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Wolfgang Lissauer * 1921

Isestraße 85 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

HIER WOHNTE
WOLFGANG
LISSAUER
JG. 1921
FLUCHT 1938
HOLLAND
INTERNIERT
DEPORTIERT 1942
ERMORDET IN
AUSCHWITZ

further stumbling stones in Isestraße 85:
Erna Baruch, Walter Baruch, Gretchen Cohn, Max Cohn, Erwin Cohn, Senta Lissauer, Ruth Lissauer, Cerline Elise Nathan

Senta Lissauer, née Lippstadt, born on 7 Dec. 1889 in Hamburg, deported on 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz
Wolfgang Lissauer, born on 14 Dec. 1921, deported from the Netherlands to Auschwitz, murdered on 30 Sept. 1942
Ruth Lissauer, born on 8 Jan. 1924, deported from the Netherlands to Auschwitz, murdered on 31 July 1944

Senta Lissauer came from a well-to-do family. Her father, Emil Lippstadt, was a successful stockbroker. From 1907 to 1911, she attended elementary school and after that, until 1917, a Realschule [a practice-oriented secondary school up to grade 10] in Hamburg.

She wished to become a concert pianist and studied music. Until being married on 4 Mar. 1921, Senta Lissauer was able to perform in concert several times. Afterward, she devoted her time to managing the household and to her three children, who were born up to the year 1925.

When she was divorced in 1926, she resumed her career. She appeared as a concert pianist, gave piano lessons, and worked as a piano accompanist in ballet schools. Her apartment was a venue for private concerts. The family had a good income throughout, managing to hire a domestic servant for childcare and housekeeping.

This changed when Jewish artists were allowed to perform in the Jewish cultural scene only. One concert she gave on 27 Feb. 1937 at Gabriel-Riesser Hall in the temple on Oberstrasse, today the location of the NDR’s (North German Broadcasting) studio hall, is documented. Senta Lissauer was also given the opportunity to continue performing in the small private orchestra of the non-Jewish Hans Bauer in Eppendorf, in whose house she socialized privately as well.

For Senta Lissauer, the assumption of power by the Nazis marked the beginning of an odyssey through different apartments, which is impossible to retrace in detail. In 1937, she moved with her children to Hansastrasse into the home of her parents, who had passed away by then.

Son Wolfgang, born in Dec. 1921, still managed to complete his commercial apprenticeship in 1936, but he lost his job in 1938. Wolfgang and his two sisters, Ruth, born in 1924, and Beatrice, born in 1925, reached a children’s home in the Netherlands on a "children transport” (Kindertransport) in Dec. 1938. On 25 Jan. 1939, Senta Lissauer submitted an application to the Chief Finance Administration (Oberfinanzdirektion) for being allowed to send the children 10 RM (reichsmark) because they had not been permitted to take along any money on the transport. Whereas this application was rejected without any reasons given, Senta Lissauer was allowed to send their summer clothing after the children in Apr. 1939.

In the Netherlands, the siblings were subsequently separated. Ruth was initially accommodated in the "Mulo” children’s camp in Scheveningen, and after the invasion of German troops, she reached Arnhem. On 11 Dec. 1942, she was taken to the Westerbork transit camp and deported from there to Auschwitz. There she was murdered on 31 July 1944.

It was not possible to reconstruct the fate of her older brother Wolfgang in detail. In any case, he was deported to Auschwitz and already murdered nearly two years before his sister, on 30 Sept. 1942.

Only Beatrice survived the "Third Reich” in exile.

Senta Lissauer, all by herself by then, was forced to vacate the apartment on Hansastrasse in Nov. 1939. She continued to live as a subtenant in a room on Isestrasse before receiving the deportation order to the Lodz Ghetto, where she perished at a time unknown. Probably she died even before her children, who likely learned nothing about their mother’s fate.


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

Stand: March 2017
© Christa Fladhammer

Quellen: 1; AfW 230725; Gemeindeblatt der der Deutsch-Israelitischen Ge­meinde von 1937, Nr. 3.
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".