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Milius Hochfeld (o. J.)
© Privatbesitz

Milius Hochfeld * 1877

Axel-Springer-Platz /Ecke Amelungstraße (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
MILIUS HOCHFELD
JG. 1877
VERHAFTET 1944
NEUENGAMME
TOT AN HAFTFOLGEN
26.5.1945 ROTENBURG

Milius Hochfeld, born on 2 July 1877 in Höxter, 1944 imprisonment in the Neuengamme concentration camp, died on 26 May 1945 in the British General Hospital in Rotenburg-Unterstedt

Intersection of Axel-Springer-Platz/Amelungstrasse (Fuhlentwiete 14)

Milius (Mylius) Hochfeld was among the younger ones of the Hochfeld siblings who left their hometown of Höxter in the Weser Uplands to live in a big city like London, Dortmund, or Hamburg. Seven of them reunited, via detours, in Hamburg. Her parents, Josef Hochfeld and Minna, née Goldschmidt, had 15 children. They had left their home in 1901 and settled in Hannover, where they died in 1905 and 1909.

Milius Hochfeld had first attended the Jewish school in his native Höxter and in 1888 changed to the König-Wilhelm-Gymnasium, a high school, which he quit in 1891 to become a merchant. He remained true to the family tradition and, after completing an apprenticeship as a carpenter, worked in the "furniture industry” like his father, who traded in furniture and upholstery products in Höxter. His younger brother Julius Salomon Hochfeld (born on 4 Mar. 1880, died on 1 Mar. 1959), actually a naval engineer, founded a factory for office furniture and interior design at Hamburg’s Deichstrasse 16 in 1923. He and his older brother Alexander Aron Hochfeld (born on 26 Jan. 1876, died on 27 Mar. 1951), a merchant based at Gertigstrasse 13, were able to leave Germany in time. Other siblings living in Hamburg were Mary Stoll, née Hochfeld; Frieda Hamlet, née Hochfeld; Mathias Max Hochfeld; and Alfred Hochfeld. They did not survive National Socialism (on the family history, see Frieda Hamlet and Mathias Max Hochfeld).

Milius Hochfeld had come to Hamburg in 1902 and had met the Jewish woman Mathilde Heinemann, born on 27 June 1872 in Hamburg. Mathilde lived with her parents, the upholsterer Moses Heinemann and Feiele/Fanny, née Katzenstein, at Caffamacherreihe 52. On 10 Feb. 1905, they were married. Daughter Elsa/Elsie was born on 19 Nov. 1905, her sister Irma followed on 26 Dec. 1906.

In the same year, Milius Hochfeld founded a furniture factory at Neustädter Strasse 24. The couple first lived in downtown Hamburg at Königstrasse 36 (now part of Poststrasse); then at Canalstrasse 59 in Hamburg-Uhlenhorst; at Quickborner Strasse 46; and at Bachstrasse 153. A third child, son Erich, was born on 29 Aug. 1914 at Barmbeker Strasse 7. The furniture factory, in which, according to the company’s own information, up to 60 people were employed at times, was then located in the immediate vicinity, at Barmbeker Strasse 9. The Hochfeld family lived in well-off circumstances.

From 1914 to 1918, Milius Hochfeld took part in the First World War as a "musketeer,” and he was awarded the Honor Cross for Front-line Veterans. From 1919, the Hamburg directory identified him as a furniture manufacturer based at Forsmannstrasse 6/8. The family lived at Hofweg 53 in Winterhude. In 1923, Milius Hochfeld donated another 10,000 (inflation) marks for needy people in his hometown of Höxter, but then got into financial difficulties himself due to the economic crisis. The furniture factory, eventually located at Kleine Rosenstrasse 10, could not be continued. In addition, his marriage failed, and on 7 Jan. 1925, Milius and Mathilde Hochfeld divorced.

Mathilde Hochfeld moved with her daughters Elsa and Irma to Magdalenenstrasse 22 in Harvestehude. In order to make a living, she took over household care and other work, facilitated by the Jewish Community, until she suffered a stroke in June 1929.

Daughter Elsa became a student nurse at the Israelite Hospital in Breslau (today Wroclaw in Poland). From there, she succeeded in emigrating to Britain, and she later lived in the USA. Her sister Irma attended the private girls’ high school (Lyzeum) operated by Dr. Löwenberg on the Johnsallee and afterward, the Grone commercial school for one year. She completed commercial training in a furniture factory and then worked as a clerk at London & Continental Export Companie Limited m.b.H., which was active in the sugar trade and located at Gröningerstrasse 14. On 30 Nov. 1934, she married Karl Bernhard Hallenstein (born on 17 July 1904 in Lemgo). The couple lived at Lehmweg 48.

