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Dr. Leo Lippmann, Foto mit Widmung an “Herr T. M. N. Nathan, zur Erinnerung an gemeinsame Arbeit in schwerer Zeit, Ihr Leo Lippmann 11.1938“
Dr. Leo Lippmann, Foto mit Widmung an "Herr T. M. N. Nathan, zur Erinnerung an gemeinsame Arbeit in schwerer Zeit, Ihr Leo Lippmann 11.1938"
© StaH

Dr. Leo Lippmann * 1881

Böttgerstraße 5 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

Freitod 11.7.1943 Hamburg

see:

further stumbling stones in Böttgerstraße 5:
Anna Lippmann, Dr. Emma Schindler

Dr. Leo Karl Lippmann, born on 26 May 1881 in Hamburg, suicide 10/11 July 1943 in Hamburg

Gänsemarkt 36 (in front of the tax office)
Böttgerstrasse 5 (Hamburg-Harvestehude)

Leo Lippmann was born in Hamburg in a liberal Jewish family home. His father Joseph Behr Lippmann was born on 7 Dec. 1851 in Leutershausen in Bavaria and moved to Hamburg at the beginning of 1870 at the age of 18 to join the tinware business of his uncle Herz/Henri Joseph Lippmann (born in 1832, died in 1890). The Blechwarenfabrik H. Lippmann at An der Neuen Burg was to become a major imported goods company.

His mother Antonie Ranette, née Laskar, called Toni, born on 27 Aug. 1855, came from a wealthy, respected Jewish family that can be traced back to the middle of the seventeenth century in Hamburg. She and her three younger siblings Paul Simon (born on 16 Feb. 1857, died on 5 June 1926), Marie Susanna (born on 20 Dec. 1860, died on 27 Apr. 1928), and Robert (born in 1862) grew up at Deichstrasse 54 in Hamburg-Altstadt. There, very close to his maternal grandparents Auguste (born in 1833, died in 1898) and Eduard Laskar (born in 1818, died in 1899), Leo Lippmann also spent his first years in a five-room apartment at An der Holzbrücke 3 on the third floor. His brother Artur Siegfried was born three years later, on 6 Apr. 1884. The youngest brother Franz Berthold was born on 6 Oct. 1886 after a move to Bundesstrasse 16. Following two further relocations, in 1894 the Lippmann family resided in Hamburg-Harvestehude at Eichenallee 43, which later became Brahmsallee 15. The apartment building they occupied had been in their possession since 1889. The father, Joseph Lippmann, died on 4 Jan. 1928, and two years later, on 1 July 1930, the mother, Toni, passed away as well. Their graves are located in the Jewish Cemetery on Ilandkoppel in Ohlsdorf.

Leo Lippmann first attended Realgymnasium [a high school focused on the sciences, math, and modern languages], then the Johanneum’s prestigious Academic School, which was still located at Speersort during his school days. In 1899, he passed his graduation exam (Reifeprüfung). After studying law in Munich, Berlin, and Kiel, where he passed his legal clerkship, and at the University of Jena, where he completed his doctorate in law, he began his career as a civil servant. As a government councilor in the fiscal authority, he was initially responsible for the properties of the state and their use.

On 16 Sept. 1906, he married Anna Josephine von der Porten, born on 31 Oct. 1881, the daughter of the doctor and obstetrician Maximilian/Max von der Porten. The young couple spent their honeymoon in Venice in keeping with their status.

The first joint address was Isestrasse 143. In 1912, the couple moved into a more modern apartment on the third floor of Sierichstrasse 84. The marriage was to remain childless.

