Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz
Jenny Olga and Ilse Margarethe Fleischer
Jenny Olga Fleischer, née Cohn
Born: 09.09.1878
Died: 19 Nov. 1938
Ilse Margarethe Fleischer
Born: 13.08.1900
Died: 19.11.1938
Place of installation:
Holzmarkt 15, today Rosenhof 1aStumbling stone laying on:
17 May 2022
Life path
Jenny Fleischer was the widow of shoe shop owner Hugo Fleischer, who was one of the leading representatives of the German Democratic Party in Chemnitz in the 1920s. The respected businessman had represented the party for almost a decade as an unsalaried councillor on the city council. He was the owner of a shoe and boot bazaar, which was based at Holzmarkt 15. He subsequently expanded the shop into a "shoe shop for all". On 10 October 1899, Hugo Fleischer married Jenny Cohn, a native of Lower Silesia. Their only child, daughter Ilse Margarethe, was born just ten months later. The family lived in the immediate neighbourhood of the shop at Holzmarkt 8.
On 2 December 1929, the respected city councillor died as a result of a heart attack. Leading representatives of public life attended the funeral service. Mayor Walter Arlart honoured the merits of the deceased and particularly emphasised his "warm-hearted feeling for the small and weak". From then on, Jenny Fleischer was the owner of the business and her unmarried daughter became the manager.
The women gave up their previous flat and moved into the business premises, which had only been completely remodelled in the spring of 1928 by the architects Max Feistel and Dr Kurt Pötzsch. However, Jenny and Ilse Fleischer were only able to continue the family legacy undisturbed until the Nazis seized power. On 1 April 1933, the anti-Semitic "Kampfbund für den gewerblichen Mittelstand" ("Fighting League for the Commercial Middle Class") also placed their business on the "List of Jewish Shops, Lawyers and Doctors", which were to be boycotted by the population.
As a result, turnover fell dramatically. Jenny Fleischer therefore authorised a real estate agency to sell the two-storey business premises in June 1938. The Nazi authorities also insisted on the "Aryanisation" of the shoe shop. Mercedes Schuhfabriken Aktiengesellschaft in Stuttgart was interested in a "takeover", but this was never to materialise.
On the morning of 19 November 1938, ten days after the terrible November pogroms, Jenny and Ilse Fleischer voluntarily passed away together. Their lifeless bodies were found at Holzmarkt 15 at midday. The cause of death was given by the authorities as "suicide by smoke inhalation". Their urns were buried four days later in the family grave at the Jewish cemetery in the Altendorf neighbourhood.
Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz
It is a project against forgetting: stumbling stones have been laid in Chemnitz every year since 2007.
Embedded in the pavement, the memorial stones commemorate the tragic fates of fellow citizens who were persecuted, deported, murdered or driven to their deaths during the National Socialist regime.
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