When London & Continental was "Aryanized” in 1935, Irma, like all Jewish employees, had to leave the company. Until July 1937, she still worked in similar positions. Later, she was no longer able to find work. In July 1938, she emigrated with her husband to Buenos Aires.

Unlike his sisters, Erich first stayed with his father in the St. Georg quarter, at Beim Strohhause 71/73, after the separation of his parents. Erich had attended the "Biebersche” preschool on Besenbinderhof and was then sent to the "Nordseeschule zu Wyk auf Föhr,” a school designated as "North Sea School” in Wyk on the Island of Föhr. Afterward, he attended the Talmud Tora School on Grindel and continued the family tradition by starting a commercial apprenticeship in the furniture industry.

When Erich was arrested on 29 Aug. 1935, he lived with his mother at Durchschnitt 1. As he later suspected, he was denounced for having read and distributed illegal newspapers in 1933. On 18 Jan. 1936, the Hamburg Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) sentenced him to 15 months in prison for "preparing a treasonous undertaking” ("Vorbereitung eines hochverräterischen Unternehmens”). When he was released from the Hannover Sand juvenile prison on 4 Dec. 1936, he was "advised” to leave Germany. Erich Hochfeld was able to emigrate to Argentina on 29 Aug. 1938; later he lived in the USA.

His father Milius had entered into a second marriage after the divorce. On 29 July 1926, he had married the non-Jewish accountant Erna Mathilde Stahl, born on 10 Aug. 1901. Two children were born to this marriage: Marion on 21 May 1927 and Siegfried on 13 July 1931.

Milius Hochfeld again founded a cabinetmaking shop, but he had the company registered in the name of his wife at Schulweg 30. The business, which initially had four employees, was not profitable and had to be abandoned after one year. The Hochfeld couple then took over representations for various furniture factories. In 1933, they gave up their apartment at Beim Stohhaus and moved to Ausschlägerweg 4. In 1937, they lived at Wasmannstrasse 5.

The following year, Erna Hochfeld had to take over her husband’s customers, as most furniture dealers no longer did business with Jews and factory owners refused to supply goods. The monthly turnover of 1000 RM (reichsmark) was halved. The Hochfeld family ran into economic trouble.

In 1941, Milius Hochfeld was sentenced to a fine of 50 RM or ten days in prison. The report to police came at the beginning of June 1940 from the physician Hans Göbbels, who had a practice at Speersort 4 and whose doctor’s fee Milius Hochfeld had not been able to pay after treatment for a severe skin disease.

"Hochfeld received medical treatment by me. He suppressed the fact that he was Jewish, perhaps out of fear that I would refuse his treatment for this reason [...] The fact that Hochfeld was Jewish only emerged after my treatment had been completed, because Hochfeld, on my suggestion of hospitalization, requested referral to the Jewish Hospital and had to admit that he was Jewish upon further inquiry. He has omitted toward me the obligation to bear the name of ‘Israel,’ and that this did not happen purely out of negligence emerges from the fact that he also signed his subsequent revelatory transcript only with the first name of Milius [...].”

Milius Hochfeld had been forced to admit and disclose after Hans Göbbels obtained an enforcement order for the unpaid invoices. A request for clemency from his wife Erna on 23 Aug. 1940, in which she described the difficult financial situation (her husband had been ill for two years and had not been earning anything for years), was rejected.

Milius Hochfeld was described as a man who publicly did not keep his political opinion to himself. For this reason, he was said to have been imprisoned for ten days as early as 1933 and later, as a matter of principle, not to have signed with the compulsory additional first name of "Israel” (from Jan. 1939 onward, Jewish men had to use the second first name of "Israel,” Jewish women "Sara”). According to the racial laws of the Nazi state, Milius and Erna Hochfeld lived in a "privileged mixed marriage” ("Privilegierte Mischehe”), which initially protected him from deportation to the East.

On 27/28 July 1943, the Hochfeld family lost their three-and-a-half bedroom apartment during the heavy air raids on Hamburg ("Operation Gomorrah”), and the remaining furniture store at Caffamacherreihe 14 was also destroyed. Daughter Marion reported on this in her application for restitution: "After my parents had moved several times within Hamburg, we, my parents, my brother and I, lived at Fuhlentwiete 14 from 1 Aug. 1939 until the bombing in July 1943.

