In this fifth part of the history of the Ledermann family, the focus is on Ilse Louise Ledermann, née Citroen, the wife of the lawyer Dr. Franz Ledermann. Researching Ilse Louise was considerably easier than tracing the ancestors of her (later) husband Franz, even though genealogical research on women is generally more difficult than on men—not least because women usually changed their surnames upon marriage, at least in the German tradition.
In the case of Ilse Citroen, the ease of research came from the fact that the Citroen family had Dutch roots, where genealogy is much better documented than in Germany. Her maternal lineage was traceable without problems at least as far back as around 1800 in Stettin, before that, however, it became difficult again. But let us proceed in order…
The wife: Ilse Louise, née Citroen.
Ilse Louise Citroen was born in Berlin on 8 March 1904, making her several years younger than her (later) husband Franz Ledermann, who was born in 1889. According to her birth certificate, her father, the merchant Hendrik Roelof Citroen, and his wife Ellen Citroen, née Philippi, lived at Hallesche Straße 24 at that time, in close proximity to Anhalter Bahnhof (opened in 1841, expanded in 1871), the largest and most important of the city’s so-called “terminal stations” around the turn of the century. However, the family had only lived there since 1898; in the four years prior (since 1894), they had lived at Bülowstraße 82 in the 2nd courtyard. At the time of their wedding (18 May 1893) (he was 25, she was 21 years old), Hendrik lived at Oranienstraße 110 in Kreuzberg, and Ellen lived with her parents at Dorotheenstraße 49.
Ilse had three siblings: Charlotte Lena Pauline, born 18 March 1894; Roelof Paul, born 15 December 1896; and finally Hans Albert, born 2 November 1905. Ilse was thus the youngest daughter. The stories of her siblings will be told another time.
The father’s origins: Hendrik Roelof Citroen (1865–1932).
Hendrik came from a Dutch Jewish family that can be traced back to his great-grandfather, Roelof Raphael Jacob Limoeneman Citroen, born in 1782 in Amsterdam and died there in 1814; he was married to Roosje Isaac Smit (1780–????). His grandfather was Barend Baruch Roelof Citroen (1808–1895), an assistant to a jeweler in Amsterdam, married to Jeanette Rooseboom. Hendrik’s father was Roelof Barend Baruch Citroen (1832–1896), a jeweler in The Hague, married on 5 December 1850 in Amsterdam to Lena Spanjaard (1827–1871). In each generation, the Citroens had many children, and some of them moved to Germany.
A brother of Hendrik’s father, Roelof Barend Baruch Citroen, was Abraham Baruch Citroen (1848–1928), who first appeared in the Berlin address book in 1872 (Spittelmarkt 5). He had previously learned the furrier’s craft in Paris and, after the Franco-Prussian War, came to Berlin via Brussels, where he opened a fur workshop at a prominent location, the Werderscher Markt. The invention of a fur-sewing machine made him a well-known and wealthy man, as it revolutionized the production of ready-to-wear fur goods—pre-manufactured items not made for a single person—and made them accessible to a broader clientele.
He married Martha Goldstein on January 25, 1884, in Magdeburg (born November 21, 1858, in Zerbst), daughter of the local merchant Simon Goldstein and his wife Julia, née Wolff.
Already in 1882, he brought his then 17-year-old nephew Hendrik Roelof, son of his younger brother Roelof Barend Citroen, to Berlin and incorporated him into his firm. After Hendrik completed his commercial apprenticeship, he became a partner in the firm and was primarily responsible for international business. As a result, when Abraham Citroen’s children reached adulthood, the succession of the fur business had already passed into Hendrik Citroen’s hands. Benno, Abraham’s son, opened his own business but was less successful than his father, while Hendrik’s son Hans became his father’s right-hand man and continued the business after Abraham’s death in 1932.
