Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Clara Emma und Adolph Olshausen
© Privatbesitz

Clara Emma Olshausen (née Hirschfeld) * 1864

Efeuweg 56 (Hamburg-Nord, Winterhude)

HIER WOHNTE
CLARA EMMA
OLSHAUSEN
GEB. HIRSCHFELD
JG. 1864
DEPORTIERT 1944
THERESIENSTADT
ERMORDET 18.1.1944

Clara Emma Olshausen, née Hirschfeld, born on 12.1.1864, deported to Theresienstadt on 10.1.1944, died there on 18.1.1944

Efeuweg 56 (formerly Epheuweg), Winterhude

Clara Emma was born in Frankfurt at river Main on Jan. 12, 1864, the second of four children of the Jewish couple Ludwig Hirschfeld and his wife Emilie, née Weller. The father was a merchant. Clara Emma's mother died when Emma was seven years old. We know nothing about Clara Emma's childhood.

Later she worked as a teacher, probably in Frankfurt. In addition, she had completed training as an auxiliary nurse, from which her sick, bedridden father benefitted when she cared for him (Ludwig Hirschfeld died on January 18, 1905).

Clara Emma Hirschfeld married Adolph Olshausen, a non-Jewish doctor of medicine and surgery (born in Hamburg on November 28, 1856), on May 27, 1891, in Frankfurt am Main. His parents were the civil servant (head of the Senate Chancellery in Hamburg) Erhard Gustav Wilhelm Olshausen and his wife Clara Johanna Adelgunde, née Schröder.

Clara Emma Olshausen moved with her husband to Hamburg on May 27, 1891, to Lübecker Straße 112 in Hohenfelde. Adolph Olshausen had bought the house (he sold it in 1900). The couple first had children Margarete Johanna Emilie (born Febr. 2, 1893) and Erhard Otto Walter (born Dec. 23, 1894).

Adolph Olshausen also acquired a plot of land for himself and his family at No. 5a Wartenau Straße in the same district. The family moved there on July 28, 1893 and stayed until 1917. Adolph Olshausen also ran his medical practice here. On June 24, 1898, Emma Maria Magdalena was born as the third child. The daughters Erika Clara Ingeborg (born Nov. 15, 1901) and Ilse Gudrun (born Jan. 16, 1904) followed. On January 28, 1917, Adolph Olshausen died at the age of 60.

Clara Emma Olshausen continued to live in the house until 1928. From 1922 she rented her husband's practice rooms to the dance teacher Heinrich Schulz. On November 6, 1928, she moved to Epheuweg (now Efeuweg) 56 in Winterhude, but kept the house at Wartenau 5 until 1938, according to the Hamburg address book.

In National Socialist terminology, she had lived in a "privileged" mixed marriage – established long before Nazi rule - and her children were considered "Mischlinge of the first degree." Her status protected Clara Emma Olshausen from some, but not all, coercive measures against Jews. Since December 3, 1938, Jews had to sell their real estate and deposit their securities in a foreign exchange bank, according to the Ordinance on the Use of Jewish Property. From then on, the Chief Finance Office blocked Clara Emma Olshausen's free disposal of her assets. She was only entitled to a monthly amount subject to approval.

As a precaution, she therefore transferred the Wartenau 5 property to her daughter Margarete and her husband Wolfgang Eduard Metz in Hamburg, which she was allowed to do. In this way, she ensured that the house could remain in the family's ownership.

Clara Emma Olshausen suffered from an illness we do not know about and had to receive medical care. However, in the Jewish Hospital in Hamburg, which had been severely damaged by the air raids of 1943, only makeshift treatment was possible. Presumably, her daughter therefore brought her to Berlin to the Jewish Hospital at Iranische Straße 2 on October 8, 1943.

In the meantime, since October 1941, deportation trains had rolled out of the entire German Reich to ghettos in the occupied eastern territories or to the "preferential camp" Theresienstadt. Jews from still existing mixed marriages were exempt (for the time being), but divorced or widowed ones, who had no minor children to take care of, received the deportation order to Theresienstadt from the end of 1943. This also affected Clara Emma Olshausen.

On January 10, 1944, presumably seriously ill, she was deported to Theresienstadt along with 349 other Jews after a three-month hospital stay in Iranische Straße. Temperatures in those winter days in Berlin were around zero degrees and it was damp and cold weather.
Clara Emma Olshausen survived the transport to Theresienstadt only by about a week. She died there on January 18, 1944.

Those who died in Theresienstadt were cremated and the ashes deposited in a cardboard urn in the camp's columbarium. In the fall of 1944, tractors took the remains of 20,000 people to the Eger River, where the ghetto residents who were still alive had to dump them into the water. Today, a memorial commemorates the deceased here.

The Stolperstein for Clara Emma Olshausen used to be located at Lattenkampstieg 4 by mistake, but she never lived there. It was moved to Efeuweg 56.

On the fate of the children of Clara Emma and Adolph Olshausen:
Margarete Johanna Emilie Olshausen (born Febr. 2, 1893), married since April 30, 1920 to the lawyer Wolfgang Eduard Metz in Hamburg, died on Aug. 30, 1978 in Hamburg.

Erhard Otto Walter Olshausen (born Dec. 23, 1894) died on Sept. 8, 1978 in Frankfurt am Main.

Emma Maria Magdalena Olshausen (born June 24, 1898) died on March 3, 1975 in Frankfurt am Main.

Erika Clara Ingeborg Olshausen (born Nov. 15, 1901), married since April 27, 1927 to the pastor (dean) Botho Eduard Karl Horst, died Oct. 1, 1976 in Wöllstein/Rheinhessen.

Ilse Gudrun Olshausen (born Jan. 16, 1904), married since May 7, 1925 to the lawyer and notary Rudolf Pius Warburg, died in Hamburg on April 2, 1989.

On the fate of the siblings of Clara Emma Olshausen:
Karl Horst Hirschfeld (born June 5, 1866), married since May 19, 1897 to Anna Maria Könitzer, died on November 18, 1952 in Frankfurt am Main.

Robert Hirschfeld (born May 28, 1869) died in Frankfurt am Main on November 29, 1877.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: February 2022
© Bärbel Klein/Klaus-Dieter Olshausen

Quellen: StaH, 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 7; 111-1_3402; 213-13_11106; 351-11 _ 53010; 351-11_795; 741-2_1/4661; Geburtsurkunde Nr. 53/1864 Hirschfeld; Geburtsurkunde Nr. 893/1866 Hirschfeld; Heiratsurkunde Nr. 914/1897 Hirschfeld/Könitzer; Geburtsurkunde Nr. 1133/1898 Hirschfeld; Heiratsurkunde Nr. 275/1917 Hirschfeld/Wirth; Sterbeurkunde Nr. 498/1946 Hirschfeld; Heiratsurkunde Nr. 574/1894 Hirschfeld/Olshausen; Sterbeurkunde Nr. 241/1975 Olshausen; Sterbeurkunde Nr. 5258/1978 Olshausen; Sterbeurkunde Nr. 820/1976 Bad Kreuznach; 332-5_423/1893 Olshausen; 332-5_102/1895 Olshausen; 332-5_1901/1895 Olshausen; 332-5_1590/1901 Olshausen; 332-5_116/1917 Olshausen; 332-5_3261/1978 Olshausen; 332-5_342/1920 Olshausen/Metz; Die Judendeportationen von Alfred Gottwaldt und Diana Schulte, Wiesbaden 2005, Seite 364 und Seite 365; www.geni.com; www.wikipedea.de; www.ancestry.de (Einsicht 15.10.2020).
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".