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Johanna Löwe (o. J.)
© T. S. Wächter

Johanna Löwe (née Sonnenberg) * 1872

Großneumarkt 38 (vorm. Schlachterstraße) (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

1941 Riga
ermordet

further stumbling stones in Großneumarkt 38 (vorm. Schlachterstraße):
Hanna Aghitstein, Julie Baruch, Ludwig Louis Baruch, Julius Blogg, Rebecca Blogg, Kurt Cossmann, Mathilde Cossmann, Frieda Dannenberg, Alice Graff, Leopold Graff, Flora Halberstadt, Elsa Hamburger, Herbert Hamburger, Louis Hecker, Max Hecker, Marianne Minna Hecker, Lea Heymann, Alfred Heymann, Wilma Heymann, Paul Heymann, Jettchen Kahn, Adolf Kahn, Curt Koppel, Johanna Koppel, Hannchen Liepmann, Henriette Liepmann, Bernhard Liepmann, Martin Moses, Beate Ruben, Flora Samuel, Karl Schack, Minna Schack, Werner Sochaczewski, Margot Sochazewski, verh. Darvill, Sophie Vogel, Sara Vogel

Johanna Löwe, née Sonnenberg, widowed name Lewald, born on 26 July 1872 in Hamburg, deported on 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga-Jungfernhof

Grossneumarkt 38 (Schlachterstrasse 46/47)

Johanna Löwe came from a family that had been expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the sixteenth century by the Catholic kings Isabella and Ferdinand because of their Jewish faith. Due to their origin, they were called "Sephardim.” Johanna’s ancestors settled in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Hamburg. Her mother Nanni Sonnenberg was born in Hamburg on 19 Apr. 1839 as the daughter of the merchant Meyer Koppel and his wife Hanna, née Koppel. She had run a private lunch restaurant at Bei den Hütten 83 (today Hütten) and since 1888, at former Schlachterstrasse 40/42, in the Jewish Marcus-Nordheim-Stift, a residential home. Johanna’s father Isaac Sonnenberg was also born in Hamburg. His parents were the master tailor Joseph Samuel Sonnenberg and Brunette, née Keyser (Kaiser). He had worked as a messenger for a health insurance company.

Like her grandfather, Johanna learned the tailor’s trade. When she was 19 years old, her father died at the age of 51 on 12 May 1891. Unlike her three siblings, she was able to stay with her mother. Her younger, underage siblings were given a guardian and were placed in Jewish orphanages, as the legislation at the time did not allow their mother to have sole guardianship. Her brother Joseph Sonnenberg (born in 1875), a commercial clerk, only reached the age of 20, dying in the Israelite Hospital on 18 Dec. 1895.

On 25 Oct. 1906, Johanna married the merchant Jacob Lewald, the son of Hirsch Levi Lewald and Helene, née Thomas. He had been born on 5 Oct. 1875 in Frankfurt/Main (for his nephew Walter Lewald, see Paula Lewald). Jacob Lewald lived at Thielbeck 5 and ran a furniture store at Elbstrasse 88 (today Neanderstrasse). The couple moved to Hoheluftchaussee 62 and rented a room near Elbstrasse from a widow by the name of Rosenberg at Neuer Steinweg 73. Johanna Lewald lost her husband just one year after the wedding. He died on 2 Nov. 1907, shortly after his thirty-second birthday, in the Israelite Hospital. The furniture business was taken over by Marcus Blatt, who, according to the Hamburg directories, operated under the name of Jacob Lewald at Elbstrasse 88 until 1912.

Five years after Jacob’s death, Johanna entered into a second marriage. On 30 Oct. 1912, she married the widower Otto Löwe (born on 9 June 1860). The guard and former sailor had four children from his first marriage with Rosa/Recha, née Elias (born on 27 Dec. 1860, died on 27 May 1911): Rudolph (born on 21 Mar. 1892), Fanny (born on 25 Aug. 1893), Hermann (born on 13 Feb. 1897), and Bertha (born on 4 June 1898). Their own marriage did not produce any children.

Johanna’s mother Nanni Sonnenberg died on 9 Sept. 1914 at the beginning of the First World War. In the following year, on 26 May 1915, her youngest stepson, the sailor Hermann Löwe, was only 18 years old when he was killed as a soldier at Bania in Galicia by a shot in the stomach.

Johanna apparently maintained contact with her stepchildren, even after she had been widowed for the second time. Otto Löwe died on 1 Jan. 1924. His daughter Fanny, married name Schüppenhauer, reported in her restitution file that she had a good relationship with her stepmother and that she received a small pension of 32 RM (reichsmark) as a widow. Johanna Löwe was also active as a female "layer-out” ("Totenfrau”) in the Jewish Community.

Johanna Löwe also kept in contact with her sister Minna (born on 23 Mar. 1881), who was nine years younger, with whom she met daily. On 22 Dec. 1901, Minna had married the chief tax inspector Gustav Wächter (born on 24 Oct. 1875). The couple lived with three sons at Eppendorferweg 40 (today Eppendorfer Weg), later on the fourth floor of the house at Scheideweg 35. According to a tradition from this branch of the family, Johanna ran a small tailor’s workshop at Schlachterstrasse 46/47. She had a penchant for coarse jokes and was very fond of children. She was called Aunt Hanna or the "Löwentante” ("lion aunt”).