In 1907, Hendrik and his wife Ellen, along with their children, moved into the Belle Étage of the house at Derfflingerstraße 21, a residence built between 1875 and 1877. In 1906, the merchant Albert Unger (Kurfürstenstraße 126) took over the building, and in the same year a private clinic for his son, surgeon Ernst Unger, was established in the rear courtyard. This is where Ilse and her three siblings grew up. Hendrik died here on October 9, 1932, less than six months before his wife left Berlin with their daughter Ellen and her husband.
The maternal lineage: Ellen Citroen, née Philippi (1872–1945).
The Jewish Philippi family originated in Stettin, where there had been no Jews until the Prussian “Jewish Edict” of 1812: Jews were not allowed to settle in fortified cities such as Stettin. Where the first twelve families who settled in Stettin in 1816 came from is unknown, but presumably from the east (East Prussia). Since the 1812 decree that allowed settlement also required the adoption of family names, the name “Philippi” would have been established at that time. Whether it indicates a local origin (as many Jewish surnames do) is doubtful; it is more likely a Latinization of the given name Philippus (or Philipp). Abraham Philippi, the first person with this name that we could trace in Stettin, was thus Abraham, son of Philipp.
Abraham Philippi was not among the twelve founding fathers of the Stettin synagogue community, but he was found on the first church board of the synagogue in 1834.
A merchant Louis Philippi appears in the Berlin address book for the first time in 1862 (agency and commission business, Louisenstraße 24); he was 29 years old at the time. Merchants in Berlin already carrying the Philippi name were not part of this Stettin family, as a merchant Eduard Philippi appears on the list of the Berlin merchants’ corporation as early as 1830, before the Stettin Philippis had left the city.
Louis Philippi was born on October 13, 1833, in Stettin. According to information from his death certificate in 1905, his father was Abraham Philippi, who died in Stettin, and his mother was Friederike Sprinze, née Moses. The merchant Abraham Philippi ran a “cloth and manufactured goods business” at Grapengießerstraße, house number 166 (in Stettin at that time, houses were numbered independently of the street). From 1858, the business was listed as “Louis Philippi jun.” under number 515 in the Stettin merchants’ registry, indicating that he had taken over his father’s business.
It is unclear whether he moved alone to Berlin or whether other members of the Stettin Philippi family also relocated there, as the address book data does not provide this information. However, the marriage certificate of his daughter Ellen to Hendrik Citroen was signed by a merchant Philipp Philippi, who may have been his brother.
Louis Philippi married Pauline Cronheim in Stettin in 1859, and they had eight children in the following years: Paul (1861–1892), Sophie (born August 21, 1862), Margarethe (March 1866), Richard (December 1866), Martin (August 24, 1867–1941), Gertrud (March 5, 1869), Bruno (January 3, 1871–1871), and finally Ellen (June 30, 1872–1945). All children except the first were born in Berlin.
Pauline Philippi, née Cronheim, died on July 10, 1874, and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Weissensee. A year later, the widower remarried on October 28, 1875, in Stettin to Selma Wald (born 1852 – she was 23, he was 42), and they had four more children: Pauline (December 15, 1876), Fritz (February 25, 1878), Erich (August 27, 1880), and Werner (December 27, 1883).
Louis Philippi died on November 15, 1905, in Berlin – his death was reported by his son-in-law Hendrik Citroen, the husband of his daughter Ellen. At that time, Louis Philippi lived very close to the Citroens, namely at Lützowstraße 42, approximately where Derfflingerstraße merges into Lützowstraße. This proximity was certainly no coincidence, even though Louis Philippi, during the more than 40 years he spent in Berlin, had very few residences by Berlin standards (Image 1), which suggests some degree of wealth:
1862–1866: Louisenstraße 24 (from 1864: Louisenstraße 46)
1867–1873: Karlsstraße 26
1874–1900: Dorotheenstraße 49 (finally engaged in banking, funds, and bills of exchange)
1901: Dessauerstraße 6
1904 until his death: Lützowstraße 42
How Ilse and Franz might have met.
What follows is pure speculation and not really part of a historically oriented series, since it involves unverified (and unverifiable) assumptions. Yet: even love follows patterns, including its beginnings.
