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Louis Lübeck und seine Tochter Allis, um 1938
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Louis Lübeck * 1879

Heußweg 9 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

HIER WOHNTE
LOUIS LÜBECK
JG. 1879
1938 – 1943 HAFT
DEPORTIERT 1943
AUSCHWITZ
ERMORDET 11.5.1943

Louis Lübeck, born on 21 Apr. 1879 in Hamburg, detained several times in Fuhlsbüttel, deported from there to Auschwitz on 28 Mar. 1943 and murdered on 11 May 1943

Heussweg 9 (Heussweg 11)

"In Feb. 1943, my husband was summoned by phone from his workplace then at the Christian Wolf spice processing plant, located on Grüner Deich, to report to the Gestapo on Rothenbaumchaussee and arrested again without any reasons specified.

The Gestapo confronted him with the following choice:
1) either divorce and transport to the ghetto in Theresienstadt (allegedly, first-class lot for Jews of his age group) or
2) committal to a labor camp for an indefinite period
Since my husband refused to get a divorce because he could not separate from me and the children, in Mar. 1943 he was transported to Auschwitz, where, according to the death certificate, he died on 11 May 1943.”

These details can be found in the restitution file for the Hamburg merchant Louis Lübeck. They are from his wife Käthe. The matter-of-fact tone and the bureaucratic form cannot gloss over the drama that came to head with Louis Lübeck’s refusal to get a divorce, sealing his death sentence.

Louis Lübeck was born in Hamburg in 1879 as the second child of the Jewish furrier Baruch Bernhard Lübeck and his Jewish wife Julia, née del Monte. His sister Charlotte was nearly two years older than he, and after him followed the siblings Jacob (in 1881; see Stolpersteine in Hamburg-St. Pauli: Biografische Spurensuche, p. 135), Leonore Louise (in 1882), and Johanna (in 1887). According to Louis Lübeck’s words, the family always had to "struggle with poverty.” Nonetheless, the parents enabled their oldest son to attend the nine-grade "Stiftungsschule von 1815.” Once founded as a reform-oriented free school for poor Jewish children, by the end of the nineteenth century, the school taught mostly Christian female and male students.

In the spring of 1895, Louis Lübeck finished school, obtaining the intermediate secondary school certificate (mittlere Reife) and then doing an apprenticeship as an export merchant with the Hamburg-based Frankfurter & Liebermann exporting business on Admiralitätstrasse. In his spare time, he learned English, French, and Spanish. After his training, the company continued to employ him, and he worked there as a commercial clerk ("Commis”) until 1903. Then he handed in his notice, in order to "extend his business expertise,” as his reference pointed out. The single-mindedness with which he pursued his career also manifested itself in the fact that he then went to Britain for two years to gather experience abroad. In his early twenties, he returned to Hamburg, working as a commercial employee at different companies over the next ten years, including as the head of the sample department of the B. Luria & Co importing and exporting company on Jungfernstieg. In those days, he took the Hamburg civic oath in a solemn ceremony. He swore "[to] seek the best for the city and [to] avert harm from it to the best of my ability,” and thus he acquired Hamburg civic rights – a precondition for both business and social standing in the Hanseatic city. Finally, the step toward self-employment followed: On 21 Oct. 1910, Louis Lübeck registered an "independent business enterprise” with the "Süd-Eimsbüttel industrial inspection and traffic police” (Gewerbe- und Verkehrspolizei Süd-Eimsbüttel); four days later, he had the "Fa. Louis Lübeck” entered in the company register, as an exporting representative for various companies based in Germany and Britain. In those days, he still lived as a subtenant at Bundesstrasse 11. Work took up the greater part of his life, and he ambitiously built up his business. Nothing is known about his private life at the time.

In Oct. 1923, at the age of 44, Louis Lübeck started a family: He married 23-year-old Käthe Amanda Emma Konow, the daughter of the Protestant master plumber August Konow from Eimsbüttel. Slightly over a year later, the first child of the couple was born: Allis Julia Louise.

