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Käthchen Hirschfeld (née Neufeld) * 1887

Greifswalder Straße 82/Ecke Danziger Straße (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

HIER WOHNTE
KÄTHCHEN HIRSCHFELD
GEB. NEUFELD
JG. 1887
DEPORTIERT 1941
ERMORDET IN
MINSK

further stumbling stones in Greifswalder Straße 82/Ecke Danziger Straße:
Isidor Hirschfeld

Adele Mayer, née Hirschfeld, b. 6.18.1877 in Culm (Chelmno) on the Vistula River, deported to the "Litzmannstadt" (Lodz) ghetto on 10.25.1941, killed there on 4.5.1942

Wandsbeker Stieg 41 (Wandsbeker Stieg 59)

Isidor Hirschfeld, b. 7.29.1874 in Bromberg (today, Bydgoszcz, Poland), deported to the Minsk ghetto on 11.18.1941, there killed
Käthchen Hirschfeld, née Neufeld, b. 6.10.1887 in Hamburg, deported to the Minsk ghetto on 11.18.1941, there killed

Greifswalder Straße 82, St. Georg

"She was a very nice woman, just like her daughter, my cousin. And she was divorced, which was very unusual at that time, especially in a Jewish family.” Thus Adele Mayer’s niece, Charlotte Koopmann, née Hirschfeld, depicted her in an interview she gave at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington in 1993. Charlotte’s father, Isidor Hirschfeld, and Adele Mayer, née Hirschfeld, were brother and sister. They came from West Prussia (today, Poland); their parents were the Jewish couple Casper Hirschfeld and Auguste, née Mayer. Isidor had been born on 29 July 1874 in Bromberg (Bydgoszcz) and was hence three years older than Adele. The two had four additional siblings, A sister who died already in 1907 from diabetes. A brother who died in World War I, around 1915. Another sister, Martha, was born on 24 March 1873, just like Adele, in the then Prussian city of Kulm (today, Chelmno, Poland). Nothing is known about the third sister.

On 9 June 1901, in Kulm, Adele Hirschfeld married the businessman Albert Mayer, around twelve years her senior. He had been born on 28 August 1865 in Alsheim, a small town in Rhenish Hesse, and like her Jewish; his parents were named Simon and Helene Mayer, née Bohnmann. After their marriage, Adele and Albert Mayer moved to Spandau, at that time an independent commune, today a city district of Berlin. It was there that Adele gave birth to their daughter Hildegard on 16 April 1902. Adele’s sister Martha also lived in Berlin at that time. She was single and earned her living running a small lending library. Charlotte Koopmann remembered her as an intelligent, very energetic woman.

In 1905, Adele Mayer separated from her husband, who had left the family and no longer cared for them. Immediately thereafter, she moved with her little daughter back to Bromberg, where her parents and brother Isidor now lived. In order to make her independent and to keep her from making financial claims on him, Albert Mayer had rented a little shop for her. She opened a paper and fancy goods store and was able to care for herself and Hildegard. Albert Mayer never paid child support for his daughter. In the meantime, Adele’s brother Isidor had also married. His wife was called Lina and was born Treuherz. In the next years they had two children. In 1907, Charlotte was born, in 1910, Kurt. In 1914, the doctors diagnosed Lina Hirschfeld with tuberculosis. Shortly thereafter, the First World War began and Isidor Hirschfeld was immediately called up. Now Lina, weakened by illness, had to care for the two children by herself. Isidor arranged a stay in a sanatorium for her and, in Berlin, engaged a nurse who cared for her around the clock. But this did not cure her. Lina Hirschfeld died in 1916.

When West Prussia, as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, was assigned to Poland in 1919, the Germans who lived there – and this included the Hirschfeld family – had a choice: either remain there and receive Polish citizenship or leave West Prussia and move into the German Reich. Adele Mayer’s family chose the latter. Isidor Hirschfeld with his two children, Charlotte and Kurt, resettled in Harburg, which at that time still belonged to the Prussian Province of Hanover. They could lodge there with Isidor’s brother, Sally, who ran a "specialty business in bedding, wicker furniture, and drapery” at Wilstorfer Strasse 74 A in Harburg.

