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Moses Samuel Magnus * 1871

Eimsbütteler Chaussee 25 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

HIER WOHNTE
MOSES SAMUEL
MAGNUS
JG. 1871
DEPORTIERT 1941
ERMORDET IN
MINSK

further stumbling stones in Eimsbütteler Chaussee 25:
Johanna Magnus, Klara Magnus, Paul Meyer, Sofie Wiesenfeld

Clara Magnus, née Fränkel, born on 30 Jan. 1871 in Altona, deported on 18 Nov. 1941 to the Minsk Ghetto

Moses Samuel Magnus, born on 30 Jan. 1871 in Kiel, deported on 18 Nov. 1941 to the Minsk Ghetto

Johanna Magnus, born on 14 June 1901 in Altona, deported on 25 Oct. 1941 to the Lodz Ghetto ("Litzmannstadt”), from there on 15 May 1942 to the Chelmno/ Kulmhof extermination camp

Eimsbütteler Chaussee 25

On 30 Jan. 1871, the Magnus family in Kiel and the Fränkel family in Altona each had a reason to celebrate: Their children Moses Samuel Magnus and Clara Fränkel were born. In the mid-1870s, the Magnus family settled in Hamburg’s Neustadt quarter. They were involved in the tobacco trade. Little is known about the Fränkel family. The Altona directory of 1875 contains an entry indicating that they lived on Grosse Bergstrasse.

We know as little about the childhood and youth or education of Moses Samuel or Clara Fränkel as we do about the occasion on which the future spouses met. Moses Samuel Magnus, who by then called himself Arthur, and Clara Fränkel were married on 31 Dec. 1900 in Altona, where they also lived. In Altona, which at that time was not yet part of Hamburg, their two children Johanna and Walter were born on 14 June 1901 and 5 Nov. 1903. In the early 1910s, the family moved into a four-and-a-half-room apartment on the fourth floor of Eimsbütteler Chaussee 25 in Hamburg. According to the available information, the father of the family pursued a lucrative occupation as a food broker.

Over the decades, Eimsbütteler Chaussee had developed into a shopping street with a diverse range of goods. This applied to everyday needs as well as beyond. Various trades and small businesses had settled in the backyards all around. In addition, several streetcar lines ran through the shopping street or crossed it, so that Eimsbütteler Chaussee was also easily accessible for residents of other parts of the city.

We learned little about the life of the Magnus family. The children grew up and went to school. Daughter Johanna then worked as an office clerk, though in which lines of business she pursued her work is not known. In the course of the Great Depression, Johanna Magnus lost her job in 1929. After that, she helped in various households for a small wage plus board. Probably because of this, she initially continued to stay in the parents’ home.

Walter Magnus completed an apprenticeship as a buyer at the Altona-based Max Victor Company for hides and skins starting in 1920, where he worked until the end of the 1920s. In the meantime, Walter met his future Christian wife Elisabeth Charlotte Wasserberg (born in 1903 in Königsberg [today Kaliningrad in Russia], died in 1989 in the USA). On 30 July 1929, they married in Hamburg and found a suitable apartment in Barmbek. Along the way, Walter changed to the Max Liebes Company in Hamburg-Altstadt, where he worked as a buyer for hides until 1934. This also led to contacts in the Netherlands, which became very important for Walter Magnus a few years later.

In the meantime, conditions for Jews had changed fundamentally. In the 1930s, the families ran into financial difficulties due to the laws, ordinances, etc. enacted by the Nazis starting in 1933. These increasingly restricted the lives of Jews. A striking signal may have been 1 Apr. 1933, marking the boycott of Jewish businesses. This signal attracted attention and the non-Jewish business owners of the Eimsbütteler Chaussee benefitted from it. The two companies in which Walter Magnus had worked for many years were "Aryanized” and the owners emigrated. Walter Magnus, henceforth unemployed, was unable to find new work. His sister Johanna was also only allowed to work for a Jewish employer.

Walter and Elisabeth Magnus no longer saw a future for themselves and their daughter Liane Mirjam, born on 2 Sept. 1935, in the German Reich. On 26 Mar. 1936, they fled Hamburg and settled in Zoppot (today Sopot in Poland), directly on the Baltic Sea and about 10 kilometers (slightly more than 6 miles) from Danzig (today Gdansk in Poland). One year later, their son Bernd was born there. Until 1920, Zoppot had belonged to the German Reich. A few years after the end of the First World War and due to the Treaty of Versailles, Zoppot and some small towns belonged to the Free City of Gdansk. It is not known how Walter Magnus earned his living here.

