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Geschäftshaus von Max Stein
© StaH

Max Stein * 1870

Adolphsplatz 1 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamburg-Altstadt)

MAX STEIN
JG. 1870
EINGEWIESEN 22.12.1936
KRANKENANSTALT HARBURG
"VERLEGT" 24.12.1936
HEILANSTALT LÜNEBURG
TOT 17.4.1937

further stumbling stones in Adolphsplatz 1:
Valentin Burchard, Leopold Cohn, Otto Friedeberg, John Hausmann, Ludwig Moritz Mainz, Heinrich Mayer, Ivan Philip, Franz Max Rappolt, Paul Salomon, Dr. Heinrich Wohlwill, Cäsar Wolf, Leo Wolfsohn

Max Stein, born on 22 Nov. 1870 in Pritzwalk, died on 17 Apr. 1937 in the Lüneburg "State Sanatorium and Nursing Home” ("Landes-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt” Lüneburg)

Member of the General Assembly of the Harburg-Wilhelmsburg Chamber of Industry and Commerce 1927–1933

The Harburg textile merchant Max Stein came from a Jewish family of merchants and traders in the Prussian Province of Brandenburg. His parents were the glove-maker and merchant Liepmann (Liebmann) Stein (ca. 1828–1897) and his wife Taube (Täubchen), née Berliner (ca. 1835–1912). Liepmann Stein was born in the small town of Havelberg as the son of the merchant Abraham (Levin) Stein and Hanna (Johanna) Heydemann (Lewin). In the 1860s, he came to Pritzwalk in the Ostprignitz District, where few Jewish families lived at that time. He entered a relationship with the daughter of the merchant Feibel Moses Berliner and Ceres (Zerel) Berliner, née Samuel (Löwenthal).

Liepmann Stein lived with his family at Marktstrasse 43, the main shopping street of the village. It was only with the introduction of the records offices of the Prussian administration that he and Täubchen had themselves entered in the marriage register as a married couple in 1875, and Liepmann was officially recognized as the father of the two children. When Max Stein was five years old, his sister Johanna (1863–1875) died of scarlet fever. No other siblings are known.

After elementary school, Max Stein attended the Königliche Realgymnasium ["royal high school,” focused on science, math, and modern languages] in the neighboring town of Perleberg until he obtained his intermediate secondary school certificate (mittlere Reife). A commercial apprenticeship of four years followed, also in the district town of Westprignitz, which at that time already offered more opportunities than his birthplace. Afterward, he worked as a sales representative for yard goods at changing locations. For instance, he lived as a sales clerk in Brandenburg/Havel in 1897 when he reported the death of his father Liepmann to the authorities on 15 December in Pritzwalk.

Around the turn of the century, he settled in the up-and-coming industrial city of Harburg with its hinterland in the rural surroundings. At the time of his first mention in the Harburg directory in 1901, Max Stein, by then managing director of a textile company, lived at Brückenstrasse 10. The business in question was the "Berliner Waarenhaus Harburg a. E. [Elbe] En gros. En detail.” at 1st Wilstorfer Str. 79, which advertised in 1902 with its "specialty: underwear for men, women and children. Largest stock in knitting wool. For dealers and resellers, definitely the most reasonable source of purchase.” This and the adjacent Lüneburger Strasse combined to form the city’s shopping mile. Quite a few stores were run by Jews, as they played an increasingly important role in economic life, especially in the retail trade and as wholesalers. The city of Harburg was therefore able to afford a young, up-and-coming Jewish merchant like Max Stein the opportunity for economic and social advancement with his own company.

The year 1904 brought far-reaching changes in Max Stein’s private and professional life. On 7 September, he married in Rostock Else Pincus, the daughter of the already deceased Jewish merchant and rentier Isidor Pincus (1851–1902) and his wife Bertha (Berta), née Else Pincus. Else was born on 5 May 1881 in Kröpelin, a small town near Bad Doberan in Mecklenburg, and initially she grew up there, soon after in Parchim, and finally in Rostock. Unlike Max, Else had several siblings. Her brother Hans (1884–1911) studied law and then settled as a lawyer in Rostock. Her sister Ina Paula (1889–1945) married the Hamburg merchant Arthur Schuster in Harburg in 1912 and moved with him to Hamburg, where he ran a store selling glass, porcelain, and kitchenware at Neuer Steinweg 64.

Only a few days after his wedding, Max Stein registered his own enterprise in the company register on 28 Sept. 1904 and rose from managing director to independent retailer. He took over the Berliner Warenhaus at 1st Wilstorfer Strasse 79 and in 1905, he advertised his company, "Max Stein, formerly Berliner Warenhaus” using the same words as had previously been introduced and known to Harburg’s clientele. A few years later, it was established to such an extent that he could operate it exclusively under his own name, "Max Stein.”

