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Karl Schober * 1880

Pasmannstraße gegenüber Hausnr. 8 (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
KARL SCHOBER
JG. 1880
GEDEMÜTIGT / ENTRECHTET
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
19.11.1941

Ruth Wilhelmine Prause, née Jacobson, born 13 Aug. 1898 in Hamburg, found 19 Nov. 1941 after she took her life in Hamburg
Karl Schober, born 16 Mar. 1880 in Gschwend in Württemberg, found 19 Nov. 1941 after he took his life in Hamburg (Stumbling Stones planned)

Pasmannstraße 3 (Pasmannstrasse 7)

On 19 Nov. 1941 at 9:30 a.m., Ms. Marta Heinemann, of Pasmannstraße 7, went to her local police station in Neustadt. She suspected that her neighbor on the second floor, Widow Ruth Prause, and her lodger Mr. Schober had killed themselves. Neither of them had been seen since Saturday, the 16th of Nov. and moreover, Ruth Prause had mentioned to her a little while before that she wanted to take her own life.

Since the door was not opened for Oberwachtmeister Christiansen or Oberwachtmeister Wernik, they called Station 2 of the "fire protection police”. At 10:20 a.m. the officers, who had brought a truck with a ladder, entered the apartment. "We climbed through the open window into the apartment. There we found the kitchen door closed and the inside sealed with paper. When we opened the door, we were hit by the strong smell of gas. We found the Jewish woman Prause and her lodger Schober seated on armchairs, dead. The gas to the stove was on.”

The doctor they called in, Reuter, determined death by poisoning with coal gas. On the kitchen table, next to an orderly stack of papers, the officers found two suicide notes.

Ruth Prause was born in Hamburg, the fourth child of the head steward and later bank courier Alexander Jacobson (born 22 Dec. 1853) and his wife Emilie, née Engers (born 16 Jan. 1863). Her parents had wed on 31 Oct. 1884 in Altona where Ruth’s mother was born, the daughter of Salomon Simson Engers and Goldine, née Arnow. The family of Ruth’s father came from Stade. Her grandfather Isaac Jacobson had held the office of synagogue superintendent there and owned a manufactured goods store at Bungenstraße 14. Isaac Jacobson lived with his family but also for a time in Harburg, Hanover and Ulzen where Ruth’s older siblings were born. Ultimately they moved to Altona around 1893, into an apartment at Paulstraße 3 (today Otzenstraße).

Her eldest brother Isaac Jacobson (born 30 Aug. 1885), named after his grandfather, immigrated to the USA in 1914 and since then was considered "lost”. Her sister Goldina Penzel, née Jacobson (born 14 May 1888 in Ulzen), died at a young age. Her husband Karl Penzel (born 27 Feb. 1898 in Schöneck) lived at Fuhlentwiete 43 and cared for his six children as a single father until he remarried. A further sister Frieda Ackermann, née Jacobson, named Scharnberg in her first marriage (born 30 Aug. 1885 in Hanover, died 24 July 1965) set out to sea starting in 1926 as a steward on the Resolut of the Hamburg-America Line. Later she married yet again, the warehouse foreman Bernhard Griesser (born 18 Apr. 1887 in Sipplingen). The couple lived with Frieda’s daughter Rösel-Ursula Scharnberg (born 9 Oct. 1907) in the Hamburg neighborhood of St. Pauli at Altonaerstraße 19 (today Altonaer Straße) and ran a professional ironing service at Maacksgasse 5. Ruth’s youngest brother Siegwart Siegesmund Salomon (born 3 Nov. 1899, died 25 Nov. 1949) was born at Bismarckstraße 24 in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel. He became a cook, then a dockworker and lived with his wife Johanna, née Landgraf (born 29 May 1904, died 14 May 1944), and their three children at Peterstraße 61 and later at Marienstraße 62/64 (as of 1940 Jan-Valkenburg-Straße). Siegwart Jacobson and his sister Frieda Griesser survived the National Socialist regime in so-called mixed marriages.

