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Eduard Wolff * 1870

Schöne Aussicht 22 (Hamburg-Nord, Uhlenhorst)

HIER WOHNTE
EDUARD WOLFF
JG. 1870
GEDEMÜTIGT / ENTRECHTET
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
26. FEB. 1938

Eduard Wolff, born 6.12.1870 in Hamburg, cigar manufacturer and trader, Turkish honorary consul, fled to his death on 26.2.1938

Schöne Aussicht 22, Uhlenhorst (residential address)
Spaldingstraße 160, Hammerbrook (business address)

Eduard Wolff was the second eldest of the seven children of Levy and Hanna Wolff from Altona. The Jewish couple, then named Levy Salomon (Louis) Wolff and Hanna (Gretl) Jacob, known as Falk, were married in Hamburg on February 20, 1867. They founded a widely ramified and economically very successful family, which was largely destroyed by the persecution measures of National Socialism.

Hanna (Gretl) Jacob, called Falk, was born in Hamburg on April 11, 1844. Levy Salomon (Louis) Wolff was born on April 5, 1830 in the then Prussian city of Altona. He earned his living as a cigar worker until he set up his own business as a cigar manufacturer.

Although the Prussian citizen Levy Salomon (Louis) Wolff lived and worked in Hamburg, he was able to persuade the Prussian government president in Schleswig to allow him to use the name Levy Wolff in future by decree dated August 31, 1871. Shortly afterwards, on January 26, 1872, Levy Wolff acquired Hamburg citizenship.

Apparently, the business developed well. From 1869 to 1871, the Hamburg address book only listed a "Cigarrenfabr. L. M. Wolff" at Tatergang 1 in St. Pauli, from 1873 a distinction was made between the "factory and warehouse of cigars" at Grosse Reichenstraße 41 (Hamburg-Altstadt) on the one hand and the residential address at Bohnenstraße 11 between Großer Burstah and Trostbrücke (also Hamburg-Altstadt) on the other. (The street Tatergang, which no longer exists, is now part of the street Pinnasberg. The street got its name because - according to the Hamburg address book of 1925 – it was a "footpath frequently travelled by gypsies (Taters)").

The residential addresses changed in the following years: Esplanade 40, Bei den Hütten 66 (1880-1884), Eimsbüttlerstraße 53 (1885-1891), Eppendorfer Weg 49 (1892-1899).

Levy Wolff and his wife Hanna last lived at Barcastraße 10 in the St. Georg district, not far from their son Eduard, who at that time lived An der Alster 51. Levy Wolff died at the age of 75 on January 7, 1906, and his widow Hanna Wolff survived him for nineteen years, until she too passed away at the age of 91 on June 10, 1925. She last lived at Averhoffstraße 12 in the Uhlenhorst district.

As the cigar company expanded, so did the Wolff family. Between 1868 and 1882, three girls and four boys were born: Rosalie on January 10, 1868, Jacob on March 21, 1869, Eduard on December 5, 1870, Martin on April 29, 1873, Wilhelm on August 1, 1875, Anna Henriette on August 18, 1877 and Franziska on September 18, 1882. As far as it is not necessary for the development of the company or in connection with Eduard Wolff, details on his siblings will be given almost later.

From the early 1890s, Levy Wolff introduced three of his sons to the management of the family business, first Jacob and Eduard and finally Wilhelm. In 1903, the senior left the company, which was now managed by the three sons as owners.

The income from the joint venture enabled Levy Wolff to live as a privateer and the three Wolff sons to lead an upper middle-class life. Eduard Wolff, who became the actual head of the family business, lived at An der Alster 51 on the eastern bank of the Outer Alster in the St. Georg district. In 1914, he moved into the neighbouring house at An der Alster 44.
For many years, the headquarter of the L. Wolff company were at Grosse Reichenstraße 41 (1873-1880) and Alte Gröningerstraße 26 in Hamburg-Altstadt (1881-1912). It expanded to become one of the best-known and highest-selling cigar companies in the German Reich with further production facilities in Steinbach-Hallenberg and Brotterode in today's Schmalkalden-Meinigen district in Thuringia, in Walldorf in southern Thuringia, in Hessisch Lichtenau in today's Werra-Meißner district, in Northeim in southern Lower Saxony and in Ludwigshafen on the Rhine.