On 4 August 1922, in Harburg, Isidor Hirschfeld married again. His second wife was named Käthchen Neufeld and came from Harburg. She was the daughter of the money and real estate broker, Max Neufeld, and his wife Jenny (see, "Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Harburg" and www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de); they lived with her parents even after the marriage at Mühlenstrasse 18 (today, Schlossmühlendamm 16). In the following year, Isidor Hirschfeld and his family left Harburg. In Bromberg, he had owned a prosperous wine dealership; now he began again in Hamburg and opened a bedding business at Greifswalder Strasse 82, in St. Georg. By so doing he was now active in the same industry as his brother, from whose professional contacts he certainly profited. The family found an apartment in the same building. Adele and her daughter Hildegard, now 17 years old, moved from Bromberg to Wesermünde (today, Bremerhaven). Hildegard had found work there. Previously, Adele had sold her business furnishings and inventory in Bromberg. But only a few years later, in 1923, she lost all her savings because of the hyperinflation in the German Reich. Now, Hildegard had to make a living for both of them. Around 1 November 1925, mother and daughter moved to Hamburg. In the same month, Adele Mayer became a member of the Hamburg Jewish Congregation. At Wandsbeker Stieg 59, she and her daughter found two rooms and a kitchen to sublease.

In 1927, Hildegard found a position as a saleswoman in the Hermann Tietz department store on Jungfernstieg. She was employed until 31 December 1933 – six years in which mother and daughter could settle down in Hamburg without having to worry about their livelihood. Hildegard’s salary was RM 145 (about 550 Euros); this sufficed for her and her mother. They paid RM 35 (about 160 Euros), with the remainder for food, clothing, and occasional special outlays. Then, however, she was dismissed and had to apply for unemployment aid. That amounted to only RM 57 (about 280 Euros). In the next years, brief employment alternated with periods of joblessness. From 1934 onward, Adele and Hildegard Mayer were often dependent on welfare support. In February 1934, Hildegard took a tailoring course at the Palestine Association of the Jewish Congregation, in order to open up a new income source, but without success. From 1937, in times of need, she received RM 10 per month from the Jewish Congregation. As more and more Jews became jobless and impoverished after the National Socialists took power, the Congregation had to divide its support among the ever increasing needy. Hildegard Mayer took any work she could find – whether as a saleswoman, a cleaning lady, household helper, as plantation worker in an import-export firm dealing in cut flowers, or as a worker in a wool-combing works.

At the same time, Adele and Hildegard Mayer’s everyday life was becoming ever more constricted by anti-Jewish laws and decrees, their living space narrower and narrower. To that was added the regular control visits by welfare providers, who became suspicious when mother and daughter were not at home. In early 1939, their apartment lease on Wandsbeker Stieg was canceled because they could no longer pay the rent. They had lived there for 14 years. The welfare worker noted: "both women cried a lot, because it was very difficult, as Jewesses, to find housing.” They finally found a place in March 1939 at Rappstrasse 15b, which was, however, much more confined than their previous apartment. Even a week before their forced move, they did not know how they would pay movers and the new rent. For this reason Hildegard wrote a desperate letter to the Hamburg Welfare Office, requesting money for the move and a higher welfare payment for her mother; she ended her inexpert letter with the words: "I would be very grateful, if you could inform us as soon as possible, because we are in need and sorrow.”

According to Charlotte Koopmann, quoted above, the members of the Hirschfeld family living in Hamburg drew closer to one another in the face of increasing harassment from without. But they could not help each other materially. Adele and Hildegard Mayer had told the welfare worker that they hoped to leave Germany soon. However, they seemed not to have attempted to do so.

Charlotte Koopmann, on the other hand, succeeded in fleeing Germany in September 1938. A stepbrother, who had already emigrated to the USA in 1933, presented an affidavit for her. Thus, in September 1938, she and her husband, Meinhard Koopmann, whom she had married in May 1938, were brought to safety.

On 30 August 1939, Hildegard Mayer, 37 years old, married the businessman Arthur Helmuth Sternfeld. He came from Danzig and had been previously married. His first wife was the non-Jewish Ottilie Dora Gebhard (b. 30 May 1900). The two had a daughter, born in 1928. The marriage was dissolved in 1929. Arthur Sternfeld lived together with Hildegard and Adele at Rappstrasse 15. Adele Mayer, Hildegard Sternfeld, and Arthur Sternfeld were deported to Lodz on 25 October 1941 and lost their lives there. Adele Mayer’s date of death was 5 April 1942. Adele’s brother Isidor Hirschfeld and his wife Käthchen were deported to Minsk on 18 November 1941 and were murdered there. For both, commemorative stones have been placed at Greifswalder Strasse 82, in Hamburg-St. Georg. (As of October 2015).

