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Franz Daus, vermutlich im norwegischen Exil
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Franz Daus * 1896

Sievekingplatz 1 Ziviljustizgebäude (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

FRANZ DAUS
LANDRICHTER
JG. 1896
VERHAFTET
IN NORWEGEN 1942
KZ SACHSENHAUSEN

• Stolpersteine für die ermordeten Richter am Sievekingplatz (PDF, 3 Seiten, 127 KB)

further stumbling stones in Sievekingplatz 1 Ziviljustizgebäude:
Heinrich Basch, Paul Blumenthal, Dr. Hermann Moritz Falk, Hermann Feiner, Richard Hoffmann, Kurt (Curt) Ledien, Lambert Leopold, Wilhelm Prochownick, Alfred Rinteln, Anna Rosenberg, Walter Rudolphi, Leonhard Stein

Franz Daus, born on 16 Nov. 1896 in Hamburg, deported on 26 Nov. 1942 to Auschwitz, murdered there on 22 Dec. 1942
Clara Daus, born on 30 Oct. 1899 in Hamburg, deported on 11 July 1942 to Auschwitz
Anna Daus, née Marcus, born on 7 Apr. 1868 in Hamburg, deported on 19 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, died there on 16 Nov. 1942

Meiendorfer Weg 61 (Volksdorfer Weg 141)

In Apr. 1893, the socially committed 29-year-old surgeon and obstetrician James Daus (born in Stolp/Pomerania [today Slupsk in Poland] in 1864) settled in Hamburg-Rothenburgsort, at Billhorner Mühlenweg 59, second floor. His father, the Jewish merchant Adolph Daus, had died in Berlin some seven years before. In about 1893, the prosperous Jewish coffee trader and Hamburg citizen Hirsch (called Hermann) Marcus (1836–1905), a native of Rehna in Mecklenburg, lived with his grown-up daughters Anna and Gertrud as well as his wife Clara, née Symons (1844–1894), from Hamburg at what was then Eppendorfer Chaussee (today northern section of Rothenbaumchaussee) 13 a. Their son Otto (1876–1928) already lived in a home of his own.

The children were baptized Protestants but the parents were buried on the Jewish Cemetery in Ohlsdorf.

Daughter Anna attended a boarding school in French-speaking Switzerland and learned to play the piano. In 1895, James Daus and Anna Marcus were married in Hamburg and James, too, took on the Protestant faith. Their three children, Franz Gotthold Hermann (born in 1896), Clara (born in 1899), and Gertrud (born in 1901) thus grew up in an assimilated Jewish family in Rothenburgsort, an area still called Billwärder Ausschlag at that time. Since 1871 the neighborhood, characterized by industry, had the status of a suburb; in 1894, it became a district of Hamburg. In 1913, the family moved together with the maid within the neighborhood to Billhorner Röhrendamm 36. The new home was located on the raised ground floor.

By 1907 at the latest, the year the Hamburg Liberals fought the "suffrage theft” ("Wahlrechtsraub”), James Daus was active in social politics within the United Liberal Party (Vereinigte Liberale). He was a member of Hamburg’s city parliament since 1909 and in the same year wrote the paper entitled "Das neue Wahlgesetz in seiner politischen und praktischen Bedeutung.” ["The new electoral law in its political and practical significance.”] In 1919, he ran for election as the seventh candidate on the list of the liberal German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei – DDP), took his seat in the Hamburg City Parliament, and became a member of the Medical Council (Medizinalkollegium). Reaching 20 percent of votes and 33 seats, the DDP was the second strongest party within the city parliament behind the Social Democrats (82 seats) in 1919. Hamburg represented one of the most important and successful state associations of the DDP in the German Reich. On top of that, James Daus was, among other things, an elected member of the Billwärder Ausschlag school district from 1907 to 1909 and on the church council of the Protestant St. Thomas Church on Billwärder Ausschlag in 1914.

Prior to the First World War, the couple maintained contact to a professor of a Quaker-founded university in Pennsylvania/USA and to a Norwegian Germanist and principal in Bergen/Norway. In the summer of 1912, the Daus family had gone on a trip to Norway, and this was probably the way in which contact to the Beyer family in Bergen came about, who took in son Franz in the year 1939. In 1922, James Daus died of cancer at the age of 58 in the Barmbek hospital. The following year, a significant part of the family assets were lost in the inflation. Nevertheless, in the summer of 1926, Anna Daus purchased, for 24,000 marks, a house with a large plot of land surrounded by a rural setting in Meiendorf. She had the brick house at the corner of Volksdorfer Weg 141 and Ringstrasse, built only three years earlier, lavishly expanded and converted according to her ideas at the cost of 6,000 marks.

