Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Kaethe (Käte) Pincus * 1899

Innocentiastraße 37 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

1941 Lodz
ermordet 13.8.1942

further stumbling stones in Innocentiastraße 37:
Prof. Friedrich Adler, Zerline Adler, Martin Pincus, Abraham Sarfaty, Franziska Sarfaty, Joseph Sarfaty, Rosa Sarfaty, Israel Abraham Sarfaty, Annette Sarfaty, Ruth Klara Sarfaty, Benjamin Sarfaty, Henriette M. Schmid, Fritz Weinstein, Gertrud Weinstein

Martin Pincus, b. 2.10.1889 in Mölln, deported to Lodz 10.25.1941, dying there on 6.1.1942
Käte Pincus, née Josias, b. 1.8.1899 in Hamburg, deported to Lodz 10.25.1941, dying there on 8.13.1942

Innocentiastraße 37 (Harvestehude district)

The businessman Marcus (Mordechai) Jacob Pincus lived in Moisling-Lübeck. With his wife, Rebecca Pincus, née Oljenick (1814–1882), also from Moisling-Lübeck, he had three children: Jacob (Jaakow) Pincus (1837–1868), Aron Marcus Pincus (b. 11.23.1839 in Moisling-Lübeck), and Bräunchen Pincus (b. 3.15.1842). In 1844, the father and bread-winner of the family died, leaving behind a 30-year old widow with three children. There is no information about their youth, schooling, and apprentice years.

Aron Pincus, the middle child, married in 1883 or 1884 Frieda (Friedchen) Horwitz (b. 4.3.1862 in Neustadt) and lived with her until 1896 in Mölln, where were born the children Rieckchen (1885), Ella (1887), Martin (1889) und Selma (1892). In the Mölln register, Aron Pincus’s profession was entered as "merchant” and his religion as "Jew.” In July 1896, the family of six moved to Lübeck, where their names were recorded in the directory of the Israelite Congregation there. Aron Pincus made his living as an agent/broker, a middleman, who bought goods at wholesale and then sold them at retail. The widowed mother of Frieda Pincus, Henriette Horwitz, née Wolfsberg (b. 9.17.1826 in Neustadt), also moved to Lübeck with her family, where she died in July 1899. In 1904, Aron Pincus moved from Lübeck, where he held citizenship since 1869, to the Hansa City of Hamburg. Whether he was still active professionally at 65 years of age is not known.

He moved with his wife Frida Pincus and their 12-year old daughter, Selma (b. 12.31.1892 in Mölln), to the Strasse Kleiner Kielort 11 (Eimsbüttel) and later, a few houses further on, to Kielerortalle 1. In 1907–1908, the free house no. 22–24 of the Oppenheimer Institute was erected here, and from 1925, along with Villa Kielortallee, it was converted into a synagogue for Jews living in the neighborhood. In 1908, the Pincus family moved into the ground floor at Rutschbahn 29 in the Rotherbaum quarter. In that house on New Year’s Day 1915, Aron Pincus died at age 75. His widow and children remained their until 1935.

The two older daughters of Aron and Frieda Pincus had already moved from Lübeck to Hamburg before their parents. Ella Pincus (b. 1.7.1887 in Mölln), listed under the first name Esther, lived from 1901 to 1904 with her Uncle Heimann (Hermann) Horwitz (1867–1944) at Bornstrasse 14 (Rotherbaum) who operated a butcher and sausage-making shop; she was a cleaning lady (at a hat-making establishment) and moved in with her parents who arrived in 1904. Rieckchen Pincus (b. 12.18.1885 in Mölln), in Hamburg three months ahead of her parents, lived with her Wolfsberg relatives at Dillstrasse 16 as a sub-letter (her maternal grandmother was born a Wolfsberg); she worked as a clerk (around 1920 she was employed in the Lisser & Rosenkranz banking business at Neuen Wall 10). Martin Pincus (b. 2.10.1889 in Mölln) went from Lübeck to Frankfurt-am-Main on 18 December 1903 where he was supposed to take an apprenticeship in upholstering. It is probable that in Frankfurt, he lived with relatives. Whether he stayed with the "independent gentlelady,” Caroline Pincus, née Lippmann (b. 1861 in Ludwigshafen), the widow (of the merchant Isidor Pincus, 1854–1899) or the factory worker Wolf Pincus (1856–1933), is not known. For the years between 1904 and 1913 there is no information concerning the addresses and activities of Martin Pincus. Around 1914 he moved to Hamburg where he was registered as living with his parents at Rutschbahn 29 (Rotherbaum); his occupation was listed as commercial clerk. From 1920, he was an independent member of the German Israelite Congregation of Hamburg and of the Orthodox Synagogue Association. In June 1920, he was listed by the Commercial Register in the Pincus & Valk Paper and Writing Materials Company, wholesale & retail, located at Banksstrasse 2 in the St. Georg district. Martin Pincus had founded the firm in Hamburg with Iwan Valk (b. 10.8.1878 in Lübeck) as an open partnership. Martin was 17 when he moved from Lübeck to Hamburg; his parents and siblings followed three years later. In September 1920, Martin Pincus was best man at the wedding of his 42-year old partner and his 33-year old sister Ella Pincus. Iwan Valk and his bride also moved into the house at Rutschbahn 29, where Martin Pincus had his own rooms on the ground floor. His mother Frieda Pincus lived on the mezzanine floor.