Isidor Hirschfeld’s son Kurt was diagnosed a schizophrenic. At 18 years of age, in March 1928, he was transferred from the Friedrichsberg State Mental Hospital to the Langenhorn State Mental Hospital. He died there on 3 March 1939 of tuberculosis.

Albert Mayer was sent on 19 July 1942 to Theresienstadt and from there, on 26 September 1942, to the Treblinka extermination camp, where he was murdered directly upon his arrival. Adele’s sister Martha Hirschfeld in Berlin was also sent from there to Theresienstadt on 3 October 1942. She was murdered on 13 December 1942.


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


Stand: December 2019
© Frauke Steinhäuser

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 8; 9; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 11442 u. 552/1922; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 6643 u. 104/1925; StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge Abl. 1999/2, 1519; StaH 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 2/1995, 17277; Archiwum Panstwowe w Lodzi, Anmelde- und Abmeldedokumente des Gettos Lodz ("Litzmannstadt") für Adele Mayer; Interview mit Charlotte Koopman, One Generation After oral history project, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Permanent Collection, Julius & Dorothy Koppelman Holocaust/Genocide Resource Center collection, RG-50.243*0042, online: http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn514155 (letzter Zugriff 20.2.2015); "Albert Mayer", holocaust.cz, Opferdatenbank, www2.holocaust.cz/de/victims/PERSON.ITI.17278 (letzter Zugriff 11.10.2015); "Martha Hirschfeld", holocaust.cz, Opferdatenbank, http://www2.holocaust.cz/de/victims/PERSON.ITI.1027807 (letzter Zugriff 11.10.2015)
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".

Isidor Hirschfeld, geb. 29.7.1874 in Bromberg, deportiert am 18.11.1941 nach Minsk
Käthchen Hirschfeld, geb. Neufeld, geb. 10.6.1887 in Hamburg, deportiert am 18.11.1941 nach Minsk

letzte Wohnadresse: Greifswalder Straße 82

Das Ehepaar Isidor und Käthchen Hirschfeld betrieb seit mindestens 1928 ein Bettenhaus am Steindamm 64 in St. Georg. Isidor Hirschfeld, der aus der zur Zeit seiner Geburt zum Deutschen Reich gehörenden Provinz Posen stammte, war vor der Ehe mit seiner zweiten Frau Käthchen bereits einmal mit Lina, geb. Treuherz, verheiratet. Aus dieser ersten Ehe gingen die beiden noch in Bromberg 1907 und 1910 geborenen Kinder Charlotte und Kurt hervor. Lina Hirschfeld starb bereits mit 38 Jahren an Lungenentzündung. Die Eltern Isidor Hirschfelds waren Caspar und Auguste Hirschfeld, geb. Meyer. Wann er nach Hamburg gekommen ist und die Hamburgerin Käthchen Neufeld geheiratet hat, ist nicht bekannt.

Die Privatwohnung des Paares befand sich in der Greifswalder Straße 82, nicht allzu weit entfernt von seinem Geschäft. Isidor Hirschfelds Tochter Charlotte absolvierte 1923 die Handelsakademie und arbeitete danach bis 1938 in verschiedenen Firmen als Stenotypistin, Buchhalterin, Kontoristin und Sekretärin. Sie heiratete im Mai 1938 Meinhard Koopmann (geb. 1901), mit dem sie im September desselben Jahres in die USA auswandern konnte. Ob ihr Bruder Kurt der NS-Verfolgung ebenfalls entgehen konnte, ist nicht bekannt. Mein­hard Koopmanns Mutter Fanny, geb. Levy (geb. 1875), und seine Schwester Irma (geb. 1903) konnten im Frühjahr 1941 ebenfalls in die USA auswandern, der Vater Max (geb. 1872) war zu diesem Zeitpunkt bereits verstorben.

Im Juni 1939 wurden die Eltern Hirschfeld gezwungen, in das "Judenhaus" Dillstraße 15 einzuziehen, wo sie bis zur ihrer Deportation ins Getto Minsk, am 18. November 1941, ihren letzten Hamburger Aufenthalt hatten.

© Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: 1; 4; 8; StaH, 522-1, Jüdische Gemeinden, 992 e 2 (Deportationslisten); AfW, Entschädigungsakte Charlotte Koopmann.
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".