEDA SELIGMANN
JG. 1892
DEPORTIERT 1943
THERESIENSTADT
TOT 2.1.1944

further stumbling stones in Hallerstraße 2:
Hugo Menke, Selma Menke, Hannelore Menke, Ivan Sally Seligmann

Frieda Seligmann, née Joachimsthal, born on 30 June 1892 in Heidelberg, deported on 9 June 1943 to Theresienstadt, perished there on 2 Jan. 1944
Ivan Sally Seligmann, born on 11 Nov. 1891 in Hamburg, deported on 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, deported further on 15 May 1944 to Auschwitz

Hallerstrasse 2

Frieda Seligmann, née Joachimsthal, was the second oldest daughter of the married Jewish couple Hermann Joachimsthal (born in 1861 in Stargard, Lebus/Oder administrative district, today in Poland) and Emma, née Gottfeld (born in 1867 in Arnswalde, Western Pomerania, today Choszczno in Poland); her sister was Gertrud Joachimsthal (born in 1898). The family, having moved to Hamburg probably at the beginning of the twentieth century and having opened a stationary store on Steindamm in 1902, resided on Bülaustrasse 8, also in the St. Georg quarter, from 1915 onward. The occupation Frieda trained in is not known, possibly she worked in her parents’ business. In 1923, she married Ivan Seligmann and with him she had a daughter born in 1924, Senta.

Ivan Seligmann was the son of a Jewish family that had resided in Hamburg for several generations. His father was the merchant Adolf Seligmann (1864–1930), his mother Rosa Seligmann, née Gutmann (born in 1867). He had two sisters, named Elsa (born in 1893) and Irma (born in 1900). Ivan spent part of his childhood in Berlin, since his parents had moved there. After he had returned with his family to Hamburg in 1904, he attended the Wilhelm-Gymnasium until 1905. After leaving high school, he completed training as a technical draftsman at the Georg Hulbe arts and crafts workshop on Lindenstrasse in St. Georg.

In about 1910, he started studying at the Hamburg School of Arts and Crafts (Hamburger Kunstgewerbeschule), where he was a student of the nationally known teachers and artists Friedrich Adler and Carl Otto Czeschka, participating in the exhibition of the Deutscher Werkbund (German Association of Craftsmen) in Cologne in 1914. There is no definitive evidence as to whether he fought in World War I, though he did create propaganda postcards during wartime and expressed his German National position through poster designs in the immediate post-war period.

Ivan Seligmann did not complete his studies until 1919, which suggests that he had indeed participated as a soldier in the war. Afterward, still living with his parents on Bornstrasse, he worked as a self-employed commercial artist. In 1923, he married Frieda Joachimsthal and that same year, after the death of his father-in-law, he took over his stationary store at the intersection of Steindamm/Lindenstrasse.

At the same time, he continued to work as a graphic artist and he was a member of the League of German Commercial Artists (Bund deutscher Gebrauchsgrafiker), an association demanding from its members exacting artistic admission criteria. As early as May 1933, he was excluded from the Federation of Commercial Artists due to the application of the "Aryan paragraph” ("Arierparagraph”) in professional associations, which to a large extent deprived him of the basis to practice his occupation. Probably, he dedicated himself entirely to the stationary store on Steindamm from then on. In 1931, he had already moved from Bülaustrasse, where he lived with his wife, daughter, and mother-in-law, who relocated to Berlin to stay with her daughter that same year, into the house also accommodating his store.

For the 1930s, the Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer) file card of the Jewish Community indicates only a modest income, which dried up completely in 1936. Probably that same year or in 1937 at the latest, Ivan Seligmann had to close the store, since by 1938 he was no longer listed as the company owner. The same period saw the geographical separation from his seriously ill wife, who henceforth had to be cared for in facilities of the Jewish Community, initially on Schäferkampsallee, later at Beneckestrasse 6.

After that, Ivan Seligmann lived as a subtenant in at least five different houses until his deportation. An entry in his Jewish religious tax file card dating from Nov. 1940 laconically sums up his social situation: "unfit for work, no income, no assets, lives on a loan from his sister.” His two sisters, like their mother, had already emigrated in 1923 and in 1936 to the USA, and his daughter Senta reached Britain on a children transport (Kindertransport) in July 1939. On 15 July 1942, he was deported from the "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”) at Bundesstrasse 35 on a mass transport comprised of 926 Jewish residents of Hamburg to the Theresienstadt Ghetto, from where he was deported further to Auschwitz, almost two years later, on 15 May 1944.

The fate of deportation caught up with his wife Frieda, wheelchair-bound, on 9 June 1943. She was taken to Theresienstadt, where she died on 2 Jan. 1944. Her mother, Emma Joachimsthal, perished before her daughter, on 21 July 1943, also in Theresienstadt. Representative of the large number of apartments they lived in, Stolpersteine for Frieda and Ivan Sally Seligmann were laid at Hallerstrasse 2.


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

Stand: January 2019
© Benedikt Behrens

Quelle: 1; 4; StaH, 522-1, Jüdische Gemeinden, 992 e 2 (Deportationslisten); AB 1936-39; Bauche, IVAN, in: Wamser/Weinke (Hrsg.), Verschwundene Welt, S. 166–170.
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