In October 1924, the legal status of the firm was changed and the business was conducted alone by Iwan Valk. The Valks then moved to Mansteinstrasse 3 (Hoheluft-West district). The income from the paper and writing materials business was so low that Iwan Valk did not have to pay any communal religion tax in 1925 and 1926. Because of the persistently difficult economic situation, there followed in June 1926 the sale of the firm to Johanna Hertzberg, née Schenck, who in a brief newspaper notice announced: "no liability for the accounts payable contracted by the previous business owners will be honored.” In December 1927, Ella Valk, née Pincus, bought back the business, in all likelihood acting for her husband who was in this way able to avoid paying his old debts. (The firm Pincus & Valk was removed from the Commercial Register in August 1940.)

After leaving his co-founded firm in 1924, Martin Pincus worked as a traveling salesman and sales representative for the firm Friedrich Fleischmann, Printing and Office Necessities (Rosenstrasse 11). From November 1938, the now 49-year old Martin Pincus was unemployed. His dismissal came in connection with the state-organized November Pogrom ("Night of Broken Glass”). A new position in non-Jewish enterprises was no longer possible, and Jewish business owners were forced into a massive sell-off of their interests to non-Jews ("Aryanization”).

In April and May of 1935, the living situation of the Pincus family changed. Within the Rotherbaum quarter, Frieda Pincus and her grown daughter Selma Pincus moved from Rutschbahn 29 to Grindelallee 138, second floor. Ella Pincus moved out in 1920 after her marriage. Rieckchen Pincus moved three years later with her husband, the Jewish merchant Ludwig Weil (b. 4.29.1879 in Merzig/Saar).

In 1935 Martin Pincus married Käte Josias (b. 1.8.1899 in Hamburg), about whom only limited information is available. She was born in Hamburg in 1899 to the dealer Josua David Josias and Bertha Mendel, née Levy. In 1913, by order of the Hamburg District Court, the first names of her father were removed from her birth certificate.

On the communal religion tax record for Martin Pincus in this period, the address he shared with his mother recorded him only as a sub-letter. In 1935 he lived at Bogenstrasse 52 (Harvestehude) with Mendel Josias (1891–1944?, see his biography), an official of the burial society of the German Israelite Congregation; his second wife was Rosa Horwitz (b. 4.14.1903 in Nuremberg) and possibly the brother of Käte Josias. From November 1936, Martin and Käte Pincus lived at Beneckestrasse 8, third floor (Rotherbaum quarter) with the coppersmith Otto Kramer. At the end of April 1939, the Nazis raised the rents for Jews. On 24 August 1940, the couple, presumably by official decree, moved out of rooms they had rented since May 1939 from Erich Samter at Bundesweg 7, second floor (Rotherbaum) to Innocentiastrasse 37 (Harvestehude district). The villa had been dedicated in 1935 as a synagogue for the Portuguese Jewish Congregation (to replace the abandoned synagogue at 2 Marktstrasse 6/Neustadt); now it served as a collection point ("Jew house”) for pending deportations. The Pincus couple were assigned a room on the second floor. Also quartered in this house on 3 December 1940 was Willy Josias (b. 5.13.1886 in Friedrichstadt, see his biography) and his wife Rosa Josias, née Josias (b. 7.13.1888 in Friedrichstadt, see her biography), both of whom were deported on 8 November 1941 to the Minsk ghetto. Commemorative stones have been placed for them at Isestrasse 65.

