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Eduard Pulvermann * 1882

Geffckenstraße 15 (Hamburg-Nord, Eppendorf)


HIER WOHNTE
EDUARD PULVERMANN
JG. 1882
GESTAPOHAFT
ERMORDET
9.4.1944

see:

Eduard F. Pulvermann, b. 9.2.1882 in Hamburg, died 4.9.1944 in the Langenhorn detention hospital

Geffckenstraße 15

Eduard F. Pulvermann was born on 2 September 1882 on Fährstrasse in the Uhlenhorst district of Hamburg. He was baptized Evangelical-Lutheran at the Church of St. Georg. He attended the private high school of Dr. Biebr, rowed for the Germania Rowing Club, sailed in the North German Regatta Club, and discovered early on an interest in equestrian sports.

Eduard’s father, the merchant Albert Pulvermann, had emigrated from the Prussian Province of Posen to New York and joined the import-export firm Markt & Co. His mother, Anna Franziska, was born in Milwaukee, the daughter of John (Johann) Markt who was born in Ried im Innkreis (Austria). John Markt had founded the firm in 1860 and in 1882 handed over the direction of the family undertaking to his brother-in-law in New York and his son-in-law Albert Pulvermann in Hamburg, where a branch had existed since 1874.

After graduating from business school, Eduard received professional training in his father’s firm in Hamburg, as well as at Markt & Co. in London, Paris, and New York.

As the son of an American citizen, Eduard received American citizenshiip at birth. In 1903, by his own wish, he was naturalized as a citizen of Hamburg. He completed his military service with the 16th Hussars in Schleswig, with the mounted light infrantry at Langensalza, and with the 17th dragoons at Ludwigslust. When Eduard Pulvermann married Freiin Ruth von Cramm in 1908, he was the authorized representative of Markt & Co. in Hamburg. After the births of their children Franziska and Curt, the Pulvermann family moved out of their rented dwelling at Loogestieg 8 in Eppendorf and into the single-family house at the nearby Geffckenstrasse 15. From 1912 to 1925, Eduard Pulvermann was a member of the freemason lodge Emanuel zur Maienblume.

After a short guest appearance with the Hamburg Polo Club, Eduard Pulvermann directed his entire sporting activities to the steeplechase and show jumping. With success, he participated in the all-terrain Hamburg-Wandsbek hunting club rides. He rode in his first jumping tournament in 1912 in Travemünde. In the next 25 years, his riding career was marked by victories, trophies, prizes, and cups from the famous German and European arenas. Eduard Pulvermann became famous worldwide as the founder of the German Jumping Derby, designing and building the obstacle course for it. Before the Derby could take place for the first time in 1920, the outbreak of war in 1914 shook the world.

Mobilization orders reached Pulverman as he was making preparations for a tournament in Travemünde. He sensed that "something enormous, unfathomable" was about to happen and was far from glorifying war. Pulvermann took part in the great battles of both the Eastern and Western Fronts. During the Revolution of 1918, his sword and officer’s epaulettes were taken – one of the bitterest war experiences for a cavalry officer.

When Pulvermann returned, physically unscathed, to civilian life in March 1919, famine ruled in Hamburg. Undeterred by this, he continued what he had to leave off in 1914 – preparation for a jumping tournament in Travemünde. There he designed, after the style of the landscape of Holstein, a hedge-ditch-hedge combination which since the fourteenth German obstacle and jumping derby became known as Pulvermann’s Ditch.

His circle of friends formed around other riders, in particular Sigismund Prinz von Preußen, Erich von Buddenbrock-Pläswitz, Rudolf Graf Goertz, Ottmar von Loessl, H. Otto Traun. His partner in team jumping was Armgard Princess zu Lippe-Biesterfeld, a relative of his wife Ruth and the godmother to his youngest daughter. In reaction to the Treaty of Versailles, Pulvermann became a member of the German National People’s Party (DNVP), however without playing a prominent political role. He was more strongly engaged as a co-founder of the "National Club of 1919,” a conservative gentleman’s club in Hamburg.

In 1921 Eduard Pulvermann acquired the noble estate of Westensee near Rendsburg (Schleswig-Holstein), where he raised cattle and a herd of Westensee purebred white swine. The owner and rider of many good show jumpers, he established his own stud farm to raise cross-bred German horses in Westensee. His most famous tournament horses were Corraggio, Heiliger Speer [sacred lance], Tristan, Kampfgesell [fellow-fighter], and Weisser Hirsch [white deer]. A small bronze statue by the sculptor Willibald Fritsch shows Pulvermann on Tristan. He had himself painted by the Hamburg artist Hermann Junker in a red rider’s cape and top hat on Weisser Hirsch. Upon acquisition of the estate Eduard Pulvermann became the patron of St. Catherine’s church in Westensee. Together with his brother John, Eduard Pulvermann instituted a bourgeois coat of arms. On the right, John is turned toward a helmet and shield with a unicorn rampant; Eduard stands to the left. The heraldic inscription reads "In pluribus unum" ["From many one"], the motto their grandfather John Markt had taken for his firm from the Great Seal of the United States.

Following the First World War, the European market for the American goods that Markt & Co. had previously imported, collapsed. For this reason, the brothers established the HERO Fittings Works in Bad Oldesloe. In their own bronze castings foundry, they manufactured fittings and valves which, along with the products of other producers, they exported mostly to South America. Despite the Inflation and Great Depression, this business and his shares in Markt & Co. of New York assured Eduard Pulvermann and his family of a high standard of living in Hamburg and on his estate in Westensee. He was a famous tournament horseman and traveled for business on luxury liners during the 1920s and 1930s.

This happy period was troubled in 1927 by the early death of his wife Ruth. In 1929 Eduard Pulvermann married Sibylla Freiin von Alten. From this marriage came their daughters Jutta and Armgard.

