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Leo Wolfsohn
© Norma van der Walde

Leo Wolfsohn * 1868

Adolphsplatz 1 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamburg-Altstadt)

LEO WOLFSOHN
JG. 1868
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
ERMORDET 16.9.1942

further stumbling stones in Adolphsplatz 1:
Valentin Burchard, Leopold Cohn, Otto Friedeberg, John Hausmann, Ludwig Moritz Mainz, Heinrich Mayer, Ivan Philip, Franz Max Rappolt, Paul Salomon, Max Stein, Dr. Heinrich Wohlwill, Cäsar Wolf

Leo Wolfsohn, born on 30 Mar. 1868 in Graudenz, died on 16 Sept. 1942 in Theresienstadt

Member of the Board of Directors of the Sugar Exchange Dec. 1932–July 1933

Leo Wolfsohn came from the Province of West Prussia. He was born there on 30 Mar. 1868 in Graudenz (today Grudzidz in Poland), at the time the district town in the administrative district of Marienwerder. His parents were Moritz Magnus Wolfsohn (1842–1932) and Johanna, née Stein (1839–1909). Leo was the second in a series of seven siblings. Around the turn of the century, he married Helene Krombach, a Jewish woman born there in 1879, called Hella (1879–1931), the daughter of Simon Krombach and his wife Eugenia, née Badt (1853–1943).

Soon afterward, the young couple moved to Hamburg, where Leo Wolfsohn registered the Leo Wolfsohn Company as sole proprietor in the company register on 2 Dec. 1905. The business, which imported sugar and molasses, was located near the main railway station at Hühnerposten 14 until 1909 and then, for a transitional period, at Kuhmühle 25 and Gröningerstrasse 13/17. In 1912, Leo Wolfsohn then rented a representative five-and-a-half-room apartment in Uhlenhorst on the raised ground floor of the house at Schrötteringksweg 9, which was newly built in 1911. Appointed with valuable furniture, carpets, paintings, porcelain, and the most modern electrical appliances, it became the home for him and his wife for a long time and from there, he also ran his business. Leo and Hella Wolfsohn did not have any children. The Jewish Leo Wolfsohn was listed in the Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer) card file of the Hamburg German-Israelitic Community under number 10,382. Whether and how he practiced his Jewish religion is not known.

Around 1908, Leo Wolfsohn’s older brother Arthur also moved to Hamburg. As a pharmacist, he acquired the house at Spaldingstrasse 28, where he lived on the second floor and operated the Mohren Pharmacy on the ground floor. A cousin of Leo and Arthur, the pharmacist Max Wolfsohn, owned the pharmacy "Zum Ritter” at Lange Reihe 39 in the St. Georg quarter from 1907 to 1938. When Arthur Wolfsohn died in 1927, his son Ernst took over the house and pharmacy on Spaldingstrasse.

On 23 Mar. 1914, the Leo Wolfsohn Company had converted into a limited partnership and Leo’s wife Helene had joined as a limited partner. Since then, the company was also active in the export of sugar and molasses. Helene Wolfsohn died on 3 Dec. 1931 in Hamburg in the Marienkrankenhaus, a local hospital. After his nephew Ernst also passed away in 1936, Leo Wolfsohn had hardly any close relatives left in the Hanseatic city apart from his cousin and his mother-in-law Eugenie Krombach, who had also moved to Hamburg. His sister-in-law Goldina Krombach had married Max Magnus van der Walde from Hamburg.

In addition to his own company, Leo Wolfsohn had been active in another company since Jan. 1931, the Union Hanseatisch-Baltische Im- und Exportgesellschaft m.b.H. This company, founded in 1921, which mainly dealt with commission business in trading with the Baltic countries, had appointed him as one of its three managing directors. He held this position until early 1935.

In Dec. 1932, Leo Wolfsohn was appointed by the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce as a member of the exchange board for the sugar division. However, this honorable task did not last long. Shortly after taking government power in the spring of 1933, the Nazis turned their attention to displacing Jewish entrepreneurs from the economy and "cleaning” business organizations of Jewish members. At the beginning of April, Hamburg’s new mayor Carl Vincent Krogmann requested from the Chamber of Commerce measures to initiate a restructuring of its organization. Thereupon, the Chamber called on the stock exchange boards to orient themselves to the political guidelines and to submit proposals for a personnel change. On 11 July 1933, the board of the Sugar Exchange was able to inform the Chamber of the following: "The previous member of the board of the Sugar Exchange, Mr. Leo Wolfsohn, resigned from office on 10 Mar. 1933.” The new exchange board was then approved by the government director Köhn, also state commissioner at the Hamburg Exchange.

The Chamber of Commerce, since Feb. 1935 the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, was more intensively involved in the Reich Governor’s (Reichsstatthalter) measures toward "Aryanization” of Jewish trade and industry from mid-1938 onward. It had not yet forwarded any information on the "Aryan status or non-status of companies.” However, "for internal use only,” it compiled a list of so-called non-Aryan companies by line of business, in which, under the heading of "Sugar,” it noted Leo Wolfsohn as well as the companies L. Behrens & Söhne and Ivan Philip.

