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Iwan van der Walde
© Norma van der Walde

Iwan von der Walde * 1883

Curschmannstraße 8 (Hamburg-Nord, Eppendorf)

KZ Fuhlsbüttel 1938
Freitod 18.8.1942 HH

Die korrekte Schreibweise des Namens ist Iwan van der Walde

further stumbling stones in Curschmannstraße 8:
Johanna Allen, Helene Elsa Bauer, Ilse Lippstadt, Sara Gertrud Theiner

Iwan van der Walde, b. 12.31.1883 in Hamburg, a suicide on 8.18.1942

Iwan van der Walde, born 12.31.1883 in Hamburg, was the third son of Magnus van der Walde, a native of Emden. After his death, Iwan and his brother Max continued their father’s firm. It was a large, cohesive family with Max and his three sisters, Marianne, Sarah, and Minne, living for several years in neighboring houses on Haynstrasse in Hamburg-Eppendorf.

Iwan was a member of the Henry Jones Lodge of the B’nai B’rith (Sons of the Covenant) and must have led an active social and cultural life. According to reports from the family, he could not, on racial grounds, marry his long-time partner. Her son, presumably by Iwan, attempted to find a position for Iwan as a butler in England, but in vain. As late as 1941, there is evidence of attempts to emigrate to the USA, but his swiftly degenerating health may have been one of the grounds for giving them up. On 10.25.1941, he and his brother Max narrowly missed being deported to Litzmannstadt (Lodz); both their names were crossed off the standby list.

Max, along with his wife, mother- and brother-in-law, were dramatically able to escape Germany for Argentina. For Iwan, this was not possible. He must have been at the end of his powers, for on 8.18.1942, shortly before deportation to Theresienstadt, he took his own life.


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

Stand: May 2019
© Norma van der Walde

Quellen: Hamburger jüdische Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. Gedenkbuch, Staatsarchiv Hamburg Bd. XV, bearbeitet von Jürgen Sielemann unter Mitarbeit von Paul Flamme, Hamburg 1995; Recherchen Sabine Brunotte (Stadtteilarchiv Eppendorf)

Iwan van der Walde, b. 12.31.1883 in Hamburg, died by suicide on 8.18.1942 in Hamburg

Curschmannstraße 8
The van der Walde family could look back on a long history. At the end of the fifteenth century, their Portuguese ancestors, who bore the name "de Silveira,” settled in the Netherlands. In 1722, one of them, Binjamin Wolf da Silveira, moved from Amsterdam to Emden and renamed himself "van der Walde.” Six generations later, namely in 1846, Magnus Moses van der Walde was born. He settled in Hamburg and married Frederike Amalie (Malchen) Seiligman (b. 1853). They had six children: Max Magnus, the eldest, born in Hamburg in 1880, was in dramatic fashion able to flee to South America with his wife in 1942; he died in Buenos Aires in 1956. The second son of Machlen and Magnus, Siegmund, fell in Flanders in 1917. Iwan was the third son, and followed by three daughters: Marianne, born in 1886, died in the USA, as did Sara (Ary) van der Walde, born in 1888. The youngest, Minna, born in 1890, was murdered in Izbica in 1942, together with her husband and son. The fate of this family is movingly described by Mark Roseman in his book, In einem unbewachten Augenblick [In an unguarded moment].

Iwan’s father, Magnus, had opened a firm on Poolstrasse (near the coal yards), which supplied the construction industry with copper sheets, pipes, roofing, and zinc. He later moved the firm to Carolinenstrasse. When his wife died in 1908, his daughters took care of the house at Schlüterstrasse 80. His three sons also lived there. Magnus died in 1912. His children moved together to Haynstrasse 7 in Eppendorf, which was, like many others in the "founders’ period,” was a new street. Minna was responsible for the siblings’ household. Max, Iwan’s brother, married Goldi Krombach from Posen in 1913. They took an apartment in a neighboring house at Haynstrasse 5. At their wedding, Minna got to know Goldi’s brother, David. In 1916 they married and subsequently lived in Essen.

At the beginning of the 1930s, Max’s mother-in-law, along with Goldi’s brother, Emil, moved to Haynstrasse 8. Family cohesion appears to have been quite strong. On Passover, Purim, and the High Holy Days, the men went to the synagogue.

Nothing is known about Iwan’s schooldays or training. In the telephone directories of 1914 and 1918, there was listed under his name a business dealing in paper, leather wares, and advertising announcements at Grindelberg 3a; in 1925 and 1931, the same source lists him "in the Firm Adolph Riefling & Son.” Later he conducted, together with Max as co-owners, their father’s firm, which in the stock market directory of 1933 was listed at the address Mercurstrasse 7 as a "warehouse for raw and rolled metals.” Sometime in the previous years, Iwan had moved to Curschmannstrasse 8.

Like his father before him, he also was a member of the Henry Jones Lodge. This Jewish order in the tradition of freemasonry was founded in 1887 as a regional association of the B’nai B’rith (Sons of the Covenant). It was responsible for numerous initiatives and associations which concerned themselves with social work, education, and culture. This movement had been triggered by the wave of antisemitism in the 1870s, which "needed” a scapegoat for the economic crisis. Iwan must therefore have been a man interested in community, one who lived an active social and cultural life. As revealed by the family, however, he did not discuss his private affairs in the circle of his siblings. Iwan supposedly had a love affair with a non-Jew who, around 1920, gave birth to a son named Otfried. Her husband died a short time later. Why the two did not then marry is unknown. Later, when Iwan’s life as a Jew in Germany was made impossible, Otfried, whom "everyone knew was Iwan’s son, and who was invited to all the family celebrations," went to England in order to find a butler’s position for his father. This was related by Iwan’s nephew Kurt to his daughter. Why Otfried had no success is not known; his father was perhaps too old or too ill. At the end of the 1940s, Otfried emigrated to the USA.

