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Betty Warburg (rechts) mit ihren Schwester (v.l.) Helene Julie und Ada Sophie
© Ellen Broido, Johannesburg

Dr. Betty Warburg * 1881

Hochallee 5 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

1943 deportiert aus NL nach Sobibor

further stumbling stones in Hochallee 5:
Gertrude Margaretha Warburg

Dr. Betty Warburg, born September 27, 1881 in Altona and deported from the Netherlands to Sobibor in April 1943.

Betty Warburg was born into a very well known Jewish Family, who lived for over 300 years in Altona and Hamburg. Famous personalities came from that family. Named after her grandmother, Betty Warburg nee Lazarus, (1782-1862), came from the Altona branch of the Warburg family. She was the daughter of the banker, Albert Warburg (1843-1919) and the Dutch Gertrude Margaretha (called "Gerta”) Rindskopf (born November 23, 1856), in Amsterdam. Her parents, Julius Rindskopf (1817-1875) and Helene Rindskopf, nee Cahn (1832-1865) had moved at the beginning of the 1850th from Frankfurt/Main to Amsterdam.

Wulf Salomon Warburg (1778-1854), founded in 1804 the W.S. Warburg Bank in the then still Danish city of Altona. For many decades he was the President of the High German Jewish Community of Altona. He decided the professions of his sons: The oldest son, Lesser Warburg (1807-1851) learned to be a printer and later on became a book printer and lived in Schleswig. The second son, Moses, called Moritz Warburg (1810-1886), studied law. The fourth son, Pinchas, called Pius Warburg (1816-1900) was being prepared to take over the family business as well as for the third son, John (Isaac) Warburg (1812-1896) it was decided that he would also become a businessman. Pius Warburg was already the second generation to conducted the family business at the Altona business address of Breitestrasse 15, after the death of his father.

From 1860 he lived in a Neorenaissance-Villa in the Palmaille 31. The Banker, Politician, Art collector, Music lover, and patron, Pius Warburg made his home a significant address for artists in Altona which in the meantime had become a Prussian city. His art collection he left to the Altona Museum. In this house, Johannes Brahms and Anton Rubinstein played, occasionally together with the house owner. Also the well known writers, Hans Christian Andersen and Klaus Groth were guests in this house. In 1874 Pius Warburg left the unwanted profession. His nephew, Albert Warburg, the son of the Administrative judge, Moritz Warburg , member of Parliament (Liberal party) and Chairman of the German Jewish Community of Altona, continued the obligatory family tradition to worked in a leading position at the Bank.

In 1896, after the death of his uncle, John Warburg, Albert Warburg became the sole owner of the business. Besides that, Albert Warburg officiated as the first President of the in 1898 established Chamber of Commerce in Altona with the honorary title of Royal Prussian Kommerzienrat, as well as town councilor. From 1899 to 1901 he was a member of the Board of Directors of the German Department of Commerce. In 1905 the Altona Bank of W.S. Warburg was sold to the North German Bank. Albert Warburg lived with his Dutch wife, Gerta in a small house during the late 1870th and early 1880th in Altona in the Bahnhofstrasse 23. In this house the 3 daughters were born: Helene ( called "Ellen”) Warburg, born September 10, 1877, Ada Wargurg, born September 11, 1878 and Betty Warburg, born September 27, 1881. The son, Wilhelm Warburg, 1884-1891, died as a child from Diphtheria.

In 1891, the family moved to Palmaille 33. The newly build villa was designed by Manfred Semper, nephew of the well known Architect Gottfried Semper, which had been contracted by Albert Warburg.
The house consisted of 3 levels, basement, added ballroom and Teehouse. The house was built on the large lot of Palmaille 32, which belonged to members of the Warburg family. Here great dinner parties were held to which not only businessmen, officers from the garrison, and high officials from the Courts, but also artists and scientists were invited. (Note: Gerta Warburg) brought a new style to Palmaille. According to the taste of the day, she furnished a French Salon. Every week she had a fixed day on which the Altona society would come to the house of the house. The life style was cultural and elegant. Nine servants took care of the smooth running of this household. Among the servants was a coachman, gardener, butler, maid, a lesser maid, cook, kitchen help, laundry woman and someone who did the ironing.

