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Anna Eva Sussmann, 1906
© Staatsarchiv Hamburg

Anna Eva Sussmann (née Bernheim) * 1863

Lenhartzstraße 10 (Hamburg-Nord, Eppendorf)

HIER WOHNTE
ANNA EVA SUSSMANN
GEB. BERNHEIM
JG. 1863
GEDEMÜTIGT / ENTRECHTET
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
2.4.1942

further stumbling stones in Lenhartzstraße 10:
Franz Martin Sussmann

Anna Eva Sussmann (-Ludwig), née Bernheim, b. 10.17.1863 in Brunswick, died by suicide on 4.2.1942 in Hamburg

Lenhartzstraße 10

Anna Sussmann came from Brunswick. Her parents, the merchant Luis Bernheim and his wife Mary, née Ascher, gave her a good, wide-ranging education. At the age of 21, she married the Hamburg insurance broker Siegfried Sussmann, whose father Joseph (1807, Altona-1880, Hamburg) also married a Bernheim (Sophie, 1824 Salzgitter-1897 Hamburg) On 15 January 1886, their daughter Paula was born, on 30 December 1887 their son John.

Besides educating her children, Anna Sussmann devoted herself to her literary inclinations. Under the name Anna Sussmann-Ludwig, as well as the pseudonyms Paul Ludwig and Luis Eva, she wrote articles for the feuilleton sections of great newspapers, especially on the fine arts and literature, and also translated short stories and novels from English, French, Italian, and Spanish.

Most of the time with her daughter Paula, she undertook trips to Italy, Norway, Scotland, and Iceland, as well as to all the northern European capital cities, giving her impressions in travel letters and travelogues. On 1 October 1899, she took over the editorship of the "Illustrirte Villen-Zeitung (Hamburger Chronik)," a periodical aimed at the owners of stately homes in Hamburg and its environs. It contained photos of mansions, articles on home and landscape architecture, serialized novels, and menu suggestions. Under her one-year leadership, the paper, called the "Illustrirte Hamburger Chronik (Villen-Zeitung)" since April 1890, opened up to social and political issues and reports. In the first issue for which she was responsible there appeared an article "On the Woman’s Movement,” presumably written by herself. She was, after all, a close colleague of Julie Eichholz (1852–1918), who, as the chairperson (1900–1904) of the Hamburg chapter of the General German Women’s Association and of the League of North German Women’s Associations (1902–1912), was one of the leading personalities of the middle-class women’s movement of Hamburg.

Anna Sussmann performed responsible functions in the departments established by Julie Eichholz dealing with "legal protection" und "job placement" (for domestics). She edited and contributed articles to the "Hamburg Women’s Paper,” an organ that since 1909 had developed out of the "job placement department” of the "Hamburg Housewives Association.”

On 23 March 1915, Anna and Siegfried Sussmann’s son John, who had become a businessman like his father, died at age 27 in the First World War. Their daughter Paula had received permission to matriculate in the university on the basis of specially arranged secondary school coursework; subsequently, she studied medicine at Heidelberg, Munich, and Berlin. After receiving her doctorate in September 1911 from the University of Heidelberg, she received the license to practice on 10 June 1912. In August 1912, she married the physician Fritz Tobias, with whom she built a medical practice in Weser River uplands.

In April 1915, the Sussmann couple moved to the 2nd floor of a house at Lenhartzstrasse 10. After the death of Siegfried Sussmann on 16 May 1916, Anna Sussmann moved into a smaller apartment on the 5th floor of the same building. After the considerable devaluation of the securities, the dividends from which she lived on, by the capital levy on Jewish assets, she moved after 1939 into a rapid succession of apartments and pensions as a subletter; finally, after 6 March 1940, she lived at Haynstrasse 10 with Martha Derenberg. Anna Sussmann poisoned herself with sleeping pills on the night of 30-31 March 1942 and died, after being taken to the Jewish Hospital, on 2 April 1942. Her landlady told the criminal police: "It went quite well with Sussmann, both health-wise and economically. But when she heard that she was to be evacuated, she could not come to terms with it. She told an acquaintance that she would take her own life.” Three weeks before her suicide, Anna Sussmann made a will and designated the Jewish Religion Association as her heir.

Her daughter Paula emigrated with her husband Fritz Tobias to the USA in 1935. The marriage ended in divorce in 1945. While her husband remained in medical practice, Paula Tobias worked, from 1944 until her retirement in 1956, as a hospital nurse in a sanatorium in California. She died in 1970.


Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: January 2019
© Heiko Morisse

Quellen: 1, 4, 5, 8; StaH 341-15 Oberfinanzpräsident-Devisen- und Vermögensverwertungsstelle, R 1939/2610; StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde-unnatürliche Sterbefälle, 3 Akte 1942/541; Pataky, Lexikon, II. Band, 1898, S. 350; Kürschners Deutscher Literaturkalender 1900–1915; Heinsohn, Politik und Ge­schlecht, 1997, S. 187, 239; Lohfeld, Im Dazwischen, 2003.
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