After an eight-day "odyssey,” the Hochfeld family arrived as bomb refugees in the town of Weiden (Upper Palatinate), where Marion was enlisted to do compulsory labor in an armaments factory. In 1959, she described the situation: "I can still remember the time very well, because I was a girl of 17 years at that time. If my memory serves me right, my father was with us in Weiden/Upper Palatinate until the end of 1943 or the beginning of 1944. My father went back to Hamburg. I do not know the exact reason for this, but I had noticed that my parents no longer got along so well [...] Finally, I would like to emphasize that my parents’ marriage was very difficult after 1933 because of my father’s Jewish descent, not for personal reasons, but because of the economic hardship caused by the Jewish descent.”

A disagreement between her parents, in which the Jewish descent of her father was discussed, was reported by an innkeeper to the Nazi party district leadership in Weiden. Milius Hochfeld was then asked to leave Weiden. He returned to Hamburg and found accommodation at Finkenstrasse 36 in Altona. Milius Hochfeld was arrested by the Gestapo on 2 June 1944 for unknown reasons and transferred to the Neuengamme concentration camp. During his imprisonment, the marriage was divorced before the Hamburg Regional Court (Landgericht) on 15 Oct. 1944.

In Apr. 1945, shortly before the end of the war, prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp were transferred to a separate part of the POW camp in Sandbostel near Bremervörde. Sandbostel served as a reception camp for several disbanded subcamps of the concentration camp in the area of Bremen and Hamburg. About 2,000 prisoners perished within a very short time. The supplies were more than inadequate and a typhoid epidemic broke out. Milius Hochfeld was probably in Sandbostel during the last weeks of his captivity and was liberated there by British troops on 29 Apr. 1945.

It is certain that he was admitted to the British General Hospital 86 in Rotenburg-Unterstedt (today Rotenburg/Wümme) on 21 May 1945, where the liberated prisoners from Sandbostel received medical attention. Despite this care, Milius Hochfeld died five days later on 26 May 1945.

In 1947, the dead were transferred from a mass grave near the military hospital to the Rotenburg Waldfriedhof (forest cemetery). In a "Description of the burial site of former concentration camp prisoners at the Waldfriedhof with current list of the dead” by Franz Schneider, the name Hochfeld is mentioned with the grave field number 208. Seventy years after the end of the Second World War, at the urging of a citizens’ initiative, the grave complex at the Waldfriedhof was redesigned. The names and dates of the dead have been perpetuated on ten stelae.

Milius Hochfeld’s first wife, Mathilde Hochfeld, died on 11 Feb. 1942 in the Jewish "retirement and nursing home” at Laufgraben 37, the former building of the orphanage of the Jewish Community. She was buried in the Jewish Cemetery on Ilandkoppel in Ohlsdorf.

Her brothers Bernhard and Julius Heinemann (see corresponding entries) were deported to Theresienstadt together with their wives on 19 July 1942. They did not survive.

Milius’ brother, Alfred Hochfeld (born on 23 Apr. 1881), and his wife Julie, née Linz (born on 27 Dec. 1880) were deported to Theresienstadt on 15 July 1942 and murdered in Auschwitz on 15 May 1944. Stolpersteine at Lange Reihe 108 (see Stolpersteine in Hamburg St. Georg) commemorate the couple.

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

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; 9; StaH 351-11 AfW 3352 (Hochfeld, Mylius); StaH 351-11 AfW 24557 (Hochfeld, Erna); StaH 351-11 AfW 31492 (Hallenstein, Irma); StaH 351-11 AfW 40337 (Hochfeld, Erich); StaH 351-11 AfW 4606 (Hochfeld, Julius); StaH 213-13 Landesgericht Hamburg – Wiedergutmachung 549 (Hochfeld, Erna); StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen 1819/41; StaH 424-111 Amtsgericht Hamburg 7947; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 14535 u 1367/1905; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3526 u 343/1926; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 14202 u 526/1934; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8180 u 72/1942; Auskunft von Alyn Beßmann, Archiv der KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme, E-Mail vom 13.9.2013;
http://www.volksbund.de/kriegsgraeberstaette/rotenburgwuemme-waldfriedhof-opfer-der-gewaltherrschaft.html (Zugriff 21.5.2016); Fritz Ostkämper, Juden der ärmeren Schichten – die Familie Hochfeld in: Jacob Pins Gesellschaft Kunstverein Höxter e. V. Jüdische Bürger in Höxter, www.jacob-pins.de (Zugriff 3.2.2015); https://www.stiftung-lager-sandbostel.de/geschichte/befreiung (Zugriff 10.11.2016); Dokumente und Ausführliche Informationen über Familie Hochfeld aus Höxer von Fritz Ostkämper vom 3.7.2016; Meyer: Verfolgung, S. 79–87.
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