Back to Ruth: Until her wedding on 4 Apr. 1923, she lived with her family at Kohlhöfen 18. Her father Alexander Jacobson lived long enough to attend his daughter’s wedding but died shortly thereafter on 27 May 1923 at Free Mason Hospital and was buried at Ilandkoppel Jewish Cemetery in Ohlsdorf. Despite the fact that her grandfather Isaac Jacobson was the superintendent in Stade, religion apparently no longer played a role in the family two generations later. Like her siblings, Ruth chose a non-Jewish spouse, the Hamburger Hans Berthold Wilhelm Prause (born 24 Jan. 1898) who was her same age. Berthold Prause worked as a postal worker and had or developed lung disease, requiring Ruth to help them earn a living. The childless couple lived at Lindenallee 86 in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel in 1927. Mid 1931 they moved into an apartment belonging to the building association of the post office at Buchsbaumweg 5 in Hamburg-Winterhude. However Berthold Prause died shortly after the move on 7 June 1931, at the age of 33, at Barmbek General Hospital.

After his death, Ruth received a small pension from the "post office” and moved frequently in the subsequent years. She lived at Herderstraße 33, Hamburg-Uhlenhorst (1933), at Groothoffgasse 3 (1934) and at Hölderlinsallee 4, Hamburg-Winterhude (1936). As of 1938 the Hamburg address book showed Ruth Prause as living at Margarethenstraße 12. From there she moved to Pasmannstraße 7 in 1939. Evidently Ruth Prause had maintained only sporadic contact with her family over the previous years. Her mother Emilie Jacobson had been living at the Jewish Lazarus-Gumpel-Stift Foundation at Schlachterstraße 46/47 since 1925 and applied to the welfare office in 1932 for support. In that application she noted that her daughter Ruth had remarried. She believed her husband’s name was Schober and her daughter was living with him in the St. Pauli neighborhood at Pinnasberg 45.

This information was not entirely accurate: Ruth Prause and Karl Schober lived together in an apartment but were not married.

The non-Jewish stoker Karl Schober was born on 16 Mar. 1880, son of the rope maker Christof Schober and Christine, née Bauer, in Gschwend, Wurttemberg and had lived in Kiel before moving to Hamburg.

Perhaps Ruth Prause and Karl Schober decided together to take their lives after Ruth received her deportation orders, probably for the transport on 18 Nov. 1941 to Minsk Ghetto. Her niece Rösel Rübcke, née Scharnberg, explained after the war that her aunt poisoned herself when the Gestapo were about to pick her up.

Karl Schober wrote in his suicide note, "I am leaving this world voluntarily since I have had a good landlady here. My whole life I have worked hard and do not want to have to live with strangers again at the age of 62.” Moreover, he explained expressly that the two of them had had no further relationship, most likely to quell any suspicion of "racial defilement”.

Ruth Prause did not want to owe anyone anything, not even the Hamburg Gas Works. On a hand-written note she left money for the gas she had used and asked for "the old man” to be buried with her in the grave of her deceased husband at Ohlsdorf Cemetery. Her urn burial took place on 18 Dec. 1941 in Ohlsdorf at Ilandkoppel Jewish Cemetery.

Her mother Emilie Jacobson died of a lung infection on 24 Jan. 1943 at Israelite Hospital at Schäferkampsallee 29.

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

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; 4; StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde - Unnatürliche Sterbefälle 3 Akte 1897/41; 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden 391; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 5887 u 753/1884; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 9148 u 242/1898; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13096 u 2493/1899; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 6473 u 421/1910; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8073 u 316/1923; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3458 u 276/1923; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 7126 u 909/1931; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1139 u 429/1941; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1139 u 428/1941; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8185 u 54/1943; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1200 u 327/1944; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 4300 u 11/1949; StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge 1329 (Jacobson, Emilie); StaH 351-11 AfW 9447 (Griesser, Bernhard); StaH 351-11 AfW 8382 (Griesser, Frieda); StaH 351-11 AfW 32190 (Rübcke, Rösel); http://www.jüdischer-friedhof-altona.de/datenbank.html (Gräber von Juden und nichtjüdischen Angehörigen, Zugriff 19.7.2017); diverse Hamburger Adressbücher.
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