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Fanny Nathan 1939, Ausweisfoto
© Privat

Fanny Nathan (née Müller) * 1880

Bismarckstraße 54 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

HIER WOHNTE
FANNY NATHAN
GEB. MÜLLER
JG. 1880
DEPORTIERT 1941
ERMORDET IN
RIGA

Fanny Nathan, née Müller, born 27.6.1880 in Herleshausen/Hessen, deported to Riga-Jungfernhof 6.12.1941

Bismarckstraße 54

On 7 February 1908, the cook Fanny Müller appeared at the Herleshausen registry office and declared that she was "resident at Herleshausen house no. 72 [and] of the Israelite religion". She "stated that from the deceased Henriette [Jettchen] Müller, née Goldschmidt, and her deceased husband, the cattle dealer Salomon Müller, both of the Israelite religion, residing at that time in Herleshausen [...] house no. 72, on the twenty-seventh of June in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty, a child of the female sex had been born who had been given the first name Fanny. She, Fanny Müller, declared, that I was the one born. My parents [...] have forgotten to register me in the birth register [...] so that I am not entered in the register and am making the [?] registration myself."

By order of the royal district court of Netra, the entry was made retrospectively on 18 March 1908. Two weeks earlier, on 3 March 1908, Fanny Müller in the town of Essen had married the master baker Samuel (Sally) Nathan, born 17.2.1873 in Elten. It was presumably only when the banns were asked for that it was realised that Fanny was not entered in the birth register.

She was the youngest of five children. Her parents had married in 1864, and their daughter Johanna Selma was born on 31 March 1865. She was followed by Minna Maria (born 15.8.1871), Levi (23.10.1875 to 3.3.1895), Simon (born 18.6.1879) and, a year later, Fanny. More about the fate of her siblings later.

Fanny was only six years old when her father (born 8 August 1836) died in Herleshausen in 1886.The girl probably attended the local Israelite school. After finishing school, she probably learned to cook and run a household, because at the age of 22 she went to Rotenburg an der Fulda for six months as a housekeeper. She returned to Herleshausen at the end of May 1903 and then, from August, went to work in Kassel. There she worked as a housekeeper and cook for various families before moving to Hamburg. From November 1907, she worked at Grindelallee 114 p for a family of master butchers with the name Leopold.


Three years earlier, on 25 October 1904, Fanny's mother Jettchen had died at the age of 60. Her gravestone can still be found in the Jewish cemetery in Herleshausen.

We do not know where and when Fanny met her future husband. It was Samuel "Sally" Nathan's second marriage. The master baker had married the factory worker Jenni Fränckel (born 23 June 1875 in Biblis) in Bochum in November 1899 and opened a bakery in Iserlohn on 1 December 1900, adding a café in 1904. Between 1900 and 1903, the couple had three children: Richard Josef (born 20 September 1900 in Bochum), Antonia Selma (Toni) (born 3 January 1902 in Iserlohn) and Sophie Hilda (born 4 August 1903, also in Iserlohn). Then the family was dealt a hard blow: Jenny Nathan, only 32 years old, died on 15 September 1907 in Essen in the Huyssen Foundation, today an academic teaching hospital of the University of Duisburg-Essen. Samuel was left alone with his three small children and his business.


In late January 1908, Fanny moved from Hamburg to Grabenstraße 34 in Essen, the house where Samuel Nathan lived. Perhaps she had originally moved there as a housekeeper. We do not know what happened in her marriage, but she returned to Hamburg 13 months after her wedding. This can be seen from the entry in her Hamburg registration file dated 30 April 1909, which reads "Registered as Mrs Nathan".

Her husband is listed in the Essen address books until 1910. In December 1911 he moved with his children Richard and Toni from Dinslaken to Moers, and from May 1914 he lived in Homberg on the Lower Rhine, now part of Duisburg. Fanny Nathan does not appear in any of the registers, and no divorce is recorded in the Essen marriage document.

We do not know what happened to Fanny's life after her return to Hamburg in 1909. In 1922 the address book lists a "Mrs F., Partiewaren" with the surname Nathan and the address Bernhardstraße 17 for the first time. This address can also be found on Fanny's Jewish religious tax file of the Jewish Community of Hamburg, which was created in 1925. Her occupation is listed there as "trader" ("Händlerin"). The entries in the address book remain unchanged until 1935, only Bernhardstraße was renamed Bernhard-Nocht-Straße in 1928. There are no entries for 1937 and 1938, perhaps she was living at Husumer Strasse 10 at the time. This address is also on the Jewish religious tax card. The entries in the 1939 and 1940 address books read: "Nathan, Wwe (= widow) Fanny, Bismarckstraße 54". Strangely enough, the abbreviation "vw" for "widowed" also appears on the Jewish religious tax card. Did Fanny really believe that her husband had died? He was still living in Homberg at the time.

