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Agathe Blanck
© Privatbesitz

Agathe Blanck (née Coutinho) * 1876

Isestraße 36 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

1941 Lodz

further stumbling stones in Isestraße 36:
Maximilian Bermann, Lina Karoline Bermann, Anita Coutinho, Carl Frank, Else Frank, Laura Heldberg, Walter Heldberg, Eduard Meyer, Berta Meyer, Arnold Meyer, Frieda Meyer

Agathe Blanck, née Coutinho, born on 10 Nov. 1876 in Hamburg, deported on 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz
Anita Coutinho, born on 31 July 1875 in Hamburg, deported on 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz, died there on 29 Apr. 1942

Agathe Blanck came from an old-established Portuguese-Jewish family. Her father, Isaac Mendes Coutinho, married to Pauline, née Meyer, was co-owner of Coutinho & Meyer, Kunst- und Tiefdruck (art and intaglio printing).
Until her marriage to the veterinarian Emil Blanck in 1906, Agathe Coutinho studied voice. The year 1907 saw the birth of a daughter, Rose Lotte, and two years later, daughter Carmen was born.

Emil Blanck died in 1931. At the time, both daughters had completed their schooling at the convent school (Klosterschule) in Hamburg, with Carmen successful in her profession as a medical-technical assistant and temporarily running her own chemical laboratory that earned her much recognition. She emigrated to Britain in 1936, appearing as an actress there in smaller stage parts.

Her sister Rose Lotte initially aspired to qualify as a social worker, and then began studies with the aim of becoming an elementary school teacher at the University of Hamburg in 1930, though dropping out of university when her father died. Subsequently, she completed a course in stenography but was not admitted to the exam for "racial reasons.” She then earned her money as a domestic, among other things. In 1933, she gave birth to a son in Altona. Only in 1939 was she able to marry the boy’s father in England, where she had emigrated with the child in the fall of 1937. There she worked in the boarding house owned by her sister Carmen’s parents-in-law.
After the emigration of her younger daughter, Agathe Blanck gave up the spacious apartment on Eppendorfer Landstraße, initially moving with her older daughter and her daughter’s son to Grossheidestraße and later, when the second daughter had emigrated as well, living with Anita Coutinho, a cousin, in Isestraße.
She received a regular small income from her father’s inheritance, which was one of the reasons for her turning down the offer to emigrate to Britain as well.

As the daughters declared in the restitution proceedings, they had "the naïve idea” of being able to have their mother join them in Britain in a year or two. At least they had written contact with their mother until 1941, indirectly via Denmark and the USA. As a result, they knew that their mother maintained connections to old friends right up to the deportation. Agathe Blanck was only on the reserve list for the deportation, perhaps going "voluntarily” to Lodz together with her cousin Anita Coutinho. Via a cousin in Denmark, news reached Hamburg from Lodz in late Nov. 1941 that Agathe Blanck was quartered there on Mühlgasse, probably together with Anita Coutinho. We do not know when she perished there.

Anita Coutinho belonged to the same Portuguese-Jewish family as Agathe Blanck. Her parents were Joseph Coutinho and his wife Lea, née Rocomora. Unfortunately, nothing is known to us about Anita Coutinho’s life beyond the basic dates. The deportation list indicates "domestic” as her occupation. She died in Lodz on 29 Apr. 1942.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Christa Fladhammer

Quelle:1; 8; www.joodsmonument.nl; StaH, 522-1 Jüd. Gemeinden, 992 e 2 Bd.1; AfW 201176; 050207; 280809; Janna Warberg Schous arkiv, opbevaret af Selskabet for Dansk-Jodisk Historie, Schreiben A. Zeckendorf am 2.11.1941 an Janna Schous, mit Erlaubnis von Dr. Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, Copenhagen; Auskunft Susan Johannsen telefonisch und per E-Mail am 21.1.2010.
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