Stumbling Stones Bahnhofstraße 62

These small memorial brass plaques (Stolpersteine or stumbling stones) commemorate:
* Here worked Hermann Hammerschmidt, born 1887, arrested 1944, Gestapo custody, Lager Schwetig murdered December 1944.
* Hertha Goertel nee Hammerschmidt, born 1893, deported 1943, murdered in Auschwitz.
* Fritz Hammerschmidt, born 1894, deported 1944, murdered in Auschwitz.
* Walter Hammerschmidt, born 1900, arrested 1938, Sachsenhausen, dead from consequences of imprisonment on 21 January 1939.
* Frieda Glasfeld, born 1890, deported 1942, Warsaw Ghetto, ???

Three brothers – Hermann, Fritz, and Walter Hammerschmidt – are remembered, along with their sister, Hertha Goerte,l and a cousin, Frieda Glasfeld. Theirs were the first stolpersteine installed in Cottbus (28 Sep 2006), with Hermann’s son Ulrich attending.

After serving honorably in WW1, Hermann Hammerschmidt married Elisabeth Pawelke. They had 3 sons. He ran a successful law firm with his father and one of his brothers until 1938 when a new antisemitic law meant his license was revoked. He became a consultant – a legal adviser for Jews. In 1941, his possessions were taken by the Reich. In 1942, he and Georg Schlesinger (a Jewish Jcommunity leader) were told to increase the number of Jews who left the district or else new areas in the East would be found for those Jews. When this threat was reported in a Swedish newspaper, both men were accused of contact abroad and detained for a week. Then two years later, Hermann himself was arrested after one of his sons escaped from forced labor in France in 1944 and a "wanted" poster had been circulated. Hermann was taken to a highway construction labor camp near Schwetig in December 1944 where he was worked to death from exhaustion or was more directly murdered.

Walter Hammerschmidt was arrested in Berlin during Kristallnacht (November 1938), and taken to Sachsenhausen. His wife paid bribes to get him released in order to emigrate, but he died in January of sepsis from injuries suffered at Sachsenhausen.

Fritz Hammerschmidt was born in Cottbus and lived in Berlin. He was deported on 09 March 1944 from Berlin to Auschwitz on Transport 50. No other information was found about his life.

Hermann’s cousin Frieda Glasfeld née Hammerschmidt worked in his office. She was deported to the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. No other information was found on her life or death.

A stolperstein for one of Walter Hammerschmidt’s clients in 1939, Maria Pfeffel, is at Wilhelmstraße 3 in Cottbus.

"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."

For more information and pictures, please visit Stolpersteine Brandenburg (in German).