In Hamburg, L. Wolff moved into the newly built office building complex "St. Georgs-Burg" at Spaldingstraße 156/182 in Hammerbrook on April 1, 1912. Jacob Wolff had already left the company in 1908. Although he remained a shareholder in L. Wolff, he set up his own company, Hamburger Cigarren-Handels-A.G. (HACIFA), but remained in close contact with the family business. HACIFA ran cigar shops in many districts of Hamburg.

After Jacob Wolff had left his father's company, Eduard and Wilhelm Wolff continued to run it together with the non-Jewish Franz Dunker. When Wilhelm Wolff emigrated, Eduard Wolff and Franz Dunker remained as partners. Franz Dunker was about the same age as Eduard Wolff. He first had been an employee in the company, until he became a co-owner in 1913. This expansion of the partnership would later become significant.

In addition to his entrepreneurial activities, Eduard Wolff took on honorary consular duties for the Ottoman Empire around 1915, and later for Turkey. His title was "Imperial Turkish Vice-Consul", as stated in the Hamburg address book of 1919, and he carried out this task almost until the end of his life. Eduard Wolff left the Jewish community in 1915 or 1916, but continued to pay his membership fee until 1921.

In May 1919, Eduard Wolff, who had lived as a bachelor for many years, bought the property at Schöne Aussicht 22 on the eastern bank of the Alster, where he lived until the end of his life. On December 12, 1928, he married Frieda Johanna Reincke, a Lutheran worker's daughter, born in Hamburg on March 12, 1893, who was 23 years his junior. They had no children together.

Eduard Wolff was one of Hamburg's notables and was now known far beyond the city's borders. For the assimilated son of Jewish parents, the rise to power of the National Socialists on January 30, 1933 represented a profound turning point and the beginning of dramatic negative changes. He was repeatedly subjected to hostility against himself and the company, including inflammatory articles in the anti-Semitic Nazi weekly newspaper "Der Stürmer". Eduard Wolff suffered greatly from the anti-Jewish discrimination. While he had previously been invited to receptions and other events at the town hall as a matter of course, especially as honorary consul of Turkey, this ceased now. On July 25, 1935, in order to avoid damage to the company, he resigned with a heavy heart from L. Wolff OHG, the company founded by his father in 1867, of which he had been a co-owner for 44 years. His widow said after the war: "He would never have left if he had not been Jewish and had always feared that one day his company or his share would be taken from him."

In the meantime, the Wolff couple lived in complete seclusion in their home at Schöne Aussicht 22, but even here they should find no peace when an "NSDAP organisation settled in the neighbourhood" (Frieda Wolff). This was obviously referring to Luftgaukommando 3 at Schöne Aussicht 16, which after Eduard Wolff's death also took over No. 26 and eventually even Wolff's home at No. 22. Eduard Wolff was under constant observation by NS-party members, so he rarely left the house. Insulting and humiliating remarks were the order of the day when Eduard Wolff was seen outside. Shouts of abuse such as "This is the one-way street to Jerusalem" or "Off to Jerusalem" were the more harmless ones. For a man like Eduard Wolff, who had been in public life and enjoyed great prestige, life as a second-class person with marginalisation, endless humiliation and constant persecution was unbearable. To protect his family from further persecution, he committed suicide on February 26, 1938.

Epilogue I
Eduard Wolff's co-partner Franz Dunker now became the sole owner. He continued the company in unchanged form after Eduard Wolff's death. After the war, he claimed that the transfer to him was based on an agreement with Eduard Wolff from 1923 and later modifications. We do not know any more details about this alleged agreement. Franz Dunker remained the owner after the war, during the 1950s together with Hans Howindt, a senior employee of HACIFA, who had already acted as one of the executors of Eduard Wolff's will and as administrator of the estate.

Eduard Wolff had two children from relationships before his marriage, he adopted both of them. On June 17, 1929, he accepted his daughter Helene Maria Christine Burmeister, born on March 7, 1898 in Rendsburg, in place of a child. She was living in Hamburg when she married the jeweller Walter Ernst Martin Tschirch on April 17, 1920. The couple settled in Rostock, Walter Ernst Martin Tschirch's home town. Helene Maria Christine Tschirch died there on May 15, 1948 ?? by suicide with cyanide. Her husband followed her in the same way on November 29, 1949.

Eduard Wolff's relationship with Emma Margarethe Elisabeth Rafael, born on January 19, 1893 in Hamburg, resulted in a son, Herbert Eduard, born on August 8, 1915 in Dresden. Eduard Wolff was obviously concerned about his son’s financial security. From 1925, he had mortgage claims and interest claims of his son against him entered in the land register for the property Schöne Aussicht 22 and also adopted him, as can be inferred from the change of his surname from Rafael to Wolff. The name change can be seen from land register documents, in which Herbert Eduard Wolff's address was now given as Schöne Aussicht 22. Apparently, Eduard Wolff had not only adopted his illegitimate son, but had also taken him in.