With the same intensity with which he pursued his profession, Louis Lübeck loved his family. Nonetheless, work continued to be at the center of his life. The son of a poor furrier with many children from Hamburg-St. Pauli had become a respected merchant with business premises on Grosse Bäckerstrasse, not far from city hall, who employed a staff of two and did business with numerous clients in Germany and Britain. In all of this, he followed the guiding principle of the influential Hamburg Association of the "Honorable Merchant,” which he had joined in 1912. Just how proud he was of this membership is demonstrated by the fact that he had it entered in the Hamburg directory with an addition to his name. Moreover, he owned a substantial portfolio of stocks, and by then he lived with his family at Heussweg 11.

Apparently, the Nazis’ assumption of power in 1933 and the associated changes in political and social life in Germany had little influence on this life at first. The increasing restrictions and persecution measures to which religious Jewish men and women as well as all of those the state declared to be Jews in 1935 by means of the Nuremberg Laws on race were exposed appeared not to worry him. Possibly, he was confirmed in his conviction by the fact that as late as Aug. 1935, he was awarded the Honor Cross for Front-Line Veterans in "the name of the leader and Reich Chancellor” Adolf Hitler "in commemoration of the World War of 1914/1918.” Furthermore, as a husband of a baptized Christian wife and thus, in the subsequent Nazi terminology, living in a "privileged mixed marriage” ("privilegierte Mischehe”), he was in fact protected from state persecution for the time being.

The first difficulties affected his daughter Allis. She attended grade 7 of Emilie-Wüstenfeld School, which was scheduled to make a trip to Lüneburg in the summer of 1937. Without suspecting anything, she handed her teacher the money for the journey, only to learn that as a "half-Jew,” she was excluded from the class trip: The youth hostel would not accommodate her. Thereupon Louis Lübeck wrote to what was then the culture and education authority, imploring that his daughter not be treated unfairly in comparison to her classmates: "(…) I would like to take the liberty of giving a few explanations in this respect in order to pave my only child’s way into life and into the German state. Her mother, my wife, is from a respectable Lutheran family. Personally, I have never belonged to a religion or parish or community or sect, and as a student of the Ree’sche Realschule (undenominational school), I was raised entirely in the liberal spirit. My father, a veteran of the 1870/71 war, served for three years with the "76er Hanseaten” [translator’s note: the 76th {2nd Hanseatic} Infantry Regiment "Hamburg”] and as a front-line soldier, I was awarded the Honor Cross and the Wound Badge; we have stood up for Germany with our property and blood. Everything for Germany, that is the way my child ought to be raised and do her duty.” In another letter, he expressed his concern that his daughter might suffer psychologically from the rebuff, lose her joy in school, and get caught in conflicts from which her parents had so far always protected her. Eventually, Allis was allowed to participate in the trip after all.

According to Rademacher’s Company Register for Industry and the Export Trade, in 1938, Louis Lübeck had up to 50 customers. Among them were the Hannover-based Dewag gambling machine manufacturer and the Igetro mechanical engineering company from Zuffenhausen near Stuttgart, and they included the Miele Works in Gütersloh and the Doulton & Co. stoneware producer in London. In 1938, however, his professional situation changed dramatically. To begin with, the Association of the "Honorable Merchant” excluded its Jewish members, a measure to which it supposedly found itself compelled in connection with an ordinance by the Reich Economics Ministry concerning the exclusion of Jews from the stock market. Louis Lübeck was affected by this as well.