The somewhat playful elements in county house style and the curved entrance area reminiscent of Art Nouveau were replaced with a more functional design. The plans for the renovation were drawn up by the Hamburg architect Hans Loop, a friend who also became the godfather of Gertrud Daus’ son that year. Together with her older daughter Clara, Anna Daus moved into the house in Meiendorf in Feb. 1927. Via the Walddörferbahn overhead railway line (Meiendorferweg stop) with its Barmbek terminus, this residential area was also connected to the Hamburg network of overhead railway lines. On the ground floor, the house featured a spacious kitchen extending toward the garden, with built-in cupboards all the way up to the ceiling, a dining room as well as, separated by a glass sliding door, a music room furnished with mahogany furniture, a bookcase, and a Steinway grand piano. The 7,300-square-meter (approx. 1.8 acres) garden with a pond for swimming and a "fresh-air bath” lined with spruce trees (equipped with a horizontal bar and a swing) "for after-bath time” also served to secure self-sufficiency regarding the vegetable and fruit supply.

The Daus family raised chickens, geese, and turkey hens, and a gardener assisted with the work. In addition, there was also a goldfish pond and a rock garden, beds of roses, and lawn space. The Dauses’ own well for drinking-water had already been drilled by the previous owner. Anna Daus was fond of nature, lived in and off her own garden, bathed in the pond even in cold weather for toughening, and liked to wear flowing garments. On photographs, one striking feature is her extremely upright posture. Only a few steps away, on the Ringstrasse (Meiendorf), lived the Nazi foreign minister von Ribbentrop’s cousin, with whom the Daus family was on friendly terms.

The son and the two daughters were given the opportunity to obtain their high school diplomas (Abitur) and to study at university. Since 1906, Franz Daus attended the "Johanneum” in Hamburg-Winterhude, a high school emphasizing the study of the classics. He received cello lessons, went to concerts, and collected books, which he numbered just like in a library. Looking back from the year 1941, he described this time as a "gentle existence in the bosom of the family and with beautiful books and fine music.”

In 1914, he volunteered, like so many of his generation, directly from going to school to fight in the world war; as late as 17 to 27 Aug. 1914, he completed the expedited high-school leaving exam for conscripted youths (Notabitur). As a non-commissioned officer of an advanced infantry unit on the western front, he observed French positions through binoculars and was captured by French troops in Sept. 1915, probably around Ypres. As a French prisoner of war, he studied the French language very intensively and was deployed as an interpreter. He returned from captivity only in Mar. 1920. In order to recover, he was sent to the Jasper family, friends living by Lake Constance. During the one year participating in the war, he had been awarded the Iron Cross Second Class and the Hanseatic Cross.

From 1920 to 1923, he studied law at the universities of Hamburg, Freiburg/ Breisgau, Munich, and Jena. In addition, he attended philosophical lectures and attempted in Freiburg to revive the French and Dutch music of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in collaboration with the musicologist and adjunct university professor Wilibald Gurlitt (1889–1963) and the flutist professor Scheck.

Starting in 1920, Franz Daus had switched his diet to vegetarian food and raw vegetables and fruit. Gradually, he edged closer toward Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy, not least under the influence of his future wife.

In 1923, he was appointed legal trainee and in 1925 assessor. From June 1927 onward, he held the office of judge at the Hamburg Regional Court (Landgericht). For a number of years, he was associate judge of a civil division at the Hamburg Regional Court headed by Louis Vidal. Franz Daus’ task was to submit proposals for court rulings and subsequently to draw up the judgments. In 1939, Louis Vidal, in his capacity as Regional Court Director in retirement, assessed Franz Daus to be a fast and good jurist with an "unusual gift for evaluating the actual and legal circumstances submitted to the court to make a decision.” His marriage with Elly Jasper (the daughter of Gisbert Jasper, adjutant to Admiral of the Fleet, Alfred von Tirpitz, and later an admiral himself), entered into in 1921 and producing two sons, was divorced in 1931.

From 1923 to 1928, he lived with his family in Willinghusen/Stormarn District, east of Hamburg, in a single family home with garden that belonged to Anna Daus. In 1929, the family moved to a modern apartment on Mettlerkampsweg in Hamburg-Hamm.