In his will from 1935, Eduard Wolff had named his son Herbert Eduard as his universal heir. However, three months after Eduard Wolff's death, Herbert Eduard was killed in a car accident near Quickborn on May 29, 1938. Herbert Eduard's biological mother now became the sole heir. After the death of her late husband's adopted son, Eduard Wolff's widow declared that he and Herbert Eduard's birth mother had been enemies. Finally, Emma Rafael and Frieda Wolff reached a settlement.

Frieda Wolff lived on an interest income, probably from the capital of this settlement. The executors managed the underlying capital and invested it in securities and a double property with residential buildings. The buildings were destroyed by bombing raids.

In May 1939, Emma Rafael, as the sole heir to her son Herbert Eduard, sold the residential property Schöne Aussicht 22 at the 1935 standardised value of RM 73,000 to the owner of a book printing company, Alfred Louis Heinrich Bauer, who later became a very successful Hamburg newspaper publisher. Hans August Howindt and Heinrich Adolf Witten were also involved in the deal as executors of the deceased Eduard Wolff’s will. We do not know anything more about Heinrich Adolf Witten. The notary Dr. Ulrich Sieveking's question as to whether a Jew was involved in the legal transaction as a party to the contract was answered in the negative by the parties involved.

Frieda Wolff found a flat at Bellevue 48, also in a posh location in the Winterhude district.
After the war, Frieda Wolff initially received no interest on her securities and no compensation for loss of use of the bombed-out houses. Franz Dunker provided her with monthly payments until her financial situation was clarified.

Frieda Wolff had to vacate her flat at Bellevue 48 in the spring of 1946 because the house was requisitioned for the military government. She was given a room with a storeroom at Leinpfad 18 as a replacement. However, the building in Bellevue was only partially used by British military personnel and was incidentally empty. At the beginning of February 1947, the confiscation of the flat in favour of the British was lifted, but was now assigned to a German, a Dr. Link. Frieda Wolff was only able to return to her flat at Bellevue 48 after the intervention of Senate Councillor Dr. Strauch from the Counselling Centre for Restitution Claims at the Housing Office. We do not know how long she lived there. Frieda Wolff died on January 15, 1972 in Löhnhorst, Osterholz district.

The headquarters of the companies L. Wolf and HACIFA were still listed in the last edition of the Hamburg address book in 1943 at Spaldingstraße 156/182. The Verwertungsgesellschaft für Montanindustrie mbH, which belonged to the German Reich and supported the Wehrmacht in the construction of production facilities for munitions, also resided there from 1933.

Epilogue II
In October 1944, a part of the building, which in contrast to the entire Hammerbrook district had been largely spared from Allied bombing, was declared a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp and occupied by around 2,000 male prisoners from Neuengamme concentration camp. The SS base for all Hamburg satellite camps of Neuengamme concentration camp was also established there.

After the Spaldingstraße site was disbanded in April 1945, the prisoners were transferred to the Sandbostel reception camp near Bremervörde. Many of them died before and even after liberation by British troops on April 29, 1945.

After the war, the building belonged to the "Immobilien Verwertungsgesellschaft (IVG)", the successor to the Verwertungsgesellschaft für Montanindustrie mbH. After difficult and lengthy negotiations with the "Immobilien Verwertungsgesellschaft (IVG)", two memorial plaques were unveiled on October 26, 2009. Concerned about possible damage to the business, the plaques were removed again and screwed to a hidden location in the backyard of the building not open to the public. After protests from the cultural authorities, the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, the Jewish Community of Hamburg and survivors' associations, the owner reattached the plaques to the front of the building, but outside an area frequented by passers-by. In May 2012, a hostel with 2000 beds opened its doors there.

The fate of Eduard Wolff’s siblings
Several of Levy and Hanna Wolff's children broke away from the Jewish denomination: Rosalie was baptised in 1918. Her brothers Jacob and Eduard also left the Jewish community. Jacob then described himself as non-denominational and a freethinker. Eduard continued to pay the religious tax (Kultussteuer) to the Jewish community in the amount of his previous contribution for several years. Anna Henriette converted to Protestantism in 1899.

