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Israel Johannes Rubanowitsch
© Archiv Holstenwall

Israel Johannes Rubanowitsch * 1866

Schulweg 48 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

1940 KZ Sachsenhausen
04.06.1941 ermordet in Tötungsanstalt Pirna-Sonnenstein

Israel Johannes Rubanowitsch, born on 12 May 1866 in Reshitza, today Belarus, arrested several times, murdered on 4 June 1941 in the Sonnenschein euthanasia killing center near Pirna

Schulweg 48

Israel Johannes Rubanowitsch came to Hamburg from a long-vanished, today very distant world: Born in pre-revolutionary Russia as the son of Russian Jews, he moved as a child with his parents to Reval (Tallinn) in the Baltic Province of Estonia. He was born in Reshitza (Rechytsa). Information about the town dating from 1841 reads, "Reshitza, small district town, located on the river by the same name, 507 versts [1 verst = 0.66 miles] from St. Petersburg, 869 from Moscow and 293 from Witebsk [Vitebsk], population 750.” However, different data exists regarding Israel Johannes Rubanowitsch’s place and date of birth. According to the Memorial Book of the German Federal Archives, he was born on 25 May 1864 in Resicabanya, a small industrial town in what was then the Banat mountain region in Hungary. The German name of this place was Reschitza in the Krasso-Szöreny County (comitatus). The files also indicate different dates of birth, the most likely of which seems 12 May 1866.

Coming from a strictly religious Jewish family, Israel Rubanowitsch was given the Jewish first name of Israel. He only received the name of Johannes later, on the occasion of his conversion and baptism. His parents were Ruben and Rebekka (Riwka) Rubanowitsch. According to the entry in the baptismal certificate, the father had been a soldier. In about 1872, the family moved to the Baltic city of Reval (today Tallinn) in Estonia. Israel Rubanowitsch had three younger sisters: Sophie Helena (born in 1871), Rahel (born in 1873), and Lea (born in 1878). Shortly after the birth of the youngest sister, the father died at the age of 38.

Israel Rubanowitsch was instructed in the Jewish faith and the Hebrew language. Even as an adolescent, he spoke Russian, German, and Estonian, subsequently acquiring other languages as well. After completing the German elementary school for boys in Reval, he started an apprenticeship as a leather shaft maker (Lederschaftmacher), subsequently working for a shoemaker. Influenced by a pious Protestant kindergarten teacher, who looked after his sister, the adolescent turned toward the Protestant faith. He later called Adele Krause, who must have been a well-to-do woman, as his "mother of faith.”

Baptized on 16 June 1885 at St. Olai Church in Reval, he was christened Johannes. Together with him, his mother and two of his sisters had themselves baptized as well. Through a placement program, he was admitted for training to the Neukirchen Missionary Institute near Moers that same year, completing three years of study there. Even during his training period, his Evangelistic charisma emerged. Due to an illness, he returned to Reval in the fall of 1889. Starting at Christmas of 1889, he preached in Estonia, primarily in the Unity of Brethren of Herrenhut (Herrenhuter Brüdergemeinde; the predecessor of the Moravian Church) in Reval. In 1892, he once again traveled to the Neukirchen Missionary Institute for the purpose of a study visit, undertaking lecture tours to all of the major cities in Germany, then returning to Estonia. He must have been an impressive preacher, for reportedly there are parishes in Estonia founded by Johannes Rubanowitsch still to this day. For instance, this applied to a community in Pärnu (formerly Pernau). Until the beginning of the 1930s, Rubanowitsch visited the city of Tallinn, as it was called after World War I, on a regular basis, the last time probably in the fall of 1934.