In about 1905, he acquired the three-story residential and commercial building at 1st Wilstorfer Strasse 2 (later no. 5), directly opposite the luxurious Hotel Kaiserhof, from the previous owner Selly Meier, who had already given up his men’s and women’s clothing business there and had meanwhile leased the premises to a company selling home and kitchen furnishings. Max Stein had the rooms furnished for his business needs and initially continued to orientate his product range towards the Berliner Warenhaus. On a selling area of about 230 square meters (close to 2,500 sq. ft.), it offered yard goods, underwear, as well as dry goods, and knitting wool in two shop departments; the business also served as an intermediary for small retailers and agricultural dealers.

Shortly afterward, the Stein family also lived above the store on Wilstorfer Strasse. On 7 July 1905, daughter Charlotte was born, on 14 Sept. 1908, daughter Hilde, and Harburg increasingly became the center of the family. After the death of her son Hans in 1911, Else Stein’s mother, Bertha Pincus, had moved from Rostock to Harburg with her younger daughter Ina. Other relatives of Else also settled there, such as her widowed aunt Franziska Mayer (1853–1939) and her cousin Grethe (1880–1945), who married the local merchant Julius Marcus (1876–1945) in 1910.

The presence of Bertha Pincus in Harburg later proved to be a stroke of luck for the family. On 29 Dec. 1917, Else Stein died of the Spanish flu and she was buried in Harburg’s Jewish Cemetery. Max Stein had a generous tomb built. Bertha moved into the second apartment in the house at Wilstorfer Strasse 2 and took care of her daughter’s two underage children. Both girls attended the girls’ high school (Lyceum) in Harburg until obtaining the intermediate secondary school certificate (mittlere Reife). Charlotte then graduated from commercial school and worked first outside of Harburg as an office worker and then, from 1926, as a private secretary for the Jewish Harburg lawyer and notary Hugo Aschenberg. Hilde attended the Froebel Institute and trained as a kindergarten teacher.

This enabled Max Stein to devote more time to the further expansion of his business, something that even his temporary deployment during the First World War (1914–1918) did not change. Over the years, he always employed about ten to twelve people, was considered a "respectable, hard-working businessman ... and never had any kind of financial difficulties whatsoever until the inflationary period. The business was so extensive that he could afford to provide his two daughters with a first-class education, in addition to the solid middle-class lifestyle.”

Max Steinz soon became one of the city’s most respected merchants due to his personal achievements and held several honorary posts. As an entrepreneur and retailer, he sat on the committees of the Harburg-Wilhelmsburg Chamber of Industry and Commerce from 1927 onward and he was assigned to the elective expert group of small trade – a retail trade committee – for the Harburg-Wilhelmsburg city district, together with the Harburg merchant Sally Goldmann and the Wilhelmsburg merchant Paul Michels for the Harburg-Wilhelmsburg-North district. In addition, Max Stein was involved in the Employers’ Association for the Retail Trade Harburg-Wilhelmsburg e. V., serving in a lead position there and becoming its chairman in 1928. As a member of the Arbitration Court against Unfair Competition, he dealt with the retail trade in his city.

A music enthusiast, Max Stein founded the "Dur & Moll” orchestra association together with other interested parties and held the office of a committee member, temporarily that of a chairman. He himself played the violin and piano and had an extensive musical library. He had been a member of the Jewish Synagogue Association (Synagogengemeinde) of Harburg-Wilhelmsburg for many years and participated there and in Jewish social life in various areas. In addition, he was active in the Jewish ninepin-bowling club in his free time. These activities did not stop him from turning to Freemasonry as well. On 11 Oct. 1910, he was admitted by the "Emanuel zur Maienblume” Masonic lodge in Hamburg.

For the first time, the inflationary period meant a deep cut in the business development of the yard goods and textiles company. "As with many such merchants, ... [Max Stein] could not get over the loss of his fortune caused by inflation. He tried to build up the business again around 1924. It appears he succeeded in this.” The further economic crises of the Weimar Republic in the following years were an additional complication. The rural population, which made up a large part of his clientele, suffered increasingly from the agricultural crisis and had to cut back more and more. Therefore, Max Stein took a radical decision. On 1 Aug. 1927, he sold his residential and commercial building on Wilstorfer Strasse, by then changed to number 5, to the City of Harburg for 150,080 RM (reichsmark), investing a large part of the purchase price in his business. Thus, the company seemed to be well positioned for the coming years, even when a derailed streetcar demolished store windows and the store in 1930.

