Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Mathias Max Hochfeld * 1869

Ferdinandstraße 69 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamburg-Altstadt)

HIER WOHNTE
MATHIAS MAX
HOCHFELD
JG. 1869
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
TOT 30.8.1942

Mathias Max Hochfeld, born 23 May 1869 in Höxter, deported 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt where he perished 30 Aug. 1942

Ferdinandstraße 69 (Ferdinandstraße 71)

"My father was, and I don’t mean to brag, a brilliant man. He could do anything. There was nothing he couldn’t do. His handwriting, it was simply fantastic. (…) My mother was a wonderful woman, I was her everything. She had a very cheery disposition, liked to sing. When our window was open, people listened in. She was a fantastic singer. She was very strict, not like she spoiled me or anything. She also sewed my clothes herself. I was still so young, I only remember good things. Back then times were really bad in Germany, she died in 1921. There wasn’t much to eat. After school I went to the harbor, to the English, to the ships and then I brought bread home. (…) If I’m honest, I’m glad my mother died then and didn’t experience what father and I, what we had to go through.”

Those words were written by Edgar Day who took on his mother’s English maiden name in Copenhagen in 1947 within the framework of redress of wrongs proceedings. His mother Mary Hochfeld, née Day, whom he lost prematurely, died of cancer on 22 Nov. 1921 after an operation at Israelite Hospital. His father Mathias Hochfeld perished in Theresienstadt Ghetto on 30 Aug. 1942.

Mathias Hochfeld was born into a family of many children in Höxter. In some documents he is called Max. His great-grandmother, the widow Fretgen Hochfeld (born 7 Oct. 1739, died 4 Apr. 1839), had settled in Höxter in 1810. One of her sons, Aron Samson Hochfeld (born 30 May 1784, died 19 Oct. 1872), was married to Rosa (Röschen), née Meyer (born 1792, died 1831), in his first marriage and later, on 8 Mar. 1832, married Zipora Goldschmidt (born 1799, died 1871). According to family lore, reported by Edgar Day, Aron Samson Hochfeld was a friend of Hoffmann von Fallersleben (born 1798, died 1874). Allegedly "von Hochfeld” was on his gravestone. Aron Samson Hochfeld earned a living as a musician along with five of his sons. Mathias’ father, Josef Hochfeld (born 25 Dec. 1832, died 8 Mar. 1905 in Hanover), played flute in the family orchestra.

Josef Hochfeld married Minna Goldschmidt (born 13 Dec. 1843, died 20 Apr. 1909 in Hanover) from Lippspringe on 3 Sept. 1867. The couple had 15 children. Not all of them reached adulthood. Alongside his job as an auctioneer and furniture merchant, Josef Hochfeld worked as a sales representative of the Royal Prussian Court Pianoforte Factory. In addition he worked as a court assessor and immigration agent of Norddeutschen Lloyd and took on the office of secretary for a gymnastics club founded in 1864.

Mathias Hochfeld attended pre-school from 1875 to 1877 at König Wilhelm Gymnasium in his home town, afterwards the Jewish school in Höxter until 1879. After that he became a first-year pupil at König Wilhelm Gymnasium until his parents removed him from the school in 1880 because of "incorrigible laziness”.

He probably was trained in business after leaving school.

He first married Rosa Meyer with whom he had his daughter Erna Alice. When Erna was born in Höxter or 20 Jan. 1900, her father registered his occupation as furniture manufacturer. Following the death of his first wife, Mathias Hochfeld left his home town and went to England where his sister Frieda Hamlet (see her entry), née Hochfeld, lived in the meantime. In Jan. 1908 he married the Englishwoman Mary Day, born on 5 Mar. 1878, who was nine years younger. Their son Edgar was born on 4 July 1908 in Marylebone, an area in the West End of London. Mary, who was not Jewish, and their son Edgar belonged to the Church of England. Edgar later reported that they did not talk about religious things in his home. His father was not devoutly religious, nor could he remember having attended synagogue.

In London Mathias Hochfeld ran a laundry receiving service. His wife Mary was a trained seamstress, but worked as a clerk. Following the outbreak of World War I, Mathias Hochfeld was interned as a hostile foreigner (see too Paul Heymann). In 1916 he was expelled and followed his sister Frieda Hamlet to Hamburg where three of his brothers lived: Milius Hochfeld (see his entry), Alfred Hochfeld (born 23 Apr. 1881) and Alexander Aron Hochfeld (born 26 Jan. 1876, died 27 Mar. 1951) and their sister Mary Hochfeld (born 19 Aug. 1878), later married under the name Stoll.

Mary Hochfeld initially moved with her then 7-year-old son Edgar to her father and worked again as a seamstress. One year later she followed her husband to Hamburg. Mary Hochfeld’s son described her as "very English”. She had trouble settling down in Germany, not only because she did not understand the language, nor did she learn it during the four years until her premature death in 1921. For Edgar the move to Germany was not easy either. Due to his poor mastery of German, he was held back a year from starting school. He first attended various elementary schools and then the Talmud Torah School for a year, which he left without receiving a high school diploma. It was there that he had had lessons in Hebrew that, in his words, was "Chinese” to him.

When he was finished with school, Edgar began an apprenticeship as an import-export merchant. However he was forced to break off the apprenticeship after a year because the company filed for bankruptcy. He then worked at various other companies. In 1927 he worked as an office clerk at the American Trade Commission, until it was moved to Berlin at the end of 1930. Afterwards Edgar began training as a language teacher at the private language school Julien Trizac where he stayed on as a teacher. In 1933 he founded his own language school, first at Hohe Bleichen 36, then at Ferdinandstraße 71 in a four or five-room apartment. Before that he had lived with his father at Gertigstraße 13.