After the divorce, from 1931 to 1935 he lived with his mother and the unmarried sister Clara Daus at Volksdorfer Weg 141. Starting in Jan. 1936, he occupied a room at Schlüterstrasse 63, fourth floor (in Rotherbaum) as a subtenant of Regina van Son (1880–1942) for nearly two years – in order not to endanger his mother, as he said.

As he had learned in the course of his law studies, Franz Daus strove to compare different statements concerning political developments as well, aiming to reach as sound a personal judgment as possible. For this purpose, he read for as long as he could Dutch, English, and French newspapers, instead of the German press, which was "forcibly coordinated” ("gleichgeschaltet”) since Feb. 1933.

His sister Clara Daus attended the private "Lyzeum,” a girls’ high school run by Miss (Fräulein) Schäben and Miss Pfannenstiel at Holzdamm 10 (1906–1913) as well as Prof. Wendt’s Realgymnasium, a high school focused on science, math, and modern languages at Besenbinderhof 29 (1913–1919). As an external student, she passed the high-school leaving exam (Abitur) of the Kloster St. Johannis Realgymnasiale Studienanstalt, a girls’ high school also emphasizing science, math, and modern languages, and afterwards studied law at the universities of Hamburg, Heidelberg, and Munich (1919–1922). In 1926, she passed the exam to become assessor and worked as a jurist in the Hamburg municipal administration at the welfare office (1926–1927), youth welfare office (1927–1931), and the finance deputation (1931–1933). Her role as a female pioneer emerges in a testimony by a judge at the Hamburg District Court (Amtsgericht), Behrends, dating from 1923: "(…) Distinguished in personal interaction by her modest and really womanly demeanor, in official matters by objectivity and clarity, she has met all of the [illegible word] directed toward the first female legal trainee in the most pleasant and favorable way.” Moreover, the law firm Oppenheimer, Behrens, Beith, Levy, Oppenheimer (see biography on Alice Oppenheimer), where she worked for five months during her practical legal training in 1925, issued a very positive reference as well: She displayed, it read, "particularly before court, an assured manner not at all inferior to her male colleagues.” As of 12 June 1933, Clara Daus was dismissed without notice from public service due to her Jewish descent. In the period following, she was a great help to her family and took care of the house and garden.

Sister Gertrud Daus passed her high-school leaving exam (Abitur) at the high school of the Kloster St. Johannis in 1920 and then studied musicology, art history, and philosophy (1921–1926) at the universities of Heidelberg, Freiburg/Breisgau, and Leipzig, though without obtaining a degree. She attended, among others, lectures given by the philosophers Heidegger and Husserl. In Freiburg, she had contact with her brother and the interpreters of medieval music as well as to the Russian choir. From 1926 to 1928, she was engaged at dancing schools in Leipzig for musical accompaniment and improvisations, thus earning a living for herself and her future husband, Hilmar Trede. Together with him, who held a Ph.D. in musicology and was a good cellist, she returned to Hamburg in 1928.

Until 1933, she worked as a music teacher at the school community on the Marienau estate near Lüneburg, a free and progressive school on the edge of the Lüneburg Heath. She also gave private lessons as a piano teacher (see biography for Anton Münden, Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Eppendorf) as well as for violin, recorder, and accordion.

On 31 Mar. 1933, she was dismissed because of her Jewish descent. By then divorced and a single mother, she temporarily moved to her mother and sister at Volksdorfer Weg. Starting in 1935, she was no longer allowed to teach non-Jewish children. With the help of the British vice-consul in Hamburg, Major Wilfried Powell, she emigrated together with her son to Britain in Mar. 1939. From there, she made efforts to enable her siblings to depart for Great Britain as well. Clara Daus commissioned a moving company to send Gertrud’s furniture after her sister on the British Isles.

Franz Daus was also forced to retire as of 1 Dec. 1933 due to his Jewish descent, and he received a pension reduced for Jewish civil servants that amounted to 312 RM (reichsmark). We do not know whether Franz Daus accepted the identity as a Jew ordered by the Nazi state. With his longish hair, the spectacles, and the wide-brimmed hat, he looked like a philosopher, one can read in a file memorandum dating from 1938. After his dismissal from employment in the judicial system, he immersed himself more intensively in anthroposophy. For instance, he played cello at the parish rooms of the "Christengemeinschaft e. V. – Bewegung für religiöse Erneuerung” ("Christian Community reg. soc. – Movement for Religious Renewal”) founded in 1921/22 at Johnsallee 17, in the course of whose "Acts of Consecration of Man” ("Menschenweihehandlungen”) liturgical texts by Rudolf Steiner were used. He also encouraged his two sons to participate in these practices.

