Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Arthur Prager * 1880

Osterstraße 20 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

HIER WOHNTE
ARTHUR PRAGER
JG. 1880
DEPORTIERT 1941
MINSK
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Osterstraße 20:
Louis Cohen-Cossen

Arthur Prager, b. 2.24.1880 in Christiania (now, Oslo); deported to the Minsk ghetto on 11.8.1941

Osterstraße 20

Arthur Prager was born in Oslo on 24 February 1880. At that time the place was still named after the Danish regent, Christiania; this is how his birthplace was entered in his documents. His parents were Herman Prager and Jenny Prager, née Levy; nothing further is known of them.

In 1939, for the first time, the Jewish Religion Association of Hamburg issued him a communal religion tax record, that is to say, he had become an obligatory member. This indicated a certain distance from the community previously. Accordingly, Arthur Prager had told his business associate Ewald W., who later reported: "that he was not a Jew. He showed me his military I.D. and his registration card. In both documents it was noted that Mr. Prager was an Evangelical Lutheran.”

Arthur Prager married the non-Jewish Alina Daemel, who was also a Lutheran. After the passage of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, Arthur and Alina Prager were classified as a "non-privileged” mixed marriage; they had no children.

Arthur Prager was a druggist by profession. Since 1907 at the latest, he ran a drugstore at Bellealliancestrasse 68; he was among the first generation of business people who settled in this new quarter of Hamburg, situated at the border with Altona. The financial means were supposedly supplied by his mother. The shop, a combined place of business and modest living quarters, was the usual model for small independent businesses in mixed business and residential neighborhoods. As a shopkeeper, he was a member of a specialized occupational organization, in his case the registered "Druggist Association of Hamburg.” Even twenty years after Arthur Prager had been driven out of business, he was known well enough in the association so that its business manager, W., was able to give information to the Office of Reparation and Restitution, which was working on behalf of Arthur’s heirs. He wrote in his report: "Since Mr. Prager was a Jew, the National Socialist Party, in several instances since 1933, created considerable difficulties for him. The drugstore was officially closed in November 1938 and its warehouse was confiscated. Mr. Prager ran his drugstore together with his wife and with occasional help from relatives.” The business grossed 40,000 RM annually with an estimated net profit of 7–8,000 RM. "It was known that Mr. Prager maintained a large warehouse,” with an estimated worth of 30,000 RM.

In fact, by 1938, the business was not doing as well as the estimates of the Druggist Association would suggest. The boycott of Jewish businesses, to which the Druggist Association alluded – while not specifying how often it participated in calls for such boycotts – produced existential effects for the Prager couple, already leading to indebtedness in 1938. The Pragers seem not to have spoken much or at all about this to their nearest relatives and friends. When the Hamburg Agency for Trade, Shipping, and Commerce closed the business on 5 December 1938, in accordance with the "Proclamation for the Expulsion of Jews from German Economic Life,” Arthur and Alina Prager had already piled up several hundred RM in back rent.

The rent had been deferred; the drug warehouse served as security. They could stay in the apartment for one month, for which they had paid a monthly rent of 100 RM; then they had to give it up. On 1 February 1939, they sublet two rooms from their friend, the salesman Ewald W, at Osterstrasse 20; they took their furniture with them from the old dwelling. They no longer possessed financial reserves but nevertheless owed rent to the amount of 900 RM. They had to apply for welfare support.

Presumably in 1939, after the move, Alina Prager died, whereby Arthur Prager lost the protection of the "mixed marriage.” He had to move into the "Jew house” at Heinrich-Barth-Strasse 8, where, on 8 November 1941, he received his deportation order to Minsk. All trace of him was lost there.

Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: February 2018
© Peter Offenborn

Quellen: 1; 2 (P 320); 4; 5; Frank Bajohr, "Arisierung".
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".