In the mid-nineteenth century, revivalism played an important role in the church of Estonia. Revivalism is the designation for currents in Christianity that particularly emphasize the conversion of the individual and a Christian way of life. Common Christian and denominational dogmas take a back seat to the original understanding of the Gospel as taken directly from the bible. Revival movements assume that practiced Christianity starts with the response of the individual human to the call of the Gospel for repentance and spiritual renewal. Johannes Rubanowitsch was very successful in his evangelizations and he had many followers, apparently appealing to workers and nobles alike. From today’s perspective, his sermons seem rather odd but at the turn of the century, people were receptive to his revivalist sermons. The theologian Jan-Peter Graap wrote that he preached a "threatening news Gospel” rather than a "good news Gospel,” nevertheless reaching many people who were in the midst of personal crises, e.g., addicted to alcohol, and who then reformed their lives.

In 1895, Johannes Rubanowitsch married in Reval Ida Helene Lohberg (born on 19 Sept. 1855 in Reval), whose parents were Georg Lohberg and Therese Lohberg, née Frei, probably Baltic Germans. Ida Helene, too, had been baptized a Lutheran. The married couple relocated their place of residence from Reval to Schwelm, where the only child, daughter Elisabeth (1896–1982), was born. The family stayed in Schwelm for a year and a half, then moving to Strasbourg in Alsace for five years, from where Israel Johannes Rubanowitsch worked as an "itinerant preacher” as he had done before. In 1896/97, he preached in Langnau in Switzerland and in Dillingen, at Easter of 1898 in Berlin, in October in Stettin (today Szczecin in Poland), and between 1900 and 1902, he was active above all in Silesia, earning the nickname of "reviver of Silesia.” In 1896 and 1898, he was probably in Hamburg as well, preaching the Gospel and impressing many people to such an extent that in 1902, he was called to Hamburg and appointed spiritual leader of the Hamburg Holstenwall Community (Holstenwallgemeinschaft zu Hamburg), including the "Elim” deaconess mother house. The church community at Holstenwall 21 bore the name of "Philadelphia” at the time. From 1904 onward, Johannes Rubanowitsch edited the magazine titled Was sagt die Schrift? ("What does the Gospel say?”). The home of the Rubanowitsch family was always located at Schulweg 48.

In 1910, Israel Johannes Rubanowitsch applied in Hamburg for naturalization for himself and his wife, and on 19 Dec. 1912, the Russian Committee of Ministers decreed to release him from the Russian Federation. He became a Hamburg citizen. The grounds provided for a positive decision also referred to the fact that Johannes Rubanowitsch had belonged to the Christian faith for many years. An essential prerequisite for obtaining civic rights was his economic circumstances. As he indicated, at the time he had assets worth 49,000 marks, and in addition to his salary and rent subsidy, he received a legacy of 2,000 marks a year for previous services.

In the ensuing period, the theological thought and preaching of Rubanowitsch underwent an increasingly pronounced convergence toward the Talmud, which led to tensions in the community. On 4 Sept. 1914, his wife died. She had been ailing from a young age and was probably suffering from depression as well. Tensions were fuelled by rumors about an "indecent way of life.” At the end of Sept. 1918, the break with the Community came. With his followers, Rubanowitsch founded a new community at the end of Oct. 1918, the "Evangelisch-kirchliche Gemeinschaft” ("Evangelical Church Community”) based at Holstenwall 12. This community was also called the "community under the white horse” ("Gemeinde unter dem weissen Pferd”). The conflicts within the Christian community are very difficult to understand from today’s perspective. Israel Johannes Rubanowitsch reportedly had a very authoritarian style of leadership. However, many members of the Community – in the period of his activity numerous new members were gained – admired him, calling him "dear father” ("Väterchen”).

Due to the confrontations within the Community, among other things, Johannes Rubanowitsch was in a very bad state of health in the early 1920s. Therefore, he accepted an offer from Frankfurt/Main to live at a local physician’s home. Between 1921 and 1924, he stayed there several times for extended periods. Apparently, during this period the plan matured to establish contact to the Herrnhuter author Alice von Wiedebach-Nostiz. He held prayer services in her house in Nov. 1925.