On 8 Nov. 1937, Franz Daus was arrested by the 58-year-old Kriminalsekretär [a rank equivalent to detective sergeant or master sergeant] Franz Soujan on charges of "racial defilement” ("Rassenschande”). Presided over by Regional Court Director Hans von Döhren, the Hamburg Regional Court (Landgericht), where Franz Daus had worked as a judge for six years, sentenced him for "attempted racial defilement” to one year and nine months in prison on 30 May 1938. The charges were interpreted by judge Döhren in such a way that even kissing constituted a criminal offense. This provided the Nazi rulers with extensive means to detain Jews and force them to emigrate after release from prison. In Oct. 1938, the sentence was recalculated and increased by three months. The date of release was then set for 9 Nov. 1939.

Franz Daus was interned in the Glasmoor prison near Glashütte (north of Hamburg), which, going by the name of Wittmoor, was established as the first Hamburg concentration camp, in a peat-processing plant in early Apr. 1933. Daus was committed there because all of the other prisons in Hamburg were overcrowded. His mother visited him and wrote to some friends: "And my Franz, of whom I could always be so proud, now is in such a situation that I am unable to sleep at night with worry.” He also had visits from the Protestant pastor of the parish responsible for his mother. The letters to his sons, who lived with their mother since the closure of their Waldorf school in Altona (Freie Schule Altona, Flottbeker Chaussee 101) since Easter of 1938, exclusively contained topics like music, literature, chess problems, school, and Christian Community – there was no mention of the prison in the letters checked by the censors. During his term of imprisonment, Franz Daus made efforts to improve his English skills for the planned emigration.

It seems there were signs since May 1939 of his deportation abroad (officially termed "release from prison and departure abroad”). He had also obtained references already. In Aug. 1939, the restlessness of the prisoner, who was ill and willing to leave the country, increased: "Now I have been sitting here for two months in front of the half-opened door and I am still kept from stepping outside, a horrible feeling.” Yet another guarantee was procured by the former superior of Clara Daus, Regierungsrätin [approx. senior civil servant] Mrs. Paulsen, who had by then emigrated to New York.

His application for an exit visa, submitted on his behalf by his Jewish legal adviser ("Konsulent”) [a newly introduced Nazi term for Jewish lawyers banned from full legal practice] Edgar Haas (1877–1946) on 3 Oct. 1939, was approved. After all, the exit visa constituted a condition imposed by the Nazi-controlled authorities for release from prison. Franz Daus was compelled to leave Germany immediately upon his release from prison on 10 Nov. 1939. A handwritten note in the official emigration file read, "Suffered very much in prison, requires warm clothes.” For his part, he formulated it very cautiously in a letter dated 8 Oct. 1939: "In terms of my health, I continue to hold on as well as possible.” Since despite an existing guarantee by Professor Lockwood from Haverford University in Pennsylvania/USA and the applied-for visa dated 14 July 1939, Franz Daus’ emigration number was not up yet, and the attempts to exit with the help of his émigré sister in Britain (reason: "in danger”), to get there failed as did the attempts to depart for Switzerland with the help of the Basle-based lawyer Ernst Wolff, he was initially forced to travel to and stay with friends in Norway on a temporary visa. From there, Franz Daus then intended to emigrate to his sister Gertrud in Britain or as an "instructor” with Professor Lockwood to the USA.

For his emigration via Sweden to Norway, Franz Daus chose 177 books from his extensive private library that he wished to take along. He compiled a list of these books for the authorities dealing with the emigration. Behind these book titles and authors, which after all were to be his food for the mind in exile, the person of Franz Daus comes into view: someone with comprehensive interests, in terms of philosophy, art, and music alike. Something that also emerges clearly from the selection of books was Franz Daus’ classical education. On the book list, the concise dictionaries of the Latin and Greek languages were followed by Oedipus by the tragedian Sophocles in the Greek original. He also selected Homer’s Odyssey and the Roman historian Tacitus. The German philosophers were also represented in large numbers, among them Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, and Arthur Schopenhauer (in the case of Husserl he had, like his sister Gertrud, attended lectures during his studies in Freiburg). He complemented art books on India, Egypt, and China with the Cicerone art magazine.

