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Margarethe Meyer * 1890

Hallerstraße 76 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
MARGARETHE MEYER
JG. 1890
DEPORTIERT 1942
ERMORDET IN
AUSCHWITZ

further stumbling stones in Hallerstraße 76:
Alice Baruch, Sara Carlebach, Charlotte Carlebach, Dr. Joseph Zwi Carlebach, Noemi Carlebach, Ruth Carlebach, Margarethe Dammann, Gertrud Dammann, Charlotte Dammann, Dina Dessau, Felix Halberstadt, Josabeth Halberstadt, Elsa Meyer, Alice Rosenbaum, Julius Rothschild, Jente Schlüter

Elsa Meyer, born 14 Apr. 1895 in Soest, Westphalia, suicide 6 Nov. 1941
Margarethe Meyer, born 29 Nov. 1890 in Soest, Westphalia, deported to Auschwitz 11 July 1942

Hallerstraße 76

The sisters Margarethe (born on 29 Nov. 1890) and Elsa Meyer (born on 14 Apr. 1895) were born in Soest in Westphalia as the first and fourth children of nine siblings.

Their parents, the merchant Julius Meyer (born on 17 Jan. 1860 in Soest) and his wife the master craftswoman Martha, née Bernstein (born on 13 Feb. 1864 in Walldorf-Meiningen) were self-employed business people. In 1888 they launched a "finery operation” in Soest, a workshop where they crafted and sold ladies’ hats, located at Brüderstraße 29 and from 1900 at the latest at Rathausstraße 5, a desirable location in the center of town. Their family also lived there.

In addition to Margarethe and Elsa, the family also included the children Alfred (born in 1892), Irene (born in 1893), Ruth (born in 1896), Hugo (born in 1898), Edith (born in 1900), Charlotte Viktoria (born in 1902) and Max Siegmund (born in 1906).

A small number of Jews had lived in the Westphalian city Soest since the mid 13th century. Around 1669, Soest became the property of the Prince of Brandenburg who issued protective letters to the two Jewish families, probably for a fee. The letters granted them the right to settle and trade within certain limits. It wasn’t until the Napoleonic Period (1794–1815) that the number of Jewish residents steadily began to rise, until the population reached its height of about 300 people around 1880. At that time, Soest had roughly 14,800 residents. In 1819, a religious community was formed, three years later a synagogue replaced the previous prayer room, and around 1860 the community added a new schoolhouse for the Israelite Elementary School. That school was where the Meyer Family children were taught before they changed to secondary schools.

Margarethe, the oldest of the siblings, attended the public high school in Soest, a high school for girls, after finishing the Israelite Elementary School. It was there that she learned the finery-maker’s crafts, and, like her mother, she qualified as a master craftswoman. With that qualification she was in a position to manage her parents’ business. She also sat exams at the Arnsberg Chamber of Crafts, which required comprehensive knowledge of her subject and skilled craftsmanship.

Their father Julius Meyer died in Mar. 1920 at the age of 60. Margarethe took over responsibility for the family and became owner of the store. She took care of the dowry for her sister Ruth, paid the school tuition for her youngest brother, and ran the household. The family’s main source of income remained the finery store which she ran with great energy. The ladies of Soest knew where they could find good service. Margarethe Meyer worked hard to maintain the store’s customary high standard, the store which continued to be called "Julius Meyer”. And she was successful, until the National Socialists took power.

Her brother Max later reported about the boycott of Jewish shops in Soest on 1 Apr. 1933: SA men were posted outside the finery store, a regular customer came into the shop to protest these measures, she asked for three shopping bags from our store which she filled with old hats, then she took a demonstrative walk along Rathausstraße. She remained unmolested, she was the widow of Soest’s former mayor. Initially, other regular customers continued to buy their hats from Margarethe. Yet slowly their revenue declined. Then the building at Rathausstraße 5 was sold, and the new owners immediately served notice on the store space and residential rooms.

Margarethe and her mother Martha Meyer decided to take a chance on making a new start in Hamburg. In Soest news was making the rounds that Hamburg had a more liberal attitude towards Jews. They wanted to build a new business and livelihood for themselves there. On 5 Jan. 1937 they moved to Eppendorfer Landstraße 18. There they had found an apartment and store space on the ground floor. Margarethe Meyer was issued a business license on 21 Jan. 1937 to run a "business as a finery craftswoman” which was expanded on 20 Apr. 1937, making her "owner of a lady’s tailoring shop”.

The reason for expanding the business was her sister Else’s collaboration, she had moved to Hamburg along with her sister. Else had attended the same schools as her sister Margarethe in their hometown Soest, then apprenticed with a tailor and had passed the final examination. Tailoring work followed in Kassel and Berlin. She sat her master craftswoman exam at the Soest Chamber of Crafts. Owing to her trade expertise, the department store Althoff in Essen hired her as a manager (Kaufhaus Althoff belonged to Rudolf Karstadt AG). She worked there until she was also hit by the dismissal of Jewish employees in 1933. So in the following years she again lived with her family in her hometown, until she moved to Hamburg with her sister.

