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Elisabeth Flatau * 1880

Bogenstraße 5 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

1941 Riga
ermordet

further stumbling stones in Bogenstraße 5:
Carl Stefan Flatau, Fanny Klein (Kleinberger), David Walter Kohlstädt, Margareta Kohlstädt, Manfred Kohlstädt, Helmuth Kohlstädt, Albert Rosenstein, Henriette Rosenstein

Elisabeth Flatau, born 7 Sep. 1880 in Hamburg, deported 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga
Carl Stefan Flatau, born 20 Oct. 1881 in Hamburg, deported 24 Feb. 1943 to Theresienstadt, died there 5 Apr. 1943

Bogenstraße 5

Elisabeth Flatau was 61 years old, unmarried, and had no children when she was deported to Riga. Her parents were Sophie Flatau, née Rothschild (*1854) and the engineer and businessman Moritz Flatau (*1840). Like Elisabeth later, her father worked in a bank. In 1880 her parents lived at Große Allee 10, today Kurt-Schumacher-Allee in St. Georg. Ten years later the family lived in Rotherbaum at Eichenallee 11. The street no longer exists. It crossed Bornstraße.

According to her church tax records, Elisabeth Flatau was a bank clerk, and worked at the Dresdner Bank as a shorthand typist for the bank director. She entered retirement on 1 April 1933. She had been suspended with pay on 1 October 1932. Her retirement was evidently not a result of anti-Semitic personnel policies, but rather of the merger of the Darmstädter und Nationalbank with the Dresdner Bank. Elisabeth Flatau received pension payments from her employee’s insurance, from the civil servant’s insurance union, and from the Dresdner Bank.

Her large apartment at Bogenstraße 5 had a separate dining room and a Steinway piano, according to a distant cousin’s testimony at the restitution hearings. She thus lived in well-to-do circumstances before her fortune was plundered by the National Socialist regime. She was forced to pay a "Jewish property levy” of 5,110 Reichsmarks in five installments between December 1938 and November 1939. In March 1940 her assets were placed under a security order. Her application for permission to withdraw 300 Reichsmarks per month was approved in November 1941, shortly before she was deported. According to information from her relatives, she had bought two large leather suitcases for the deportation, as she assumed that she would be able to take bedding as well as clothing with her. The actual conditions during the deportation and after the arrival at Riga-Jungfernhof were beyond her imagination. After her deportation her household belongings were auctioned off by the Carl F. Schlüter auction house. The proceeds went to the Chief Tax Authority.

Elisabeth Flatau had an invalid brother for whom she cared. Carl Stefan Flatau was born on 28 October 1881. His illness first became apparent at age 15. He had to leave school and was a patient at the Alsterdorf Mental Institution and at the Friedrichsberg State Hospital. A brain tumor was operated on twice. He later also had epileptic seizures. He was repeatedly released and re-admitted to hospitals, until he finally went to live with his sister on 27 May 1938. He was deported to Theresienstadt on 24 February 1943, where he died on 5 April of the same year. At the time of his deportation he lived at Beneckestraße 2.

Translator: Amy Lee

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Susanne Lohmeyer

Quellen: 1; 2 (R1940/230); 5; StaH 332-5 Standesämter, 1970 und 3731/1880; StaH 332-5, 1997 u. 4510/1881; StaH 351-11 AfW, AZ070980; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 992e2 Bd 3 und 5, Deportationsliste; HAB II 1890; Michael Wunder u. a., S. 158; "Wo Wurzeln waren …", S. 82f.