Martha Loewenthal Wolff’s Family: An Update from Israel

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One of the more elusive Goldschmidt family members to research has been Martha Loewenthal Wolff and her family. Martha was the daughter of Kiele Stern and Abraham Loewenthal, the granddaughter of Sarah Goldschmidt and Salomon Stern, and my third cousin, twice removed. Thanks to my friend Aaron Knappstein, I now have more information and documents and even photographs of Martha and her family.

Martha was married to Jakob Wolff, as discussed here, and they had three children: Anna, Hans Anton, and Walter. I was missing birth records for all three children, and Aaron was able to locate all of them.

Birth record of Anna Wolff

Birth record of Hans Anton Abraham Wolff

Birth record of Walter Wolff

Martha died in 1930, and I could not find a death record for her until Aaron located it, as I wrote about here.

After Martha’s death and the Nazi takeover of Germany, Jakob Wolff and all three of their children immigrated to Israel, as I wrote about here.

But I did not know what happened to Jakob or his children after their immigration. And then Aaron came through for me again and located Hans Anton Wolff’s son Benjamin in Israel and connected me to him and his daughter Ravid. Now I have firsthand information about Martha’s family as well as photographs, thanks to Ravid Wolff, my fifth cousin, once removed.

First, some photographs of the family taken before they left Germany.

Jacob and Martha Wolff and their first car Courtesy of the Wolff family

Anna Wolff and her mother Martha Loewenthal Wolff Courtesy of the Wolff family

Anna Wolff as a child Courtesy of the Wolff family

Hans Anton and Walter Wolff Courtesy of the Wolff family

Ravid shared with me that her great-grandmother Martha was a very talented artist and sent me this image of a painting that Martha did while traveling with Jakob in what was then Palestine in the 1920s.

Painting by Martha Loewenthal Wolff

According to Ravid, her great-grandparents Martha and Jakob Wolff owned two banks in Frankfurt, Germany, and were quite wealthy. After Martha died from ovarian cancer in 1930, Jakob married Ilse Gruenebaum. When Hitler came to power, Jakob recognized how dangerous he was and, as a Zionist, decided to leave Germany for Israel (then Palestine) before it was too late. He was able to obtain visas to immigrate for a thousand pounds each, an exorbitant amount of money at that time, but had to leave all his other property and possessions behind. All of it including their home in Frankfurt was confiscated by the Nazis and never returned to the family.

Ravid shared two letters with me that show that the requests for restitution of their property in Frankfurt were denied:

Google Translate helped me translate these letters. The one above translates as:

Upon your request of 17 December 1956, we will inform you: The property Leerbachstrasse 36 was registered until 17 September 1937 on:
Banker Jakob Wolff on the ideal half
Instead of his wife Martha Wolff [names of children] for ideal half in undivided community of heirs. [I am not sure what “ideal half” means.]
In the way of the forced auction, this plot of land on 17 9 1937 is given to Frau Therese Ried geb Stromer, [address]. It is still owned by them.
The owner of the Paulsplatz 14 property was the merchant Carl Seitz in Baden near Vienna in 18 1 1923 and the owner of the Paulsplatz 16 property was the Jakob Wolff & Co., Open Trade Company since 18 March 1922.
The current owner of both properties has been the municipal district of Frankfurt since August 10, 1934 bze, October 15, 1935. A piece of land at Paulsplatz 18 does not exist.

The second letter translated as:

The aforementioned property became the property of the City of Frankfurt on the basis of an additional resolution dated 2 4 1935. The compulsory auction had already started in 1932. The JRSO, which had previously asserted claims for reimbursement for the aforementioned property, accepted its application on Feb. 1, 1951. For your further information, we would like to inform you that the city has always contested a claim for reimbursement.
We hope to have served you with the above statements.

As for Martha and Jakob’s three children, Anna, the oldest, was married to Simon Wittekind when she immigrated, and they had two sons, Aharon and Baruch (as they were known in Israel) who were born in Berlin. Simon was a doctor who wanted to move to South Africa, but Anna felt safer in Israel, so she stayed there with her children.

