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Mary Mengers (née Goldschmidt) * 1872

Steinwegpassage 1 (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
MARY MENGERS
GEB. GOLDSCHMIDT
JG. 1872
FLUCHT 1939
HOLLAND
INTERNIERT WESTERBORK
DEPORTIERT 1943
ERMORDET IN
SOBIBOR

further stumbling stones in Steinwegpassage 1:
Will(y)i Krügel, Erna Strüßmann

Mary Mengers, née Goldschmidt, born on 11 Feb. 1872 in Hildesheim, in 1939 escape to the Netherlands, deported on 20 July 1943 from the Westerbork transit camp to Sobibor, murdered there on 23 July 1943

Steinwegpassage 1

Mary Mengers was born as Margarethe Goldschmidt in Hildesheim. Her father Moritz Goldschmidt (born in 1835, died in 1899), from the mountain village of Moritzberg, moved to Hildesheim in 1855, where he rose from lottery ticket vendor to banker. In Jan. 1863, he had married Georgine Feldstein (born on 4 Dec. 1840) from Kassel. The Jewish Goldschmidt couple lived at Almsstrasse 34 in Hildesheim. They had seven children, three of whom did not live to adulthood. The only son Adolf and the daughters, too, received good school educations. The sisters graduated from the Städtische Höhere Töchterschule, a municipal girls’ secondary school and the first public school in Hildesheim, which Mary completed with the graduating class (Prima) in 1888. Mary came to Hamburg at the age of 25 and married Carl Mengers (born on 2 Mar. 1860), twelve years her senior, on 15 June 1897. Carl came from a well-heeled merchant family and only at the beginning of that year, he had taken over the long-standing "Blusen-Paradies Falk & Mengers,” a store for manufactured and fashion goods at Alter Steinweg 30-32, founded in 1853, from his widowed mother Mine Mengers, née Falk. His father Georg Mengers came from Lehe and had already died on 19 May 1889 in Hamburg. Mine Mengers died on 1 Sept. 1906 at the age of 77.

In addition to the business premises at Alter Steinweg 30-32, the adjacent buildings at Steinwegpassage 1 and 3 as well as Alter Steinweg 29 had also been family-owned for many years. Mary and Carl Mengers first moved into their own apartment at Fuhlentwiete 119 and then lived in the house of Carl’s parents at Steinwegpassage 1. Their first child, daughter Gertrud, was born on 16 Apr. 1898; sister Käthe followed on 14 Aug. 1902. Son Georg, named after his grandfather, was born on 27 Dec. 1906.

The daughters also received solid schooling. They attended girls’ high school (Lyzeum), the Emilie-Wüstenfeld School. The older Gertrud first began studying medicine and then devoted herself to economics. She studied in Munich, Heidelberg, and Kiel. In 1927, she passed the diploma examination for economists in Jena. She received her doctorate in 1929 and married Erich Zachau (born on 1 Nov. 1902 in Elbing) in Berlin-Zehlendorf. She wrote her dissertation in 1930 on the subject of Subventionen als Mittel moderner Wirtschaftpolitik ("Subsidies as a means of modern economic policy”). According to the 1939 national census, she lived in Berlin-Lichterfelde.

Mary’s younger daughter Käthe gave up her dream of becoming a kindergarten teacher when her father fell seriously ill; Carl Mengers died of a stomach condition on 2 Apr. 1920. After a traineeship and attendance of the Peters commercial school, Käthe was given power of attorney by her mother in 1924. She was married in 1928 and left the company. Her husband Paul Lissauer (born on 26 Nov. 1900 in Wandsbek) had received commercial training at the company of his father, Marcus Lissauer, specializing in raw materials, imports, and exports. The glue factory at Kirchenallee 43-45, which he had taken over together with his brother Moritz (born on 13 June 1892), went bankrupt in 1933 right at the beginning of the boycott measures against Jewish companies.

In 1933, in order to continue to secure their livelihood, Käthe Lissauer opened a shop for women’s fashion under the name "Billig & Fesch” ("affordable and smart”) in her mother’s house at Steinwegpassage 3, in 1933, which did go well until it was officially closed in the course of the November Pogrom in 1938. Warned in time, Paul Lissauer was able to avoid arrest. Hidden in the toolbox of a car, on the evening of 13November he fled across the border to the Netherlands, where his brother Moritz had lived since 1934. It was not until June 1939 that Käthe was able to follow her husband. In Marseille, they both joined an illegal transport to Palestine.

