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Leopold Peine * 1873

Brandstwiete 4 (früher Brandstwiete 12) (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamburg-Altstadt)

HIER WOHNTE
LEOPOLD PEINE
JG. 1873
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
TOT 17.6.1943

further stumbling stones in Brandstwiete 4 (früher Brandstwiete 12):
Lilly Levy, Bela Levy, Auguste Peine, Erna Peine

Auguste Peine, née Kahn, born 12 June 1872 in Hamburg, deported 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt where she died 14 Nov. 1942
Erna Peine, born 15 Sept. 1902 in Hamburg, deported 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga-Jungfernhof
Leopold Peine, born 23 Apr. 1873 in Hamburg, deported 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt where he died 17 June 1943
Bela Levy, born 23 Sept. 1939 in Hamburg, deported 18 Nov. 1941 to Minsk
Lilly Levy, née Peine, born 27 July 1901 in Hamburg, deported 18 Nov. 1941 to Minsk

Brandstwiete corner of Willy-Brandt-Straße (Brandstwiete 12)

The fitter Leopold Peine and the embroiderer Auguste Kahn were married on 18 May 1899. They both came from Jewish Hamburg families. Leopold’s father Marcus Peine (born 5 Apr. 1840, died 26 Dec. 1900) owned a "manufactured goods and yarn” store at 2nd Elbstraße 19 (today Neanderstraße), where their family also lived. His mother Adelheid came from the Kleve Family (born 25 Aug. 1843, died 18 Jan. 1908).

Auguste was the daughter of the merchant Levy/Louis Kahn (born 30 Mar. 1835, died 10 Dec. 1896) and Eva, née Landmann (born 15 Apr. 1845, died 8 Aug. 1913).

When their eldest child, daughter Käthe, was born on 8 May 1900, the Peines lived at Durchschnitt 12. Lilly followed on 27 July 1901, Erna arrived on 15 Sept. 1902 and Manfred on 8 Nov. 1905. In 1913 the family was registered at Bogenallee 3. From there they moved to Grindelweg 1a. At the end of 1936 they lived in old town Hamburg on the first floor at Brandstwiete 12. Leopold Peine was an electrician by training and was self-employed for a time. He then worked in his field for various companies until an eye condition forced him to give up working. Subsequently Leopold Peine was supported by his children.

After finishing his high school diploma at the Talmud Torah School at Grindelhof, his son Manfred began a commercial apprenticeship at the music store belonging to Anton J. Benjamin at Alterwall 44. In 1928 he changed over to the wholesaler Goldschmidt & Mindus at Hohe Bleichen 31/32, which bought and sold music instruments, among other things. At that company he worked as a travelling salesman. He lived with his wife Felicitas Harriet, née Bourscheid, called Levy (born 2 Nov. 1905 in Düsseldorf) at Schlankreye 40. At the end of Dec. 1938 they immigrated with their three-year-old son Edgar (born 8 Apr. 1935) to the USA.

Manfred’s three sisters attended the Israelite Daughters’ School on Carolinenstraße. Käthe, the oldest, completed commercial training after graduating high school and began working as a salesperson at the fashion house Gebrüder Robinsohn at Neuen Wall in 1918 or 1920. After the company was "Aryanized” and she was let go, she was not able to find another job. On 30 Sept. 1940 she married Selig Semmy Bleiweiss (born 19 June 1898) from Neumünster, the brother of her former co-worker Sella Kanter, née Bleiweiss, who had also been dismissed from Robinsohn. Käthe gave birth to their son Uri on 19 Jan. 1941 (see the Bleiweiss Family).

His younger sisters Lilly and Erna both trained to become hair stylists. Lilly passed her mastership examination and opened her own hairdressing salon in 1932 in Hamburg’s Altstadt at Pferdemarkt 14 in Dynamohaus. At the end of Dec. 1938 she was forced to give up her business. In May 1939 she worked at the Women’s, Men’s and Theater Hair Salon of Siegfried Wolff in the Jewish community center at Hartungstraße 9/11. Siegfried Wolff had run a hairdressing salon for many years at Grindelallee 156 and like her was forced as a Jewish business owner to give up his business. (Siegfried Wolff, born 30 July 1882, and his wife Bertha, née Rosenberg born 15 May 1885, were deported to Minsk Ghetto on 8 Nov. 1942.)

Lilly met the butcher Martin Levy. Martin was born on 26 Apr. 1901 in Segeberg (renamed Bad Segeberg in1924). His family had influenced the destiny of the Jewish community there for several generations. His parents, who married in Segeberg in 1887, ran a department store in the town. Abraham (Adolf) Levy (born 5 July 1854) and Johanna (Hanchen), née Wolf (born 31 Aug. 1866, died in 1949) were forced to give up their properties at Kurhausstraße 7 and 9 due to pressure from antisemitism and the boycott measures which set in early in Bad Segeberg. They moved to Hamburg in 1934 with several of their children where Martin’s mother Johanna opened a guest house at Werderstraße 6. Abraham Levy died in Hamburg on 10 May 1937.

Martin Levy quickly made a good name for himself in Hamburg as a cattle and horse trader with his "calm and no-nonsense manner”, until he was taken into custody under the pretext of "racial defilement”. On 10 June 1936 he was sentenced to one year in prison which he served at Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison until 21 Nov. 1936, having had the time he spent in custody while under investigation counted towards his term. On 23 June 1938 he was one of about 200 Jewish men, out of a total of 700 men in Hamburg, who were taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp during the "June Operation” because of an earlier conviction.

