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Magda Spiegel * 1887

Dammtorstraße 28 (Oper) (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

1942 Theresienstadt
1944 Auschwitz ermordet

• http://www.verstummtestimmen.de/
  (Die Stolpersteine vor der Staatsoper wurden aus Anlass der Ausstellung 'Verstummte Stimmen' verlegt. Weitere Informationen finden Sie unter dem vorstehenden Link)

further stumbling stones in Dammtorstraße 28 (Oper):
Gustav Brecher, Dr. Max Fraenkel, Hermann Frehse, Camilla Fuchs, Mauritz Kapper, Jacob Kaufmann, Ottilie Metzger-Lattermann, Kurt Abraham Salnik, Joseph Schmidt, Viktor Ullmann, Bruno Wolf

Magda Spiegel, born 8 Nov. 1887 in Prague, deported 1 Sept. 1942 from Frankfurt to Theresienstadt, killed 19 Oct. 1944 in Auschwitz

Dammtorstraße 28 (Opera House)

Magda Spiegel was a singer (contralto), famous throughout Europe with fixed engagements at the New German Theater in Prague (as of 1907), at Düsseldorf City Theater (1909-1916) and the Frankfurt Opera House (1917-1935); she gave guest performances in Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Paris, Stuttgart and Vienna, among other places. "Her dramatic, scheming roles in the operas of Verdi and Wagner were her star roles. With those parts she established her reputation as one of the finest contralto voices in the German-speaking world. Clarity, power and intensity – one impressive voice. Even contemporary composers like Paul Hindemith, Franz Schreker and Richard Strauss wrote parts in their operas for her.”

In National-Socialist Germany, the opera houses refused to give her large singing parts as of 1933, then she was dismissed (Dec. 1934), banned from performing (1935), socially isolated, financially ransacked and ultimately deported.

Magda Spiegel lived in Frankfurt on the Main. In 1936/37 she moved out of Cronstettenstraße 2/Lichtensteinstraße 2 to an apartment at Holzhausenstraße 16. After she was given notice on that apartment in 1941 she changed her address at short intervals: Bockenheimer Anlage 5, Joseph-Haydn-Straße 55 (Mendelssohnstraße) and Hansaallee 7. On 1 Sept. 1942 she was deported from Frankfurt on the Main to Theresienstadt Ghetto.

At Theresienstadt the 55-year-old contralto took part in evening performances of opera arias. Historical witnesses remembered her as one of the "stars of Theresienstadt”. Claudia Becker spoke at the unveiling ceremony of her Stumbling Stone in Frankfurt: "Magda Spiegel – a celebrated, adored contralto. As an assimilated Jewish woman, an unpolitical person, a Czech woman who lived abroad and felt attached to the German-speaking population of her country, a woman without children, with no descendants or relatives to remember her, Magda Spiegel has fallen through the cracks in the network of memorial organizations and occasions of remembrance. After 1945 Magda Spiegel nearly vanished from the memory of the city of Frankfurt and Germany’s cultural life.”

On 19 Oct. 1944 Magda Spiegel was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, during the so-called autumn transports, where she likely was gassed to death immediately upon her arrival.

A Stumbling Stone honors her in Frankfurt am Main-Nordend at Holzhausenstraße 16, where she lived from 1936 to 1941, and in Hamburg-Neustadt outside the State Opera House (2007). Her Stumbling Stone in Hamburg was laid as part of an exhibition at the Hamburg State Opera House and serves as a permanent memorial to her persecution outside that cultural center.

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

Stand: June 2020
© Björn Eggert

Quellen: Becker: Magda Spiegel; Claudia Becker, Rede zur Stolperstein-Verlegung 2006 in Frankfurt/Main; Heer/Kesting/Schmidt (Hrsg.): Verstummte Stimmen, S. 50; www.lexm-uni-hamburg.de (Magda Spiegel); www.wikipedia.de (Magda Spiegel); www.tracingthepast.org/minority census Germany (Magda Spiegel, Holzhausenstr. 16 II).