Mary’s son, Georg Mengers, had received power of attorney in 1928 when his sister Käthe left the family business. In Apr. 1930, Georg became the sole owner. Due to the poor economic situation, however, he was forced to give up the company at the end of 1931. In the same year, on 6 March, he had married Ruth Levy (born on 28 Jan. 1909), the daughter of Joseph Levy (born on 25 Sept. 1869, died on 31 Dec. 1950) and Martha, née Levy. Joseph Levy owned the "M. Rieder” shoe store at Neuer Steinweg 1-3. With the help of his father-in-law, Georg Mengers reopened a fashion store at Neuer Steinweg 20 in 1932. A large store window and two showcases presented textiles and stockings for sale. Later, ready-to-wear goods were also sold. He employed a sales assistant and an apprentice; a domestic servant took care of the family’s three-bedroom apartment at the intersection of Holstenwall 13 and Enckeplatz, because Ruth Mengers, the official owner of the company, also worked in the business. Daughter Susanne was born on 2 Sept. 1932.

When the Nazi party (NSDAP) called for a nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses on 1 Apr. 1933, two SA men also took up positions in front of the Mengers’ store and the slogan was, "Do not buy from Jews.” Despite this threat, Georg Mengers did not allow himself to be deterred from a visit to the hairdresser "on Steinweg” that day. There, he was engaged by a stranger in a conversation about the government, and a remark he made led to his arrest shortly afterward. His family remained in the dark about his whereabouts for three weeks until his mother and father-in-law managed to buy him out of custody on bail. Georg’s lawyer Henry Neuhaus, however, was able to obtain an acquittal on 16 May 1933 before the Hanseatic Special Court (Sondergericht) in the proceedings entitled "Offense of the Heimtückeverordnung [Treachery Act].” However, as Ruth Mengers reported, these events forced them to give up their business. A subsequent attempt to leave Germany failed at the Dutch border. They were forced to leave their belongings behind and return to Hamburg eight days later. Georg Mengers initially found a new field of activity as a textiles representative for various companies, mostly in Berlin, until he and his family managed to emigrate to the USA via Rotterdam in Aug. 1938 under great difficulties. The shoe store of his father-in-law Joseph Levy was "Aryanized.”

Mary Mengers, who had moved to Hansastrasse 60 with her husband Carl shortly before his death, went back to residing at Steinwegpassage 1 via an intermediate stay at Zesenstrasse 1 in Hamburg-Winterhude around 1933. She lived with her daughter Käthe on the second floor of her house until the daughter followed her husband Paul into emigration. At the beginning of 1939, the five-storey apartment building was still in her possession. Then it was, like all of her real estate, placed under a "security order” ("Sicherungsanordnung”) and forcibly administered by the "Hanseatic Property Management Company of 1938” (Grundstücksverwaltungsgesellschaft von 1938). On 15 Mar. 1939, the foreign currency office of the Hamburg Chief Finance Administrator (Oberfinanzpräsident) approved the sale of the houses at Alter Steinweg 29/32 and Steinwegpassage 1 and 3. The purchase price of 86,901.46 RM (reichsmark) was deposited in a blocked account. Mary Mengers could no longer dispose of her assets without prior permission.

In Nov. 1938, she managed to emigrate to the Netherlands, where she lived temporarily in The Hague at Stadtheuderslaan 8. The Hague was originally intended as a stopover, from where she intended to travel further to join her son Georg in the USA. Mary Mengers had to leave The Hague as a Jewish foreign national and moved to her widowed sister Bertha Cohen-Goldschmidt (born on 29 Jan. 1870) in Doorn, at Prinz Hendrikweg 39. According to information from the website "Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands,” her brother Adolf Goldschmidt (born on 27 Jan. 1868) was also registered there.

In Apr. 1943, Mary Mengers was interned in the Vught (‘s-Hertogenbosch) camp and brought from there to the Westerbork camp on 9 May 1943. Every week, a freight train left Westerbork, which was used by the Nazi occupiers as a transit camp for the deportation of Dutch Jews to the Auschwitz and Sobibor extermination camps. Mary Mengers and her sister Bertha Cohen-Goldschmidt were in a transport to Sobibor on 20 July 1943, where Mary Mengers was murdered on 23 July 1943.

Her brother Adolf Goldschmidt died on 25 Oct. 1944 in Auschwitz.

Georg Mengers, who with his wife Ruth and daughter Susanne lived to see the end of the "Third Reich” due to his forced emigration to the USA, did not get along in the foreign country. He took his own life in a hotel on Times Square in New York on 21 Sept. 1946.

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

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; 4; 8; 9; StaH 351-11 AfW 1757 (Mengers, Mary); StaH 351-11 AfW 31494 (Mengers, Georg); StaH 351-11 AfW 26200 (Lissauer, Käthe); StaH 314-15 Abl. 1998/1_M 115; StaH 314-15 OFP, R 1939/213; StaH 314-150 OFP, F 1701; StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgerichte – Strafsachen LO 229/33; StaH 231-7_B 1955-278; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 258 u 1303/1889; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2457 u 1310/1898; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8059 u 275/1920; Prauss: Verfolgt, S. 36f.; Bajohr: "Arisierung", S. 369; Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands, www.joodsmonument.nl (Zugriff am 4.4.2012).
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