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Martha Friedländer (née Jacobi) * 1865

Blumenau 63 (Wandsbek, Eilbek)

HIER WOHNTE
MARTHA FRIEDLÄNDER
GEB. JACOBI
JG. 1865
DEPORTIERT 1943
THERESIENSTADT
ERMORDET 1.9.1943

Martha Friedländer, née Jacobi, born 13.9.1865 in Hamburg, deported to Theresienstadt on 5.5.1943, death there on 1.9.1943

Blumenau 63

In 1940, the widow Martha Friedländer, née Jacobi, possessed a six-figure fortune, but lived "extraordinarily modestly in a room at Mrs. E. Külper, Blumenau 63," as Kurt Sieveking of the bank M. M. Warburg & Co. informed the Chief Finance President. The reasons for this were both family and political. She had at her disposal as liquid assets the interest from the inherited assets of her father Leopold Jacobi/Jacoby and her husband Adolf Arthur Friedländer, from which, however, she also had to finance the living expenses of her daughter Gertrud. In 1939, the Chief Finance President issued a "security order" blocking the total assets as well as all income with the exception of a small tax-free amount.

When Martha Jacobi was born in 1865 as the daughter of a banker, the path to a middle-class life and a materially secure old age seemed to be mapped out. Her parents, Leopold Jacobi and Clara, née Katz, were neither natives of Hamburg, but had established themselves economically successfully in Hamburg in the second half of the 19th century. Her paternal grandparents, Behrend Jacobi and Täubchen, née Isaak, lived in Beelitz near Potsdam, where Täubchen Jacobi had given birth to their son Leopold on March 31, 1831. Martha Jacobi's maternal grandparents, Meyer Jonas Katz and Philippine, née Mond, resided in Paderborn, where their daughter Clara was born on April 1, 1841. Details of Leopold Jacobi's move to Hamburg are not known.

Leopold Jacobi, Martha Friedländer's father, acquired Hamburg citizenship as a 25-year-old commis (merchant's assistant). He had done his military service in the Prussian cavalry and had joined Elias Warburg's banking business as a commis in 1851. On October 10, 1856, he took the oath of citizenship, having shortly before been admitted to the Jewish community in Hamburg. He belonged to it until his death.

In the year of his naturalization, he had registered the company "Leopold Jacobi & Co." with Gustav Warburg as authorized signatory under commercial law, from which a very successful banking, bill of exchange and commission business developed. The business premises and apartment were located at Hermannstraße 18 until 1890, then at Ferdinandstraße 26 in Hamburg's old town. The company continued to exist (as a limited liability company) for ten years after Leopold Jacobi's death.

In 1862, Leopold Jacobi married Clara Katz, ten years younger than him, in Berlin, where she was living at the time. The two moved in with her husband in Hamburg. Their first child was a son, Berthold, who died in 1863, the year of his birth. Daughter Martha was born on September 13, 1865, followed by sister Flora, the last child, on March 21, 1869. Presumably, the two daughters grew up as "higher daughters" were raised and educated in their day.

Martha Jacobi was 24 years old when she married Adolf Friedländer, called Arthur, a merchant's son from Marienwerder, eleven years older than she, on December 29, 1889. He was also a merchant and became director of the "Maklerbank in Hamburg", whose purpose was, among other things, guarantees for forward transactions of cotton, sugar, coffee, tin, copper. He operated his business from the apartment at Ferdinandstraße 26, his wife's parents' house. In addition, Adolf/Arthur and Martha Friedländer owned a summer residence at Hoheluftchaussee 99. His income allowed the family to live a middle-class life.

Martha Friedländer's first child, Gertrud Franziska, was born on January 14, 1891, followed by a son on May 15, 1895. He was given the name Edgar Julius Jacobi.

A few weeks later, on June 2, 1895, the marriage of Martha's sister Flora to the London architect Edwin Sachs took place in Hamburg, to which his parents also traveled from England. Flora moved to London. Edwin Sachs had studied, among other things, at the technical University (Technische Hochschule) in Berlin-Charlottenburg and specialized in theater architecture and fire protection, in which capacity he also worked in Vienna and Paris.

Three months after this marriage, on September 15, 1895, Martha's father Leopold Jacobi (in the death register Jacoby) died in his summer apartment at Hoheluftchaussee 99. He was buried in the Jewish Cemetery Ilandkoppel in Hamburg-Ohlsdorf. Clara Jacobi spent the first New Year's Eve as a widow, not with her family in Hamburg, but in the company of Clara Friedländer from Berlin, an unmarried relative of her son-in-law.

