Hermann Freudenberger |

Several of Felix Freudenberger’s ten siblings followed in their father’s footsteps and, like Hermann Freudenberger, became teachers.

Hermann attended the humanistic Old Grammar School in Würzburg and studied German, history and geography in Würzburg and Munich after graduating from high school. He graduated in 1898 with the state examination and taught for two years at the Real- und Handelslehranstalt in Neustadt an der Aisch. From 1900, he was head teacher at the Talmud Tora School in Hamburg for ten years. In 1902, he completed his doctorate at the University of Rostock with a thesis on “Hamburg’s dispute with Christian IV of Denmark over the Glückstadt customs 1630-1645”. Hermann Freudenberger must have been a gifted teacher, as a former pupil praised him as having been an “unusually gifted and inspiring teacher”.

There is also an episode from his time as a teacher at the Philanthropin that illustrates Freudenberger’s positive influence on young people’s enthusiasm for learning. His colleague Betty Rand-Schleifer recalled that her sister memorized Chamisso’s poem “Salas y Gomez” over the weekend for the sake of her German teacher Dr. Hermann Freudenberger and recited it flawlessly to the class and her moved teacher on Monday morning.

In 1910, Freudenberger moved to Frankfurt, where he had obtained a position at the Philanthropin. He taught there until his death in 1941.

The Philanthropin was founded in 1804 on a private initiative. This new school was intended to help promote the emancipation and integration of Jews into the society in which they lived. The Philanthropin thus occupied a prominent position in the community life of Frankfurt’s Jews and at the same time acted as a pioneer for Germany. In 1929, around 900 young people attended the school. During the National Socialist era, the Philanthropin experienced a temporary boom, as the increasing restrictions on Jewish children attending public schools led to a temporary increase in the number of pupils.

In this text, Freudenberger pays tribute to people who made decisive contributions to the emancipation of the Jews. He particularly emphasizes the role of Moses Mendelssohn in the enlightenment and the role of Gabriel Riesser in the implementation of equal rights for Jews in Germany. The historian concludes his historical outline with the remark that the rights of the Jews are closely linked to the rights to freedom of all people. “… we know that the struggle for our rights is inextricably linked to the liberation struggle of humanity in general. In this struggle one can be held up, but never defeated.”

With his writing, Freudenberger wanted to encourage young people to stand up for equality and human rights, because “light and warmth still radiate from the imperishable testimonies that that time of struggle produced”.

It must have been bitter for him when the Nazis came to power in 1933 and dashed all the hopes he had expressed in his booklet.

Hermann Freudenberger’s first marriage was to Ida Heilbronn, who died in 1914. This marriage produced the children Fritz and Suzie, who were both born in Hamburg.

One year later, on December 10, 1915, Hermann Freudenberger remarried. With his second wife Mirjam (Miriam), née Wechsler, the couple had two sons, Kurt Jacob (born in Frankfurt in 1916) and Hellmuth (Helmut) (born in Würzburg in 1919). The family lived at Günthersburgallee 38 in Frankfurt am Main.

The onset of Naziism had a direct impact on the children’s prospects for life. The eldest son Fritz was arrested in 1934. Kurt Freudenberger, who had previously attended the Musterschule, left Germany in the same year to continue his education in France. His younger brother Hellmuth, a pupil at Lessing Grammar School, began an agricultural apprenticeship after secondary school due to a lack of career prospects in Germany in order to prepare for emigration. He initially worked on a training farm in Neuendorf near Fürstenwalde.

Hellmuth was unable to begin his planned agricultural training in the Taunus region, as the farmer was denied the necessary permit to train a Jewish apprentice by the party authorities. Hellmuth therefore decided to emigrate to Palestine in 1936, where he lived on a kibbutz for a year. He later moved on to Argentina. From 1941 onwards he lived in Uruguay.

It became lonely for the Freudenberger couple. Their daughter had already died in 1931 at the age of 22, their son Kurt had been living in France since 1934, Hellmuth in Palestine since 1936 and their eldest son Fritz was in prison. In 1938, Mirjam and Hermann Freudenberger were living at Blumenstrasse 4, presumably in a smaller apartment.