In 1938, the Magnus van der Walde firm was "Aryanized." Iwan and Max’s family – he and Goldi had two children, Kurt Wolfgang and Vera – probably lived from the proceeds of the sale and from their savings. Their assets were placed under a "security order.” In the aftermath of the November 1938 Pogrom, Iwan was taken to the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp.

The rest of Iwan’s life story can be deduced from various letters to the Office of the Chief Financial Governor. For every extra disbursement, practically everything that did not fall under the category of rent or authorized living expenses, an application had to be made for an unblocking of his own assets.

In June 1939, Max petitioned for permission to be allowed to take out "an allowance" from his assets for his sick brother for the next three months, to pay fees that were due, among other things. In July, he wrote that Iwan was soon to be released from the hospital and embark on a cure for which he asked a special disbursement. Iwan himself applied in August for a certificate of clearance because he was apparently attempting to emigrate to the USA: On his religious communal tax record (later crossed out) it states:

"Departed Sept. 39 through England/USA." Was it the beginning of the Second World War that brought his plans to nothing? In any event, he pursued his plan at least up to 1941. Evidence for this is a bill for telegram fees, which he submitted to the Office of the Chief Financial Governor in June 1941: "With regard to a telegram to the USA related to emigration on HAPAG, RM 22.”

In a further letter Iwan asked for a special disbursement of money in order to pay a bill from the General Hospital of Altona, as well as to its chief physician. Subsequently, his health again deteriorated. According to Max, "my brother Iwan ... had to undergo an operation and is presently in the hospital." Iwan added: "I point to my fragile health. With only a brief interruption I was in the hospital for three months and required constant care there.”

Since 1936 Iwan lived again at Haynstrasse 5. Apparently, he sub-leased from his brother Max and sister-in-law Goldi, for she reported to the Office of the Chief Financial Governor an income of 100 RM, payments by sub-lessees Iwan van der Walde and Miss Sara Gunst. In addition, she wrote: "My expenditures I estimate at RM 25 per month; I therefore beg you to leave the remaining RM 75 to my own discretion.” The request was denied. In January 1942, Max informed the Office of the Chief Financial Governor that they no longer had sub-lessees. Iwan had moved to Grossneumarkt 56, House B. In May 1942, he was again living with his brother, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law, Emil – they had relocated in a former Jewish foundation now converted to a "Jew house.” To be sure, their sufferings in Germany were at an end; however, new hardships awaited them. For months the three of them had to hold out on a sailing yacht beyond Spanish territorial waters, until they received the necessary right of passage and in February 1943 safely reached Argentina.

A few months earlier Iwan and Max narrowly avoided deportation. On the "standby list” for deportation to Liztmannstadt (Lodz) on 25 October 1941, both their names were crossed out. There were "sufficiently many” of those designated for deportation who appeared at the collection point, so that the previously determined number had been reached. Had that not been the case, those on the standby list would have made up the difference.

A letter of January 1942 from the Jewish Religion Association informed the cemetery office of Hamburg-Ohlsdorf that "Mr. Iwan Israel von der Walde would be responsible for Jewish burials. In this function, Iwan carried out the funeral for John Kronach (see his biographical entry), who poisoned himself in July 1942. Iwan, too, must have been at the end of his powers. One month later he took his own life. He had been on fire watch in the now empty building that once housed the Jewish orphanage at Papendamm 3. On the morning of 19 August 1942, a coworker found his farewell letter on a desk in the library. Iwan van der Walde, 58 years old at the time of his death, had hung himself it the attic of the house. In his farewell note to the Jewish Religious Association, he said: "I can no longer bear this life, for I know that I am no longer up to the spiritual demands placed upon me…To all those who were well-intentioned toward me, I thank with my best wishes, Iwan van der Walde.”

Sixty years later, his grandniece Norma van der Walde, granddaughter of his brother Max, laid a commemorative stone for him.


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

© Sabine Brunotte

Quellen: 1; 2; StaH 351-11 AfW, 311283; StaH 314-15 OFP, R 1938/3390; StaH 213-8 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht Verwaltung, Abl.2 451a, E1.1c; StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde – Unnatürliche Sterbefälle 1942/1465; StaH Friedhofsverwaltung 273; 300 Jahre der Familie van der Walde (privat); private Aufzeichnungen zur Familiengeschichte (ohne Titel), beides freundlicherweise zur Verfügung gestellt von Norma van der Walde, März 2010; mündliche Auskunft Norma van der Walde, 2.3.2010; Verzeichnis der Mitglieder Der Drei Hamburger Logen U.O.B.B. Henry Jones Loge, Steinthal Loge und Nehemia Nobel Loge (1933); Hamburger Telefonbuch von 1933 und von 1938; Verzeichnis Hamburger Börsenfirmen (abgeschl, Mitte Feb. 1933); Hirsch, Die Henry-Jones-Loge, in: Wamser/Weinke, Ehemals in Hamburg, 1991, S. 64ff.
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