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Olga Reyersbach * 1885

Eppendorfer Landstraße 46 (Hamburg-Nord, Eppendorf)

1941 Riga

further stumbling stones in Eppendorfer Landstraße 46:
Alfred Aron, Bertha Engers, Bertha Margaretha Haurwitz, Dr. Rudolf Haurwitz, Henriette Hofmann, Siegfried Marcus, Martha Markus, Elsa Meyerhof, Käte Meyerhof

Olga Reyersbach, born on 4 Jan. 1885 in Hamburg, deported on 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga-Jungfernhof

Eppendorfer Landstrasse 46

Olga Reyersbach was born on 4 Jan. 1885 in Hamburg as the youngest of three daughters of the married couple Julius and Anna Reyersbach, née Windmüller, born on 15 June 1861. Julius Reyersbach was probably the co-owner listed in the 1886 Hamburg directory of the Leopold and Julius Reyersbach Company, bond and bill brokers, located at Kleine Johannisstrasse 10/12, and he was entered at the private address of Alsterchaussee 18 (also as the homeowner). Since his wife Anna appeared in the 1924 directory as Mrs. J. Reyersbach residing at Gellertstrasse 20, Julius Reyersbach would have to have passed away before 1924.

Her oldest sister was Lisbeth Engelmann, née Reyersbach (see corresponding entry), born on 29 Apr. 1882 in Hamburg, who was married to the merchant and owner of Joseph Engelmann Papierlager und Schreibmaterialien en gros, a paper warehouse and stationary wholesale company, Hugo Engelmann, born on 29 Jan. 1863 in Hamburg. They had two children, Gertrud, born on 16 May 1918 (from Joseph Engelmann’s first marriage), and Max, born on 4 Nov. 1921. Hugo Engelmann passed away on 30 Apr. 1936 in Hamburg. Lisbeth Engelmann was deported to the Lodz Ghetto on 25 Oct. 1941 and died in the Lodz hospital on 9 Feb. 1942, aged only 59 – the cause of death indicated was marasmus senilis (physical and psychological age-related decay). In a Page of Testimony her son Max established at Yad Vashem in 1999, he had the information entered that his mother and his aunts Olga and Margarethe Reyersbach had perished in Auschwitz. In the case of his mother, the Lodz Hospital’s listing of deaths occurring from 9 to 15 Feb. 1942 proves that she died in Lodz on 9 Feb. 1942. For the aunts, too, Auschwitz probably does not apply as the place of death but instead Chelmno and Riga-Jungfernhof, respectively, as is indicated as well in the Memorial Book for the Victims of the Persecution of Jews issued by the German Federal Archives.

The middle sister, Toni Friedländer, née Reyersbach, born on 8 Sept. 1883 in Hamburg, was married to the merchant and co-owner of Friedländer & Co. Getreide- und Futtermittelhandlung, a grain and animal feed company, Jacob Oscar Friedländer, born on 7 Jan. 1878 in Hamburg. Both emigrated in 1938 to Brazil along with the Hamburg-born sons Julius Heinz, born on 25 Jan. 1913, and Walter Hermann, born on 25 Dec. 1914. The example of the Friedländer couple shows how Jewish emigrants were plundered by the Nazi state: They had to pay 141,677 RM (reichsmark) in "Reich flight tax” (Reichsfluchtsteuer) and 12,440.98 RM in a "levy on Jewish assets” ("Judenvermögensabgabe”), suffering a transfer loss of 207,508 RM. This also included goods, real estate, etc. … left behind. The Friedländer couple was obviously willing to accept all of this in order to be able to flee Germany. Jacob Oscar Friedländer died on 15 Nov. 1942 in Sao Paulo, his wife Toni lived until 22 Dec. 1968. The sons stayed in Brazil even after the war, working as a merchant and a farmer, respectively.

Olga Reyersbach never married. She became a teacher and assumed work in the Hamburg school service on 1 Jan. 1923. From 1927 until 1931, she taught as a secondary-school teacher with civil-servant status (Studienrätin) at the business school and college for girls on Am Lämmermarkt and from 1932 until 1933 at the school at Schlankreye 1 – also a business school and college for girls. In all probability, she was dismissed from public school service or forced to retire, like all Jewish teachers, in connection with passage of the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” ("Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums”) on 7 Apr. 1933. There is no evidence that afterward she taught at a Jewish school as did many of her dismissed Jewish colleagues. Based on her work in the public school service, she initially drew a pension, which in Jan. 1940 she indicated to be 175 RM. It is unclear for how long this pension was paid out.

She belonged to the "Society of Friends of the Patriotic School and Education System” ("Gesellschaft der Freunde des Vaterländischen Schul- und Erziehungswesens”) until 1931. For the 1932/33 school year, the entry then indicates "no longer a member.”