The mother, Frieda Pincus, née Horwitz, died of natural causes in February 1941 in the dwelling at Grindelallee 138 (Rotherbaum). With her, and since the emigration of her husband Iwan Valk in July 1937, lived her daughter Ella Valk, née Pincus. She followed her husband in September 1941 to Amsterdam, which was already occupied by German troops, possibly in order to sail from there to a safer country for emigrants. The couple was deported from the Netherlands in 1943 to the Sobibor extermination camp; bother were murdered there shortly after they arrived. Their son Alfred Valk (b. 6.13.1921 in Hamburg) emigrated to New York in 1937, where Iwan Valk’s son by his first marriage already lived as of 1934.

On the death certificate of his mother, Martin Pincus was listed in February1941 as an "employee of the Jewish Religion Association." Performing this function allowed a few Jews to avoid compulsory labor in Hamburg. Eight months later began the deportations of Hamburg’s Jewish inhabitants. Those classified by the Hamburg Gestapo as not absolutely essential for the work of the Jewish Religion Association were also deported. On the first deportation train that left Hamburg for Lodz in occupied Poland, on 25 October 1941, were Martin and Käte Pincus.

Martin Pincus died on 1 June 1942 in the Lodz ghetto, at age 53. Käte Pincus died there on 13 August 1942, at age 43. The sisters Rieckchen Weil, née Pincus, and Selma Pincus were also deported, their final destination unknown. Commemorative stones for the sisters have been place at Grindelallee 138.

For Ella Valk, née Pincus, and her husband, Iwan Valk, commemorative stones shall be laid at Mansteinstraße 3 (Hoheluft-West), where the couple lived from 1925 to 1933.

Iwan Valk (b. 10.8.1878 in Lübeck) was the third of seven children born to the merchant Simon (Moses) Valk (b. 7.5.1847 in Emden) and Hanna (Hannchen), née Lion (b. 11.20.1857 in Lübeck). In March 1898 the family moved from Lübeck to Hamburg. Of their seven children, three were murdered in the Nazi era: Leopold Valk (b. 2.21.1884 in Lübeck) was sent on 23 September 1940 from the Langenhorn psychiatric hospital to the Brandenburg Euthanasia Center; Sammy Valk (b. 5.11.1889 in Lübeck) emigrated in December 1938 to the Netherlands and was sent from the Westerbork camp to Sobibor on 8 June 1943; he was murdered immediately upon his arrival; Iwan Valk and his wife, Ella Valk, née Pincus, were murdered at Sobibor.

Heimann (Hermann) Horwitz (b. 2.28.1867 in Neustadt), the son of Isaac Falk Horwitz and Henriette Horwitz, née Wolfsberg (1826–1899), was the brother of Martin Pincus‘ mother, Frieda Pincus, née Horwitz. He lived in Lübeck for a time and after his move to Hamburg was a member of the Jewish Congregation and the Orthodox Synagogue Association. After the death of his wife, Johanna Horwitz, née Tannenberg (d. in May 1938), he left Germany in January 1939. He was deported from the occupied Netherlands to the Theresienstadt ghetto and died there on 25 December 1944. In his memory there is a commemorative stone at Rappstrasse 13 (Rotherbaum). On the ground floor of this house he ran a butcher shop. On the fourth floor, the registered Jewish religious study group Mekor Chayim [Source of Life, founded 1862] rented rooms from 1926 to 1932. Heimann Horwitz’s son James (b. 11.10.1895) was also deported from the Netherlands in 1944 and died after being shipped off to the Theresienstadt ghetto, the Auschwitz concentration camp, and Mauthausen concentration camp, where he died in April 1945.

The exact family relationship of Sophie (Selda) Oljenick, née Horowitz (b. 10.3.1866 in Brody, Galicia) to the Pincus family is not known. It is possible that she was the aunt or great aunt of Martin Pincus (his grandmother Rebecca Pincus, 1814-1882, was born Oljenick; his great aunt Betty (Bune) Wolfsberg, 1815–1886, was born Oljenick; the father of both was Samuel Aaron Oljenick). After the death of her husband, the New York-born Louis (Levy) Oljenick (1861–1931), Sophie Oljenick took in laundry on the second floor of Bornstrasse 16 (Rotherbaum), between 1931 and 1942. On 20 March 1942, she was compulsorily lodged in a room at Bundesstrasse 35 (Rotherbaum); both dwellings were included in the planned deportation as "Jew houses.” Sophie Oljenick was deported on 15 July 1942 to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where she died on 21 April 1943.

