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Ernst Victor
© Privatbesitz Tim A. Osswald

Ernst Victor * 1875

Rosenhagenstraße 22 (Altona, Groß Flottbek)

HIER WOHNTE
ERNST VICTOR
JG. 1875
ENTRECHTET/GEDEMÜTIGT
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
5.12.1938

Ernst Victor, born 10/1/1875, suicide on 12/5/1938 in Hamburg

Ernst Victor was born as the second child of the married couple Julius Victor (1829–1883) and Rosa Davidsohn (1847–1915) in Saargemünd. Shortly after the death of her husband, Rosa Victor and her two children moved to Berlin, where her siblings lived. Ernst Victor later went to a boarding school in Davos, Switzerland and had himself baptized a Protestant Christian, ending a Jewish family heritage that had lasted for many centuries.

After graduating from high school, Ernst Victor studied chemical process technology in Darmstadt; in 1898, the year when he got his diploma in engineering, he became a founding member of the academic duelling corporation "Hasso-Borussia”, whose annual conventions in July he enthusiastically attended until he was expelled as "non-Aryan” in 1935.

In 1910, Ernst Victor met Emilie Zinn (1885–1949), whom he saw at irregular intervals until 1913. The relationship was reduced to a correspondence level, when Ernst Victor, like many German Jews, proudly became a soldier and fought for the Kaiser in World War I. In 1920, at last, he an Emilie Zinn married in Hannover (she was not Jewish).

The same year, Ernst Victor was elected president of the chemical sector of Norddeutsche VDI, the Association of German Engineers, and moved to Hamburg. Simultaneously, he was a director and partner in the "Regenhardt AG" publishing company in Berlin. Due to his diverse activities, Ernst Victor travelled a lot throughout Germany in the following years, delivering lectures and acting as a consultant.

The couple’s daughter Clara Rosemarie was born in 1921, their son Hans Robert in 1923 at Rosenhagenstrasse 22 in Gross Flottbek – then still an autonomous rural community.

From 1933, the family’s life changed, even though they – like many others – believed that the "Nazi spook” would end soon. However, Ernst Victor was expelled from the VDI of chemical engineers in 1936, and the shares in the Regenhardt AG had to be forcibly sold at an unfavorable price. The same year, he was offered to emigrate to Sweden and join the family of his deceased first wife. Victor, however, was still convinced that the "Nazi madness” would soon come to an end. But this changed with the pogrom night of November 1938 – Ernst Victor now realized that the situation had become very threatening and something had to be done. He tried to get a visa for his family and himself for Switzerland, a country he had visited repeatedly, but the authorities rejected his application.

Ernst Victor returned to Hamburg as a broken man, and wrote a farewell letter to his family, in which he declared that he had enjoyed a fulfilled life, but now – categorized as Jewish – was a burden for his family and that his wife and children would only be able to survive without him.

Degraded and humiliated by the Nazi regime, Ernst Victor saw escape to death as his only choice and hanged himself in the garage of his house in Rosenhagenstrasse 22 on December 5th, 1938.

Nonetheless, the plight his children, rated as "half-Jews” by the Nazis, did not end with Ernst Victor’s death. Hans Robert was recruited for forced labor in Hamburg and assigned to extremely dangerous clearing jobs after the bombing raids.

To avoid a similar fate for daughter Clara Rosemarie, Tekla Schade, a friend of her mother, in 1941 took her to St. Peter-Ording to a hospital for wounded soldiers she ran, and concealed the girl there under an assumed name until 1945. The hospital was in the building of the children’s colony where Clara Rosemarie and her brother Hans Robert had often spent happy carefree summer holidays.

Tekla Schade became Clara Rosemarie’s best friend, mother and protector – experiences that closely link their families to this day.


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

Stand: March 2019
© Johann-Hinrich Möller

Quellen: Tim A.Osswald-Victor, Family Memories, in: Robert Davidsohn – Uno Spirito Libero tra Cronoca e Storia, Eds. M. Ingerdaay and Wiebke Fastenrath-Vinattieri, Olschki Editore, 2003, S. 23ff. Der Autor Prof. Tim A. Osswald (Jg. 1958) ist der Enkel von Ernst Victor und heute Director of the Polymer Engeneering Center an der University of Wisconsin in Madison. Interview Johann-Hinrich Möller mit Tim Osswald am 22.06.2006 in Hamburg.
Der vorstehende Beitrag ist mit geringen Veränderungen bereits erschienen in: Maajan – Die Quelle, Zeitschrift für jüdische Familienforschung, 21. Jg. Heft 83, Juni 2007, S. 2976f.