In 1905, the Norwegian painter, Edvard Munch painted Helene "Ellen” Warburg. The painting hung on the first floor (today it hangs in the Artist House in Zurich). In the round music room stood a Steinway piano. In the Dining Room hung Dutch portrays from the Rindskopf Family . In 1913, Albert and Gerta Warburg spent their vacation in Monte Carlo. In the next house, Palmaille 32 lived until his death the lawyer, notary and King/Queen counselor, Dr. Salomon (called Siegfried) Warburg (1852-1934), a brother of Albert. He was buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery next to his brother in the family burial lot.

Besides the house in the magnificent Palmaille, the family like other wealthy business people, maintained a summer house since 1890 in Grossflottbeck, in the Baron-Voght-Street 6. In the Biedermeier house (early Victorian style), which was built in 1840, and which had a large garden, Gerta Warburg had a studio built where she could paint without being disturbed. She admired the artist Ernst Barlach (1870-1938) und visited him in his studio in Guestrow. Around 1903 she supported Ernst Barlach, at that time living in Wedel, towards a scholarship. This artist designed in 1920 the tombstone for the Warburg family gravesite on the Ohlsdorf main cemetery. In 1917 individuals who had been evacuated from the Island of Helgoland were ordered by the Government to live in the Garden House in Grossflottbek. This constituted a painful memory for the family since some of the wooden furniture was stolen and the wooden fence was used for fire wood.

Still before Christmas of 1918, both the houses in Altona and in Grossflottbeck were sold and the couple moved into an apartment in the Hotel Esplanade in the new part of Hamburg. There Albert Warburg died on February 19, 1919. He was buried on the Jewish cemetery on the Koenigstrasse (old city of Altona). In December 1919, Gerta Warburg bought for 3,200 Mark a family gravesite with 8 graves, on the Christian part of the Ohlsdorfer cemetery and on January 12, 1920 the urn of Albert Warburg was reburied there. The gravestone was made in accordance with a design by Ernst Barlach. A five step- Pyramid rose from a sandstone square. There had been no desire to have a figurative image.

In this surrounding, the daughter, Betty grew up. There are no documents concerning her schooling and it may be assumed that like her father she had a private teacher. She may have taken her matriculation examination as an Extern. However, sure is that there were English and French governesses who spoke with the 3 Warburg sisters in these foreign languages. In 1914/1915, Betty Warburg graduated from the Kiel Psychiatric and Neurological Clinic where she had studied in 1909 cases of general psychosis.

The files of the graduation from the University of Kiel are no longer available due to the war time destruction. Around 1914, she lived in Altona in the Koenigstrasse 119 and had requested a telephone with the addition of "M.D.” (Doctor of medicine). The first World War destroyed her private hopes. The man she wanted to marry died as a soldier. Around 1920 she lived in the Hagedornstrasse 11 (Harvestehude), shortly thereafter she moved together with her widowed mother, Gerta into the house on Hochallee 5, which they had bought shortly before. There Betty Warburg established her practice.

The 1923 the inflation destroyed a large part of their wealth. It appears that Gerta Warburg therefore was from time to time engaged in the art business. Since most of the large Dutch ancestral portrays did not fit into the relatively small rooms of the new house, they were donated to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Still in 1935, Gerta Warburg decided to renovate the house where the practice was. The Steinway piano was sold at that time.

In 1916, Betty Warburg was certified as a general physician and worked from time to time as a medical practitioner at the Kaiserin-Auguste-Victoria-House for children’s decease in Berlin. Together with Prof. Dr. Otto Kestner in 1923, she published an article in the Clinical Weekly Magazine, entitled: "The Effects of the Breakfast Drinks upon the Digestive Organs”.

On April 1, 1934, Betty Warburg, as well as all other Jewish Physicians lost access to participate in the health insurance. As a result she lost her economic basis as a physician. Old patience still came to her for a while under cover of darkness. Thereafter she could treat only members of the family. During the November 1938 pogrom the name "Dr.med. Betty Warburg” was knocked off the enamel plaque. Sometime later she herself became the victim of a bodily attach during which her face was injured. Thereafter she only left her house under cover of darkness in order to get some exercise. Like numb she stayed in her apartment during the day.