On 18 Aug. 1939, Leo Wolfsohn’s company, which he had again managed as sole owner since Oct. 1937, was entered in the company register as expired. The reasons that led to the discontinuation of the business can only be speculated about. As of Nov. 1937, a decree of the Reich Ministry of Economics had reduced the quotas for Jewish companies, making trade extremely difficult for them. It seems questionable whether the company of the 71-year-old owner still turned a profit under the prevailing economic conditions, so that the sale – subject to approval by the authorities – to a non-Jewish entrepreneur would have been worthwhile. However, the company does not appear to have been liquidated under direct compulsion.

In the course of the persecution of Jewish citizens by the Nazi authorities, Leo Wolfsohn was also systematically plundered starting in 1939 at the latest. He had to pay a "levy on Jewish assets” (Judenvermögensabgabe) amounting to 12,400 RM (reichsmark), surrender securities with an assumed value of 27,817 RM, and hand over jewelry, gold and silver objects at an estimated value of 4,000 RM. A remaining bank balance of 1,147 RM was also confiscated.

"Apart from the usual restrictions and humiliations during the Nazi era, Leo Wolfsohn had to endure the fact that parts of his apartment were confiscated by the SS to serve as an office until he was finally expelled. In Aug. 1941, he moved to a family named Wallach at Lehnhartzstrasse 3 and with them, in early Mar. 1942, to Kielortallee 22/24. This semi-detached house of the Jewish Oppenheimer Foundation, which originally provided free apartments for members of the German-Israelitic Community in need, was transferred by force to the Reich Association of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland) in 1942. It was used as one of the so-called "Jews’ houses” ("Judenhäuser”), in which Jewish citizens were accommodated in very confined circumstances, also serving as a collection point for deportations. During the forced resettlement, the high-quality furnishings from Schötteringksweg 9 with period furniture, paintings, and a Steinway concert grand piano probably had to be sold off for little money. In the restitution proceedings, there was also talk of an extraordinarily extensive and valuable stamp collection, but this could not be proven.

On 15 July 1942, Leo Wolfsohn was deported from Hamburg to Theresienstadt on Transport No. VI/1 under No. 917. There he died on 16 Sept. 1942. The inspection of the corpse resulted in a diagnosis of arteriosclerotic dementia, with the cause of death indicated as enteritis. His brother Bruno and his sister Greta Rosa, married name Angres, who lived in Posen (today Poznan in Poland), and his cousin Max Wolfsohn were also killed in a concentration camp.

In the 1950/60s, the descendants of his surviving siblings contended successfully for restitution payments for the damage caused to Leo Wolfsohn by forced special levies, confiscation of property, and forced squandering of the apartment furnishings, through lawyers in Germany before the local authorities. By that time, they lived in London, Paris, the USA, Colombia, and Argentina.

Since 2014, a Stolperstein in front of the residential building at Schötteringksweg 9 has been commemorating Leo Wolfsohn.

© Text courtesy of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce (eds.) taken from: "Against Forgetting. Victims of totalitarian persecution from the honorary and full-time office of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce” (Gegen das Vergessen. Opfer totalitärer Verfolgung aus dem Ehren- und Hauptamt der Handelskammer Hamburg). Hamburg 2019

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

Stand: July 2020
© Dr. Karin Gröwer

Quellen: HK-Archiv 100.B.1.21 (Verzeichnis der jüdischen Betriebe nach Geschäftszweigen); HK-Archiv 100.B.1.29 (Ablehnung von Anträgen und Anregungen, Firmen als nichtarisch zu bezeichnen oder Listen nichtarischer Firmen aufzustellen oder weiterzuleiten); HK-Archiv 53.D.2.2.9 (Ernennung der Mitglieder der Allgemeinen Abteilung des Börsenvorstandes (Börsenkommission) 1926–1934); HK-Archiv 53.D.6.3.10 (Ernennung des Vorstandes der Zuckerbörse 1927–1933); StAHH 213-13_18733 (Landgericht Hamburg, Wiedergutmachung, Leo Wolfsohn); StAHH 231-7_A 1 Band 8 (Handelsregister A 2323); StAHH 231-7_A 2 Band 46 (Handelsregister B 3019); StAHH 231-7_A 3 Band 50 (Handelsregister C 3576); StAHH 332-5_1053 (Standesamt Hamburg 02a, Sterberegister 1936 Nr. 93); StAHH 332-5_7121 (Standesamt Hamburg 21, Sterberegister 1931 Nr. 1054); StAHH 332-5_930 (Standesamt Hamburg 23, Sterberegister 1927 Nr. 245); StAHH 351-11_1309 (Amt für Wiedergutmachung, Erbengemeinschaft Leo Wolfsohn); Bajohr, Frank: "Arisierung" in Hamburg. Die Verdrängung der jüdischen Unternehmer 1933–1945, Hamburg 1997, S. 223ff, 347; Bielfeldt, Hans: Vom Werden Groß-Hamburgs. Citykammer, Gauwirtschaftskammer, Handelskammer. Politik und Personalia im Dritten Reich, (Staat und Wirtschaft. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Handelskammer Hamburg) Hamburg 1980, S. 61, 142; Hamburger Adressbuch; Lohalm, Uwe (Hrsg.): "Schließlich ist es meine Heimat ..." Harry Goldstein und die Jüdische Gemeinde in Hamburg in persönlichen Dokumenten und Fotos, (Veröffentlichung der Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg) Hamburg 2002, S. 142; Offizielles Hamburger Börsenadressbuch.