Olga Delbanco
* 1876

Olga Delbanco, born 24.2.1876 in Hamburg, deported 18.11.1941 to Minsk

Haynstrasse 10 (Eppendorf)

Olga Delbanco was born in Hamburg in 1876 as the daughter of the merchant Hirsch Elias Delbanco (1831-1906) and Hanna Delbanco, née Arnhold (1843-1914).

The Delbancos were a widespread Hamburg family, already noted in the 1794 address book of the Hanseatic city with four heads of household, all of them merchants. The grandfather Elias Israel Delbanco (1802-1880) last lived at Großneumarkt 30 (Neustadt), where the unmarried Hirsch E. Delbanco also had his own address book entry as early as 1864 to 1867 due to his business activities. Hirsch E. Delbanco and Hanna Arnhold, daughter of the merchant Eduard Arnhold and Caroline née Neustadt, had also been married by Chief Rabbi Anschel Stern (1820-1888) in the synagogue after the civil wedding (15.11.1867) (25.12.1867).

Before Olga Delbanco, the siblings Adelheid (1868-1940), Eduard (1869-1925) and Ernst (1871-1932) were born in the apartment Deichthorstraße 8 (St. Georg, Klostertor). Their father had acquired the citizenship of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg in 1862, a sign of economic and social solidity. In June 1862, together with Jens Christian Folkmann, he founded the cloth warehouse, commission and forwarding business Delbanco & Folkmann, which was based at the street Alter Wall 74 (Altstadt) from 1872 until its liquidation in December 1878. Subsequently, from 1881 to 1897, Hirsch Delbanco operated a "Slips- u. Cravattenfabrik" at Deichstraße 8 /Altstadt (1881-1883) and Bohnenstraße 12 (1884-1895), directly next to St. Nicolai Church, which was also the landlord. Probably at the same time as the company was dissolved, it moved to Bogenstraße. The first name of Hirsch Delbanco always appeared in the address books only with an abbreviated H. E..

The family of Hirsch and Hanna Delbanco lived for a long time at Deichthorstraße 8 in St. Georg (1868-1888), a house that presumably belonged to Hirsch Delbanco's parents-in-law. After that, the residential addresses were Klosterallee 31 (1889-1892), Bogenstraße 11a in Eimsbüttel (1893-1896), Kielortallee 15/ Eimsbüttel (1896-1901), Eppendorfer Baum 5/ Harvestehude (1901-1903) and Heinrich-Barth-Straße 8/ Rotherbaum (from 1903). Both parents were buried in the Jewish Cemetery Hamburg-Ohlsdorf.

Olga Delbanco began teaching as an elementary school teacher in October 1895 after her education at the teacher training seminar in Hamburg; at that time she was 19 years old and thus not yet of age. She entered the Hamburg school service in January 1899. She taught in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel at the boys' and girls' school at Tornquiststraße 19a (1907-1915) and at the girls' school at Hohe Weide 12 (1918-1923).

The elementary school Hohe Weide had been built between 1887 and 1890 as a boys' and girls' school with separate entrances, in a uniform structure with a common gymnasium for fourteen classes each - a common type of construction at the time for the increasing numbers of pupils in the growing Hanseatic city. During the First World War, schools in the Eimsbüttel district were also converted into military hospitals and the students were distributed to other schools. In 1923, the German Reich had to deal with crises of historic proportions, including fighting inflation through the "miracle" of the new stable Rentenmark (1 dollar = 4.20 Rentenmark = 4.2 trillion paper marks). Among the rigorous measures taken by both the German Reich and the city-state of Hamburg was the reduction in the workforce of some 1.6 million civil servants and employees, who were sent into retirement by April 1, 1924. This also affected the school and education system. Thus, Olga Delbanco, now 48 years old, also received a "waiting allowance" from April 1, 1924, as a civil servant who had been temporarily retired (Wartestand).

Only after her temporary retirement in 1924 was Olga Delbanco listed as an independent member of the Jewish community.

The unmarried Olga Delbanco continued to live with her parents even as a teacher, and after her father's death with her mother at Heinrich-Barth-Strasse 8/Rotherbaum (1903-1907) and Oberstraße 3/ Harvestehude (1908-1914). Presumably, after the death of the mother (December 1914), the apartment in Oberstraße was dissolved and Olga Delbanco moved in with her brother Eduard Delbanco (born 27.11.1869) in Wrangelstraße 2 (Hoheluft-West), who lived there on the 3rd floor since September 1915. His brother, who was also unmarried, had founded the company Eduard Delbanco Agentur und Commission in 1900 after longer stays abroad.

From 1916 to 1934, Olga Delbanco was listed in the Hamburg address book with her own apartment at Wrangelstraße 2. Her brother Eduard Delbanco had moved to Groß Flottbek in July 1919, which was then outside the city of Hamburg.

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists and their anti-Semitic measures, Olga Delbanco's living situation also changed. According to the Jewish Community's cultural tax card, she now lived in Hamburg-Eppendorf in varying subtenancies: presumably from 1935 at Beim Andreasbrunnen 8 with the widow Betty Asch (1865-1938), then at Haynstraße 13 with the unmarried dressmaker for ladies' hats and milliner Frieda Eller (born Oct 3,1904 in Hamburg), then in Haynstraße 10 with Rosenberg (whose name, however, is not listed in the Hamburg address books 1936-1941 under this address) and finally in Haynstraße 5 in the boarding house of the former merchant Alfred Heidemann (born Aug 3,1884 in Osterholz-Scharmbeck).

The houses at Haynstraße 5 and Haynstraße 7 were included in the preparations for the deportations as so-called Jewish houses (“Judenhäuser”) by the state authorities as collective quarters. Deviating from the Kultussteuerkartei, the Hamburg address book listed Olga Delbanco from 1939 to 1941 with a separate entry for the first floor apartment Haynstraße 13 (from 1940 Senator-Hayn-Straße 13), where the merchant Siegfried S. (Samuel) Strauss (born Oct 29, 1898 in Mergentheim) lived until his emigration in February 1938 and ran a brokerage firm for metals as well as an import and export company named after him in 1930. It was not possible to clarify the origin of these deviating residential entries, nor who possibly lived in the first floor apartment instead of Olga Delbanco.

Meanwhile disenfranchised and financially plundered, Olga Delbanco was deported to the Minsk ghetto in occupied Belarus on November 18, 1941, from where she never returned.

The date of her death is not known, nor whether she died of starvation or infectious diseases, or whether she perished in the SS firing squad.

Her cousin Prof. Dr. Ernst Delbanco (see there) took his own life on March 31, 1935. He is commemorated by stumbling blocks at Alte Rabenstraße 12 (apartment) and Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1 (main university building), biography see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de.

Olga Delbanco's landlords were also deported: Alfred Heidemann on October 25, 1941 to Lodz Ghetto and Frieda Eller on December 6, 1941 to Riga-Jungfernhof Ghetto.

Translation by Beate Meyer