Stumbling stones in Chemnitz
Erich Max, Emilie Ellen and Johanna Ida Wangenheim
Erich Max Wangenheim
Born: 23 April 1881
Died: 05/08/1955
Emilie Ellen Wangenheim, née Tuchler
Born: 02.11.1891
Died: 21/03/1944
Johanna Ida Wangenheim, née Joachimsthal
Born: 06.06.1861
Died: 30.10.1942
Installation location:
Agricolastrasse 13Stumbling stone laying on:
17 May 2022
Life path
The businessman Erich Wangenheim and his father Theodor were members of various committees of the Jewish religious community in Chemnitz for almost five decades and played a key role in its changing fortunes during the German Empire, the Weimar Republic and the "Third Reich".
Erich Wangenheim was born in Chemnitz, the son of a textile business owner. He attended the municipal secondary school. His commercial apprenticeship took him to Frankfurt (Main) and abroad. On 22 May 1913, he married Ellen Tuchler from Dresden. From then on, the couple lived at Agricolastrasse 13, where their only son Gustav Siegfried was born on 8 April 1916.
Erich Wangenheim was a non-commissioned officer in Reserve Infantry Regiment 102 and was so badly wounded in World War I that his left leg had to be amputated. After the death of his father, he became the sole owner of the family business in the spring of 1925 and continued to expand it successfully. During the November pogrom of 1938, Wangenheim was arrested despite his severe disability and taken to Buchenwald. After his return, he dissolved the business at Lange Straße 46, which had existed for almost 50 years. On 23 March 1939, Erich Wangenheim was elected the last chairman of the board of the Jewish Religious Community in Chemnitz. In January 1940, he became the administrator of the newly built Jewish old people's and infirmary home on Antonplatz. The couple were arrested by the Gestapo on 27 March 1943 and deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto after being imprisoned in Chemnitz and Dresden.
Ellen Wangenheim died there of hunger and illness on 21 March 1944. Johanna Wangenheim, Erich's mother, had already been deported to the ghetto on 8 September 1942. She died there of old age on 30 October 1942. Despite his disability, Erich Wangenheim survived the long time in the ghetto and returned to his heavily destroyed hometown on 13 June 1945. He received permission from the Soviet occupying power to reopen his shop. The severely disabled businessman immediately endeavoured to find a trained carer. In July 1946, the Berlin nurse Gerda Sand, whom he had known from before, moved in with him in Chemnitz. In September 1945, Erich Wangenheim was one of the founding members of the Jewish community in Chemnitz.
In January 1949, he and his carer left the city "by night and fog" and moved in with his son in Israel. He later reported that he had felt compelled to take this step when the windows of his business premises were smashed again in 1948. Already seriously ill, he lived in a retirement home near Tel Aviv until his death.
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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