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Lilly Windmüller * 1904

Hegestraße 27 (Hamburg-Nord, Eppendorf)

1941 Lodz

further stumbling stones in Hegestraße 27:
Flora Joseph, Gustav Rosenstein, Emilie Lilly Rosenstein

Lilly Windmüller, born on 21 Dec. 1904, deported to Lodz on 25 Oct. 1941, deported further to Chelmno on 15 May 1942

Hegestrasse 27

"It’s not true that I can get a job. I am now 35 years old, Jewish, and of weak physical constitution, and I am under supervision by the public lung care service (Lungenfürsorge) because I was tuberculous for seven years and now I am also at risk of tuberculosis. ... I worked in the wool-carding shop for six weeks in the summer and then I was admitted to hospital. There, I was examined by the independent medical examiner of the employment office and it was determined that I was not allowed to do any factory work. However, I cannot get any other work from the employment office, nor am I 100 percent fit for work. For me, being a Jewish woman, it is also hopeless to get any other work. I am therefore unable to earn my own living and depend on external support. ... Currently, I receive weekly assistance of 9.50 RM [reichsmark] from the employment office, for which I have to do compulsory work five times a week. But I don’t think it’s okay for me to be a burden to the state if my mother has 35,000 RM to her name.” In this letter, which Lilly Windmüller wrote to her lawyer in 1940 in order to be granted the right to legal aid, her life situation, but also her difficult relationship with her mother, becomes clear.

Lilly was the second child of Percival and Margarethe Windmüller, née Simon. Her father, born in New York, came to Germany at the age of nine, attended school in Hamburg and Altona and studied medicine in several German cities. In order to settle in Hamburg as a dentist, he applied for Hamburg citizenship in 1892. In 1901, he married Margarethe Simon, who came from an upper-middle-class Hamburg family. Both were baptized Protestants. They moved to Hagedornstrasse, where their son Kurt was born in 1903. When Lilly was born one year later, the family had already moved to their subsequent long-time residence at Hochallee 57. Lilly Windmüller grew up there with three brothers, because Harald, called Denny, was born in 1911 and Henning in 1911.

Margarethe Windmüller had set up a studio here, where she worked as a craftswoman and photographer. However, she suffered from psychological problems. In 1916, when Lilly was 12 years old, her mother attempted suicide, which she survived. Two years later, Lilly’s older brother Kurt died. When her parents divorced in 1925, she was training as an infant and monthly nurse, while the two underage brothers lived with their father and were cared for by the female housekeeper and cook.

Lilly worked in many different households. In each case, she took care of the newborn child and the new mother for a few weeks or months and lived with her respective employers. Lilly not only worked in Hamburg, she also took positions in Berlin and southern Germany. However, the job of the infant nurse was poorly paid, so that she kept getting into financial difficulties. She regularly turned to her mother and asked for a grant, which she did not receive. Margarethe Windmüller considered her daughter unstable and even tried to have her incapacitated in the mid-1930s. The conflict escalated over several years. Lilly refused to accept that she should live from hand to mouth, while her mother had a small fortune through her inheritance, from whose interest she supported her son but did not want to give anything to her daughter. At the end of the 1930s, they communicated only through lawyers.

In Sept. 1939, Margarethe Windmüller was taken into "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”) and subsequently committed to the "Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home” ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Langenhorn”). Lilly Windmüller was no longer employed as an infant nurse and the work permit in Britain she had applied for was not issued. She worked in various factories, such as the Steen & Co. hemp-spinning mill in Hamburg-Lokstedt and at a wool-combing mill in the Veddel quarter. In between, she was always unemployed, as she was extremely susceptible to illness due to the pulmonary tuberculosis she had survived. She lived in small rooms as a subtenant, in rooming houses or, if she no longer had any money, in a homeless shelter.

In Mar. 1941, her mother died in the Berlin-Buch institution. Lilly was to inherit a third and her brother Denny two thirds of the assets, which essentially consisted of mortgages. Except for a small advance, however, neither of them came into their inheritances. Her brother Henning had gone to Finland in 1939 as a war volunteer. He survived the Shoah there, a Finnish citizen.
On 25 Oct. 1941, Lilly and Denny Windmüller and his wife Mathel were deported to the Lodz Ghetto. Once there, Lilly was assigned to "apartment” no. 1a at Hohensteinerstrasse 31/33. It consisted of two rooms without a kitchen, which she had to share with eleven other people. On 15 May 1942, she was deregistered from this "apartment.” The de-registration form indicates "resettlement” ("Aussiedlung”). In fact, "resettlement” meant further deportation to the Chelmno extermination camp. At this point, all traces of Lilly Windmüller disappear.


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

Stand: May 2019
© Maria Koser

Quellen: 1; 2; 4; 8; StaH 314-15 OFP, R 1939/2618; StaH 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1995/1 26469; StaH 621-1/87 Firma W. Wulff Nr. 10; An-und Abmeldung Archiwum Panstwowe, Lodz; Hildegard Thevs, Stolpersteine Hamburg-Hamm, 2007, S. 64; Hildegard Thevs in: Sparr, Stolpersteine Hamburg-Winterhude, 2008, S. 259ff.; Maike Grünwaldt in: Fladhammer/Grünwaldt, Stolpersteine, Hamburger Isestraße, 2010, S. 183ff.; Löw, Das Getto, in: Feuchert/Leibfried/Riecke (Hg.), Die Chronik, Supplemente, 2007.
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