It is possible that there was a distant family connection to Jenny Pincus (see her biography), since both lines of the Pincus family originated in Moisling-Lübeck.

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

Stand: February 2018
© Björn Eggert

Quellen: Staatsarchiv Hamburg (StaH) 332-5 (Standesämter), 128 u. 2638/1882 (Sterberegister 1882, Rebecca Pincus geb. Oljenick); StaH 332-5 (Standesämter), 13086 u. 84/1899 (Geburtsregister 1899, Käte Josias); StaH 332-5 (Standesämter), 8025 u. 3/1915 (Sterberegister 1915, Aron Marcus Pincus); StaH 332-5 (Standesämter), 8742 u. 625/1920 (Heiratsregister 1920, Ella Pincus u. Iwan Valk); StaH 332-5 (Standesämter), 8779 u. 420/1923 (Heiratsregister 1923, Rieckchen Pincus und Ludwig Weil); StaH 332-5 (Standesämter), 8107 u. 240/1931 (Sterberegister 1931, Levy genannt Louis Oljenick); StaH 332-5 (Standesämter), 8174 u. 50/1941 (Sterberegister 1941, Frieda Pincus geb. Horwitz); StaH 332-8 (Alte Einwohnermeldekartei, 1892–1925), Aron Pincus, Rieckchen Pincus, Ella Pincus, Simon Valk; StaH 351-11 (Amt für Wiedergutmachung), 1100 (Selde Oljenick geb. Horowitz); StaH 351-11 (AfW), 1391 (Jenny Pincus); StaH 522-1 (Jüdische Gemeinden), 992b (Kultussteuerkartei der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde Hamburg, ab 1913) Martin Pincus (1920–1939), Aron/ Frieda Pincus geb. Horwitz (ab 1913), Rieckchen Pincus (1919–1923), Ella Pincus (1919–1922), Selma Pincus (1931–1940), Ella Valk geb. Pincus (1940–1941), Iwan Valk (1920–1937), Heimann Horwitz (1913–1939), Levy Louis Oljenick/Sophie Selde Oljenick geb. Horowitz (1913–1938), Willy Josua Josias (1920–1941); Universität des Saarlandes, Historisches Institut (Forschungen zur jüdischen Gemeinde Merzig; Ludwig Weil); Stadtarchiv Mölln, Melderegister; Archiv der Hansestadt Lübeck, Meldearchiv (Karte von Aron Pincus und Familie, 1896–1904), Archiv der Hansestadt Lübeck, Israelitische Gemeinde 4, S. 51 (Isaac Falk Horwitz u. Familie), S. 100 (Jacob Marcus Pincus, Aaron Pincus), S. 125 (Simon Valk u. Familie); Jüdische Gemeinde Lübeck, Belegungsplan des Friedhofs in Moisling (Jakob Pincus 1837–1868); Stadt Frankfurt/Main, Institut für Stadtgeschichte; Yad Vashem, Page of Testimony (Heimann/Hermann Horwitz); Hamburger jüdische Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, Gedenkbuch, Hamburg 1995, S. 183 (Heimann Horwitz), S. 315 (Sophie Oljenick), S. 326 (Martin Pincus, Käthe Pincus, Selma Pincus), S. 425 (Rieckchen Weil); Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Gedenkbuch (Selma Pincus, Martin Pincus, Ella Valk geb. Pincus, Iwan Valk, Leopold Valk, Semmy Senny Valk, James Horwitz); Erich Koch, unveröffentlichte genealogische Übersicht zu Familie Josias aus Friedrichstadt; Irmgard Stein, Jüdische Baudenkmäler in Hamburg, Hamburg 1987, S. 43–44 (Innocentiastraße 37); Salomon Goldschmidt, Geschichte des Vereins Mekor Chajim, Hamburg 1912 (45 Seiten); Ulrike Sparr/Björn Eggert, Stolpersteine in Hamburg, Hamburg 2011, S. 209–216 (Lipmann/Leo Josias u. Bella Josias); Hamburger Adressbuch 1923; Hamburger Adressbuch (H. Horwitz) 1910, 1914, 1926, 1930, 1933; Hamburger Adressbuch 1935 (M. Josias), 1938 (O. Kramer, E. Samter), 1939 (O. Kramer); Frankfurter Adressbuch (Pincus) 1903–1905, 1907, 1909, 1911, 1913; Handelskammer Hamburg, Firmenarchiv (Pincus & Valk, Handelsregister-Nr. A 23855).