In addition to various books on chess, he also packed a chess set, for Franz Daus was a member of a reputable Hamburg chess club and a very good tournament player. During a game of simultaneous chess, he played a draw against the renowned Russian chess player Aaron Nimzowitsch. The writer and translator Martin Beheim-Schwarzbach, member of the master class of the Hamburg chess club and in 1934 author of a chess book published by Insel Publishers (Das Buch vom Schach. 33 Meisterpartien), also played in this club. His verdict about Franz Daus’ playing ability was exceptionally positive: "He is an extraordinarily inventive, acute, clever chess player, in a strong club absolutely belonging to the master class, with a sure eye and aptitude for rapid decisions both in questions of position and combination. (…) He must definitely be regarded as a first-rate expert.”

He took along a book about bridge and whist as well. Complementing the music stand and the cello, music books and encyclopedias of music were also packed. It is striking that the book list also contained five authors whose works the Nazis had burned publicly in May 1933: Maxim Gorki, Joachim Ringelnatz, Arthur Schnitzler, Jakob Wassermann, and Arnold Zweig. Books by the émigré Thomas Mann, too, were on the list, in addition to works by Gerhart Hauptmann and Rilke. The German classics were represented with Goethe, Schiller, and Kleist. Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde stood for Anglo-Saxon, Gorki and Dostoyevsky for Russian, and Jacobsen, Lagerlöf, and Strindberg for Scandinavian literature.

The "list of moving goods,” however, also included articles of clothing and items providing further clues about their owner: dinner jacket, tails, and patent leather shoes (possibly already with a view to potential work as a lecturer in the USA) as well as a rain coat, backpack, and walking stick for relaxation in the open countryside. The replacement spectacles listed identify Franz Daus as a person wearing glasses; the cigarette case also noted down show him to be a smoker. For the emigration, Franz Daus wished to buy a high-quality new wardrobe trunk for 404 RM (reichsmark) from the Hamburg branch of the well-known Moritz Mädler suitcase store (Neuer Wall 10). Despite the business-minded advocacy by the selling company, the Hamburg foreign currency office turned the request down. On behalf of the "Aryan” people’s community (Volksgemeinschaft), this division of the Chief Finance Administrator (Oberfinanzpräsident) decided that it was not permissible for a German top product to be shipped outside the country by an emigrating Jew.

On 26 Oct. 1939, the "moving goods” were checked by senior court bailiff Johannes Meinert (born in 1901, a member of the Nazi party since 1 May 1933), acting as an expert of the foreign currency office, at the house in Volksdorfer Weg, with Clara Daus present. The two sons and his sister Clara accompanied Franz Daus to see him off at Hamburg central station. Immediately upon his arrival in Fjosanger near Bergen, he wrote to his oldest son: "I would have liked so much to have had you near for a little bit longer in order to be able to tell you about the riches fate has bestowed upon me in addition to all of the almost unbearable hardships. (…) Let us try to be good friends from afar.”

As late as Nov. 1938, the mother Anna Daus and her two children still remaining in Germany, Clara Daus and Franz Daus, had sold her house at Roonstrasse 40 (Hoheluft-West) and one month later the house at Eppendorfer Weg 170 (Hoheluft-West) for a total of 91,000 RM. One can assume that these sales, completed in an emergency situation, also turned out unfavorably for the vendors. Possibly, the sales proceeds served to settle punitive taxes imposed by the Nazi state starting in Nov. 1938 with the aim of appropriating Jewish assets. In July 1939, the house in Willinghusen was sold. The house at Volksdorfer Weg 141 was transferred by a notary to the sons of Franz Daus in June 1941. As their legal guardian (since 1939), the Hamburg architect and friend Hans Loop took care of the house from the fall of 1942 onward and visited Anna and Clara Daus until their deportation.

In terms of his emigration to Norway, Franz Daus also received support by the private aid organization of Odd Nansen, the son of the arctic explorer and Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1922, Fridtjof Nansen. However, in this context, differing views emerged on the Norwegian side. "The Nansen aid organization gave the impression that for its part, it was so very willing to say ‘yes’ but that it had to leave the last decision up to the authorities throughout,” Anna Daus wrote on 22 Aug. 1939. In the Norwegian port of Bergen (Fjosanger), Franz Daus was taken in by the married couple Harald and Eidis Beyer, friends of his parents. Starting on 1 Dec. 1939, he lived at Storhaugen 6 with Harald Beyer’s sister. He was not granted a work permit for Norway. Franz Daus learned Norwegian, established contact to the Waldorf School in Bergen, and continued his research into the work of Rudolf Steiner. He sought to find stability in anthroposophy as well as in philosophical and poetic wisdoms. In the papers contained in his estate from Norway, there was also a parable by Leonardo da Vinci:

"From Leonardo’s diaries:
Patience serves as a protection against wrongs
As clothes do against cold.
For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases,
It will have no power to hurt you.
So in like manner you must grow in patience
When you meet with great wrongs,
And they will then be powerless to vex your mind.”

