Heinrich Wohlwill, grandson of Immanuel Wohlwill, well-known Jewish Enlightenment philosopher and head of the Jacobsen School in Seesen, was born in 1874. He graduated from the Wilhelm Gymnasium in Hamburg and then studied chemistry in Heidelberg, Munich and Berlin. In 1898 he received his doctorate at the newly founded Institute for Physical Chemistry Institut für Physikalische Chemie in Göttingen. After university, he started working at Norddeutsche Affinerie as a chemist and was elected to succeed his father as technical director on its executive board in 1913.
The family lived for many years in the Hagedornstraße and in 1929 moved into a newly built semi-detached house at Hindenburgstraße 111 in Hamburg-Alsterdorf. Wohlwill is mentioned as a member of the Chamber of Commerce in 1925, and again in 1933 and 1934. He joined the Patriotic Society Patriotische Gesellschaft in 1929. Heinrich Wohlwill had played an important economic role; in 1903 he had invented a process with the help of which copper could be recovered. This patent was an important basis for the growth of Norddeutsche Affinerie before the Second World War.
The provisions of the Aryan Paragraph (§3 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service) of April 11, 1933 defined Heinrich and his wife as Jews. As board member of a public corporation, Heinrich was additionally affected by the professional consequences of this law. When the Chamber of Commerce "voluntarily" assimilated itself in 1933, 17 members, including all Jewish and half-Jewish members, had to resign. The restitution file shows that Heinrich continued to hold the position of senior chemist after the end of his board activities. Thus he was still able to receive his salaries until 1938 and a compensation payment of RM 30,000 in January 1939. Only after that did the tax authorities began to successively cut Heinrich’s pension payments, from the original 1,500 Reichsmark to eventually 600 RM per month. His bank account was largely blocked, so that for the birthday of his domestic help, for example, he had to ask for an extra 20 marks from the tax authorities.
In 1902 Heinrich had married Hedwig Dehn. Four children were born of this marriage. Max, also a chemist, who was able to flee to Australia with his wife and three children at the beginning of 1939, Elisabeth, a doctor of philosophy, died in Frankfurt in 1935, Marianne, had to flee to England after her legal traineeship exams and worked there as a nurse. The youngest was Margarete, who married the (non-Jewish) general practitioner Albrecht Brandis in 1929. Four children were born of this marriage between 1930 and 1939. The family survived the Nazi regime, but lost their home several times during the war due to bomb hits.
Heinrich Wohlwill described his situation in the years 1939 to 1942 in letters to his son Max, which I found a few years ago with my cousins in Australia. He reported on everyday life, enjoyed the flowers in his garden or mentioned social events, which, however, increasingly took place in the inner family circle. Non-Jewish friends or acquaintanceshad withdrawn more and more. The family circle also became smaller and smaller. Heinrich Wohlwill – this also becomes obvious in the letters - took care of the family members who were trying to leave Germany; at first he did not think of himself.
It can be assumed that the couple Heinrich and Hedwig Wohlwill, despite all the restrictions they had to face, could not believe that they would be affected by the deportations. However, the restrictions increased continuously, as can be seen from these lines: “I was in town on foot with mother to buy a tin watch.” On foot, because the use of public transport was forbidden in the meantime, the gold watch had already had to be handed in, as had the family silver. It says: “we are not so much concerned about the value, but about the familiarity and traditions in our family that we are losing and that hurts.”
In the meantime, Heinrich had been relieved of all honorary positions, and he even had to give up his board activities at the Jewish foundations, which depressed him greatly. The Wohlwill family's slow isolation is increasingly expressed in the letters to his son in Australia. The phrases "we are still doing quite well", or also, "what will become of us" are repeated again and again? His attempts via letters to Robert Solmitz, married to Heinrich's niece Hertha Goldschmidt, who had fled to the US in the meantime, to yet still enable an escape somewhere in the world failed. The relatives had collected money to obtain an entry visa for the Wohlwills to Cuba - but too late: "Mayers (Heinrich Mayer and Marie Mayer, Hedwig Wohlwill's sister) and we will have to retreat into our fate," Heinrich Wohlwill stated resignedly at the end of 1941. Before the transport on July 19, Heinrich Wohlwill wrote a telegram to Australia: "we have to relocate our residence. Mail please via Brandis". Relocating meant deportation to Theresienstadt.
On July 19, 1942, Mayers and Wohlwills were requested to appear at the Moorweide assembly point, from there thye were transported to Hannoversche Bahnhof, where they boarded the wagons and finally arrived in Theresienstadt after a journey of three days. On arrival, the problem arose that Heinrich and Hedwig were not on the list. The Wehrmacht had removed the family from the list through special connections. However, the Gestapo Geheime Staatspolizei did not abide by this and had the Wohlwills deported anyway.
This led to special harassment on the platform in Theresienstadt. The SS Schutzstaffel accused Heinrich Wohlwill of “probably trying to sneak into the concentration camp”. The violin he was carrying was immediately taken from him.
There are eyewitness accounts of the Wohlwill couple from Theresienstadt by Alice Kruse and Angèle Mumssen. They describe the physical strain, the extremely poor nutrition and the harassment of the camp inmates. In a single postcard (card 2) from Heinrich in December 1942, he describes how he was doing quite well. He had employment as a lobbyist for 2,500 workers. However, the diet was so poor that both increasingly lost strength. Heinrich fell ill with a severe intestinal inflammation (enterocolitis) at the end of January 1943, from which he finally died on January 31, 1943.
Contact between the Brandis family in Hamburg and the grandparents in Theresienstadt was only possible through simple postcards, which were allowed to be written every two months. A few postcards from Hedwig Wohlwill to my mother and back described the loneliness of those deported into exile and at the same time the not knowing of the family in Hamburg (card 7). After Margarete Brandis' letter of March 29, 1943 (card 4), news of Heinrich's death arrived four days later (card 5). The life stories of Heinrich and Hedwig Wohlwill are an example of the fate of many Hamburg Jewish families in the 19th century and after 1933.
The postcards of which excerpts are presented here, only give an idea of the situation in which the grandparents had to live. The subsequent testimonies of survivors (Alice Kruse, Angèle Mumssen) give a detailed account of the inhuman cruelties in this camp. It is unimaginable what suffering the camp inmates had to endure and for the most part did not survive. A very high proportion of the inmates imprisoned in Theresienstadt were transported even further to Auschwitz for extermination.
The book “Meines Großvaters Geige” [My Grandfather’s Violin] describes the situation of the middle-class families Wohlwill and Dehn and the fate of the many family members who were forced to flee or did not manage to do so and perished in the concentration camps. With the historical development in the 19th century, a satisfactory future had also begun for many Jewish families in the Hanseatic City of Hamburg. Schooling and university education became possible in the second half of the 19th century. The acculturation of many Hamburg Jewish families led the members into important positions in business, banking, science and culture.
Matthias Brandis was born in Hamburg in 1939 as the grandson of Heinrich and Hedwig Wohlwill. After working as a pediatrician and medical director of the University Children's Hospital in Marburg and Freiburg, he devoted himself to researching the widely ramified family history, which can be read in the book "Meines Großvaters Geige" (Hentrich&Hentrich, 2020).
Matthias Brandis, My Grandfather’s Violin. The fate of the Hamburg Jewish families Wohlwill and Dehn, in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History. <https://keydocuments.net/article/jgo:article-279> [April 24, 2024].