An article appearing in Das schwarze Korps. Zeitung der Schutzstaffeln der NSDAP, the combat and advertising brochure of the SS, in July 1938 pulled the rug from under him for good. Under the heading, "Louis, the persistent Aryan,” an author not specified by name described in a lengthy, sarcastic inflammatory article Louis Lübeck’s "unmasking” as a "full Jew,” who had tried with any trick imaginable to pass himself off as an "Aryan” vis-à-vis his clients, also accusing him of fraud. The reasoning behind this accusation: He supposedly had transferred his company to his "Aryan” wife and thus "procured for himself pecuniary advantages.” Some four weeks later, on 20 August, Louis Lübeck was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to the Fuhlsbüttel police prison. He spent ten months in pretrial detention. On 23 June 1939, the sentence was passed: For "violation of the Ordinance Against Support for the Camouflaging of Jewish Commercial Enterprises [Verordnung gegen die Unterstützung der Tarnung jüdischer Gewerbebetriebe],” he was sentenced to one year and six months in prison as well as payment of a fine amounting to 1,000 RM (reichsmark). In handing down this verdict, the court referred to the "Ordinance Against Support for the Camouflaging of Jewish Commercial Enterprises” [Verordnung gegen die Unterstützung der Tarnung jüdischer Gewerbebetriebe], passed only four months earlier. According to Sec. 1 of this ordinance, "a German citizen, who for selfish motives collaborates in consciously concealing the Jewish character of a commercial enterprise with the intention of deceiving the population or the authorities” can be "penalized with penitentiary or, in less serious cases, with a jail term, though not under one year in duration, as well as a fine.” Later, Louis Lübeck’s wife Käthe wrote on this score in her application for restitution, "The victim was a full Jew and married to me in a privileged mixed marriage (one child). When in 1938 – my husband was already 59 years old – our second little daughter was born, while the Nazi laws against Jews increasingly escalated and spilled over to the so-called ‘liberal’ professions and threatened our livelihood, my husband decided to "Aryanize” his business by transferring it to me. This proved to be his undoing. The Gestapo arrested him, sealed his office, and banned him from continuing to operate his enterprise.” This was the first "camouflaging offense” for which a Hamburg court passed a conviction.

The pretrial detention had already been hardly bearable for Louis Lübeck; the verdict plunged him into a serious depression. At the beginning of July 1939, he described, in a long letter full of self-reproaches because of his "mistake,” written "with courage born of despair,” his feelings to the Hamburg Jury Court (Schwurgericht) – fully aware in this context that this would change nothing about his situation. On a regular basis, Käthe Lübeck applied to be able to visit her husband. Above all, it was very important to her that he got to see his children: Allis, by then 15 years old, and little Ilse Angelika, born only in Apr. 1938. At the end of 1939, she submitted a plea for clemency to the head of the prison, which the latter refused a short time later without providing any reasons. As a result of this, she filed a complaint with the responsible Chief Public Prosecutor against the refusal. By then, Louis Lübeck had been allocated work applying bast insulation. Shortly after the refusal of the complaint, the foreman in charge reported him to the institutional administration: Apparently, Lübeck had plugged the toilet drain line with twisted bast fibers and had become unruly when ordered to mop up the water in the cell. Moreover, he reportedly worked far below the quota, for which he had been warned already. The penalty was seven days confinement. A few days later, Käthe Lübeck again filed a plea for clemency. Once more, this petition was rejected without any reasons given.

In accordance with the "Ordinance Concerning an Atonement Payment by Jews of German Citizenship” ("Verordnung über eine Sühneleistung der Juden deutscher Staatsangehörigkeit") dated 12 Nov. 1938, Louis Lübeck had already been forced to pay a "levy on Jewish assets” ("Judenvermögensabgabe”) in four installments amounting to nearly 6,000 RM (reichsmark) to the German Reich between mid-Dec. 1938 and mid-Aug. 1939. Because he had had no income since then, the family lived on savings. In early 1940, Käthe Lübeck also had to comply with a "security order” ("Sicherungsanordnung”), being forced to pay her husband’s entire assets still available into a so-called blocked account with an authorized bank and to deposit all of his securities there. From this account, she was allowed to withdraw only 475 RM a month, with the bank noting in each instance the reason for the sums paid out in addition to the date and amount. Since the decree by the Reich Economics Minister also applied to the assets of the "Aryan” wife, she had no access to her own account either.