In 1932 Eduard Pulvermann was president of the Markt & Co. trading company of Hamburg, vice-president of the Markt & Hammacher Company, in which were gathered the worldwide activities of the parent business in New York, on the board of directors of Markt & Co. Copenhagen, president of HERO SAC Buenos Aires, director of the HERO Fittings Works in Bad Oldesloe, and partner in Abrasive Materials, LLC, formerly Pike & Escher, in Sonneberg. The National Socialist Foreign Currency and Commercial laws put the export firm Markt & Co. into economic difficulties in 1938. In this context, the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce expressed doubts about the "Aryan character of the American firm’s participation in markets that heretofore were cultivated by German firms.”

Upon inquiry from the "Reich Office of Genealogical Research," the Humbug Registry Office confirmed that the deceased parents of Eduard Pulvermann were of the Christian faith. Following the occupation of Poland by the German armed forces, the district court of Ostrowo, the birthplace of Pulvermann’s father, found evidence that the father’s side of the family descended from a long-established Jewish merchant family. In 1834, great grandfather Abraham Pulvermann was one of the first wealthy "Jewish patriarchs" to receive Prussian citizenship. Grandfather Moritz Pulvermann, a manufacturer of liquors and president of the Jewish Synagogue Community, married Sophie Jaffe, also the descendant of a long-settled wealthy Jewish family.

Even though his father Albert had converted to the Christian faith, Eduard Pulvermann was, because of his Jewish grandparents, classified by Nazi race ideologues as a "half-Jew,” that is to say, "an assimilated Jewish half-breed of the first degree, with Christian faith and provisional Reich citizenship." Pulvermann attracted the attention of the Gestapo. In March 1941, the Westensee estate was searched by Gestapo officials, led by the director of the "Jew Department," Claus Göttsche.

At the Lehrter railroad station in Berlin, Eduard Pulvermann was taken into "protective custody" by the Hamburg Gestapo officials Stephan (Jew Department) and Westphal (Customs Investigations) to clarify a few questions; he was brought to Hamburg Gestapo headquarter in city hall. From there Eduard Pulvermann was placed in the Fuhlsbüttel police jail and in July 1941 in the detention center prison. The charge before the Hanseatic Special Court dealt with "maliciousness."

In 1939, during his last foreign travel to the offices of Markt & Co. in Oslo, Eduard Pulvermann had written a letter to his cousin Edgar Vintschger, the CFO of the firm in New York. He described the difficult financial situation of the firm in Hamburg which had already been forced to transfer the Chile business to his private residence on Geffckenstrass: "I have fired all but four employees.” And, he continued, "I remain here until 29 October to enjoy the good dining. The food at home is frightful.” A copy of this letter was found in Oslo in 1940 after the invasion of Norway; it formed the basis of the charges against him. Because this remark was an "untrue assertion of a factual sort, suited to seriously damage the welfare of the Reich,” Eduard Pulvermann was sentenced to six months imprisonment in January 1942. On account of his service in the First World War and on the basis of testimony from character witnesses confirming Pulvermann’s national sentiments, the police and interrogation time were counted as part of the sentence which was therefore considered as served. Immediately after Pulvermann’s arrest, the flourishing HERO works fell into difficulties, because "Jewish-related enterprises” were barred from supplying strategic materiel. Ultimately, bowing to political pressure, the works had to be sold to Wilhelm Klauke, the then owner of the Hamburg Th. Rose foundry.

After the maliciousness trial, Eduard Pulvermann remained in detention by the Hamburg State Court on a charge of foreign currency infractions. When Gestapo officials wanted to transfer Pulvermann to "Kolafu,” the Fuhlsbüttel police prison, the director of the interrogation prison, Chief Councilor Robert Bredow, refused to hand him over, although for his part he, "felt in no way bound to him. Quite the contrary, I personally do not like him at all.” Because he was convinced that it was not a matter of currency violations but rather "an influential personal enemy” that stood behind the charges, Bredow consigned the prisoner Pulvermann to the custody of Dr. Wilhelm Callsen and Dr. Wilhelm Schadel, prison infirmary doctors, who were his subordinates. They declared him unfit for incarceration and kept him, at Bredow’s direction, in the infirmary until the currency violations trial.

Bredow hindered the examination of his medical records by SS-doctors and enabled Mrs. Sibylla Pulvermann to visit her husband in his own office, in which there was already in place a cigar for the prisoner.

In October 1943, Pulvermann was sentenced to three months in prison and a 90,000 RM fine on account of "authorizing a fraudulent foreign currency transaction.” The court recognized explicitly that Pulvermann had not personally enriched himself. Once again the sentence was deemed served by the previous interrogation and police detention time. Nevertheless, Pulvermann appealed the judgement in the Leipzig Reich Court. Perhaps, he hoped thereby to avoid further detention by the Gestapo.

Because Chief Councilor Bredow had extended protection to Pulvermann and other prisoners, he was forced into retirement in October 1943. On the day that Bredow had to leave his office, Eduard Pulvermann lost his protection and was placed once again into "protective custody” in Neuengamme concentration camp.

On April 1, 1944, as a result of the efforts of his lawyer Dr. Carl Stumme, the seriously ill Eduard Pulvermann was again transferred to the Langenhorn prison hospital. He died there a week later on Easter Sunday, 9 April 1944. His ashes were interred in the family crypt at the Ohlsdorfer cemetery.

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

Stand: February 2018
© Joachim Winkelmann

Quellen: Winkelmann, Eduard F. Pulvermann, 2007, dort Quellenangaben im Detail; Robert Bredow Nachlass, in Familienbesitz; (Grabstelle: AB 25, 96-100/AC 125-143).

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