Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Erika Mansfeldt * 1903

Heckkatenweg 2 (Bergedorf, Bergedorf)

HIER WOHNTE
ERIKA MANSFELDT
JG. 1903
DEPORTIERT 1943
THERESIENSTADT
1944 AUSCHWITZ
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Heckkatenweg 2:
Blanca Mansfeldt

Blanca Mansfeldt, née Löwenstein, born on 31 May 1880, deported on 24 Mar. 1943 to Theresienstadt, deported further on 13 Oct. 1944 to Auschwitz, murdered there
Erica Mansfeldt, born on 31 Mar. 1903, deported on 24 Mar. 1943 to Theresienstadt, deported further on 23 Oct. 1944 to Auschwitz, murdered there

Heckkatenweg 2

To be sure, some information has been preserved about the Mansfeldt family, from the tax card file of the Jewish Community and from applications for restitution by family members. However, no personal testimony exists, such as letters or accounts. Thus, we know only very little about the family; their lives remain hidden, as it were, behind a veil.

Blanca Mansfeldt was the mother of the siblings Ernst (born on 27 Feb. 1901), Walter (born on 16 Jan. 1902), Erica (born on 31 Jan. 1903), Elisabeth (born on 1 July 1907), and Erwin (born on 1 May 1909). Her husband, Gustav, appears in the documents only by name; probably, he passed away early or he was killed in action in World War I. At any rate, in 1915, Blanca started working for the local statutory health insurance company in Stormarn. She was employed there until her retirement in May 1933, for which most likely health reasons were actually the decisive reason. She would have been entitled to a retirement pension of 190.52 RM (reichsmark). Since she was Jewish, that amount was cut to 142.89 RM. She paid modest sums to the Jewish Community on a monthly basis.

With her family, she lived in house no. 217 of the village of Billwerder, before moving with her children to Lohbrügge, into the third floor of a villa-like multifamily house located at Heckkatenweg 2. Except for Walter, none of her children got married. Presumably, the family had to leave the apartment in Lohbrügge against their will, for in 1936, they moved to the traditionally "Jewish” Hamburg Grindel quarter, where the authorities began to concentrate the Jewish population. The first address there was 25, and at times, all family members lived together.

Son Erwin, whose occupation was indicated to be "warehouseman” and "commercial clerk,” died in the Elisabeth Hospital on 26 Sept. 1936, of unknown causes. He reached the age of only 27.

Over the next years, Blanca Mansfeldt had to change accommodation rather frequently, while three of her children gradually emigrated. The addresses named are "Jews’ houses” ("Judenhäuser”) at Haynstrasse 5 in Eppendorf, then, again in the Grindel quarter, Bundesstrasse 43, and Beneckestrasse 2. In the end, only daughter Erica lived with Blanca Mansfeldt. Together, the two women were deported to Theresienstadt on 24 Mar. 1943. The Chief Finance Administrator (Oberfinanzpräsident) saw to it that her assets were seized and her retirement pension paid into a state-owned account: "By decree of the Reich Governor [Reichsstatthalter] in Hamburg, the assets of the Jewess Blanca Sara Mansfeldt, née Löwenstein, formerly residing in Hamburg [...] was confiscated to the benefit of the Greater German Reich. According to your communication dated 5 Feb. 1944 [...] the Jewess Mansfeldt is entitled to payment of a retirement pension. This entitlement is part of the confiscated assets. The Jewess was expelled on 24 Mar. 1943. [...] According to the communication by the Central Office for the Settlement of the Jewish Question in Bohemia and Moravia [Zentralamt für die Regelung der Judenfrage in Böhmen und Mähren] dated 1 Mar. 1944, the Jewess Mansfeldt is still alive.”

On 13 Oct. 1944, Blanca Mansfeldt was assigned to a death transport to Auschwitz. After the war, she was declared dead as of 31 Dec. 1945.

Erica, who had worked as an office employee with the Hamburger Revisions- und Treuhand-Gesellschaft (Hamburg Auditing and Trust Company) before 1933, likely lost her post due to her Jewish descent. Prior to her deportation, she worked as a salaried employee of the Jewish Community. From Theresienstadt, she was taken to Auschwitz on another death transport on 23 Oct. 1944, ten days after her mother, and probably murdered immediately upon arrival. Later, she was declared dead as of 8 May 1945.

Son Ernst, a commercial clerk, emigrated to Britain in Mar. 1934. From there he went to Johannesburg in South Africa, where he still lived in the 1950s.