When he returned from England in 1916, Mathias Hochfeld had already passed the age for obligatory military service. He found work as a store manager in one of the seven cigar shops of Gustav Geber, which he lost at the end of the war when the original manager returned home. On 24 Sept. 1919, Mathias Hochfeld registered a business as a merchant and agent for wholesale cigarettes in an apartment at Königstraße 36 (today part of Poststraße) in downtown Hamburg. There is no documentation as to how long he stayed in that business. Edgar reported his father had a very good income as an employee in furniture sales where he continued to work until 1930. Afterwards he worked for the company Lurch until, at the age of 68, he was let go for "racist reasons”. Yet Edgar also remembers his father left the company in 1937 on good terms and received a severance package. Perhaps the dismissal of their Jewish employee was coerced. Mathias Hochfeld received a pension of 75 Reich Marks a month and helped his son at his language school.

Father and son quickly felt the changes in politics and society while living on Ferdinandstraße. It wasn’t just that the sign for the school at the door to their building was repeatedly smashed, Mathias Hochfeld was also molested and harassed on the street.

By National Socialist definition, Edgar was a "half-breed of the first degree”. He possessed British as well as German citizenship and had to report to the Gestapo on a regular basis.

The summons to the Gestapo arrived on postcards, always on a Friday, with the request that he report the following Friday to Gestapo headquarters. "The pressure, having to wait until he was released by those people again, was terrible. We never knew if he’d come back.” The language school soon was only attended by Jews preparing to flee into exile.

In 1935 Edgar met Hildegard Scheibe (born 24 Dec. 16 in Staffelfelde) and became engaged to her. Yet without receiving permission to marry, they could not wed. Edgar felt that the chances of his application being approved as a "half-breed Jew” were hopeless, "so I realized the day was not far off when life in Hamburg would become unbearable.” On 26 Aug. 1939 Edgar fled illegally to Denmark. His fiancée followed three days later.

Mathias Hochfeld continued to run the language school on Ferdinandstraße, but had to take in a lodger. His lodger, by the name of Krieg, now claimed the apartment for himself. After reporting him to the Gestapo, Mathias Hochfeld had to clear out of the apartment his son had rented in the summer of 1940. Two of his brothers, Alexander Aron Hochfeld and Julius Hochfeld (born 4 Apr. 1880, died 1 Mar. 1959), had already left Germany, so Mathias Hochfeld moved into a room at Schlüterstraße 63 in the apartment of Adolf (born 22 Oct. 1891) and Martha Wolff, née Stiefel (born 9 Apr. 1881). The couple was deported to Lodz on 25 Oct. 1941.

Mathias Hochfeld’s last accommodation was at Agathenstraße 3, a so-called Jewish house. That address was where he received his deportation orders for 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt. Yet unlike his brother Alfred Hochfeld and his wife Julie, née Linz (born 27 Dec. 1880), who also were to report at the collection point in the Jewish Community House at Hartungstraße 9-11 the day before their deportation, Mathias Hochfeld did not appear at the set time but hours later.

Anna Ostermaier, the mother of Edgar’s fiancée, lived at Bartelsstraße 65. She had helped feed Mathias Hochfeld, who no longer had any income or savings, until she received a warning from the local chapter leader because she was socializing with a Jew. After the end of the war she reported, "He always came in the dark and left by darkness, covering his forehead as best he could with a briefcase. […] The day Mr. Hochfeld was to be deported at 9 a.m., he was with me until 11 a.m. because he didn’t want to go on the transport. He wanted to take his own life, hang himself. After much talking and assurances that with his beautiful handwriting and other abilities he was sure to find work at the camp, he agreed to go. When he stopped by his room to change and pick up necessary items, he found his room had been sealed off by the Gestapo. He had been left a note as to where he was to report. He told me this in a card from Altona train station. I am so sorry now that I advised him to go at the time and didn’t let him carry out his plan. That surely would have spared him all of those terrible ordeals.”

Mathias Hochfeld died on 30 Aug. 1942 in Theresienstadt. According to the announcement of his death, he died of "heart failure” at the age of 73.

His daughter from his first marriage Erna Alice Wolff lived in Kassel, unmarried. Her last address was at Gießbergerstraße 2. In Sept. 1940 she moved to Berlin. On 24 Oct. 1941 she and her husband Willi Wolff (born 14 Mar. 1897 in Frielendorf) were deported from Berlin to "Litzmannstadt” ghetto in Lodz and killed on 5 May 1942 at Chelmno (Kulmhof).

Stumbling Stones have been laid for Alfred and Julie Hochfeld in St. Georg at Lange Reihe 108. They were deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz on 15 May 1944 where they were killed (see Stumbling Stones in Hamburg-St. Georg).

Edgar Hochfeld was arrested on 6 May 1940 along with other foreigners in Denmark at the behest of the German occupying forces. He was interned at various camps until 9 May 1945. After the war he lived in Copenhagen for a time. He married his fiancée in 1947.

Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: April 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; 3; 9; StaH 351-11 AfW 32940 (Day, Edgar); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 841 u 529/1921; StaH 314-15 Abl. 1998 D 83; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde Nr. 992 e 2 Band 4; http://www.statistik-des-holocaust.de/VI1-19.jpg (Zugriff 4.2.2015); Kleinert/Prinz: Namen, S. 242; Fritz Ostkämper: Juden der ärmeren Schichten – die Familie Hochfeld in: Jacob Pins Gesellschaft Kunstverein Höxter e. V. Jüdische Bürger in Höxter, www.jacob-pins.de (Zugriff 3.2.2015); Dokumente und Ausführliche Informationen über Familie Hochfeld aus Höxer von Fritz Ostkämper am 3.7.2016 und am 9.9.2017.
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".