Anna later married Herbert Feige. According to Ravid, Anna hated Germany and suffered great trauma because of what had happened there and unlike her brother Hans Anton refused to reclaim her German citizenship when that right became available to her. Her sons changed their surname to Yardeni (for the Jordan River) to identify with their new homeland. Ravid did not know exactly when Anna died, only that like her mother Martha, she died young and from cancer.

Ravid’s grandfather was Hans Anton Wolff, the second child of Martha Loewenthal and Jakob Wolff.  He married Susana Meseritz, another refugee from Germany, whom he met in Palestine. They had one child, Ravid’s father Benjamin. Hans had a doctorate in chemistry. He died from colon cancer in 1974, and his wife Susana died in 2002.

Walter, the youngest of the siblings, also married in Palestine/Israel. He owned a hotel in Jerusalem for many years. He and his wife Hedy Buller had two children. Walter died in 1968 in Jerusalem, also from cancer.

I am so indebted to Aaron Knappstein for finding the missing records of the Wolff children and even more so for connecting me to my cousin Ravid. And I am very, very grateful to Ravid for sharing her family’s story with me. Ravid, like her great-grandmother Martha and so many others in the extended Goldschmidt family, has a great interest in and great talents in art. Her photography captures in simple and yet complex ways the beauty of the world around us by using unusual perspectives and contrasting light and colors.

30 thoughts on “Martha Loewenthal Wolff’s Family: An Update from Israel”

  1. I just visited Ravid’s website and had a peek at her marvellous photos. They are truly the work of a digital artist. I can see how grateful you must be for having gained access to some hard to find information about a seemingly lost family branch in today’s Israel. Aaron who provided the information is truly a great friend.

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  2. I don’t exactly understand the concept of “ideellen Hälfe” used in the letter. “Ideellen Werte” would be the optimal value. When legal terms are used, German is a hard language to translate. Google Translate usually does a good job when correct grammar is used. Even though I can read German and French fluently, I am often surprised that the Google translation is often far better than how I would translate it into English.

    I enjoyed looking at Ravid’s photography.

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    • Thanks, Cathy. I certainly have no idea what that means. And Google Translate does present some challenges. I know enough German to be dangerously wrong and not enough to be confident I’m right. One letter I translated yesterday used the word “zukerkrank,” which was translated as sugar-sick. I assume it’s a German term for diabetes, though when I put in “diabetes,” I got Diabetes…. I decided to translate zukerkrank as diabetes…

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  3. The picture of Anna Wolff as a child reminds me of Little Red Riding Hood. What an incredible gift to have connected with Ravid – she is a wonderful photographer!

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  4. What an exciting post with this lost branch found. You’re blessed to have Aaron and all the research help he has provided. The family photo’s ~ priceless. I especially like the one of Anna and Martha. I hopped over to Ravid’s photography site noticing Peters post. Stunning photography. The restitution request was denied in 1956, I am just wondering, has anything changed that would make a request ‘today’ possible?

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    • I like the one of Anna and Martha best also—I selected it as the featured image. And I don’t know the answer to your question about restitution, but somehow I think once you’ve made a claim and been heard, unless there’s new information or there was some fraud or wrongdoing in the proceeding, the matter is probably considered closed.

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      • So interesting, I no nothing about ‘restitution’ – just seems so unfair and wrong. Times were so different in ’56 compared to now. 😦 TY for the your thoughts and explanation Amy

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  7. Pingback: My Goldschmidt Family Project: Looking Back and Looking Forward | Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

  8. Amy, I am writing to you on behalf of special friends who are doing a project to perserve the memory of the Jews of Bad Kissingen. They would like to be in touch with you regarding permission to use some of your photographs and information about the family of the Kissinger Dr. Simon Wittekind and his wife Anna Wolff and their family. Since I live in Israel, they asked for my help to find your telephone number or email. I thought that this might be the easiet way to contact you! Can you please contact me so that I can put you in touch with them? Thank you!

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