Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz
Max and Marta Tebrich
Max Tebrich
Born: 29.12.1872
Died: 07.10.1943
Marta Tebrich, née Heinemann
Born: 04.03.1887
Died: 16.05.1944
Installation location:
Bernsdorfer Straße 1Stumbling stone laying on:
14 June 2023
Photos of the laying of the Stumbling Stones
Life path
Max Tebrich was born into a large family of merchants in Kamenz. His parents were Siegmund Tebrich (1846 to 1915) and Helene Rosam (1844 to 1908), who last lived in Leisnig. His father had opened a clothing and tailoring business there.
Max Tebrich obtained his licence to practise as a pharmacist on 26 May 1900. On 22 December 1911, he married Marta Heinemann, 14 years his junior, in Oldenburg. When the widow of Chemnitz pharmacist Bernhard Meyer was looking for a new tenant for the Rosen pharmacy, Max Tebrich was chosen. He took over the pharmacy, which was located on the ground floor of the commercial building at Bernsdorfer Straße 1, on 8 October 1923. This made him the third Jew in the city to lease a pharmacy after David Courant and Dr Kurt Magen.
How the lease came about remains a matter of speculation. It is possible that Fanny Frank, Max's younger sister, was the intermediary. She had married the Chemnitz merchant Max Josef Frank in June 1900. From then on, the couple lived in the Bernsdorf neighbourhood. Max Tebrich quickly settled into life in Chemnitz. Among other things, he joined the "Chemnitzer Kunsthütte" association.
The Rosen-Apotheke, which was a registered company, was already targeted by the National Socialists in the spring of 1933. The "Action Committee for the Boycott against Jews in Chemnitz" also put Tebrich's pharmacy on the list.
Max Tebrich did not withstand the pressure exerted by the National Socialist "Professional Association of German Pharmacists" for long. Even before the Reich Chamber of Pharmacists was founded in 1937, he leased his pharmacy to Erwin Juckeland from Burgstädt on 9 October 1936. It was thus "aryanised". The pharmacist was regarded as a staunch National Socialist, as he had previously been awarded the NSDAP's "Golden Party Badge", which was donated at the end of 1933. For Max Tebrich, the sale also meant that he and his wife had to leave the city immediately and move to Berlin-Friedenau (Kaiserallee 73). In July 1939, he sold the pharmacy inventory to the tenant.
The anonymity of the Reich capital and their conversion to Protestantism did not save the couple from being deported to their deaths. They were forced to move to a Jewish retirement home (Gormannstraße 3) on 2 November 1942 and two days later signed a "home purchase contract" with the Reich Association of Jews in Germany to cover the costs of their accommodation in the Theresienstadt ghetto. For this purpose, they paid the agreed purchase amount of 22,281 Reichsmark. The couple were finally deported to Theresienstadt on the 73rd transport of the elderly on 6 November 1942.
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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