The Philanthropin was subject to constant change. The staff and children had to deal with new situations and with harassment. Teachers and pupils left Germany and new ones arrived from the surrounding areas. For Freudenberger and the other teachers at the school, the strain must have been enormous.

At the beginning of October 1938, the Reich Ministry of Science, Schooling and National Education had already withdrawn the Philanthropin’s status as a public school. A year later, the city had bought up all of the Jewish community’s properties, including the Philanthropin building in Hebelstrasse. It was leased to the school for three years.

On April 6, 1940, the Chief Finance President inquired whether a reform secondary school existed or had even existed at all at the Philanthropin (sic!). The school board of the Philanthropin then informed the “Devisenstelle” (financial customs office) that the school had been converted into a private educational establishment in 1939. In the next momentous step, the Reich authorities ordered the closure of all Jewish higher educational establishments in April 1941. From then on, Jews were only allowed to attend elementary schools. This deeply affected Freudenberger, who was head of the secondary school that was thus closed. He lost all hope. Did he still attend the last consecration ceremony in the Philanthropin on June 8, 1941? On June 23, 1941, Hermann Freudenberger committed suicide together with his wife Mirjam.

When the deportations began in October 1941, almost all the pupils and teachers at the Philanthropin were deported to concentration and extermination camps. At the end of June 1942, all teaching had to be stopped.

Dora Oppenheimer, the last secretary of the Philanthropin, informed former pupil and teacher Kurt Goldschmidt, who had managed to escape from Germany in 1941, of the principal’s death in a letter: “Our good dear friend has disappeared from this earth at the right moment.”
Kurt Goldschmidt had obviously had a particularly good relationship with Hermann Freudenberger, who was a friend and mentor to him. “He was not only a friend and advisor who accompanied me, so to speak, from the sexta of the years 1923 to 1941, but also one of the outstanding teachers and personalities at the Philanthropin during my time.”
Dora Oppenheimer and Fanny Baer were unable to escape in time and became victims of the Holocaust.
Irritation arose among the authorities when Mirjam Freudenberger, who was already deceased at the time, was sent a “security order” according to which she was granted 150 marks a month.

Fritz Freudenberger was assigned to clerical work in the state sanatorium by the head of the sanatorium, Hinsen. The situation changed abruptly in February 1938 when Dr. Mennecke took over the management of the institution. The situation worsened again in connection with the November 1938 pogrom. According to an order issued by the Frankfurt remand prison on November 9, 1938, special measures were established for Jewish prisoners. “The cowardly murder of the Counselor of the German Embassy in Paris, vom Rath, has proved that Jewry is so strongly permeated by criminal elements that special protective measures are necessary to prevent incidents of a similar nature. Special attention must be paid to the Jews who have become criminals and are already in prison. In view of the strong criminal energy of the Jewish elements that has emerged, all security measures must be taken that are necessary to prevent the disruption of order and endangerment of security in the prisons. In particular, it seems necessary to restrict contact with the outside world as much as possible in order to avoid the kind of petty intrigues to which the Jewish character is particularly prone.”

According to the reply from the Chief President to the Attorney General in Frankfurt on March 23, 1939, this request was not granted. The head of the institution explained to the parents that “preventative detention” was necessary because their son was Jewish and had an innate tendency to commit crimes, Fritz Freudenberger was presumed to attempt to escape and it was not possible to keep him safely in Weilmünster to prevent such an attempt.

Mirjam and Hermann Freudenberger now endeavored to liberate their son by finding a way for him to emigrate to Palestine. On behalf of her son, Mirjam Freudenberger submitted an application in April 1940 for removal goods to be taken with him. In vain. The planned emigration could not be realized.

