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Heinrich Mayer im Garten des Bauer- und Ferienhauses "Die Masch"
© Marlis Roß

Heinrich Mayer * 1866

Maria-Louisen-Straße 112 (Hamburg-Nord, Winterhude)

1942 Theresienstadt
HIER WOHNTE
HEINRICH MAYER
JG. 1866
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
ERMORDET 2.12.1942

further stumbling stones in Maria-Louisen-Straße 112:
Marie Mayer

Marie Auguste Mayer, née Dehn, born on 24 Mar. 1880 in Hamburg, deported on 19 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, deported further on 15 May 1944 to Auschwitz
Heinrich Mayer, born on 6 Feb. 1866 in Worms, deported on 19 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, died there on 2 Dec. 1942

"Do your duty, follow your conscience.” Franziska Mayer remembered this motto of her father all of her life.

The parents of Heinrich Mayer, Jeanette, née Hüttenbaels, and Wilhelm Mayer, lived in Rennertehausen near Worms. They moved to the nearby city to open a store. Their son Heinrich was born in Worms on 6 Feb. 1866. As a young man, he wanted "more excitement” and so he left for Hamburg. There, the Jewish merchant took over Tomkins, Hildesheim & Co, a coffee importing company at Sandthorquai 20. Initially he lived in Altona. In 1903, his address was Colonnaden 68.

Heinrich Mayer married Marie Dehn, born on 24 Mar. 1880 in Hamburg as one of seven children of Bertha, née Raf, and Maximillian Dehn, who worked as a physician at the Israelite Hospital in Hamburg. At the educational institutions of St. Johannis Convent (Convent School on Holzdamm), Marie Dehn completed training as a teacher, working as a substitute teacher at two private schools for three years.

On 1 Oct. 1905, she began her teaching post at the Paulsenstift School. This school had been established to impart elementary knowledge and good education to children from poor families. From 1866 until 1911, Anna Wohlwill had headed the school and ensured that the Paulsenstift became a state-recognized "semi-public” secondary girls’ school, though the addition of "semi-public” was misleading: A public school for girls was founded only in 1910. The female students came from all social strata, since the allocation of exemptions from tuition fees also allowed talented children from poor homes to get a school education. After getting married, Marie Mayer gave up the position as of 1 Apr. 1909.
Marie and Heinrich Mayer lived at Isestrasse 74 in 1908 and 1909.

The Mayer couple had their first child on 17 Apr. 1910, Gertrude, who already died on 19 July 1910. Son Rudolf Reinhard Wilhelm Heinrich was born on 7 May 1911, his brother Wilhelm Karl Albert Reinhard on 18 Sept. 1912, and sister Franziska Marie Reinhard on 4 July 1914 in Hamburg. The family moved to Eppendorfer Baum 8 and in 1912 into a spacious, well-appointed ground-floor apartment at Maria-Louisen-Strasse 112 at the intersection to Opitzstrasse.

According to his grandson Enrique Mayer, Heinrich Mayer did not feel any particular affinity to Judaism. He left the Jewish Community in 1926. Facing the pressure of Nazi persecution, the couple later drew nearer to the Jewish religious community: In 1934/35, Marie Mayer re-joined and in 1937, her husband followed suit, with an entry indicating "without any religious creed.”

In 1911, Heinrich Mayer had joined the Hamburg Patriotic Society (Patriotische Gesellschaft), from which he was excluded after 24 years of membership in 1935, after the introduction of an "Aryan Paragraph” ("Arierparagraph”) in the society rules. When the First World War started, he was already too old for active military service and he was therefore used as a censor.

Especially on the weekends, the Mayer family liked to spend time in the farmhouse of the Solmitz family in Gross-Borstel, built in 1738 and called "Die Masch.” Registered as the owner of the property was E. Solmitz at house number 17/19 E. Robert Solmitz, an executive member of the Jewish Community, was the husband of Marie’s niece Hertha, the daughter of her sister Elisabeth Goldschmidt.

In 1935, after almost 40 years as the sole owner, Heinrich Mayer had his long-standing authorized signatory Hermann Niels Edler, an "Aryan,” join the company as a partner in order to be able to continue operating Tomkins, Hildesheim & Co. It is no longer possible to clarify today whether the reason for this step was already connected to increasing repression or the emigration of the designated company successor, son Wilhelm, in Nov. 1935. For Heinrich Mayer himself, emigration was out of the question at this time.

On 9 Oct. 1935, he transformed his company by contract into a general partnership. The official joining of Edler took place as of 15 Oct. 1935. Heinrich Mayer kept a share of 70 percent and the right to withdraw reasonable amounts of capital during a business year. Hermann Edler was given a share of 30 percent. At that time, Heinrich Mayer was still able to decide to what extent he wished to remain involved in his company.