Leopold Jacobi left his widow Clara, his daughters Martha Friedländer and Flora Sachs, and grandchildren a large estate under the administration of three trustees, one of whom was his son-in-law Adolf/Arthur Friedländer. The estate was taxed by the Jewish Community of Hamburg as if it were a member. Adolf/Arthur and Martha Friedländer belonged to the Jewish Community as regular contributors, nothing is known of any functions.

In 1898 Flora Sachs, Martha Friedländer's sister, gave birth in London to their only child, Eric, who took part in the First World War on the Allied side. There is no evidence of contact between the two sisters and their mother Clara Jacobi, but passports issued for travel abroad between 1904 and 1920 make it seem possible that Clara Jacobi as well as daughter and son-in-law Martha and Adolf/Arthur Friedländer visited their relatives in London. However, there is no indication of later efforts by Martha Friedländer or her descendants to escape Nazi persecution to England.

The 1918 passport shows that Martha Friedländer was of medium height, had gray-blue eyes, an oval face, and mottled gray hair appropriate to her age of 53.

In 1900, Martha and Adolf/Arthur Friedländer and their children settled outside of downtown Hamburg at Moorweide and moved into the first floor apartment at 8 Tesdorpfstraße in Rotherbaum.

Martha Friedländer's mother, Clara Jacobi, gave up her two apartments in 1911 in favor of a rented apartment near her daughter and moved to Schlüterstraße 4. She went on trips, in 1912 to unspecified foreign countries and shortly before her death in the summer of 1916, by then about 75 years old, accompanied by her maid Helene Kahn within the German Reich. She died on April 5, 1917 in her apartment on Schlüterstraße and was buried next to her husband Leopold in the Jewish Cemetery in Ohlsdorf.

Adolf/Arthur and Martha Friedländer's son Edgar was apparently ill; no diagnosis is known. In the fall of 1915, at the age of 20, he traveled to Huchting near Bremen to attend Adalbert Wintermann's school for the "mentally weakly gifted." He returned to Hamburg after only one month and was placed in the Iatro-Pädagogium at Bornstraße 12, a medical institution for young people with learning difficulties (Iatrology = the study of medical healing). After only ten days, the specialist for nervous and mood disorders, Arnold Lienau, who ran a clinic in Eichenstraße in Eimsbüttel, took him in as a patient at his private address, Am Weiher 7. Just one week later, on December 4, 1915, Edgar Friedländer was admitted to what was then known as the "Friedrichsberg Lunatic Asylum," where he died on October 27, 1917. His parents had a loving, representative tomb built for him in the Jewish cemetery in Ohlsdorf, with a line of music in the architrave and the following inscription in the center field:

THOSE WHO WERE ALWAYS
THE DEAREST TO YOU
ARE HERE IN DEATH
ALSO NEAR YOU
No details are known about the career of Gertrud Friedländer, Martha Friedländer's daughter. In the middle of World War I, on September 30, 1916, she married Adolf Moll, who was almost 16 years her senior and later received a doctorate. He was a Lutheran, born in 1874 in Neuvorwerk, then Mecklenburg. His parents ran a brickyard in nearby Zarpen (today: Stormarn County). Adolf Moll was a musicology teacher, composer, voice and language researcher. Gertrud Moll converted and also had her children Siegfried and Agathe, born in 1918 and 1920, baptized.

In 1920, the brokerage bank was taken over by the "Waaren Liquidations-Casse" and continued to operate under the name "Liquidations-Casse". Adolf/Arthur Friedländer, by now over 60 years old, took over the directorship and apparently held it until the end of his life. He decided to enter into a community of property with his daughter Gertrud and stipulated in the joint will with his wife that in the event of his death she should continue the community of property with the daughter in order to maintain family control over the assets. Furthermore, he decreed that his "wife shall be relieved of the trouble connected with the administration of the entire estate, and therefore shall have only the enjoyment of interest in the same, while the capital shall be under the administration of administrators of the entire estate." In this way, the inheritance of Martha Friedländer's father Leopold Jacobi, as well as that of her husband, would eventually fall to her grandchildren.

During the inflationary period of 1922/1923, Adolf/Arthur Friedländer ran into financial difficulties, especially since he had to maintain his daughter Gertrud Moll and the grandchildren Agathe and Siegfried Moll.