The Community and its preacher, the "Jew Christian,” did not remain unaffected by Nazis’ assumption of power. At the beginning of 1935, Rubanowitsch, by this time deemed a "racial Jew,” was arrested, his assets were confiscated, and his magazine titled Das volle Heil ("Full Salvation”), published since Dec. 1929, was banned. Due to the daily reports conveyed by the Hamburg Gestapo to Berlin, his arrest on 28 February for "suspicion of conduct harming the German people and comments hostile to the state” went on the official record. The confiscation of his assets was lifted but according to the Amtliche Anzeiger (the official gazette) dated 13 Mar. 1935, the "Evangelisch-kirchliche Gemeinschaft” at Holstenwall 12 was disbanded effective for the entire state territory of Hamburg, with any re-founding being prohibited. Furthermore, Israel Johannes Rubanowitsch was banned from preaching anywhere in the German Reich. In the following years, he was left alone until his assets, with the exception of a monthly allowance of 300 RM, were blocked by means of a "security order” ("Sicherungsanordnung”) at the end of 1938. The reason, commonly given in such cases, was, "You are a Jew. One has to reckon that you will emigrate in the near future.” He was permitted to give his daughter Elisabeth securities worth 30,000 RM as a gift (according to Nazi definition, she was a "Jewish half-breed” ["Mischling”]) and to bequeath to his former "Aryan” domestic help, Sister Grete Lindenburg, 1,700 RM. In terms of a "levy on Jewish assets” ("Judenvermögensabgabe”), he had to pay 8,000 RM with bonds from his securities account.

Israel Johannes Rubanowitsch was arrested for good on 29 July 1939. His "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”) in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison can be documented for the period from 5 Oct. 1939 until 11 Apr. 1940. On 15 Apr. 1940, the Gestapo transferred him to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he received prisoner number 18,591. In 1940, a large number of prisoners were committed to Sachsenhausen, and due to the dreadful living conditions there, the number of inmates unfit for work rose dramatically. To the Nazis, these prisoners were "ballast existences” (i.e., "unproductive eaters”). In Apr. 1941, the physician Friedrich Mennecke carried out a selection and designated 400 prisoners for Operation "14f13” (Aktion "14f13"). Chronologically, this operation with the bureaucratic code was between the "euthanasia” of "mentally” and physically disabled persons and the organized mass murder of Jews. Concentration camp inmates were selected and murdered by means of gas at three killing centers. In early June, when 131 of those selected in Sachsenhausen had already died, the remaining prisoners were taken to the Pirna-Sonnenstein institution and murdered, among them 29 Jews whose number included Israel Johannes Rubanowitsch.

In a letter, the foreign currency office with the Chief Finance Administrator (Oberfinanzpräsident) in Hamburg lifted the "security order” as of 25 Feb. 1942, "since the person mentioned has deceased.”

After the end of the war, the daughter succeeded in taking the mortal remains in an urn to Hamburg and having them buried in the cemetery on Diebsteich. Elisabeth Rubanowitsch passed away in 1982.


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

Stand: October 2018
© Dr. Ulrich Betz, Susanne Lohmeyer

Quellen: 2 (R1938/3444; FVg 8776; Ablieferung 1998 R251); 4; 5; StaH 213-8 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht-Verwaltung, Ablieferung 2, 451 a E 1, 1 d und Ablieferung 2, 451 a E 1, 1 e; StaH 332-7 Staatsangehörigkeitsaufsicht, B III + 103173; StaH 351-11 AfW,8874; August Jung, Israel Johannes Rubanowitsch; Dazu Rezension von Dr. Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer, in: Theologische Gespräche 32/2008, Heft 3, S. 149–154; Hermann Brause, Autobiographische Notizen; Brief von Hermann Brause vom 7.4.2012; Bundesarchiv Berlin, PSt 3/27, S. 138; Ulrich Betz, Leuchtfeuer und Oase, S. 34ff.; Günter Morsch, Jüdische Häftlinge, S. 194, 300; Jan-Peter Graap, Israel Johannes Rubanowitsch; Astrid Ley, Vom Krankenmord zum Genozid; Harry Naujoks, Mein Leben im KZ Sachsenhausen, S. 247ff.
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