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Ernst Hauptmann * 1883

Grindelallee 138 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

1941 Minsk

further stumbling stones in Grindelallee 138:
Hugo Frank, Bertha Hauptmann, Selma Pincus, Edgar Rosenbaum, Rieckchen Weil

Bertha Hauptmann, née Neumark, b. 6.20.1883 in Hamburg, deported to Minsk on 11.8.1941, murdered
Ernst Hauptmann, b. am 10.1.1883 in Schrimm, Posen, deported to Minsk on 11.8.1941, murdered

Grindelallee 138

Ernst Hauptmann‘s parents were Julius and Minna Hauptmann. Because he was wounded in the First World War, he received a small pension. Like so many whose birthplace had become Polish in 1918, he probably came to Hamburg immediately at war’s end. From all the regions that now belonged to Poland, there issued a massive emigration of Germans and German-speakers.

In Hamburg in 1919, Ernst Hauptmann married Bertha (a.k.a. Berta) Neumark. She was the middle child of three. Born before her, on 30 January 1882, was Fanny (who married Max Levinsohn, d. 5 August 1934), and after her, on 1 September 1886, was her brother Edgar Neumark (see Grindelallee 23). Bertha grew up at Rappstrasse 10. Her father was Meyer Joseph Neumark (1849-1925); her mother was named Hanna, née Berwin. Nothing is known concerning Bertha’s training or occupational activity.

Bertha’s brother Edgar married Anna Levy, who was born in Lüneburg on 27 December 1886. The couple had three sons: Karl-Heinz (b. 15 April 1913) and the twins Richard and Walter (b. 1 August 1918). Karl-Heinz was diagnosed with "congenital weak-mindedness” and from 1928 lived in the then Alsterdorf Institute; Walter was committed to the Alsterdorf Institute in 1937. Richard was considered to have a "learning disability.” Their father Edgar was treated several times for mental illness.

Edgar, Richard, and Karl-Heinz were taken on 23 September 1940 to the Brandenburg State Mental Hospital and, on the same day, murdered by means of carbon monoxide.

Walter was sent to the Jacoby Mental Hospital in Bendorf-Sayn near Koblenz. From 1940 until the summer of 1941, by order of the Reich Ministry of the Interior and as part of the "Euthanasia Program,” Jewish patients in mental institutions from all over Germany were collected at Bendorf-Sayn and, together with Jewish residents in the Koblenz region, shipped to the General Gouvernment of Poland and murdered. Walter was deported to Izbica and murdered there or in another extermination camp.

The marriage of Ernst and Bertha remained childless. Around 1930, they lived at Parkallee 22, then at Beneckestrasse 6, and from September 1935 on Grindelallee. According to the Hamburg directory of 1937, Ernst was listed as an "independent entrepreneur.” From 9 November 1939, he was registered at the Labor Office, just as "worker.” From an application for assistance from the Social Services Administration, dated 17 November 1939, it can be determined that Bertha and he were sub-lessees of two rooms in an apartment on Grindelallee, of which only one was furnished; they sought to have their rent reduced from RM 100 to RM 25. The couple’s financial situation continually worsened. An application to the Social Services Administration reveals that the couple received RM 16 in unemployment assistance and RM 23.50 as a military pension for Edgar’s wounding in the war; they had no other income besides this. In a supplement to the aid application, dated 17 November 1939, a support payment of RM 72 per week was decided upon; at the same time, a claim handler wrote in big letters "Jew” on the form. Whether Ernst Hauptmann ever received the money is not ascertainable from the records. There is only a further dispensation on the basis of which he was supposed to receive a "bonus” of RM 0.20 and RM 2.70 for carfare.

The last documented sign of life for Ernst Hauptmann is an instructional card for a three-day stint of compulsory labor on Moorredder Strasse in the Volksdorf quarter.

On 8 November 1941, Ernst and Bertha Hauptmann were deported to Minsk and murdered.

Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Charlotte Wilken

Quellen: 1; StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge – Sonderakten 1242; Jenner: Schabow: Die Israelitische Heil- und Pflegeanstalt, S. 55–95; Liste der am 15.6.1942 aus der Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Bendorf-Sayn ausgesiedelten Juden, in: Rheinland-Pfalz Landesarchivverwaltung (Hrsg.): Dokumente, S.274–280.
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