According to documents of the school administration, Olga Reyersbach lived at Gellertstrasse 30 until 1928. Subsequently, until 1941, she resided at Lattenkamp 29, where according to the 1935 Hamburg directory, her mother Anna Reyersbach lived as well. After her mother’s death on 14 Mar. 1941 in Hamburg’s Sophienkrankenhaus (formerly Bethanien) hospital, she moved, probably due to economic hardship, to Eppendorfer Landstrasse 46 as a subtenant of Elsa and Käthe Meyerhof (see corresponding entry) on 19 July 1941.

The financial situation of Olga Reyersbach, like that of her mother Anna, progressively worsened: The widowed mother, having moved in with her daughter Olga at Lattenkamp 29 by 1935 at the latest, had surely given up her apartment at Gellertstrasse 20 for financial reasons, an apartment where she had already lived in 1924 and probably even earlier. Her assets, on whose yields she was forced to make ends meet, had already shrunk from 20,183 RM in Apr. 1938 to some 14,000 RM in 1939. On 31 Jan. 1940, a "security order” ("Sicherungsanordnung”) was issued against Anna Reyersbach; from this time onward, she was allowed to dispose of 250 RM a month only, whereas her actual monthly expenses amounted to 255 RM (80 RM in rent and utilities, 120 RM in living expenses including clothes, 30 RM for a household help, and 25 RM for miscellaneous expenses). On 29 Jan. 1940, she indicated her assets as amounting to 11,700 RM in bonds, 672 RM in savings, and 8 RM in cash; therefore, they had shrunk further within a few months. In this connection, her current income consisted of interest from bonds, support from her son-in-law (originally, 1,200 RM per annum, earnings from his Hamburg real estate property; by 1940, only 500 RM a year), and interest from a blocked mark account (Sperrmarkkonto) of her brother Paul Winn, who lived in Britain. For the monetary allowances, she had to pay 7.5 percent in income tax.

The financial situation of her daughter Olga was about as modest as her own in Jan. 1940: Her assets consisted of 2,979 RM in savings and 378 RM in cash; she had revenues from the interest on her savings (87 RM for 1939) and her state pension amounting to 175 RM net a month. She indicated her monthly expenses to be 175 RM for rent and utilities (105 RM) and living expenses including clothing, doctor’s fees, as well as odds and ends (70 RM). Together, the mother and daughter were just barely able to make ends meet.

After Anna Reyersbach’s death on 14 Mar. 1941, the inheritance for the three daughters, which was subject to a "security order” ("Sicherungsanordnung”), amounted to about 11,200 RM, some of which was required to cover the costs for administrating the estate and the burial as well as the substantial doctor’s fees. To be sure, the "security order” for the mother was lifted on 10 Apr. 1941 but it was then imposed on daughter Olga (for daughter Lisbeth Engelmann, such an order was already in place), who was allowed to dispose freely of 260 RM a month. This was likely the reason for Olga Reyersbach having to move from Lattenkamp to become a subtenant at Eppendorfer Landstrasse 46.

On 16 Nov. 1941, Olga Reyersbach applied in writing for the unblocking of 130 RM from her blocked account, because she "had to buy a few more items for a possible evacuation with which after all I probably have to reckon soon.”

Permission was granted on 18 Nov. 1941 – only two and a half weeks later, on 6 Dec. 1941, at the age of 55, she was deported along with her landladies Elsa and Käthe Meyerhof to Riga-Jungfernhof, a subcamp of the Riga Ghetto. She has been missing since then. Her assets were confiscated.

There are no clues that Olga Reyersbach would have attempted to leave Germany at any time, even though there were several precedents in the family: In 1938, her sister Toni Friedländer emigrated with her husband and the two sons to Brazil. In a letter dated 9 June 1939 to the foreign currency office, she mentioned that her uncle Alexander had emigrated and lived in Rio de Janeiro. Prior to his emigration, he had left to her pre-war loans, which had become worthless by then. His son, too, born in Hamburg as Hans Reyersbach in 1898, had already departed for Rio de Janeiro in 1925; going by the name of Hans Augusto Rey, he later embarked on an international artistic career.

Possibly, Olga Reyersbach did not wish to leave behind her solitary mother, who was already 77 years old in 1938, and did not try to emigrate for that reason.


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

Stand: October 2018
© Birgit Burgänger

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 8; StaH 351-11 AfW, 5997; StaH 314-15 OFP, R 1941/85; StaH 314-15 OFP, 1940/72; StaH 522-1 Jüd. Gemeinden, 992e2 Band 3; AB 1886, 1924, 1935; Adler-Rudel, Jüdische Selbsthilfe, in: Schriftenreihe Leo Beck Institut, 1974; Berkemann/Meyer, Jüdisches Leben, in: Das Jüdische Hamburg, 2006; Lodz Hospital, Der Hamburger Gesellschaft für Genealogie zur Verfügung gestellt von Peter W. Lande, 2009, USHMM Washington, bearbeitet von Margot Löhr; Hamburger Lehrerverzeichnis, 1930/31 und 1931/32; Internetseite H.A. & Margret Rey Papers, aufgerufen am 7.7.2010.
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