Even before the onset of the world economic crisis in 1929, the Liquidations-Casse had recovered and subsequently collapsed, but not collapsed. On December 31, 1933, Adolf/Arthur Friedländer retired with a net pension of about RM 690 per month. Added to this was income from his supervisory board activities at the Eutin-Lübeck Railway and interest. Since his taxes were calculated on the basis of the higher income of 1932, he found himself unable to pay the full amount of the Jewish Community contribution in 1933 and applied for a rebate. He indicated his resignation from the community, renouncing the burial place in the Jewish Cemetery for himself and his wife, if the community did not accommodate him. The community board granted him a reduction based on his difficult income situation.

When Adolf/Arthur Friedländer died on April 5, 1935, he was buried in the family grave next to his son Edgar. "His greatest joy in life was work," can still be read on the right side of the monument. He left his widow a considerable fortune and an annual pension from the Liquidations-Casse of RM 5000 for the next ten years. Martha Friedländer moved out of Tesdorpfstraße and changed accommodation several times before taking up residence with the widow Külper at Blumenau 63 in Eilbek.

The marriage of Martha Friedländer's daughter, Gertrud, and her husband, Adolf Moll, was divorced by the Altona District Court in April 1932, and Adolf Moll retired around the same time. His retirement pay was not sufficient to finance the maintenance and education of the children, but he took special care of his daughter Agathe. She was to be sterilized because of a mental weakness, against which her father fought with success.

Gertrud Moll entered into a second marriage in 1939, to Percival Sidney Windmüller, a dentist (see www.Stolpersteine- Hamburg.de). They lived in Hamm at Jordanstraße 53 near the border with Eilbek. Percival Windmüller was penniless and was maintained by his wife. Martha Friedländer continued to provide for her daughter Gertrud and also for her grandson Siegfried when he went to study engineering at the Technical University in Berlin.

Old law and new ordinances kept the Jewish lawyers, now called "consulters" as executors, the probate court and the chairman of the Northwest Germany district office of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, Max Plaut, busy for a long time, delaying the deportation of the now 77-year-old Martha Friedländer to Theresienstadt. In the meantime, she had moved in as a lodger with Bruno Seelig, Grindelhof 2, on May 30, 1941. After he and his family were deported to Minsk on November 8, 1941, the Jewish Community placed Martha Friedländer in the Paulinenstift, Laufgraben 37.

On January 20, 1942, the Chief Finance President issued a "security order" for "Arthur Friedländer Gesamtgut und Leopold Jacobi Testament" and allowed Martha Friedländer to dispose of 240 RM per month. On application, the support for Gertrud Windmüller was approved in the previous amount of 390 RM for six more months and for her son in the amount of 200 RM for an unlimited period. This six-month period ended exactly when Gertrud Windmüller was deported on July 15, 1942.

Kurt Sieveking and Felix Epstein had until then acted together as executors and administrators of assets. Now Kurt Sieveking, as an "Aryan", had to end his activity and hand it over to a Jewish "consulter". He was replaced by Morris Samson, who had a doctorate in law. Together with Felix Epstein he fought for the rights of Martha Friedländer, her daughter and grandchildren, but in vain. The German Reich confiscated the assets.

New legal problems arose in mid-1942 with the deportation of Gertrud and Percival Windmüller to the "old age ghetto" of Theresienstadt. Together they paid 3731.75 RM for the "home purchase" to the Jewish Religious Association; with their "delay abroad" their assets were forfeited to the Reich. The admissibility of the withdrawal of the money for the "home purchase contract" from the assets and its collection in favor of the Reich remained legally disputed, because the assets were the total property of the community of property of Gertrud Windmüller and her mother Martha Friedländer.

Apparently, Martha Friedländer continued to fulfill her financial obligations to the Jewish Religious Association (i.d. former Jewish Community) herself until mid-September 1942 and then, for health reasons, also left this task to her consul Morris Samson, as can be seen from the following letter to Leo Lippmann, deputy chairman of the Jewish Religious Association in Hamburg:

Friedlaender, Marta to Dr. L. Lippmann, p. Adr. Religionsverband, 13 Hamburg, Benekestr. 2.
Received Sept. 23, 1942 9/22/42.
"13 Hamburg, Laufgraben 37
Dear Dr.!
I kindly request you to send all monetary claims for the Religious Association that come into consideration for me to my executor Dr. M. Israel Samson, Hbg. 1, Ferdinandstr. 75 direct. As a result of my illness I am unable to deal with this seriously.
Respectfully
Yours, Marta Sara Friedlaender"

Three months later, "Konsulent" Morris Samson applied to the Chief Finance President for the release of a monthly payment of 200 RM to Gertrud Windmüller's daughter Agathe from her marriage to Adolf Moll, who lived with her father. Agathe Moll had not yet received an adequate education due to learning difficulties and now wanted to complete her attendance at a women's school to learn tailoring, white sewing and general housekeeping. To date, her mother had provided her with the necessary funds. A one-time larger sum was at stake for grandson Siegfried's doctoral project in Berlin, which was approved on April 7, 1943.

