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Richard Meyer * 1870

Isestraße 71 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

HIER WOHNTE
RICHARD MEYER
JG. 1870
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
1942 TREBLINKA
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Isestraße 71:
Gretchen Meyer, Edgar Meyer

Edgar Meyer, born on 19 Nov. 1901 in Hamburg, deported on 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk
Gretchen Meyer, née Hartig, born 14 Apr. 1876 in Hamburg, deported on 19 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, murdered on 21 Sept. 1942 in Treblinka
Richard Meyer, born on 31 Mar. 1870 in Hamburg, deported on 19 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, murdered on 21 Sept. 1942 in Treblinka

On 8 Nov. 1941, Richard and Gretchen Meyer had to bid their son Edgar farewell. He was deported to Minsk. One morning nearly a month later, Gretchen Meyer found her subtenant Elisabeth Wolf unconscious in her bed. She had ended her life when she received the deportation order to Riga. In doing so, she followed her husband, Cäsar Wolf, Worshipful Master (Meister vom Stuhl) of the oldest Masonic Lodge in Germany, "Absalom zu den drei Nesseln,” into death, which he had sought as early as 1933. It is unclear whether Elisabeth Wolf, née Meyer, was a relative of her landlords or the congruity of names was a coincidence.

The Meyers were "dissidents.” When they were forced to join the Jewish Community, because according to the Nazi terminology they were "racial Jews,” the parents had themselves entered as having no religious creed (glaubenslos), son Edgar as being a Protestant as late as 1939.

As the directory reveals, another person was living with them in 1939, Gretchen Meyer’s mother.

In the same source, father and son are indicated as being "i. F.,” i.e. "in the company” "A. L. Meyer,” probably a commercial agency that they had taken over from Richard Meyer’s father Adolph. From the Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer) card file of the Jewish Community one can gather that Richard Meyer must have had income of his own until 1942.

That year, Gretchen and Richard Meyer no longer lived in their own apartment. They had been forced to move to the building of the Portuguese synagogue on Innocentiastrasse, which had been set up as a "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”). From there they were deported to Theresienstadt on 19 July 1942 and two months later to Treblinka, where they were murdered.


Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2017
© Christa Fladhammer

Quellen: 1; 2; 5; AB Hamburg 1938, 1939; www.abendblatt.de/article 1007624/ Caesar-Wolf-gedemuetigt-geaechtet-und-in-den-Tod-getrieben.
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