Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz

Elsa Hauptmann, née Jacobi

Born: 02.09.1881

Died: after 10 May 1942

Marianne Hauptmann

Born: 05.11.1905

Died: 01.05.1977

Helga Hauptmann, married name Bessac

Born: 05.09.1907

Died: 28/03/1999

When Elsa Hauptmann moved to the city of Chemnitz after 1933, she was already a widow. Her husband Julius Hauptmann had died in Leipzig on 4 November 1932. The former owner of the Salomon Pharmacy in Leipzig rose to become director and head pharmacist in Gohlis.

Elsa Hauptmann was the daughter of Mr and Mrs Jacobi from Döbeln. Her parents owned a men's and boys' wardrobe business in the small town in central Saxony. On 27 April 1903, she married Julius Hauptmann, a merchant's son from Lower Silesia who was five years her senior and had studied chemistry in Leipzig until the end of 1902. From then on, the couple lived in Leipzig, where their three children were born: Friedrich (*1904), Marianne (*1905) and Helga (*1907). In March 1909, the family moved to Landshut and only returned to the trade fair city in the spring of 1919.

The following is known about the children: Friedrich Hauptmann, an engineer, emigrated to Jerusalem with his wife Lore at an early age. In October 1939, the couple moved to the USA. Helga Hauptmann, a trained nurse, was married to the Berlin businessman Rudolf Bettsack. The couple emigrated to Shanghai via the Soviet Union in 1939.

After attending secondary school, Marianne Hauptmann began studying law at the University of Leipzig in April 1925, which she completed at the end of 1928. A traineeship took her to the Ministry of Justice in Dresden. However, she was denied a career in the civil service. The seizure of power by the National Socialists in 1933 made this impossible.

Instead, Marianne Hauptmann took up an offer from the Jewish religious community in Chemnitz. The local Jewish Welfare Centre, headed by Rabbi Dr Hugo Fuchs, was looking for an employee to deal with legal issues. As early as May 1934, the young assessor lamented the state of the Jewish soup kitchen in a counselling session. Together with her mother and her 80-year-old grandmother Rosalie Jacobi, Marianne Hauptmann lived in a flat in the house at Heinrich-Beck-Straße 7, which was owned by the Jewish merchant Max Geller.

Rosalie Jacobi died on 5 September 1936 and Marianne Hauptmann subsequently prepared for her emigration. On 3 July 1939, she was finally able to emigrate to England, where she settled in Leicester. Her almost 58-year-old mother Elsa remained alone in Chemnitz. In the summer of 1939, she was quartered in one of the many "Jews' houses" at Äußere Klosterstraße 2. She had to share a flat on the third floor with Elsa Flieg-Fuchs, Stefan Heym's mother, and Mr and Mrs Archenhold and Mr Horn.

She also thought about emigrating to Shanghai to join her daughter Helga, but the imminent start of the war made this almost impossible. On 10 May 1942, Elsa Hauptmann was deported together with over a thousand Jews from central Germany to the Belzyce ghetto near Lublin, where she was murdered in the weeks that followed.

Marianne Hauptmann learnt of this the following year. In November 1948, she moved to the USA after her sister, who later called herself Bessac, was able to move from Shanghai to the USA in April 1947. Marianne Hauptmann had been friends with Maria Cordes from Leipzig since early childhood. Dr Hans-Joachim Kandler, a retired pastor, still preserves the extensive correspondence between the friends and, as the sponsor of the Stumbling Stones, would like to keep the memory of Elsa Hauptmann and her daughters alive.

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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