When Louis Lübeck was released from punitive detention at the end of Apr. 1940, he was, as his wife later put it in her application for restitution, an "emotionally and physically broken man.” Nonetheless, emigration was out of the question for him. His wife and his two daughters, he argued, were Lutheran, and his wife "fully Aryan” on top of that. Instead, he made great efforts to build up a new livelihood in order to provide for his family. Since he lived in a "privileged mixed marriage” ("privilegierte Mischehe"), the Gauleitung (Nazi regional administration) of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg permitted him to "work as an employee in the commercial field.” In each individual case, however, he required the allocation by Willibald Schallert, who was in charge at the Hamburg Employment Office for the placement of Jews. Various companies expressed interest when Louis Lübeck applied to them for a position. However, Schallert – according to Käthe Lübeck in connection with the legal proceedings against him before the Hamburg Regional Court (Landgericht) in 1947 – constantly made trouble, attempting to assign him to perform physical labor. After almost three years, in early Jan. 1943, Louis Lübeck eventually succeeded in obtaining Schallert’s permission for a job after all. Yet "the joy was not to last too long,” said Käthe Lübeck. After a mere month, on 1 Feb. 1943, her husband suddenly had to leave his workplace with the Christian Wolf spice processing plant on Grüner Deich in Hammerbrook to report to the Gestapo office at Rothenbaumchaussee 38. There he was arrested immediately, taken to Fuhlsbüttel, and placed in "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”). Apparently, Schallert had reported him to the Gestapo because he had failed to sign his application to the company health insurance fund of the Deutsche Werft shipyard with the compulsory added name of "Israel.” Overall, this arrest operation, based on various pretexts, affected 17 Jews living in mixed marriages.

After eight weeks of detention in Fuhlsbüttel, Louis Lübeck was transported to Auschwitz on 28 Mar. 1943. From there, he wrote one last card to his family: "I am doing well; I am healthy and feel fine. I would look forward very much to hearing good news from you soon. Greetings from your Daddy. "He died on 11 May 1943.

As a bombed-out evacuated citizen of Hamburg ("Butenhamborgerin”), Käthe Lübeck initially worked in Bargteheide in 1945, and from 1950 for the employment office in Hamburg. She died in 1972.

From 1948 until 1949, Allis Lübeck underwent in-patient psychological treatment at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) for nearly one year. She later committed suicide.

Ilse Lübeck lives in Hamburg with her husband. She has two sons and five grandchildren.

Family members who also perished in the Holocaust were Louis Lübeck’s sister Leonore, married name Stollberg, in Theresienstadt on 21 Jan. 1942, and his brother Jacob. He was taken from the Dachau concentration camp to the Hartheim euthanasia killing center and murdered there on 15 May 1942.

The proceedings against Willibald Schallert in the case of Louis Lübeck were suspended "due to lack of evidence.”


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

Stand: March 2017
© Frauke Steinhäuser

Quellen: 1; 2 (R 1940/113); 9; StaH 213-11, Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, 11 Js 1154/38; ebd., 63701/53 Schallert; StaH 242-1 II, Gefängnisverwaltung II, Abl. 18, 923/39 Gefangenenpersonalakte Louis Lübeck; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung, Abl. 2008/1 210479 Eg Käthe Lübeck, Ilse Lübeck, Allis Lübeck; StaH 361-2 II Oberschulbehörde (Höheres Schulwesen), A 29 Nr. 21; Adressbücher Hamburg 1938, 1939, 1940; Postel, Kaufmännische Selbstverwaltung; www.veek-hamburg.de (Zugriff 31.3.2008, inzwischen überarbeitet ohne Unterseite zur Geschichte); Anträge auf Eintragung in das Register Eines Ehrbaren Kaufmanns, Bd 5 L–M; Ehrbarer Kaufmann, Mitgliederverzeichnis A–L; Ausschluß von Juden aus dem Reg. E. E. K. u. Eintragungen von Mischlingen in das Reg. E. E. K., Akte Nr. 505/39; Gespräch mit Ilse Ulmer, geb. Lübeck, Michael Lübeck und Dorothee Kern-Lübeck am 7.3.2011 in Hamburg; Jungblut/Ohl-Hinz, Stolpersteine in Hamburg-St. Pauli; Meyer, Jüdische Mischlinge, S. 199.
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