Rosalie, the eldest of the seven Wolff siblings, married the son of Jewish parents, Max Pniower, in 1868, whose Jewish origins she denied in 1941 in order to obtain limited protection for her daughters as "first-degree half-breeds" according to Nazi terminology and for her granddaughter Ellen Margarethe Herrmann as a "second-degree half-breed". However, the court did not make a decision about Max Pniower's origins. Rosalie Pniower and her daughter Margarethe Adolfine Hermann died in Theresienstadt/Terezin. Her eldest daughter Franziska Dorothea Riess was deported to Auschwitz and murdered there (for all of them, see www.stolperteine-hamburg.de).

Anna Henriette, Levy and Hanna Wolff's second daughter, married Ernst August Bauer, a Protestant merchant from Königsberg, on September 11, 1897. Eduard Wolff attended the wedding as best man. The couple lived at the elegant Parkallee 11 in Harvestehude. The marriage produced a son, Carl Louis Bauer, born on December 31, 1899. The family survived the National Socialist era in Hamburg and the surrounding area. We do not know any more details.

Franziska, Hanna and Levy Wolff's third daughter, born on September 18, 1892, was not quite three years old when she died in the Israelite Hospital on August 27, 1885.

Jacob, the eldest of the three Wolff sons, lived at the beginning of the 20th century at Alsterufer 17 on the west side of the Outer Alster in the Rotherbaum district. At 1906, he moved to a mansion at Badestraße 28, also in the Rotherbaum district.
Jacob Wolff must have been a very active and busy man. He had already left the Orthodox Synagogue Association in 1912, but not other Jewish associations. Although non-denominational, as he described himself, he did not consider converting to the Christian faith, which was suggested to him several times in the military. As a result of his experiences during his military service before the First World War, Jacob Wolff had become a pacifist. Nevertheless, he volunteered for the army on August 2, 1914, but was unsuccessful due to his advanced age. After financing his own pilot training, he was accepted as a volunteer in 1915 with his own aeroplane. On July 27, 1917, he crashed seriously wounded near the front line in France.

Jacob Wolff was married three times. In 1893 he married the Jewish Frankfurt woman Alice Schottländer, who died in 1897. His daughter Ilse, married name Heuer, came from this marriage. In 1913, he married the non-denominational Annemarie Elisabeth Tanck, born 1892 in Dockenhuden/Blankenese. This marriage was divorced in 1916. Finally, in April 1918, a third marriage took place with the Lutheran Elsa Hermine Agnes Schirmer, born on August 17, 1898 and 32 years his junior. This marriage produced three children, two daughters and a son. Their son Eberhart Hans Heinrich died in 1942 during the Second World War as a member of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe). Jacob Wolff himself died in December 1926 as a result of a serious motorbike accident in the summer of 1926. His widow married the shipowner John T. Essberger in her second marriage. She joined the NSDAP in 1933. According to her own statements in the denazification proceedings, she had been pressured to do so by a NS confidant to protect her three "half-Jewish" children from her first marriage. Her membership was cancelled by a "decree of mercy from the Führer" in 1939. (After the war, Elsa Essberger became an art patron in Hamburg).

Wilhelm Wolff, who had been a member of the L. Wolff oHG management for a time, is said to have emigrated in 1927.

We do not know if Martin Wolff, the fourth son of Levy and Hanna Wolff, participated in the cigar company. He emigrated to South Africa. Martin Wolff, born on April 29, 1873, was married to the Jewish merchant's daughter Therese Julie Cohn, born on March 20, 1879 in Hamburg. The marriage was divorced in March 1918. When the Foreign Exchange Office of the President of the Chief Finance Directorate (Devisenstelle des Präsidenten der Oberfinanzdirektion) summoned Martin Wolff in 1939, it was informed that he had "already been in Australia for many years". We do not know anything more about his subsequent life.

In September 1919, Therese Wolff, née Cohn, married the merchant Leon Lilienfeld, also Jewish, born on December 30, 1881 in Hamburg. They lived at Hansastraße 6 until they had to move to the so-called Jews' house at Bundesstraße 35c. They were deported to Riga, Jungfernhof, on December 6, 1941 and murdered.