In the meantime, the effects of the world economic crisis of 1929 with a rapid increase in unemployment, as well as the banking crisis in 1931, contributed to a change in the purchasing behavior of the entire population of Harburg. Not only in the countryside did money become scarce, but industrial workers, too, hardly had the necessary means. In addition, the uncertain situation led to a strengthening of the Nazi party (NSDAP), especially in rural areas. Like the other Jewish merchants in Harburg, Max Stein felt the effects of the changed political mood long before the Nazi "seizure of power” on 30 Jan. 1933. National Socialist propaganda and the resulting uncertainty among customers led to a buying boycott, resulting in a sharp decline in business and a large loss of revenue. "The store’s clientele mainly consisted of the rural population of the greater environs and to a lesser extent of workers from the city. Already in the second half of 1931, business declined and this decline intensified considerably in the first months of 1932. The reason for this was that the rural population at that time had already been stirred up by Nazi propaganda, refraining from buying in Jewish shops due to threats,” as his daughter Charlotte later described her father’s economic situation.

Finally, Max Stein was forced to give up his business in 1932. In a six-week general sale in June/July 1932, he sold off cheaply the store’s range of goods as well as his extensive stock "at giveaway prices.” The remainder was subsequently auctioned off to the highest bidder. With this, he had lost almost everything; his life’s work was destroyed. Although he tried for some time to earn a living as a representative of textile goods, this attempt failed in 1933, because "nobody wanted to buy from a Jew,” according to his daughter Hilde.

In the following months, Max Stein was supported by his two daughters until they finally emigrated to Palestine. Since 1926, Charlotte had lived with her father again, after having resided in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein before. However, with her dismissal in June 1933, she pushed ahead with her emigration plans and left Harburg on 19 Aug. 1933. In Palestine, on 5 Sept. 1933 she married Josua (Sascha Jehoschua) Zalmanson’s (Salmansohn), a Latvian Jew who had also emigrated in April. Only a few weeks later, her sister Hilde followed her. It was not easy for her "to bid farewell to her father; she knew that he was not healthy and almost penniless. Shortly before, she had married the Harburg physician and Zionist Kurt Horwitz (1906–1986), leaving Europe with him via Trieste on 23 Oct. 1933.

Mother-in-law Bertha Pincus had already moved to Hamburg to be near her daughter Ina after the sale of the house in the late 1920s. When Max Stein gave up his business, other companies took over the store premises, such as branches of Lindor Strumpfläden GmbH, a stockings company, and Walter Meßmer Kaffee- und Konfitürenhandlung, a coffee and jam store, as well as Flöring & Petzold, an electrical engineering company. Max Stein increasingly had to economize after his failed professional livelihood. He was "compelled to sell off cheaply his household goods in all but one room for the purpose of subsistence at minimal cost.” In Sept. 1933, he gave up his large apartment except for one room and had to come to terms with the new occupants.

Max Stein was particularly hard hit by the fact that in 1933 he was expelled from the committees of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the Orchestra Association after 30 years of membership, and other institutions. This exclusion was difficult to bear and had an impact on his health as well. "Mr. Stein was unable to find a livelihood after the store closed because his nerves were completely shattered,” according to a witness the in restitution proceedings.

In 1936, Max Stein was admitted to the hospital and retirement home of the Altona and Hamburg High German Jewish Community at Blücherstrasse 18-20 in Altona, as there was no comparable facility for Jews in Harburg. Whether this happened in connection with a stroke can no longer be determined. His two daughters at least assumed that he had had two strokes. The merchant Sally Goldmann was appointed ex officio as the representative for proprietary matters; after the latter’s death on 29 Mar. 1937, the Harburg merchant John Danziger took over.

In Dec. 1936, Max Stein’s health had deteriorated extremely. Totally disorientated, he was initially admitted to the Harburg-Wilhelmsburg Municipal Hospital for a detailed examination on the orders of the Harburg-Wilhelmsburg local police authority. There, medical staff diagnosed dementia after a stroke. He constituted "a considerable burden for the general public. His admission to a closed institution is therefore urgently required.” Thereupon, the local police authority inquired whether Max Stein was thus to be regarded as mentally ill according to the law, and asked for the expert’s report to be supplemented. Although all examinations, even those carried out later, described him as a helpless, withdrawn person, the public health officer quickly determined that nevertheless he was "dangerous to the public.”