After the "Reich Law on Tenancies with Jews” ("Reichsgesetz über die Mietverhältnisse mit Juden”) had come into force on 30 Apr. 1939, thus abolishing the free choice of housing for Jews, Johanna Löwe had to give up her long-standing apartment in house no. 2 of the Lazerus-Gumpel-Stift, a residential home. She was re-quartered in apartment 35, house no. 5, with Elvira Rose, née Hirsch (born on 16 May 1898), also widowed (a Stolperstein was laid at Clemens-Schultz-Strasse 84 for Elvira Rose). During the day, she stayed in the apartment of her stepdaughter Fanny Schüppenhauer at Grosse Gärtnerstrasse 96 (today Thadenstrasse) in Altona. "She only went home to sleep.” Johanna’s stepdaughter Fanny was facing a twofold threat as a Jewish woman and because of her husband’s political opposition to the Nazi state. Karl Schüppenhauer (born on 5 Oct. 1892 in Fachenfelde) had been serving a four-year prison sentence for "preparation to high treason” ("Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat”) since 1935. Both survived the Nazi era.

Johanna’s brother, Martin Sonnenberg (born on 15 Feb. 1879), who served as a volunteer in the First World War and was the bearer of the "Wound Badge” ("Verwundetenabzeichen”), also ran a tailor’s shop, but in Berlin-Oberschöneweide. Martin Sonnenberg, too, was widowed at an early age when he married Frieda/Friederike Streim (born on 29 July 1884), a dressmaker, in his second marriage in Berlin on 5 Apr. 1919. It is quite possible that they knew each other from an early age because Frieda grew up with her sisters Clara (born on 5 Nov. 1873) and Rosalie (born on 21 Feb. 1880) (see Adolf Posner) with her father, the master tailor Eduard Samuel Streim (born on 2 Feb. 1844 in Hamburg, died on 7 Sept. 1909) at Schlachterstrasse 40/42. She had been born in Reichenbach in the Vogtland, where her mother Eva Streim, née Striem, had passed away early. Frieda Sonnenberg died on 3 June 1942 in Berlin. Martin Sonnenberg was deported on 17 Mar. 1943 from Blumenstrasse 80 in Berlin to Theresienstadt, where he died on 12 Mar. 1944.

Although Johanna Löwe had exceeded the determined age limit of 65 years, she was not deported to the "ghetto for the elderly” ("Altergetto”) in Theresienstadt, but together with her sister Minna and brother-in-law Gustav Wächter to Riga on 6 Dec. 1941. However, since a large-scale killing operation of Latvian Jews in the Riga Ghetto had not yet been completed yet, the transport was diverted to the former Jungfernhof estate about 6 kilometers (nearly 4 miles) away. Her fate and the exact date of her death are unknown.

The Wächter couple is not only commemorated by Stolpersteine at Scheideweg 33 in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel, but also by 32 postcards that they sent to their son Walter in Sweden between 1940 and 1941. Seventy years later, they can be viewed on the Internet and describe the last months of their lives.

Johanna’s younger stepdaughter Bertha Löwe and her brother Rudolph Löwe did not survive either. Rudolf Löwe lived with his wife Elisabeth, née Schröder (born on 2 Mar. 1882), who, like Karl Schüppenhauer, was not Jewish, at Im Tale 10 in the Eppendorf quarter. Rudolph worked as a stoker at the Israelite Hospital, where he died on 20 Nov. 1938, after an unresolved accident. Bertha was not married and worked as a cleaner for the state justice administration until she was dismissed in Oct. 1933 because of her Jewish descent. In the very end, she worked as a domestic servant. Bertha Löwe was deported from the "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”) at Agathenstrasse 3 to Auschwitz on 11 July 1942. A Stolperstein was laid for Bertha Löwe at Thadenstrasse 130 (see Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Altona).

Karl Schüppenhauer’s son from his first marriage, Hermann Willi Schüppenhauer (born on 7 Mar. 1925), died in the Dachau concentration camp in Mar. 1945. His mother Lina Schüppenhauer, née London (born on 16 Jan. 1897), was murdered in Auschwitz in Oct. 1942.

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

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; 4; StaH 351-11 AfW 15731 (Schüppenhauer, Fanny); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 295 u 1107/1891; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 381 u 2404/1895; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2458 u 1811/1898; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3067 u 767/1906; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 590 u 725/1907; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3195 u 661/1912; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 704 u 458/1914; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 724 u 1232/1915; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3302 u 474/1917; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 882 u 4/1924; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1089 u 435/1938; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1089 u 394/1938; StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge 1505 (Löwe, Bertha); Auskünfte von T. S. Wächter vom 2012; http://www.32postkarten.com/index_D.html (Zugriff 18.8.2014); http://www.statistik-des-holocaust.de/GAT4-20.jpg (Zugriff 18.8.2014); www.ancestry.de (Heiratsregister von Martin Sonnenberg und Frieda Friederike Streim am 5. April 1919 in Berlin, Zugriff 14.9.2017); Wächter: 32 Postkarten.
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