While most of the members of the Warburg family emigrated before the beginning of the Second World War, Betty Warburg and her mother Gerta remained in Hamburg. Physically and psychologically they did not feel that they could survive an emigration. However, the increasing reprisals did not give them another option. At the end of 1939, Gerta Warburg, who by this time was almost blind, decided to return to Holland. Her daughter Betty was supposed to accompany her. Due to the German Government’s demand for money (Reichsfluchtsteuer, Auswanderer-Abgabe, Judenvermoegensabgabe), the two lost almost their entire capital. On the 8th of May, 1940, mother and daughter immigrated to the Netherlands, the land where Gerta was born. After the death of her husband in 1919, Gerta reclaimed her Dutch citizenship. Only two days later, German troops occupied the Netherlands. The German occupiers did not permitted them to settle in Den Haag and the lift with the furniture which had been sent there did not get permission to be forwarded to another city. In this way Gerta and Betty Warburg were robbed of the rest of their household.

Whether their household was returned to Germany and sold there for the benefit of the National Socialistic State is possible, but not documented. They lived in Arnheim in a furnished two room apartment and friends helped them with food and heating material since Jews no longer were permitted to shop in public stores. The German Nazis furthered systematically their anti-Jewish measures in the Netherlands as well. Whoever was unable to hide in order to avoid the regulations was unprotected

in the hands of the Germans. Apparently in the spring of 1943, Gerta and Betty were arrested and imprisoned in the Arnheim school building. From there they were sent to the transit camp, Westerbork. As of April 6th and 13th, trains deported imprisoned Jewish women and men to the Sobibor death camp and it can be assumed that among them was Betty Warburg and her mother. The people who arrived in Sobibor were gased. The District County Court in Hamburg declared Betty Warburg in 1949 to have died on April 16, 1943.

Her sister, Helene "Ellen” Burchard, nee Warburg, who in 1905 before her marriage to the Jurist, Dr. Edgar Burchard, had converted to the Evangelic Belief in the main St. Katharina Church in Hamburg. She was deported on July 11, 1942 from Hamburg-Altona (Papagoyenstrasse) to the Auschwitz death camp were she was murdered. The exact date of her death is not known. Her husband, Edgar Burchard (born July 6, 1879 in Breslau), committed suicide before deportation. He had taking an overdose of Veronal pills. He died July 10, 1940 in the Israel Hospital (Johnsallee 68).

Her sister, Ada Martienssen, nee Warburg was deported to Theresienstadt; she survived the Holocaust.

The cousin, Maria Warburg (born September 6, 1896 in Altona) was the daughter of the Jurist (Salomon) Siegfried Warburg (1852-1934), she was deported on September 23, 1940 from the Nursing Home in Hamburg-Langenhorn to the killing institute Brandenburg.

The gravesite on the Ohlsdorf Cemetery was after 1945 maintained by the Hamburg wing of the Warburgs. The names and dates of death of the Holocaust victims were incorporated into the headstones.