Samuel Nathan was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto on 25 July 1942 along with 976 other Jews from the administrative districts of Aachen and Düsseldorf. The 69-year-old man survived the terrible conditions for almost three years, and after liberation was accommodated in the Lower Bavarian town of Deggendorf in the American occupation zone.There a camp for "displaced persons" had been set up immediately after the end of the war in 1945 for survivors, including many from Theresienstadt. Samuel Nathan died on 30 January 1948 in Deggendorf and was buried in the local Jewish cemetery, which had been set up for deceased camp residents.

Fanny Nathan received the deportation order to Riga at Bismarckstraße 54 at the beginning of December 1941. She did not return.

All of her siblings suffered the same fate:
Johanna Selma, her eldest sister, had married Jakob Rosenbaum, who died in 1935. She was deported from Kassel, where she lived with her sister Minna, to Theresienstadt on 7 September 1942 and murdered in the Treblinka extermination camp on 29 September 1942.

Minna, married name Lazarus, was assigned to the same transport from Kassel to Theresienstadt with her husband Markus. Markus Lazarus died in Theresienstadt on 4 May 1943 and Minna on 19 June 1943.

Simon Müller had a textile business in Duisburg ("Hosen-Müller"). He and his wife Flora, née Kahn (born 2 January 1878), were deported from Düsseldorf to Riga on 11 December 1941 and also did not survive.

Samuel Nathan's daughter Toni died in 1930, but his two other children, for whom Fanny would have cared during her time in Essen in 1908/1909, also fell victim to the Shoah. The son Richard, who lived in Homberg am Rhein, was married to a non-Jewish woman. His wife died in 1942 and he was sent to a labour camp run by the Organisation Todt, which was responsible, among other things, for the expansion of the underground relocation of armaments projects. Richard was forced to live and work in inhumane conditions in the Lenne camp in the district of Holzminden. It is not known when he died; he was declared dead on 8 May 1945.

Samuel's daughter Sophie was employed for many years in Elten by her uncle Bernhard Nathan in his butcher's shop at Markt 8. In 1937, he had to give up the business he had taken over from his father. Like four others of Samuel's siblings, he was also deported and murdered.
In 1939, Sophie lived in Berlin-Weissensee at Wörthstraße 20, a building that was opened in 1902 as the first Jewish labour colony in Germany and housed a "permanent home for Jewish imbeciles" that accommodated adults with disabilities. A girls' home was also established in 1935.
On 1 April 1942, Sophie was among the first residents to be deported to the Warsaw Ghetto. No trace of her remains.

Since 1951, Wörthstraße has been called Smetanastraße, and the property was given the house number 53. In the German Democratic Republic, the building served as an administrative building. A memorial stone was erected in the courtyard in memory of the deported residents. In the summer of 2008, a construction management company took over the property and apparently set up condominiums there.

Stand: August 2024
© Sabine Brunotte

Quellen: 1; 3; 5; 6; Schriftliche Auskunft Stadtarchiv Kassel, E-Mail vom 9.2.2017; schriftliche Auskunft Haus der Geschichte/Stadtarchiv Essen vom 15.2.2017; schriftliche Auskunft Dr. Heinrich Nuhn, Rotenburg a.d. Fulda, E-Mail vom 7.3.2017; schriftliche Auskunft Eric Brück, Frankfurt/M., E-Mail vom 26.9.2017; schriftliche Auskunft Helmut Schmidt, Herleshausen, E-Mails vom 8.3. 2017, 11.3. 2017, 12.3.2017, 23.1.2020 und 8.2.2020; schriftliche Auskunft Stadtarchiv Emmerich, E-Mail vom 24.10.2017; schriftliche Auskunft Stadtarchiv Bochum, E-Mail vom 11.12.2019; schriftliche Auskunft Stadtarchiv Iserlohn, E-Mails vom 6.1.2020 und 6.8.2024; StaH Meldekartei 6640 D2; diverse Hamburger Adressbücher unter https://agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de/subhh-adress/; Juden in Emmerich, Hrsg. Emmericher Geschichtsverein 1993, S. 308, S. 418; http://www.homberg-unterm-hakenkreuz.de/index.php/Liste_der_ Juden, Zugriff 27.10.2019; https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homberg_(Duisburg) Zugriff 27.10.2019; https://www.statistik-des-holocaust.de/TT420725-24.jpg, Zugriff 25.07.2024; https://www.statistik-des-holocaust.de/list_ger_rhl_420725.html, Zugriff 25.07.2024;
https://www.bpb.de/themen/holocaust/erinnerungsorte/503219/erinnerungsstaette-fuer-zwangsarbeiter-in-der-zeit-des-nationalsozialismus-im-lenner-lager/ Zugriff 26.7.2024; https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/de/search/person/127187668?s=Sophie%20Nathan HYPERLINK "https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/de/search/person/127187668?s=Sophie Nathan&t=228742&p=1", Zugriff 26.7.2024;
http://www.jg-berlin.org/beitraege/details/die-juedische-arbeiterkolonie-und-asyl-i82d-2009-01-05.html Zugriff 26.7.2024.
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