Subsequently, on 25 Aug. 1937, he left the company entirely based on a new contract "due to advanced age (72), certain physical ailments, and other reasons,” as the agreement read. Henceforth, the enterprise was managed by Hermann Edler alone as of 1 Sept. 1937. Heinrich Mayer left the greater part of his assets locked in the business, including 70,000 RM (reichsmark) of them as a loan at an interest rate of 5 percent per annum, with the interest payable on a quarterly basis. The loan was scheduled for repayment on 1 Sept. 1947. His profit sharing was to be 38 percent for ten years, with him receiving 1,200 RM a month.

However, this contract was changed as early as 31 Jan. 1938. At that time, Heinrich Mayer no longer received any profit share and only 700 RM a month for the duration of ten years. It was impossible to establish whether he actually ever received this money or whether Hermann Edler unofficially abided by the old contract.

The change of contract could also have been caused by external pressure, since as of 1938 there was a new head at the Administration Office for Commerce, Shipping, and Industry (Verwaltung für Handel, Schiffahrt und Gewerbe) who eliminated the last Jewish company owners from the coffee importing business.

Due to their increasingly restrictive financial situation, the Mayer couple was forced to move to a smaller apartment at Sierichstrasse 126 in the spring of 1938.

Beginning in Dec. 1938, Heinrich Mayer gradually lost a large part of his savings. In 1938/39, he had to pay the "levy on Jewish assets” ("Judenvermögensabgabe”) for himself and his son Reinhard to the Hamburg-Nord tax office. On 28 June 1939, he surrendered, under compulsion, jewelry and silver goods to the Hamburg Public Lending and Purchasing Point (Öffentliche Leih- und Ankaufstelle) on Gothenstrasse. The proceeds were deposited in his account. A property at Eckhoffstrasse 16/20 had to be sold and a bank balance was confiscated.

From his experience as a censor of letters in World War I, Heinrich Mayer had learned not to write about anything political in his correspondence with his children, who had emigrated by then, instead only reporting on positive things. Marie Mayer wrote about walks, flowers, visits by relatives, about who was able to depart Germany, and about the fact that she read English novels. By then, an attempt to obtain a visa for Peru had failed.

From Oct. 1938 until June 1941, the "Warburg Secretariat,” the office of the Warburg Bank at Mittelweg 17, was a refuge for the couple, an "oasis for Jews in Hamburg,” (see entry on Alice Ascher). Jewish citizens met up there for talks and political discussions. The meeting of the executive committee of the Jewish Community took place there. In addition, the premises served as a venue for concerts, including some given by a sister of Marie Mayer, Bertha Dehn (born in 1881). She had been a violinist with the Hamburg State Opera. After 18 years of performing in the orchestra, she was dismissed in 1933, officially "because of illness.” At the last minute, she managed to evade deportation on 12 Oct. 1941, fleeing to her brother Georg in Ecuador.

In about 1941, the Mayer couple was forced to vacate the apartment on Sierichstrasse. They then moved into a room at Hindenburgstrasse 111 with a husband of Marie’s sister Hedwig, Dr. Heinrich Wohlwill, who had been technical director of Norddeutsche Affinerie, a copper producer, until 1933.

Probably in 1942, the Mayer couple had entered a "home purchase contract” ("Heimeinkaufsvertrag”) with the "Reich Association of Jews in Germany” ("Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland”) (which on the orders of the Gestapo had to sign as a contracting party) for the sum of 55,441 RM in order to move to the Theresienstadt "ghetto for the elderly” ("Altersgetto”). This meant the transfer of the entire bank assets to the Reich Association, in return for which they would allegedly receive room and board in communal accommodations for life.

The Mayer couple was deported to Theresienstadt on 19 July 1942.

Their household effects were seized by the Chief Finance Administration (Oberfinanzdirektion) and auctioned off on 17 Sept. 1942; the remaining assets were confiscated.

The Theresienstadt chronicler and fellow prisoner Käthe Starke reports that Marie Mayer met up with her sister Hedwig Wohlwill in Theresienstadt. Unexpectedly, the latter’s husband, Heinrich Wohlwill, had been deported on the same train as the Mayer couple. He had been unable to make any preparations. His name had not been on the list, and he was even suspected of having intended to "sneak in.”

Heinrich Mayer died in the Theresienstadt Ghetto on 2 Dec. 1942, according to the death notice of enteritis. The couple had been quartered in different buildings. Having been deported further from Theresienstadt to the Auschwitz concentration camp on 15 May 1944, Marie Mayer was declared dead as of 8 May 1945.