From time to time, he also gave cello lessons. Equipped with snowshoes and snow-goggles, he went hiking in Fjosanger and environs. From Norway, too, Franz Daus made efforts to realize his emigration to the USA, and he attempted to help his mother and sister Clara to depart from Germany to Norway or to the USA. "The constant justified fear of expulsion or other dreadful official measures against them (Anna and Clara Daus) as non-Aryans must certainly darken all of their days, however. For this reason, any opportunities to exit must be seized for them as well. Even some reasonably well-founded hope of it can strengthen them and protect them to the outside, e.g. from deportation,” Franz Daus stated on 29 Nov. 1939 vis-à-vis his émigré sister in Britain.

Increasingly, the Norwegian state restricted the influx of German refugees, which meant that by Apr. 1940, an emigration of Anna and Clara Daus to Bergen was out of the question. On 2 Apr. 1940, Franz Daus wrote to his sister in Britain: "Seen from here, the struggle to find a way out for Mother and Clara looks very gloomy. The Norwegian Nansen aid organization, though benevolent and competent, is not a state institution after all, and by now the state authorities have arrived at the most rigid ‘no,’ even if large dollar sums are available and the time here would only be transitional. Only a pure transit without any stay and perhaps cases of those related to Norwegians are permitted. One has to understand that the small countries feel helpless enough (…)” Particularly after the German occupation of Norway, he actively corresponded with the US consul general in Oslo in order to accelerate his emigration to the USA. Whereas the authorities in Germany classified Franz Daus according to Nazi criteria as a Jew, both of his sons had to serve in the German Wehrmacht starting in 1941 and 1943, respectively. The younger son died at the age of 20 as a soldier in Romania.

The period after the invasion of Norway by the German Wehrmacht (9 Apr. to 10 June 1940) and the country’s surrender saw the installment in Norway of a government including the Norwegian fascists. In Aug. 1940, Franz Daus wrote, "My situation here has in fact become rather difficult already since the German authorities want my removal as a non-Aryan. By now, I have already spent a period of one month in protective custody.” In 1941, he was also interned for three and a half months. July 1942 saw the compulsory registration of all Jews. On 18 July 1942, preparations started for permanent internment. Franz Daus commented on this in a letter: "So far our initiated relocation is not really getting anywhere because the place we are supposed to go is not vacant yet. Part of the furniture has already been taken away into storage, none of my things, however. I have stored the old cello case (…), which came along already in 1912 to spend summer holidays in Bache, at a musician’s place, and I do hope to be able to bring the large suitcases to the attic.”

In Oct. 1942, the entire property of Jews in Norway was confiscated. On 25/26 Oct. 1942, all Jewish men and boys in Norway aged 16 years or older, comprising a total of 209 persons, were arrested by the Norwegian state police on the orders of the Gestapo. Franz Daus was among them. He was committed to the Berg internment camp near Tönsberg, where he ran into the former judge of the Hamburg District Court (Amtsgericht) Max Saenger. The prisoners were taken over by the SS and deported further. On 26 Nov. 1942, Franz Daus was taken to Oslo harbor by railroad and then transported aboard the German freighter Donau to Stettin (today Szczecin in Poland). Together with him, another 531 women and children were deported from Oslo to Auschwitz.

On 1 Dec. 1942, the transport arrived in the Auschwitz extermination camp on freight cars of the German Reich Railroad. The prisoners were deprived of all their personal belongings, including their civilian clothes. Their heads were shaved and they received a camp number, which turned an individual into a nameless work slave. Franz Daus received number 79,096. Three weeks later, during a "selection,” the 46-year-old Franz Daus was assigned to the group of those to be murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau on 22 Dec. 1942. Of the 740 persons deported from Norway, only 12 survived the Holocaust. Aided by the Norwegian population, some 900 Jews managed in time to flee from arrest to neutral and unoccupied Sweden.