Translation: Johanna Neumann, Silverspring, USA

© Björn Eggert

Quellen: Staatsarchiv Hamburg (StaH) 332-5 (Standesämter), 6198 u. 2708/1877 (Geburtsregister Altona 1877, Helene Warburg); StaH 332-5 (Standesämter), 6203 u. 2573/1878 (Geburtsregister Altona 1878, Ada Warburg); StaH 332-5 (Standesämter), 6218 u. 2656/1881 (Geburtsregister Altona 1881, Betty Warburg); StaH 332-5 (Standesämter), 5966 u. 530/1905 (Heiratsregister 1905, Helene Warburg u. Edgar Burchard); StaH 332-5 (Standesämter), 5980 u. 556/1908 (Heiratsregister 1908, Ada Warburg u. Ernst Martienssen); StaH 332-5 (Standesämter), 6016 u. 1212/1913 (Heiratsregister 1913, Sophie Charlotte Warburg u. Max Heinrich Ernst Wolf); StaH 332-5 (Standesämter), 807 u. 118/1919 (Sterberegister 1919, Albert Warburg); StaH 332-8 (Alphabetische Meldekartei der Stadt Altona, 1892–1919), K 7129 (Albert Warburg, Pius Warburg, Siegfried Warburg, John Warburg); StaH 351-11 (Amt für Wiedergutmachung), 3440 (Ada Martienssen geb. Warburg); StaH 522-1 (Jüdische Gemeinden), 992b (Kultussteuerkartei der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde Hamburg), Betty Warburg (1925–1940), Gerta Warburg (1927–1940), Dr. Edgar Burchard (1939–1942); Erinnerungszentrum Kamp Westerbork; Altes Gymnasium Flensburg, Schularchiv (Abiturzeugnis Betty Warburg); Landeshauptarchiv Kiel, Melderegisterkarte (Betty Warburg); Friedhof Ohlsdorf, Grabprotokoll Nr. 100996 vom 20.9.1919 (Grablage R 26, Nr. 109–116); Adressbuch Hamburg u. Altona 1794 (Warburg); Adressbuch Altona (Palmaille) 1929; Adressbuch Altona (Geschwister C.H. u. E. van der Smissen) 1885, 1886, 1888, 1890, 1894, 1899; Adressbuch Hamburg (Burchard) 1915, 1916, 1918, 1920, 1938; Adressbuch Hamburg (Martienssen) 1912, 1914, 1920, 1927; Amtliche Fernsprechbücher Hamburg (Betty Warburg) 1920, 1931, 1939; Amtliche Fernsprechbücher Hamburg, Anhang Altona (Albert Warburg) 1914, 1920; Ernst Barlach Stiftung Güstrow, bearbeitet von Elisabeth Laur, Ernst Barlach – Das plastische Werk, 2006, S. 167/168 (Nr. 309, Grabmal Warburg); Ulrich Bauche, Vierhundert Jahre Juden in Hamburg, Ausstellung des Museums für Hamburgische Geschichte, Hamburg 1991, S. 294–295 (Ölbild von Wolff Salomon Warburg), S. 482–483 ("Liste der während der Deportation durch Selbstmord verstorbenen Juden", Nr.5 Edgar Burchard); Ingo Böhle, "Juden können nicht Mitglieder der Kasse sein", Hamburg 2003, S. 28–30 (u.a. Nachdruck der "Ausschlussliste" von 1934); Ron Chernow, Die Warburgs - Odyssee einer Familie, 1996, S. 607 (Gerta u. Betty Warburg, Ellen u. Edgar Burchard); Martin Gilbert, Endlösung – Die Vertreibung und Vernichtung der Juden – Ein Atlas, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1982, S.157 (Deportationen April 1943); Ursula Hinnenberg, Die Kehille – Geschichte und Geschichten der Altonaer jüdischen Gemeinde, Hamburg 1996, S. 173, 185, 194, 195, 211; Paul Theodor Hoffmann, Neues Altona 1919–1929, Zehn Jahre Aufbau einer deutschen Großstadt, Jena 1929, S. 240–244 (Familie Warburg); Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden (Hg.), Das Jüdische Hamburg, Hamburg 2006, S.273/274 (Pius Warburg); Heiko Morisse, Jüdische Rechtsanwälte in Hamburg – Ausgrenzung und Verfolgung im NS-Staat, Hamburg 2003, S. 165 (Dr. Rudolf Warburg), S. 172 (Dr. Salomon/Siegfried Warburg); Helmut Schoenfeld, Der Ohlsdorfer Friedhof. Ein Handbuch von A-Z, Bremen 2006, S. 181 (Warburg, Eric M. und Geschichte des Grabes); Gertrud Wenzel-Burchard, Granny: Gerta Warburg und die Ihren, Hamburg 1970; Michael Studemund-Helévy/Gaby Zürn, Zerstört die Erinnerung nicht. Der jüdische Friedhof Königstrasse in Hamburg, Hamburg 2002, S. 160–162 (Wolff Salomon Warburg, Samuel Salomon Warburg); Anna von Villiez, Mit aller Kraft verdrängt. Entrechtung und Verfolgung "nicht arischer" Ärzte in Hamburg 1933 bis 1945, Hamburg 2009, S.414/415 (Betty Warburg); Warburg-Burchard Family Tree 1566–2010, Privatbesitz; Hamburger Abendblatt, Schicksale an der Palmaille, VI – Die Zeit der Warburgs, 18. März 1965; www.joodsmonument.nl (eingesehen am 13.5.2009); www.jewishencyclopedia.com (Warburg); wikipedia Familie Warburg (eingesehen am 13.5.2009); www.springerlink.com (Artikel Klinische Wochenschrift, 1923); Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Online-Katalog: Betty Warburg.