The children of the Mayer couple were able to save themselves by emigrating in time. The oldest son, Reinhard Mayer, attended the Johanneum High School until obtaining his high school graduation diploma (Abitur) in 1929. He then studied medicine in Freiburg and Hamburg before being forced to terminate his university studied because of his Jewish descent. He went to Denmark in the spring of 1934, working in agriculture. In the summer of 1937, he returned to Germany and worked, among other things, as a farm worker at the Jewish Neuendorf retraining estate near Fürstenwalde. After 9 Nov. 1938, the entire workforce of the farm estate was arrested and taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Reinhard Mayer was released at the end of Dec. 1938. In Apr. 1939, he emigrated to Leith/Scotland and – like all German refugees in Great Britain – he was interned, from July until Nov. 1940, spending his time as an "enemy alien" (see entry on Ivan Philip) in a camp on the Isle of Man. From there, he entered military service in the British Army until 1941. In 1946/47, we traveled to his brother Wilhelm in Peru, leasing a small farm estate in 1951.

Wilhelm Mayer also obtained his high school graduation diploma at the Johanneum High School, in 1930. Since he was designated to take over his father’s company, he completed commercial training in Hamburg and Breslau, where he was employed at a grocery wholesale business, also working there as an assistant to the head of the roasting department for a year. In 1933/34, he worked in London. At the end of 1934, he returned to Hamburg and became an employee in his father’s company. However, he did not see a future for himself in Germany, in contrast to his father, who was reluctant to approve of his son’s emigration. Wilhelm Mayer found a job in Lima/Peru, where he emigrated via Antwerp in Nov. 1935. In Huancayo, he took over a sales outlet starting in 1938, which did business under the name of "Guillermo Mayer & Co, hardware store and household goods” from 1944 onward. In 1941, he married Lisbeth Behrendt, the daughter of the architect and head of the municipal building authority Fritz Behrendt from Breslau (today Wroclaw in Poland), taking on Peruvian citizenship in 1942.

Starting at Easter of 1931, daughter Franziska Mayer attended the Realgymnasium [a high school focused on science, math, and modern languages] for girls’ on Curschmannstrasse, which she left after obtaining the high school graduation on 28 Feb. 1934. Being Jewish, she had no opportunity to find an apprenticeship in Germany, so therefore she completed a practical farming year (Landjahr) in Sweden. With assistance from the "American Joint Distribution Committee,” she was able to attend a weaving school in Stockholm, which she completed with the exam qualifying her as "weaving teacher” in Dec. 1936. Since she did not get a work permit in Sweden and Denmark, she returned to Germany briefly in Sept. 1937. In Apr. 1938, she was able to emigrate to Newfoundland/Canada via Great Britain. She worked for "The International Grenfell Association,” a medical missionary society, as a drawer and weaving teacher, subsequently also in a clothes warehouse, for some time only in return for room and board. An uncle, the mathematician Prof. Dr. Max Dehn, her mother’s brother, obtained for her the entry permit to the USA in Oct. 1945. She worked in New York as a wage-earning weaver in the Jewish orphanage. From June 1946 until Sept. 1947, she was employed as substitute weaving teacher at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where Max Dehn taught. In Los Angeles, she met up with Hertha and Robert Solmitz again. At the end of 1947, she went to join her brothers in Huancayo/Peru, where she established a weaving mill of her own from 1950 onward, subsequently training local women to enable them to earn a living of their own.

In 1985, Franziska and Reinhard Mayer returned to Hamburg because they had no savings for old age. An additional reason for their return was connected to the increasingly threatening situation in Peru. Starting in 1982, the Maoist group of the "Shining Path” ("Sendero Luminoso”) had begun a guerilla war against the state. The siblings no longer felt safe. In Hamburg, they lived in a retirement home of the Jewish Community.


Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2017
© Maike Bruchmann

Quellen: 1; 3; 5; 7; 8; AfW 060266; Marlis Roß, Der Ausschluss der jüdischen Mitglieder 1935. Die Patriotische Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus, Patriotische Gesellschaft von 1765, Hamburg 2007, S. 71–81; www.loebtree.com/dehn.html (eingesehen am 10.02.2008); Auskünfte von Marlis Roß; Rita Bake, Wer steckt dahinter? Nach Frauen benannte Strassen, Plätze und Brücken in Hamburg, Hamburg 2005, Wohlwillstraße; Amtliche Fernsprechbücher Hamburg 1911–1943; Hertha und Robert Solmitz Archiv, Arcata/Kalifornien, Veröffentlichung über Franziska Mayer; AB 1903, 1908–1910, 1932, 1935; www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschichte_Perus u. /Sendero_Luminoso (eingesehen am 28.04.2008).
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