With this, Max Stein’s fate was sealed. He was admitted to the Lüneburg "State Sanatorium and Nursing Home” (Landes-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt zu Lüneburg) on 24 Dec. 1936. The patient file describes him as a nursing case who could only rarely answer questions by then. After several days of mild fever with abscess, Max Stein died on 17 Apr. 1937, and later both pericarditis and a brain tumor were diagnosed. Apart from cutting open the abscess, no medical treatment during these four months is apparent from the file.

On 24 Sept. 1937, the Harburg-Wilhelmsburg Chamber of Industry and Commerce wrote to the local district court (Amtsgericht) that the Max Stein Company had "ceased to exist, since no business had been conducted for a long time.” The liquidation was to be brought about by force, which was finally carried out on 1 Mar. 1938. In 1960, the Restitution Office (Amt für Wiedergutmachung) refused to compensate the material damage suffered by Max Stein’s community of heirs. Since the Federal Restitution Law was only applicable for the period after 30 Jan. 1933, it was assumed that the world economic crisis – and not his defamation as a Jew – had caused the closure of the business in 1932.

Lotte Lea (Charlotte) Salmansohn initially had only simple jobs in Palestine before she joined the United Restitution Organization as an office employee in 1956. Her husband found work as a chauffeur. The couple had two daughters, born in 1935 and 1946. Lotte Lea died on 18 May 1976 in Rishon le Zion/Israel. Hilde Horwitz went to a kibbutz with her husband for almost 20 years. It was not until the early 1950s that her husband was able to work as a physician in Tel Aviv again. The couple had two sons and a daughter. Hilde passed away in Tel Aviv/Israel in 1988.

© Text courtesy of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce (eds.) taken from: "Against Forgetting. Victims of totalitarian persecution from the honorary and full-time office of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce” (Gegen das Vergessen. Opfer totalitärer Verfolgung aus dem Ehren- und Hauptamt der Handelskammer Hamburg). Hamburg 2019

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

Stand: July 2020
© Barbara Günther

Quellen: 1; Landeshauptarchiv Schwerin 5.12-3/20 (Statistisches Landesamt, Band 2288, B-Zählkarte, Zählbezirk 211, Haushaltungsliste 20); Landeshauptarchiv Schwerin 5.12-3/20 (Statistisches Landesamt, Kröpelin, Haushaltsliste 462); NHSA Hannover, 155 Lüneburg Acc. 2004/66 Nr. 08523 (Landesheilanstalt Lüneburg, Patientenakte Max Stein); Sta Pritzwalk, Personenstandsregister (Standesamt Pritzwalk, Heiratsregister 1875 Nr. 12); Sta Pritzwalk, Personenstandsregister (Standesamt Pritzwalk, Sterberegister 1897 Nr. 134); Sta Pritzwalk, Personenstandsregister (Standesamt Pritzwalk, Sterberegister 1912 Nr. 90); Sta Pritzwalk, Personenstandsregister (Standesamt Pritzwalk, Sterbeurkunde 1875 Nr. 216); StAHH 332-5_11408 (Standesamt Harburg, Heiratsregister 1912 Nr. 534); StAHH 332-5_11782 (Standesamt Harburg, Sterberegister 1917 Nr. 1196); StAHH 332-5_11846 (Standesamt Hamburg-Harburg, Sterberegister 1939 Nr. 176); StAHH 332-5_8173 (Standesamt Hamburg 02, Sterberegister 1941 Nr. 570); StAHH 332-5_8173 (Standesamt Hamburg 03, Sterberegister 1941 Nr. 517); StAHH 351-11_1637 (Amt für Wiedergutmachung, Erbengemeinschaft Max Stein); StAHH 351-11_29557 (Amt für Wiedergutmachung, Lotte Lea (Charlotte) Salmansohn); StAHH 351-11_31685 (Amt für Wiedergutmachung, Kurt Horwitz); StAHH 430-62_III a 40 Band I (Katasteramt: Wilstorfer Straße 5, Steuerrolle 3855); StAHH 430-64_VII A 1 Band 1 (Handelsregister des königlichen Amtsgerichts in Harburg, Abt. A 397); StAHH 430-64_VII B 397 (Amtsgericht Harburg, Handelsregisterakte Firma Max Stein); StAHH 522-1_979 (Synagogengemeinde in Harburg); Adressbuch der Stadt Harburg; Die Industrie- und Handelskammer Harburg-Wilhelmsburg 1866 bis 1936, hrsg. von der Industrie- und Handelskammer Harburg-Wilhelmsburg, Harburg-Wilhelmsburg 1937, S. 146; Hamburger Adressbuch 1912; Heyl, Michael: "Vielleicht steht die Synagoge noch!" Jüdisches Leben in Harburg 1933–45, Norderstedt 2009, S. 22, 38, 179.
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