On 17 Dec. 1938 he was released from barrack 16 as part of the prisoner category "precautionary prisoner”, probably with the provision to leave Germany as soon as possible. Lilly and Martin wed on 31 Mar. 1939 and just a few months later, on 27 June, Martin immigrated to Shanghai via Trieste.

At that time Lilly was heavily pregnant, and their daughter Bela was born on 23 Sept. 1939. Lilly and her daughter Bela lived with her family who had moved from Brandstwiete into a 4-room apartment at Schlüterweg 8 mid year.

Her unmarried sister Erna also was no longer permitted to work in her profession as a hair stylist. In order to contribute something to the family’s livelihood, she worked at the Jewish Religious Association as a "cleaner girl”. It was noted on her religion tax card on 5 June 1939 that Erna had received a "clearance certificate” required to leave the country. Her emigration likely failed due to the outbreak of war. The additional note "June 1939 England/Australia” was crossed out.

At the end of Sept. 1939, Leopold and Auguste Peine moved out of their apartment on Schlüterweg and into one at Dillstraße 15 where they paid the low rent of 12 Reich Marks a month. The building on Dillstraße was one of the so-called Jewish houses. From there, their youngest daughter Erna Peine was deported to Riga-Jungfernhof on 6 Dec. 1941.

Lilly Levy had tried to hold onto her parents’ apartment on Schlüterweg by renting out rooms until she and her two-year-old daughter Bela received their deportation orders for Minsk Ghetto on 18 Nov. 1941.

Their eldest sister Käthe, her son Uri, her husband Selig Bleiweiss and her mother-in-law Selma Bleiweiss were deported from their "Jewish house” at Heinrich-Barth-Straße 8 to Auschwitz on 11 July 1942 and killed.

Leopold and Auguste Peine were sent to the "old age ghetto” Theresienstadt on 15 July 1942. According to the ghetto’s death register, Auguste Peine died that same year on 14 Nov. 1942 of a lung infection at the "central infirmary”. Leopold Peine survived his wife until 17 June 1943. He then died from the inhuman living conditions in the camp of pneumonia and pleurisy after becoming much weakened.

Martin Levy survived the end of the war in spite of difficult living conditions abroad. In shanghai he learned that his wife and child had been deported and killed. He married a second time, wedding Betty Leysersohn, née Israel (born 7 Feb. 1899) and in Oct. 1947 he immigrated to his mother Johanna in the USA.

Johanna Levy survived the end of the war hidden by partisans in the Netherlands.

Martin Levy’s older brother Ludwig Levy (born 14 Jan. 1889) was working as an interior designer in Munich when he married Friederike Gertrude Wertheimer (born 22 Aug. 1895 in Mannheim) there in 1918. The couple immigrated with their son Erich Peter (born 28 July 1922) in Sept. 1938 from Hamburg to the Netherlands. Erich Peter died on 12 Sept. 1941 in Mauthausen concentration camp. His parents were killed in Auschwitz on 14 Oct. 1944.

Their sisters Ella (born 31 Dec. 1896) and Frieda Levy (born 7 Sept. 1898) were deported together on 11 July 1942 from the "Jewish house” at Kielortallee 22 to Auschwitz.

Their youngest brother Ernst Levy (born 24 Sept. 1905) was also deported from the Netherlands with his wife Rijntje, née Markus (born 25 May 1913 in Amsterdam) and their children Adolf Maurice (born 22 Aug. 1937) and Simon (born 18 Aug. 1938). They were killed in Sobibor extermination camp on 16 Apr. 1943.

Their niece Lieselotte Rosenmann (born 20 Dec. 1924 in Munich) was deported on 4 Apr. 1942 to Piaski near Lublin and killed.

The surviving siblings and their families were "cast to the winds”, as Martin Levy wrote to a friend in Bad Segeberg while he was still in Shanghai on 14 Feb. 1947. Martin Levy passed away in Boston on 2 Jan. 1954.

Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: April 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; StaH 351-11 AfW 1164 (Levy, Johanna); StaH 351-11 AfW 29664 (Peine, Manfred); StaH 351-11 AfW 21743 (Levy, Martin); StaH 314-14 OFP, R 1939/27; StaH 351-11 AfW 21973 (Bleiweiss, Selma); StaH 351-11 AfW 21148 (Bleiweiss, Selig); StaH 314-15, Fvg 5574; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2924 u 486/1899; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13274 u 1038/1900; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13616 u 1798/1901; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8144 u 251/1937; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde Nr. 992 e 2 Band 3; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde Nr. 992 e 2 Band 4; StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht 07395/36; Nationalarchiv in Prag/Theresienstädter Initiative, Jüdische Matriken, Todesfallanzeigen Theresienstadt (Auguste Peine, Leopold Peine); Gleiss: Leben, S. 47, S. 128f., S. 192; Archiv Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen, Auskunft von Monika Liebscher, E-Mail vom 6.10.2016; www.ancestry.de (Heiratsregister von Ludwig Levy und Friederike Gertrude Wertheimer, Zugriff 10.5.2017); https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/206831/ernst-david-levy (Zugriff 10.5.2017); https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/person_view.php?PersonId=3061607 (Zugriff 10.5.2017).
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