Stumbling Stones Augsburger Straße 42

Stumbling Stones Augsburger Straße 42 #3

These small, brass memorial plaques (Stolpersteine or stumbling stones) commemorate:

* Dr. Helene Herrmann née Schlesinger, born 1877, deported 10 September 1942, Theresienstadt, murdered 1944 in Auschwitz.
* Dr. Max Herrmann, born 1865, deported 10 September 1942, Theresienstadt, murdered 17 November 1942.

Helene Schlesinger and Max Herrmann married in 1898. She became a literary scholar and teacher. She completed her dissertation on Goethe, the 4th woman in the Berliner Germanischen Seminar. Even today, her essays on contemporary literature are still available in two volumes of her writing. After graduating in 1915, she taught German, Latin, and French, and her students remembere her as an impressive and captivating teacher.

Max Herrmann earned his PhD in 1889 and taught at Friedrich Wilhelms University Berlin. He finally was made associated professor in 1913 and full professor in 1930. In 1923 he started the Berlin Theater Studies Institute, which he co-directed with Julius Petersen. Today Max Herrmann is known for starting the academic field of theater studies. In 1933, Dr. Max Herrmann was one of only a few German academics who protested the book burning. He was forced to retire that year with a reduced pension, and he and Helene had to give up their Charlottenburg house where they had lived for three decades. From then until 1938, Dr. Helene Herrmann partnered with a former student, Dr. Vera Lachmann, to teach Jewish children in Lachmann’s private school until the Nazis closed the school in 1939. (Vera Lachmann was able to escape to the US, where she ended up teaching classics in prestigious colleges and universities and in a summer camp for boys.)

They moved in with Helene’s sister, Katharina (Käthe) Finder in Berlin-Charlottenburg (Eislebener Str. 9). They tried with the help of friends and colleagues to emigrate together to the USA, UK, or Switzerland, but they did not succeed. Max, Helene, and Käthe were taken away on 8 September 1942, then deported to Theresienstadt on the 10th. He was was dead 2 months later. Helene and Käthe were deported from Theresienstadt on 16 May 1944 to Auschwitz. If they survived the journey, they were processed, put into a so-called Family Camp for a while. Anyone still in the Family Camp on 10 July 1944 was taken to the gas chambers and murdered.

There is a stolperstein for Katharina Finder at Eislebener Strasse 9 in Berlin-Charlottenburg.

"Stolpersteine" is an art project for Europe by Gunter Demnig to commemorate victims of National Socialism (Nazism). Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) are small, 10x10cm brass plaques placed in the pavement in front of the last voluntary residence of (mostly Jewish) victims who were murdered by the Nazis. Each plaque is engraved with the victim’s name, date of birth, and place (mostly a concentration camp) and date of death. By doing this, Gunter Demnig gives an individual memorial to each victim. One stone, one name, one person. He cites the Talmud: "A human being is forgotten only when his or her name is forgotten."

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