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Gottlieb Magnus (M.), vermutlich mit seiner Frau Margaretha und seiner Tochter Antonie
© Sammlung Friederichsen/Stadtmuseum Oldenburg

Margaretha Magnus (née Schiff) * 1889

Schäferkampsallee 29 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

1943 Theresienstadt
ermordet am 15.4.1944

further stumbling stones in Schäferkampsallee 29:
Dr. Rudolf Borgzinner, Martha Dessen, Heinrich Harth, Meyer Jelinewski, Eva Emma Mathiason, Gertrud Stillschweig, Clara Streim, Emma Weiland

Margaretha Magnus, née Schiff, born on 14 Aug. 1889 in Gröbzig/Anhalt, deported on 23 June 1943 to Theresienstadt, died there on 15 Apr. 1944
Gottlieb Leonardus Magnus, born on 15 Sept. 1883 in Hannover, deported on 11 July 1942 to Auschwitz
Antonie Magnus, born on 20 Dec. 1921 in Kassel, deported on 11 July 1942 to Auschwitz

Schäferkampsallee 29 / Osterstrasse 19

Margaretha Magnus, her husband Gottlieb and their daughter Antonie lived at Osterstrasse 19 probably since 1936. They had moved from Wilhelmshaven to Hamburg.

Margaretha Magnus was born on 14 Aug. 1889 as the daughter of Julius and Sara Schiff, née Cohn, in Gröbzig in the Köthen District (Anhalt). Gröbzig is a small town in Sachsen-Anhalt, with a population of approx. 3,000 today. Since the seventeenth century, Jews had been living in Gröbzig. The town featured a synagogue, a Jewish school, and a Jewish cemetery. In Gröbzig, the proportion of Jewish men and women in relation to the total population was high because the conditions to do business there were good. Only at the beginning of the twentieth century did their numbers decline substantially. The synagogue was not destroyed in 1938 because the last Jews of the Community had already made it available for museum purposes.

Margaretha Magnus had one older brother, Walter Schiff, who managed to emigrate to the USA. Her sister Erna, married to Adolf Hirche in Jever, also survived.

Gottlieb Magnus came from Hannover. His parents were Gustav and Cato, née Lorjé. Margaretha and Gottlieb had been married in Wilhelmshaven on 20 July 1910. In 1904, Gottlieb Magnus had been hired as a technical draftsman on the imperial shipyard in Wilhelmshaven, subsequently rising to become a marine engineer. It was the first time that a Jew reached such a position in Wilhelmshaven. In the First World War, he was involved in the construction of German submarines. Despite his services, he lost his job in 1935, moving with his wife and daughter to Hamburg. He received a pension of 262 RM (reichsmark) a month. On 16 June 1936, Gottlieb Magnus registered with the Hamburg Jewish Community. In early 1940, when a "security order” ("Sicherungsanordnung”) was issued against him, he indicated that his father and his father-in-law, i.e., Gustav Magnus and Julius Schiff, lived in his household as well. Gottlieb Magnus submitted an application for lifting the "security order” because he had done service in the rank of an officer for 35 and three quarter years. The application was turned down but his allowance, the sum of which he could dispose, was increased slightly.

Daughter Antonie Magnus remained unmarried. She attended a tailor’s school. There was a Jewish vocational high school for female tailors at Heimhuder Strasse 70, where Jewish women could still receive training at the time.

At the end of the 1930s, Margaretha Magnus fell seriously ill and spent more than two years in the Israelite Hospital. In Nov. 1941, she returned home, still sick, probably because no regular hospital operation existed by that time. Then, on 11 July 1942, Margaretha Magnus was re-admitted to the Israelite Hospital because on the same day, her husband Gottlieb and her daughter Antonie were deported to Auschwitz. At the time, they no longer lived on Osterstrasse, but in the "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”) at Bundesstrasse 43. The names of Margaretha Magnus, née Schiff, Gottlieb Magnus, engineer, and Antonie Magnus already appeared in combination with the address of Osterstrasse 19, third floor, on the deportation list for 9 Nov. 1941 to Minsk, but they were crossed out there.

Margaretha Magnus was deported from Beneckestrasse 4, the retirement home of the Jewish Community, on 23 June 1943, along with Moritz Magnus (born on 11 Aug. 1867 in Hamburg), who was possibly a relative of her husband and died in Theresienstadt ten days before Margaretha, on 5 Apr. 1944. In 1937, Moritz Magnus had still lived at Oberstrasse 62.


Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2017
© Susanne Lohmeyer

Quellen: 1; 2 (R1940/135); 4; 5; 7; 8; StaH 351-11 AfW 011096 Schiff, Walter (zu Margaretha Magnus); StaH 552-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 992n Bd 24 Fürsorgeakten; StaH 522-1, 992e2 Bd. 2 Deportationslisten; http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/wilhelmshaven_synagoge.htm; http://stopp-rechts.de/nationalsozialismus-in-whv-1933-bis-1945/; Hermann Obenaus, Historisches Handbuch, Bd. 2, S. 1554 und 1558; HAB II 1937, 1938 und 1941; HAB IV 1940; Peter Offenborn, Jüdische Jugend, S. 768.