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Elsa Lina Mengers (née Mink) * 1881

Susettestraße 5 (Altona, Ottensen)

gedemütigt entrechtet
Flucht in den Tod 11.06.1933

further stumbling stones in Susettestraße 5:
Dr. Siegfried Mengers

Dr. Siegfried Mengers, formerly Löwenstein, born 10/24/1875, suicide on 06/11/1933
Elsa Lina Maria Mengers, née Mink, Born 11/22/1881, suicide on 06/11/1933

Susettestrasse 5 (formerly Ohlendorffsallee)

Siegfried Mengers was born October 24th, 1875 in Oldenburg in Oldenburg Province, the son of the Jewish merchant Adolf Löwenstein; following his father’s death, the family name was changed to Mengers. Siegfried Mengers was a Lutheran Protestant. He studied law and in 1901 worked as a junior lawyer in Altona. Esa Lina Maria Mink, born October 22nd, 1881 in Paris, became his wife; she was of non Jewish origin. The Mengers lived first lived at Wohlersallee 44; in 1907, they moved to a house at Ohlendorffsallee 5 (now Susettestrasse) they had bought. Their daughter Annemarie Inga Lina was born October 19th, 1909, their daughter Else Lotte on June 29th, 1913. Siegfried Mengers had been admitted to the bar at the district and higher court of Altona in March 1904. In 1905, he first had an office alone at Kleine Gärtnerstrasse 112 (now the eastern section of Stresemannstrasse); in 1907, he moved the office to Bahnhofstrasse 52; in 1911, he joined a partnership with Justizrat (justice counselor) Walter Weber at Holstenstrasse 114. This office flourished and soon had about 14 employees. In December 1919, Siegfried Mengers was appointed as a notary public in Altona. Both partners handled a lot of estate and inheritance matters.

When the Nazi terror against state officials such as judges and state attorneys began in 1933, nearly all Jewish attorneys in Altona, among them Siegfried Mengers, were banned from appearing in court. The Nazi call to boycott Jewish physicians, lawyers, business people and crafts persons was a great setback for the Jewish population. The "Law for the Restoration of Professional Civil Service” of April 11th, 1933 enabled the cancellation of the licenses of Jewish lawyers. On June 9th, 1933, Siegfried Mengers was dismissed from his office as notary public. The deprivation and humiliation he had suffered drove him to his death. Three days after his dismissal he and his wife committed suicide together; he was 57 years old, his wife 51.

According to their daughter, Annemarie, her father chose to die because he had been forbidden to keep practicing his profession. The attorney Ernst Magens, who knew Mengers well, after the war testified to the compensation agency that Mengers had been deprived of the possibility of making a living. "He was very depressed in the time before his death”, Magens said, "I don’t know if he was a full Jew. According to my knowledge, he was baptized.” Walter Müller, another attorney who was a friend of Mengers’, testified in writing: "Dr. Mengers was severely shocked when the defamation of Jews began following the Nazis’ rise to power, and severely suffered from the discrimination practiced with the consent of the majority of the population. I have no doubt that Dr. Mengers put an end to his life together with his wife due to the persecution of Jews.”

The Mengers’ daughter Else Lotte Langenbach, married to a Swiss citizen, emigrated to Rio de Janeiro in the middle of 1933 following the death of her parents. Daughter Annemarie, classified as a "half Jew”, was married to Walter Delfs; the couple had two children. Their marriage was divorced on April 7th, 1937. When Else Lotte subsequently wanted to marry Erich Hans Otto von Baeyer, who was not Jewish, this was forbidden by the Hamburg Police President, and von Baeyer was immediately dismissed from his job as assistant physician at the Altona hospital and furloughed after he had filed an application to be allowed to marry a "Mischling of the 1st degree.” The couple emigrated to England together with Annemarie’s son in July, 1938, and married there. The same year, the family traveled on to the USA.


Translated by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: April 2018
© Birgit Gewehr

Quellen: 2 (F 1700 Mengers, Lotte); 5; AB Altona; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung, 35116 (von Baeyer, geb. Mengers, Annemarie); Morisse, Ausgrenzung, Bd. 1, S. 185.
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