Margarethe, Else and their mother Martha Meyer were certainly able to provide for themselves with the income form the Hamburg store. But there too the anti-Jewish measures continued to spread. On 31 Dec. 1938, her business license expired in accordance with "Article II §5 of the Order to Implement the Decree to Eliminate Jews from German Economic Life of 23 Nov. 1938”. Paragraph 5 stated: "Jewish owners of trade businesses are to be removed from the trade register as of 31 Dec. 1938”. Trade businesses and retail stores had to be closed.

The following year, 1939, proved to be a further severe test for the women. They gave up the rooms on Eppendorfer Landstraße and moved into a sublet from Rothschild on Hallerstraße which by now had been renamed "Ostmarkstraße”, number 76. Else Meyer probably had lung disease – at the time of the census on 17 May 1939, she was staying at the medical facility of the "Rothschildsche Lung Sanitarium in Nordrach, Baden”, a sanitarium for Jewish women with lung disease, owned by the Rothschild Foundation in Frankfurt on the Main.

In Dec. 1939 the mother and her daughters parted ways. Martha Meyer left Germany by train, travelled to Genoa and boarded a ship there to Brazil where her youngest son Max Siegmund was already living. Why only the mother emigrated we do not know. It is possible that they did not possess the financial means to cover the journey for the two daughters, or Else’s state of health did not allow her to embark on such a long journey.

We do not know anything about the sisters’ lives between 1940 and early 1941. They may have been supported by the large household at Hallerstraße 76.

On 22 Sept. 1941, the Israelite Hospital at Johnsallee 68 sent a letter to the police authority, stating the following: Miss Else Sara Meyer, born on 14 Apr. 1895, residing at Ostmarkstraße 76, ground floor, c/o Rothschild was admitted here today following an attempted suicide. Diagnosis: Veronal poisoning. Else Meyer died on 6 Nov. 1941 at the Israelite Hospital, yet not immediately as a consequence of her Veronal poisoning, but rather from pulmonary tuberculosis. She was buried at the Ilandkoppel Jewish Cemetery in Hamburg Ohlsdorf.

Margarethe Meyer was then alone in Hamburg. Four weeks after Else’s death, on 6 Dec. 1941, her neighbors, the Carlebach Family, mother and daughter Dammann and the married couple Halberstadt were deported to Riga and taken to the Riga-Jungfernhof satellite camp. All of a sudden, a total of twelve close neighbors no longer lived in her house. Margarethe still had a little time until 11 July 1942, the day of her deportation to Auschwitz. Like her follow persecuted individuals, she was killed there.

We know the following details about Margarethe and Else Meyer’s siblings:
Alfred Meyer, the eldest of the three sons, fell during World War I in 1916 near the town Soissons in Northern France.
Irene Mahler, née Meyer, married Josef Mahler (born in 1884 in Hörde), lived in Krefeld-Uerdingen on the Rhein, was deported with her husband from Düsseldorf to the transit ghetto Izbica on 22 Apr. 1942. Over 1000 people from the region were deported on that transport. We know that the people on that transport lived roughly half a year longer. They probably were transported to Sobibor extermination camp in Oct. 1942. They did not return from there. Irene and Josef Mahler were survived by their daughter Hannelore (born in 1923 in Krefeld) who immigrated to the USA where she married.
Ruth Meyer had married the watchmaker Berthold Block (born in 1893 in Wolfshagen) on 17 Nov. 1929. The couple escaped the Holocaust by immigrating to the USA in time.
Hugo Meyer never married and did not have any children. He died in 1921 in his hometown Soest.
Edith Meyer had followed her sisters and her mother to Hamburg in May 1937. She worked in her profession as a nurse and paid the Jewish community religious tax from Aug. 1937 to mid 1938. In Jan. 1939, she left Germany for England and from there immigrated to the USA. She died at her last residence in Seattle, Washington in 1945, never having married or had children.
Charlotte Viktoria Meyer also never married or had children. She died in 1924 at the tender age of 22.
Max Siegmund Meyer, the youngest, had attended Israelite Elementary School and high school in Soest. He began an apprenticeship at Alsberg Department Store in Hamm in 1925 and afterwards worked at department stores in Recklinghausen, Hildesheim, Kassel and Osnabrück. He fled across the Dutch border near Gronau and travelled to Brazil via France. In Sao Paulo he found a place to stay and muddled through with various jobs. His mother Martha Meyer joined him. In 1946 the two of them left Brazil for the USA. Martha Meyer died there on 18 Apr. 1948 at the age of 84. Max became a naturalized citizen, dropped his middle name Siegmund and lived in various towns on the west coast of the US. He worked as an interior designer and died on 24 Oct. 1975.


Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.


Stand: September 2019
© Christina Igla

Quellen: 1; StaH: 331-5 Unnatürliche Todesfälle 3 Akte 1941/1721; 332-8 Hausmeldekartei Film 2351; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 797, _12791, _17361; Auskunft Stadtarchiv Soest, E-Mail v. 9.7.2015; Köhn, Die jüdische Gemeinde Soest, S. 253–257; Gottwaldt/Schulle, "Judendeportationen", S. 195f.; www.ancestry.de (eingesehen am 18.1.2016); http://bbf.dipf.de (eingesehen am 17.1.2016), www.jüdische-gemeinden.de; www.soest.de; www.wikipedia.de Stichwort: Synagoge (Soest) (jeweils eingesehen am 18.1.2016). Informationen von Frau Astrid Louven zu Elsa Meyer (Juni 2015).
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