Fritz Freudenberger died in Hadamar on January 22, 1941.
From January 13, 1941, the first patients from Eichberg were transferred to Hadamar. Around 800 patients were sent from there to the gas chambers. Among the victims of the murder of the sick were 18 Jewish patients. It is assumed that they, like Fritz Freudenberger, were killed in Hadamar. Friedrich Mennecke (1938-1942), the medical director of the Eichberg State Hospital, was one of the “T4” doctors who signed these death sentences. After completing his studies, Mennecke initially worked as an assistant doctor at the district hospital in Bad Homburg. In 1936, he moved to the Eichberg sanatorium. Two years later, he became senior physician and temporary head of the institution; from 1939, he was chief physician at the state sanatorium.
The death of their son hit the Freudenberg couple all the more as they had presumably put their own emigration plans on hold in order to secure his release. In their despair, Hermann and Mirjam Freudenberger put an end to their lives in June 1941.

Hanna had good recollections of her childhood before 1933, when she had many Christian friends. They played together and invited each other over. But after the Nazi regime began, she felt very lonely. She has never forgotten one scene: “I was walking alone in the schoolyard, as I always did at that time, when a classmate chased me on her bike and laughingly shouted: ‘Now I’m going to ride that Jewish girl to death.’ I ran away, my classmate kept riding after me, while the others laughed. She was a pastor’s daughter.” Hanna did not dare to tell people at home about these or similar events.

Music played a major role in the Bing family. The list of belongings compiled for emigration to Uruguay includes a grand piano and numerous sheets of music by Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, and others. Opera glasses suggest that she regularly attended the opera.
Erna Bing worked for the Frankfurt Opera; her engagement ended with the beginning of the Nazi era, as a document from the municipal theater dated April 1, 1933 shows. The opera’s director informed her: “According to a decision by the municipal administration, Jews are no longer allowed to work or be employed in the municipal opera house. We therefore regret that you can no longer work in the operas in which you have been assigned.” It is as yet unknown whether Erna Bing played a role in the Jewish Cultural Association founded in 1933.

Hanna’s father, the businessman Alfred Bing, managed the south German agency for the company “Spinnerei und Weberei Zell-Schönau” in Zell-Wiesenthal/Baden. Erna’s father Max Rothschild had already worked for this company, which meant that the family had a decade long connection with the company. Since the beginning of the Nazi era, there were increasing problems with the German Labor Front, the DAF, which demanded that the “Spinnerei und Weberei Zell-Schönau” fire Bing. At first these attempts were unsuccessful because the management supported Bing. In 1936, however, with the reorganization of the representative districts, Alfred Bing’s influence was limited to Frankfurt and with it his earning potential.

Two years later, the Frankfurt businessman gave up and decided to emigrate with his family. In addition to his work as a representative, Alfred Bing also owned a baby equipment store at Wolfsgangstrasse 51, which he had taken over from his father in law. According to his daughter, he employed several assistants, seamstresses and a manager in this business. Bing also had to give up this company on October 1, 1938.
On October 28, 1938, the family left Germany on the ship “Jamaique” for South America.

In order to finance his living expenses and the costs of emigration, Alfred Bing had prematurely terminated his life insurance policy with a Swiss insurance company, which under normal circumstances would have been due in 1947. The correspondence with the insurance company in the post war period is revealing. The company emphasized that this was a purely insurance-related settlement. No harm was caused to the customer. According to the insurance company, there was no need to check whether the termination of the contract was “due to racial reasons”.
The Bings’ remaining assets were further reduced by the “Reich Flight Tax” and the “Dego Levy”. The “Dego Levy” was a tax, sometimes associated with high fees, that had to be paid to the German Gold Discount Bank when emigrating during the Nazi era.
The events in Germany had taken a heavy toll on Alfred Bing’s health. Hanna reported that he had suffered a severe heart attack in the port of Montevideo shortly after arriving. According to Hanna Bing, her father was therefore no longer able to work in Uruguay. He died there in 1947 at the age of 63. His widow Erna remarried in 1953 and later lived in the USA.

Hanna was unable to continue her education in Uruguay. She had to contribute to the family’s income and worked as a nanny, later on as a gymnastics teacher. On August 24, 1946, she married Hellmuth Freudenberger. The couple had two children. The marriage was however not happy and they divorced in 1959. Hellmuth later lived in Israel again, where he died in 2003. Hanna Freudenberger returned to Germany in 1973, where her two children now live.