Translation: Elisabeth Wendland

Stand: January 2024
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 7; 9; Hamburger Adressbuch, diverse Jahrgänge; StaH 213-13 Landgericht Hamburg – Wiedergutmachung 6647, 13383 Pniower Rosalie, 16802 Wolff Martin Erben, 314-15 Oberfinanzpräsident (Devisenstelle und Vermögensverwertungsstelle) R 1940/1047 Wolff Martin, 331-5_3 Akten 459/1938 (Eduard Wolff), 332-3 Zivilstandsaufsicht Geburtsregister A 259 Nr. ??/1875 (Wilhelm Wolff), Heiratsregister 332-5 Standesämter 13086 Geburtsregister Nr. 86/1898 (Carl Louis Walter Bauer), 1911 Nr. 4013/1877 Anna Henriette Wolff, 2033 Nr. 4575/1882 (Franziska Wolff), 2304 Nr. 669/1893 Frieda Johanna Reincke, 2432 Nr. 2610 (Ilse Wolff), 2884 Heiratsregister Nr. 816/1897 (Ernst August Bauer/Anna Henriette Wolff), 3379 Nr. 431/1920 (Walter Ernst Martin Tschirch/ Helene Maria Christine Burmeister), 8602 Nr. 5/1900 (Martin Wolff/Therese Julie Cohn), 5745 Nr. 42/1913 (Jacob Wolff/ Annemarie Elisabeth Tanck), 8716 Nr. 17/1917 (Ilse Wolff/Paul Rudolf Heuer) 3574 Nr. 684/1928 Eduard Wolff/Frieda Johanna Reincke, 184 Sterberegister Nr. 2723/1885 (Franziska Wolff), 6866 Nr. 30/1906 Levy Wolff, 4919 Nr. 191/1942 Eberhardt Hans Heinrich Wolff, 6866 Nr. 30/1906 (Levy Wolff), 7051 Nr. 540/1925 Hanna Wolff, 7204 Nr. 221/1938 (Eduard Wolff), 8086 Nr. 506/1926 (Jacob Wolff), 332-7 Staatsangehörigkeitsaufsicht A I e 40 Bd. 8 Nr. 3335 Levy Wolff, 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 1643 (Eduard Wolff), 15179 Wolff Frieda; Standesamt Berlin III, Heiratsregister Nr. 464/1896 Jacob Wolff/Alice Schottländer; Standesamt Frankfurt/M 903_8907 Geburtsregister (Alice Schottländer); Standesamt Rendsburg, Geburtsregister Nr. 79/1898 (Helene Maria Christine Burmeister); Standesamt Rostock, Sterberegister Nr. 836/1948 (Helene Maria Christine Tschirch), Nr. 1895/1949 (Walter Ernst Martin Tschirch); Grundbuchamt St. Georg, Grundbuch Uhlenhorst Band 36 Band 1601; Gedenkbuch Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933 – 1945. Hamburger Biografie Personenlexikon, Hrsg. F. Kopitzsch/D. Brietzke, Wolff Johannes Jacob (Jacob)., Bd. 7, S. 359 ff. Einzelheiten zu Elsa Wolff-Essberberger, siehe https://www.hamburg.de/clp/zwangsarbeiterinnen-valvofrauen/clp1/hamburgde/onepage.php?BIOID=3973&cM=107 (Zugriff am 30.7.23)
https://www.abendblatt.de/kultur-live/article106856973/Warum-ich-Hamburg-den-Liebermann-schenkte.html (Zugriff am 30.7.2023);
Einzelheiten zu Jacob Wolff, siehe https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Wolff (Zugriff am 30.7.23); https://www.uni-kassel.de/gis/KULADIG/Losse/KLK/KLKL/KLK_E_CH_4004.html "Die Wolffsche Zigarrenfabrik.pdf (Zugriff am 30.7.2023); https://www.northdata.de/Hacifa+Hamburger+Cigarren+Handels+Gesellschaft+L.+Wolff+%28GmbH+%26+Co.+KG%29,+Hamburg/HRA+67177 (Zugriff am 30.7.2023)
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verwertungsgesellschaft_für_Montanindustrie (Zugriff am 30.7.2023).
Zum früheren KZ-Außenlager Spaldingstraße St. Georgs-Burg:
https://gedenkstaetten-in-hamburg.de/gedenkstaetten/zeige/kz-aussenlager-spaldingstrasse-st-georgsburg; https://www.kz-gedenkstaette-neuengamme.de/geschichte/kz-aussenlager/aussenlagerliste/hamburg-hammerbrook-spaldingstrasse/ (Zugriff 5.8.2023); https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=ha6_1_6_thm_2040.pdf&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 (Zugriff am 5.8.2023); https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verwertungsgesellschaft_für_Montanindustrie#:~:text=Die%20Verwertungsgesellschaft%20für%20Montanindustrie%20mbH,Mantelgesellschaft%20ohne%20operatives%20Geschäft%20fungierte.
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