Even before Apr. 1940, the Gestapo set the 42-year-old Clara Daus a deadline to leave Germany by the fall of 1940. However, her efforts to emigrate were unsuccessful. At the end of 1939, she had joined her mother in pushing forward the departure of Franz Daus and deferred her own exit. The mother cited her in a letter as saying "after all, it is only when Franz is free that we may think of ourselves.” And on 14 Aug. 1939, she cited her daughter once again in a letter to a friend: "’I cannot think of myself until Franz is in safety.’ And thus she [Clara Daus] also comes too late, everything is overcrowded and occupied twice over.” She did not seem to think of herself at all, hoping that age would protect her from the impending deportation. Clara Daus was deported directly to the Auschwitz concentration camp on 11 July 1942. Eight days later, the deportation of the 74-year-old mother to the Theresienstadt Ghetto followed. Gertrud Jasper, until 1937 teacher at the Waldorf school in Altona and sister-in-law of Franz Daus, accompanied Anna Daus to the collection point for deportees at the Hannoversche Bahnhof (Klostertor).

Only four weeks after the deportation, Anna Daus’ bank balance with the Norddeutsche Bank, which then belonged to the Deutsche Bank, was confiscated to the benefit of the Nazi state. Anna Daus died in Theresienstadt on 16 Nov. 1942, her son’s birthday. Clara Daus’ date of death is not known.

From Aug. 1942 onward, first Dutch citizens and, starting in 1943, also families bombed out of their homes were quartered in rooms of the house at Volksdorfer Weg 141; makeshift stovepipes rose up out of the windows. In 1953, the house was sold. Apparently, it was resold shortly afterwards and torn down to make room for a multi-floor apartment house.

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

© Björn Eggert

Quellen: 4; 5; StaH 131-15 (Senatskanzlei Personalakten), C 100 (Clara Daus); StaH 213-1 (OLG Verwaltung), Abl. 8, 143 E-L 4a (Urteil 1938); StaH 221-11 (Staatskommissar für die Entnazifizierung), P 14524 (Franz Soujan); StaH 221-11, L 4288 (Johannes Meinert); StaH 241-1 I (Justizverwaltung I), 2010 (Daus, 1933); StaH 241-2 (Justizverwaltung, Personalakten), P 1201, Abl. 1986 I (Franz Daus); StaH 241-2 (Justizverwaltung Personalakten), A 1160 (Clara Daus); StaH 242-1 II, Abl. 13 (Strafhaft Männer, Karteikarte Daus); StaH 242-1 II, Abl. 16 (U-Haft, Karteikarte Daus); StaH 314-15 (OFP), FVg 7902 (Franz Daus); StaH 314-15 (OFP), R 1757/38 (Dr. Ernst Daus); StaH 332-5 (Standesämter), 7887 u. 1784/1894 (Tod von Clara Marcus); StaH 332-8 (Alte Einwohnermeldekartei), Dr. James Daus, Hermann Marcus; StaH 332-8 (Hauskartei); StaH 351-11 (AfW), 1288 (Anna Daus); StaH 351-11 (AfW), 251022 (Peter Daus); Bibliotheca Johannei, Schülerkarte Franz Daus; Gräberkartei Jüdischer Friedhof Ohlsdorf (Marcus); Landesbetrieb Geoinformation und Vermessung, Mai 2010 (Adresszuordnung); Bezirksamt Wandsbek, Bauamt Rahlstedt; Jødisk Museum i Oslo, database "Victims of the Shoah in Norway"; Briefe von Franz Daus, Oktober 1938– Juli 1942 Privatbesitz (M. T.); W. Melhop, Historische Topographie der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg von 1880 bis 1895, Hamburg 1895, S. 386 (Billwärder Ausschlag); Hamburgisches Staatshandbuch 1907, 1909, 1914 (Dr. James Daus); Ursula Büttner, Politischer Neubeginn in schwieriger Zeit: Wahl und Arbeit der ersten demokratischen Bürgerschaft 1919–1921, Hrsg. Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Hamburg, Hamburg 1994, S. 138 (James Daus); Ursula Büttner, Hamburg zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik, Hamburg 1996, S. 45, 52 (DDP); Ursula Büttner/Werner Jochmann, Hamburg auf dem Weg ins Dritte Reich – Entwicklungsjahre 1931–1933, Hamburg 1985, S. 49 (Wittmoor bei Glashütte); Handbuch der Hansestadt Hamburg, Hamburg 1939, S. 257 (Strafgefängnis Glasmoor); AB 1905, 1918 (James Daus); TB 1895, 1900, 1908, 1912, 1920, 1922 (James Daus); TB 1939 (Die Christengemeinschaft e.V.); Michael Trede, Der Rückkehrer, Landsberg 2003, S. 10–27, 40–60, 141–145 (Familiengeschichte Daus); Martin Gilbert, Endlösung – Die Vertreibung und Vernichtung der Juden – Ein Atlas, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1982, S. 130/131 (Norwegen); Heiko Morisse, Stolperstein für den Richter Franz Daus, in: Mitteilungen des Hamburgischen Richtervereins, Nr.4/2009, S.17–18; www.lexm.uni-hamburg.de (Lexikon verfolgter Musiker und Musikerinnen der NS-Zeit; darin: Gertrud Daus); 3 telefonische Interviews mit dem Sohn P. D., Januar–März 2010; 2 telefonische Interviews mit dem Neffen M. T., Januar u. März 2010; Telefonat mit Annelise Bunzel, geb. Münden (Californien), August 2009 (wg. Ihrer Klavierlehrerin Frl. Daus).
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".

