Stumbling stones in Chemnitz
Norbert and Elfriede Stadthagen
Norbert Stadthagen
Born: 28 November 1891
Died: 15.06.1945
Elfriede Stadthagen, née Leiner
Born: 03.07.1897
Died: 23/06/1958
Laying location:
Gustav-Freytag-Straße 23, today near Gustav-Freytag-Straße 17Stumbling stone laying on:
17 May 2022
Life path
The merchant Norbert Stadthagen was one of the more than 1,500 victims of the typhus epidemic in the Theresienstadt ghetto, which raged there even after its liberation on 8 May 1945.
He was born in Berlin, the son of a furrier. On 20 December 1919, he married the office clerk Lucie Spandau. Twelve months later, their son Heinz was born. However, the marriage was divorced by the Dresden district court in spring 1925. He subsequently moved to Chemnitz, where he worked as a market vendor. On 26 March 1928, he entered into another marriage with Elfriede Leiner, a shorthand typist from Potsdam. From then on, the couple lived at Gustav-Freytag-Straße 23.
In accordance with the National Socialists' Nuremberg Race Laws, their marriage was later categorised as a "mixed marriage". In 1936, Stadthagen lost his trade licence. The Jewish Community Office then helped the couple with monthly rent subsidies. Years of forced labour followed. His last job was in the labour department of the E. F. Barthel lighting fixture factory (Uhlestraße 34). House searches by the Gestapo were the order of the day. Johannes Ahner, the hated "Judenreferent", had repeatedly exerted pressure on Elfriede Stadthagen in order to force a divorce. However, she refused to separate. "On 14 February 1945, at 6 p.m., my husband was taken from the flat by two SS men and a Gestapo man," she later recalled, "He was then taken to the academy in Chemnitz. The next day he was taken to Theresienstadt".
Stadthagen fell ill there with abdominal typhus on 18 May 1945. According to Ernst Sander, a fellow survivor, he was "very weak and unconscious for the last few days". He later said: "I took him with other people to the typhus barracks, where he was taken away by a Russian doctor." The papers were later found on a street. The former fellow prisoners handed them over to a Russian officer. Bruno Sternheim, another fellow prisoner, recalled that the sick man had a "high fever" at the end.
Norbert Stadthagen died in the typhus hospital on 15 June 1945 and was cremated - probably as "unknown". The urn was buried in the national cemetery in Theresienstadt. Elfriede Stadthagen, who had fled to Lugau after 5 March 1945 to escape further attacks by the Western Allied air forces, initially still hoped that her husband would return. A card he had sent her from the ghetto on 15 February 1945 was the last sign of life. The urn containing Elfriede Stadthagen's ashes was buried in the municipal cemetery on Reichenhainer Straße on 10 July 1958.
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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