During the First World War, Leo Lippmann was appointed head of the War Pension Office and in 1920 was appointed Senate Secretary. His last position as State Councilor was that of Head of Finance until he was put into early retirement by Mayor Carl Vincent Krogmann (born in 1889, died in 1978) based in the Nazi "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” ("Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums”) and dismissed from public service. His dismissal hit him hard. He wrote in his memoirs, "After a busy life, I was unexpectedly and suddenly recalled from my office as Hamburg State Councilor on Mar. 14, 1933, since it was unacceptable for the Senate elected on 8 Mar. 1933 for me to hold a high office as a Jew.”

His brother Artur Lippmann, professor at St. Georg General Hospital, was also dismissed at the end of 1933. His 20-year-old son Rudolf Lippmann (born on 6 Mar. 1913) took his own life in Cologne on 13 Oct. 1933 because he was no longer admitted to medical studies. Leo Lippmann gave the eulogy for his nephew on 20 October.

After his hopes of returning to civil service had not been fulfilled, Leo Lippmann found a new field of activity when the Jewish Community of Hamburg elected him to its board on 25 Nov. 1935. There he took over the finance department. In 1937, he was appointed Vice-Chairman. The Lippmann couple did not take advantage of an opportunity to leave Germany that arose in the early summer of 1939. The brothers Artur and Franz Lippmann emigrated with their families to Australia in 1938.

In June 1940, Leo Lippmann had to surrender his antique coin collection, to which he was very attached, to the Reichsbank in Berlin. In May 1942, Anna Lippmann was no longer allowed to employ her long-time domestic servant Mathilde Bräu. Finally, the Lippmann couple was forced to leave their home at Sierichstrasse 84, where they had spent almost 30 years of their lives. He was spared the move into one of the overcrowded so-called "Jews’ houses” ("Judenhäuser”). He was allowed to move into the ground floor of the house at Böttgerstrasse 5 in Hamburg-Harvestehude. The estate had belonged to Anna Lippmann’s family for many years. Her widowed mother Adele von der Porten lived there until her death on 18 May 1941.

After the Gestapo informed the community leadership of the Jewish Religious Organization (Jüdischer Religionsverband) that the remaining Jews of Hamburg were to be deported to Theresienstadt in a few days, Leo Lippmann and his wife Anna took their lives on the night of 10 to 11 July 1943. Stolpersteine at Böttgerstrasse 5 in Hamburg-Harvestehude and another one for Leo Lippmann in front of the Hamburg tax authority office commemorate the Lippmann couple. Since 1993, the exhibition hall bears the name Leo-Lippmann-Saal in his honor.

Anna’s brother Paul von der Porten (born on 28 May 1879, died on 30 Dec. 1964), a specialist in skin and sexually transmitted diseases based at Dammtorstrasse 5, had followed his sons to New York in Apr. 1936 with his wife Martha, née Rübner, and their youngest daughter Irma. The oldest daughter already lived in Britain. His younger brother Ernst von der Porten (born on 10 May 1884), a well-known anesthetist and obstetrician based at Mittelweg 118, took his own life on 13 Dec. 1940 together with his wife Frieda, née Alexander (born on 2 Dec. 1885), in Perpignan in southern France. Their daughter Marianne de Zwart (born on 19 May 1917) died in Jan. 1945 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. For them, Stolpersteine were laid in front of the building at Mittelweg 118 (see Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel).

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

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 4; StaH 351-11 AfW 5484 (Dr. Lippmann, Leo); StaH 351-11 AfW 4465 (Dr. von der Porten, Paul); StaH 351-11 AfW 6894 (Dr. von der Porten, Ernst und Frieda); StaH 241-2 A 571; StaH 720-1_215 Li 356; StaH 622-1 55_A 3; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1992 u 2207/1881; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 913 u 212/1926; Jochmann: Leo Lippmann, in: Der Untergang der Hamburger Juden; Lippmann: Mein Leben; Asendorf: in: Vierhundert Jahre Juden in Hamburg; Lorenz: Leo Lippmann in: Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden (Hrsg.): Das Jüdische Hamburg, S. 177; Villiez: Kraft, S. 379; Lippmann: "Deutscher".
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".

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