Martha Friedländer's daughter Gertrud and her husband, Sidney Percival Windmüller, were deported to Theresienstadt on July 15, 1942. What loss the parting from her daughter may have meant to Martha Friedländer can only be guessed at based on their lifelong close bond with and commitment to each other. Percival Windmüller died already on November 5, 1942 in the ghetto of Theresienstadt, of which his widow informed the family via the Red Cross. However, the notification reached the son Henning Windmüller, who lived in Finland, only years later.

Martha Friedländer was to be deported to the "old age ghetto" of Theresienstadt on March 24, 1943, but was postponed because it had still not been clarified whether the "Reich Association of Jews in Germany" had access to the assets to the extent that a "home purchase agreement" could be concluded. The Hamburg Local Court endeavored to persuade Martha Friedländer to dissolve the community of property, contrary to the previously made testamentary dispositions. In that case, she would have been able to pay for the "home purchase" from her share of the estate, and her daughter's share would have gone to the Reich. However, the administrators of the entire estate were anxious to preserve the assets for the grandchildren.

On April 29, 1943, the community of property was cancelled ex officio, of which the Reich Association was only informed in writing on May 7, 1943, two days after Martha Friedländer's deportation. In the meantime, Max Plaut had clarified the question of the payment of the Reich Flight Tax via the consul and the state police. There remained remaining assets of 112000 RM, which were included in the "home purchase contract" for the "old age ghetto" Theresienstadt, although Martha Friedländer's amount far exceeded the care costs that could ever be expected. With it "not only the costs for the communal accommodation of Mrs. Friedländer in Theresienstadt must be covered, but in addition the available assets must be added to the general fund," Max Plaut informed the executors of the will. They had agreed to access the capital portion of the assets instead of just the interest in order to pay the entrance fee and ongoing care fees for the accommodation in the home Laufgraben 37 and to fulfill other obligations. Since then, the provisions of the testators regarding the use of the capital, "which had been made under completely different circumstances," no longer applied. With the financing of the "home purchase contract" Martha Friedländer, her daughter Gertrud and the grandchildren had been deprived of all their assets.

On May 5, 1943, Martha Friedländer, who in the meantime had been quartered at Beneckestraße 6, a "Judenhaus," was subsequently assigned to a transport of 50 people to Theresienstadt, where her daughter Gertrud was still living. Presumably she took care of her mother as she had taken care of her husband a few months earlier.

Martha Friedländer died in Theresienstadt on September 1, 1943, shortly before her 78th birthday;
Gertrud Windmüller also died there, at the age of 53 on July 11, 1944. A Stolperstein for them is located at 58 Hirschgraben Street.

The left side of the family grave intended for Martha Friedländer remained empty.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: January 2022
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 7; 8; 9; StaH 314-15 OFP Oberfinanzpräsident R 1940/216; 332-5 Standesämter 2739-1365/1889, 2842-464/1895, 7894-1678/1895, 8039-254/1917, 8710-169/1916; 332-7 Staatsangehörigkeitsaufsicht B I 1 1856 Nr. 1287; 332-8 Meldewesen K 6094, K 6297; A 24 Band 107, 1910; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 47009, 130965; 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden Abl. 1993, 7; 992 d Band 9 Steuerakten; Günther, Barbara, Hsg., Stormarn-Lexikon, S. 248f.; Jüdischer Friedhof Ilandkoppel (C 9-113/114); Lehrerverzeichnis 1927; http://www.rohcollections.org.uk/CollectionPhotSachs.aspx (Zugriff 27.3.2012); Wilmore, David, ed., Edwin Sachs: Architect, stagehand, engineer & fireman, Summerbridge, North Yorks: Theatreresearch, 1998, durch freundliche Vermittlung von Julia Creed, Archivarin des Royal Opera House, London, E-Mail 19.4.2012; http://www.rohcollections.org.uk/CollectionPhotSachs.aspx (Zugriff 27.3.2012); Mitteilungen zur Genealogie Jacobi von Sabine Paap, E-Mail 19.3.2012; mündliche Mitteilungen von Jan P. Windmüller, 24.4.2012.
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