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Ilse Lippstadt * 1905

Curschmannstraße 8 (Hamburg-Nord, Eppendorf)

1941 Minsk

further stumbling stones in Curschmannstraße 8:
Johanna Allen, Helene Elsa Bauer, Sara Gertrud Theiner, Iwan von der Walde

Ilse Lippstadt, born 12/31/1905 in Elmshorn, deported to Minsk and shot there 11/18/1941

Curschmannstrasse 8

Ilse Lippstadt registered with the German-Israelitic Community in Hamburg on January 8th, 1936, shortly before her 30th birthday. She had left Elmshorn, where she was born, because the conditions for Jews – especially those without influence and assets – had become unbearable there after the Nuremberg laws had come into force – as was generally the case in small towns in Germany.

Ilse’s great-grandfather Hirsch Elias Lippstadt, a native of Hamburg, had already settled as cattle trader and butcher in the then Danish municipality prior to 1840. For a time, he had the highest income among his fellow-believers in Elmshorn. His son and grandson, Ilse’s father, had followed in his footsteps. Julius Lippstadt had married a girl from Hamburg, Jettchen (Henriette) Rothgiesser, whom he was able to offer a secure middle-class livelihood. Ilse had two sisters; Fanny, born February 16th, 1903, and Anna, born December 14th, 1908.

The Lippstadt family belonged to the part of the Jewish community that engaged in the public life of Elmshorn. In 1881/82, Julius Lippstadt supported a candidate for Mayor by a newspaper advertisement; and two women from the family were among the founders of the first women’s club in Elmshorn. Julius took part in the First World War. In 1931, his daughter Anna Lippstadt had herself baptized and married the Protestant Christian baker Oskar Willi Ernst Lötje. Considering these developments, it is not surprising that her sister Ilse Lippstadt also left the "Israelitic Religious Association” on September 29th, 1932.

This and the fact that Ilse was single and penniless and had neither work nor an abode in Hamburg in 1936 posed a tough problem for the Jewish Community to solve.

Ilse was placed as a housemaid with the Guggenheim family at Hallerstrasse 83 I (which soon after was renamed "Ostmarkstrasse”) at wages of 43.25 RM plus room and board. In Elmshorn, where she had worked as a secretary, she had earned 130 RM a month. In the following three years, she found shelter at close-by Rothenbaumchaussee 73 and next at Oderfelder Strasse 42/III with the Eckert family. Later still, she moved close to the Aussenalster Lake in Alte Rabenstrasse 9/I, where for a short time she shared a flat with her sister Fanny and Anna Rosenbaum (cf. there).

Fanny Lippstadt had already come to Hamburg in 1932. According to the files, she was admitted to the concentration camp Lichtenberg near Wittenberg on the Elbe in July of 1938 and detained there until shortly before her emigration to England in summer of 1939. We do not know why Lippstadt was arrested, but it is common knowledge that the Gestapo often acted wantonly.

By then, Ilse Lippstadt, too, had substantiated a plan to emigrate to England. In August, her relocation goods with an appraised value of 700 RM even passed the official inspection. However, the authorities only released it immediately before the outbreak of the war, thus making Ilse’s emigration fail.

In this desperate situation, Ilse received the news that her father had died in Elmshorn, aged 69. Her mother Jettchen soon moved near to her daughter in Hamburg, where she was admitted to the "Jews’ house at Frickestrasse 24. When Ilse in August was assigned to a new flat with the widow Gertrud Theiner, née Bauer (68), and her sister, the schoolteacher Helene Elsa Bauer (65), Ilse was responsible for three old ladies; and she even had to support her mother from her meager wages.

On November 18th, 1941, Ilse Lippstadt was separated from the three women who needed help by her deportation to Minsk.

By chance, we have gained knowledge of the circumstances of Ilse’s death. Harald Kirschninck, chronicler of the Elmshorn Jews, was able to interview the surviving sister Anna Lötje and reported the following account of an eye witness from Elmshorn who had been a soldier in Russia, whom Anna had met: "Her sister Ilse was marching with a column of other Jews near Minsk; the column encountered a group of soldiers, and among them, Ilse recognized a few young men from Elmshorn whom she had used to date at the "Holsteinischer Hof”, an inn frequented by young people. ‘Hello Elmshorn!’ she called out. Whereupon she was led aside and shot ‘in a field’.”

Finally, on July 15th, 1942, the Gestapo also deported Ilse’s mother Jettchen. At the age of 70, she reached Theresienstadt, where she, too, perished miserably 16 months later.


Translated by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: March 2017
© Dietrich Rauchenberger

Quellen: 1; 9; StaH 314-15 OFP, Fvg 5624; StaH 332-8 Meldewesen, A 51 (Ilse Lippstadt); Stadtarchiv Elmshorn, Auskunft Marion Eymers am 3.2.2010; Kirschninck, Juden in Elmshorn, Teil 1, Elmshorner Geschichte, Bd. 9, 1996, S. 147f., 155, 157; derselbe, Teil 2, Bd. 12, 1999, S. 141, 149, 158; derselbe, Doppelt so viele Elmshorner Juden deportiert wie bisher angenommen, in "Elmshorner Nachrichten" v. 30.6.2007; derselbe, www.stolpersteine-elmshorn.de.
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