Walter Mansfeldt had been working as a judicial authority employee with the District Court in Hamburg, and he was dismissed from this post effective 31 Aug. 1933. Afterward, he found a job in Elmshorn, having the local authorities issue a passport for him. After two years, he lost his employment and moved back to Hamburg. Probably until his emigration, he worked for the Jacobi & Co transit trading company at Neuer Wall 10. (The owner, Sandor Weissenstein, was not able to prevent the "Aryanization” of his business in 1938, but he did manage to get himself to safety in Britain.) On 3 Nov. 1936, Walter Mansfeldt registered with the Jewish Community as residing at Hochallee 25.

At the end of Aug. 1938, Walter Mansfeldt was able to emigrate to Britain. There he changed his name to Mansfield. He succeeded in finding a job in the business field. In Aug. 1938, he married pregnant Lotte Posner (born on 14 Sept. 1906), a native of Hamburg staying in Britain at the time, though. She was a stenographer by occupation, reportedly working for the Jewish Community since 1937.

For unknown reasons, Lotte Mansfeldt, née Posner, returned to Hamburg after the wedding, giving birth there to their daughter Bela on 9 Dec. 1938. She lived with the child at Schlüterstrasse 5 "with Posner,” which likely means with relatives. Whether and to what extent she had contact with the family of her husband is not apparent from the available documents.

On 19 July 1942, she had to set out, along with four-year-old Bela, on the journey to Theresienstadt, where she died on 16 Apr. 1943. Her girl was taken to Auschwitz on 23 Oct. 1944, on the same transport as her aunt Erica, and murdered there. For Lotte and Bela Mansfeldt, Stolpersteine are to be laid in front of the house at Schlüterstrasse 5.

Lotte’s brother, former district court judge (Amtsrichter) Walter Posner (born on 23 Jan. 1901), was able to emigrate along with his wife Gerda, née Weil, to the USA in 1938. He suffered from severe asthma, made even worse by adverse working conditions, and died in 1947. His wife had also sustained physical and psychological ailments due to the pressure of persecution and the difficult circumstances of life in emigration. She died in California in 1993.

Walter Mansfield married a second time in 1950, and the marriage produced no children. He died in Britain in 1981.

Elisabeth (Lissy) Mansfeldt followed her brother, joining him in Britain in May 1939. We do not know whether she learned an occupation. In the "questionnaire for emigrants” that she had to fill out in 1939, she described herself as a domestic help. In the application for restitution dating from 1957, she was entered as a "machinist (production of ready-to-wear clothing).” She had such modest assets that she was not demanded to pay the duty to the Gold Discount Bank ("Dego-Abgabe”), which served to keep the greater part of any "Jewish (emigrant) property” within the country.

However, like all emigrants, she had to submit to the Chief Finance Administrator (Oberfinanzpräsident) a "list of items to be taken along in connection with the emigration.” It contained the basic equipment and clothing of a single woman with modest income: In addition to a few pieces of clothing, among them, 3 coats, 2 warm pinafore dresses, 3 light pinafore dresses, 1 woolen blouse, 9 washable blouses, 12 sets of nightdresses and panties, 1 writing case, 1 travel alarm clock, 1 Kodak Junior camera. Apart from that, she also detailed on the list a few modest pieces of jewelry and silverware, e.g., "1 rolled gold wrist watch, 1 imitation brooch, 2 silver tablespoons.” This part of the list was crossed out, obviously by the authorities. Lissy Mansfeldt had these items sealed in a parcel by the Schrader jeweler at Neuer Wall 9, something the shop owner confirmed to her with listing, signature, and seal. However, the "rolled gold wrist watch” was missing on the jeweler’s list. Whether Lissy Mansfeldt was able to take the parcel along to Britain does not emerge from the records. Like her brother, she changed her name to Mansfield in Britain. Nothing is known about her subsequent life.


Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2017
© Ulrike Sparr

Quellen: 1; 2; 4; 8; StaH 351-11, 27900; StaH 351-11, 26002; StaH 351-11, 4899; StaH 351-11, 24641; StaH 3511-11, 30146; StaH 351-11, 30147; StaH 332-5, 8137 473; StaH 314-15, FVg 6089; Frank Ba­johr, "Arisierung" in Hamburg, Hamburg 1998, S. 198ff; www.terezinstudies.cz/deu/ITI/database/database (einges. 8.11.2010).
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".