His sister Johanna Magnus intended to emigrate to Britain in late summer 1939. This probably failed because of the beginning of the war on 1 Sept. 1939. For a short time, she still lived at home. On Johanna’s Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer) file card of the Jewish Community, a note indicates that in 1940 she lived with Mr. and Mrs. Chassel (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de) on Isestrasse and possibly helped in the household in return for room and board. After that, Johanna Magnus lived in the house of the widow Kiewy at Johnsallee 29.

Already with the first Hamburg transport on 25 Oct. 1941, the Nazis deported Johanna Magnus to the Lodz ("Litzmannstadt”) Ghetto in German-occupied Poland and from there to the Chelmno/ Kulmhof extermination camp in May 1942. In Kulmhof, a gassing truck was already waiting, which could hold up to 100 people. By the time the truck reached the "forest camp,” the victims had already died.

Moses Samuel and Clara Magnus lived on state support towards the end of the 1930s. In addition, they rented out rooms to "make ends meet.” For example, Sofie Wiesenfeld (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de), who had been expelled from Oldenburg by the Nazis, resided with them for a few months. Likewise, the worker Paul Meyer (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de) found lodging with the couple until his deportation to Minsk on 8 Nov. 1941.

With the third Hamburg transport, on 18 Nov. 1941, the Nazis also deported Moses Samuel and Clara Magnus to Minsk; they did not return.

Stolpersteine commemorate them and Johanna Magnus at Eimsbütteler Chaussee 25 (instead of "Clara,” the spelling there is "Klara”).

On 20 Jan. 1942, the Chief Finance Administrator (Oberfinanzpräsident) announced the call for the second auction of household goods. The Pommerenke Company took care of clearing the apartment and moved the inventory to Drehbahn, the headquarters of the court bailiff’s office. At the beginning of Mar. 1942, the proceeds of the auction amounting to 572.95 RM (reichsmark) were transferred to the Chief Finance Administrator.

Other traces that were found concerning Walter Magnus:
After the beginning of the war in Sept. 1939, persecution measures against Jews also escalated in Poland, and from then on Walter Magnus had to perform forced labor. Therefore, he decided to flee to one of the countries that still accepted emigrants and he used his former business contact to the Kaufmanns Huidenhandel Company in Rotterdam/ Netherlands. The owners of this company helped him to emigrate by paying all the costs as well as the necessary documents processing. Thus, Walter Magnus left his Christian wife behind with their two small children.

In early 1940, Walter Magnus traveled to Hamburg to bid farewell to his parents. From Hamburg, he took the train to Rotterdam, then going by ship to the Dominican Republic. There he fell seriously ill with malaria, from which permanent health impairments developed in later years. It was not until 1946 that he reached the USA, where he reunited with his wife and two children after so many years. We found no traces of the circumstances under which his family survived the war period. Walter and Elisabeth Magnus passed away in 1989; their son Bruno died in 2014 as a distinguished philosophy professor in the USA.

The owners of the Kaufmanns Huidenhandel Company also left the Netherlands at an unknown time due to the persecution measures by the Nazis. The company was continued in New York/USA. After Walter Magnus was able to work again, he managed to start a job there and stayed until he had worked off his "debts.”

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

Stand: May 2021
© Sonja Zoder

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 8; 9; StaH 214-1/475 Gerichtsvollzieherwesen; StaH Standesämter 332-5/5952-1273/1900; 332-5/18510-1772/1902; 332-5/13981-2958/1903; 332-5/13108-437/1929; StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge Sonderakten 1538; 351-11 (AfW) 27980; Baumbach: Wo Wurzeln waren, Hamburg 1993, S. 262 und Beiheft S. 17, 25, 26; Das unbekannte Vernichtungslager Kulmhof am Ner (Chelmno nad Nerem) Geschichte und Erinnerung. Begleitheft zur Ausstellung, Hamburg 2013; Altonaer und Hamburger Adressbücher; URL: https://www.tracingthepast.org/minority-census am 2.6.2016; https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/bernd-magnus-obituary?pid=173094520 am 10.6.2015; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Kaufmann%27s_Huidenhandel#/media/File:Kaufmann's_ Huidenhandel_02.jpg jeweils am 22.8.2020; https://ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/regionen/reichsgau-danzig-westpreussen am 16.9.2020.
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