Stolperstein für den Richter Franz Daus - Ergebnisse neuer Recherchen

Stumbling Stone for Judge Franz Daus - Results of New Research

Since August 2006, nine stumbling stones for Hamburg judges and public prosecutors who were victims of National Socialism because of their Jewish origin have been placed in front of the Civil Justice Building (MHR 3/2006, 3). One of these stones is dedicated to the judge Franz Daus. As persecution fate is engraved on the stone:
Arrested in Norway 1942
Sachsenhausen concentration camp

In my short biography of Franz Daus (MHR 3/2006, 4) you can read: "In November 1939 he fled to friends in Norway. There he was arrested by the Gestapo in October 1942 as part of the so-called Judenaktion and shortly thereafter deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was presumably murdered in the gas chambers, as were most of the Jews deported from Norway."

The assumption that Franz Daus was deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp was based on information in a restitution file and from a contemporary witness, which also formed the basis of other research findings (e.g. exhibition "Viermal Leben - Jüdisches Leben in Blankenese", Trede family, 2004). 1)
A request to the Sachsenhausen Memorial for verification was unsuccessful, since - according to information received on May 12, 2006 - almost all files of the commandant's office of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, including the prisoners' file, were destroyed by the SS in the spring of 1945. New research has now revealed that Franz Daus was not deported to Sachsenhausen, but to Auschwitz, where he was killed on December 22, 1942:
Franz Daus, who had fled Germany in November 1939 to visit friends in Norway, was arrested by the Gestapo on October 26, 1942, in his then home town of Bergen, Norway, and taken to the Berg internment camp near Oslo. On November 25, 1942, the head of the Gestapo in Oslo, Helmuth Reinhardt, informed the Stettin State Police Headquarters by telegraph that "on 26.11.42 a ship transport of approximately 7-900 male and female Jews of all ages will be carried out from Oslo to Stettin. (...) The Jews are to be taken to Auschwitz."

In fact, on November 26, 1942, 532 Jewish prisoners, including 188 women and 42 children, were taken by the SS in Oslo on board the cargo ship Donau, requisitioned by the German Navy as a transport vessel. Among them was Franz Daus. On November 30, 1942, a criminal secretary of the Stettin State Police Headquarters certified that "532 Jews from Norway" had been taken over. They were immediately transported on freight trains to Auschwitz, where they arrived the next day. Again, their acceptance was confirmed in writing, this time by an SS-Obersturmführer of the Auschwitz concentration camp commandant's office. 2) 186 men were found fit for work and registered as prisoners. All the rest were immediately selected for the gas chambers.

Franz Daus, registered as prisoner No. 79096, died in Auschwitz on December 22, 1942. On his death certificate with the number 45406/1942, the cause of death is listed as "cardiac insufficiency due to phlegmon. "3) This was one of the diseases compiled on a list "Distribution of Diseases" from which the writers of the death certificates had to select the cause of death in order to conceal the true circumstances of the Auschwitz prisoners' deaths.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: January 2022
© Heiko Morisse

Fußnoten:
1) Weder im Hamburger Gedenkbuch "Hamburger Jüdische Opfer des Nationalsozialismus" (Hamburg 1995) noch im Gedenkbuch des Bundesarchivs "Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933-1945 (2. Aufl., Koblenz 2006) ist Franz Daus genannt.
2) Sowohl das zitierte Fernschreiben wie die beiden Übergabeprotokolle sind abgedruckt bei Kristian Ottosen, I slik en Natt. Historien om deportasjonen av jøder fra Norge, Oslo 2005.
3) Eine Kopie hat mir das Staatliche Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau freundlicherweise am 26.10.2009 überlassen