Stumbling stones in Chemnitz
Adele Prager
Adele Prager, née Reichelt
Born: 29 July 1882
Died: 25.09.1940
Godfather: Dieter Nendel
Installation location:
Chemnitz- Altendorf hospital grounds, Flemmingstraße now SFZStumbling stone laying on:
5 December 2019
Life path
Adele Marie Prager was born in Gera on 29 July 1882. She grew up in a Protestant family home on the local Kornmarkt. Her father owned an oil refinery and a wine and colonial goods shop. According to the Nuremberg Race Laws, which were passed over 50 years later, the merchant's daughter was considered "German-blooded" but "of Jewish descent" or living in a "mixed marriage".
In October 1902, Adele Reichelt married the court and commercial chemist Dr Albert Prager, who was 22 years her senior and came from a Jewish family in the West Prussian city of Thorn, in St Peter's Church in Leipzig. In September 1893, however, he had broken with Judaism and become a member of the Evangelical French Reformed Church in Berlin.
From then on, the couple lived in Leipzig. In 1903 and 1904, Adele Prager gave birth to two sons (Erich Robert Albert and Horst Walter Rudolf). But the young couple's happiness did not last long. Adele fell seriously ill in June 1907. Due to an incurable nervous disorder, the 25-year-old woman was admitted to the Leipzig-Dösen sanatorium and nursing home, where she was to spend the rest of her life. At the end of 1939, she was transferred to the Chemnitz-Altendorf State Educational Institution and was transferred to the Hubertusburg State Institution on 29 May 1940. She stayed there for only three months and was transferred to Großschweidnitz on 29 August 1940, where there was another intermediate institution.
On 25 September 1940, Adele Prager was transferred "in accordance with Order Xc 60101 of 29 May 1940" in a collective transport, i.e. she was taken to the T4 institution in Pirna-Sonnenstein and murdered there. Albert Prager died on 14 June 1941 in a Jewish retirement and nursing home in Leipzig. Even at an advanced age, he had recalled his Jewish tradition and left the Evangelical Reformed Church in May 1935. Their sons had already been able to flee to safety in 1934 and 1936, having emigrated to Palestine.
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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