Ilse and Franz could, of course, simply have met on the street, while shopping at Wertheim, or during a walk in the Tiergarten, and it could have been love at first sight. Or: perhaps the merchant Citroen had a legal problem that lawyer Ledermann helped solve, and during one of these occasions…
Much more likely, however, is that shared interests brought them to the same place at the same time – ultimately, just as one goes shopping or for a walk – but in a more specific location where Berlin did not present itself as a mass of almost four million pedestrians, but rather as a smaller, more manageable group, which allowed a proper introduction.
The little we know about the Ledermann family allows us to assume that music was a very central shared interest. Both were devoted to music, and apparently not just passively as listeners, but actively: there were two pianos in the Ledermann household on Genthinerstraße, there were house concerts, and the small satirical article “Auf Wiedersehn bei der Fermate” suggests more than occasional engagement with music, at least on Franz Ledermann’s part. Whether Ilse, as family legend claims, was a trained pianist, is difficult to verify.
And on what occasion could they have met?
To answer this, one must know that the Lützow district, perhaps more than any other quarter of the city, had a multitude of concert halls, which will be discussed elsewhere and at a later point. These included the Blüthner Halls, the Bach Hall on Genthinerstraße, the Schumann Hall on Lützowstraße, the Harmonium Hall on Steglitzer Straße (today: Pohlstraße), the Scharwenka Conservatory on Genthinerstraße, and the (old) Philharmonie on Bernburger Straße.
A little closer toward Friedrichstadt, where Franz Ledermann lived, there was also the Stern Conservatory (Bernburger Straße) and the Neue Akademie der Tonkunst (Große Friedrichstraße). Together, all of these venues offered the opportunity to attend a concert practically every day.
And even though we cannot assume that Ilse Citroen attended any of Berlin’s 28 conservatories, there were also 18 music institutes, 11 music schools, 2 music academies, 6 music institutions, over 100 other music schools of various kinds, and 175 piano factories, and she could have had lessons with one of more than 750 piano teachers in Berlin around 1910. Most of these were located in or near the Lützow district.
But enough speculation…
Engagement, wedding, children.
On August 28, 1924, Hendrik Citroen and his wife Ellen announced in the newspaper of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith the engagement of Ilse Citroen to Dr. Franz Ledermann. At that time, Ilse, 20 years old and thus not yet of legal age, lived with her parents at Derfflingerstraße 21, while the lawyer lived at Kochstraße 49, the same building where his brother Curt had his apartment and practice until 1918.
Less than two months later, the wedding took place: on October 15, 1924, Ilse and Franz were married at the Berlin Registry Office III. The witnesses were Käthe Kaempfer, widow of a lawyer, Franz’s sister (residing at Potsdamerstraße 109), and the bride’s father, the merchant Hendrik Citroen.
No reason for the very short engagement period is apparent. Their first child, Barbara, was born on September 4, 1925, and Susanne, their second daughter, three years later.
We learn two things from this announcement:
The new family continued to live at Kochstraße 49, where Franz had his law practice, and the birth took place in a private clinic in Wilmersdorf, a good five kilometers west of their residence. Whether this indicates a difficult pregnancy or complications during childbirth is not apparent; it could just as well have been a precautionary measure—for example, suggested by Ilse’s parents.
Three years later, at the birth of Susanne, they had moved to Genthinerstraße 5a, their last residence in Berlin before fleeing to Amsterdam.
In the case of Ilse Citroen, the ease of research came from the fact that the Citroen family had Dutch roots, where genealogy is much better documented than in Germany. Her maternal lineage was traceable without problems at least as far back as around 1800 in Stettin, before that, however, it became difficult again. But let us proceed in order…
The wife: Ilse Louise, née Citroen.
Ilse Louise Citroen was born in Berlin on 8 March 1904, making her several years younger than her (later) husband Franz Ledermann, who was born in 1889. According to her birth certificate, her father, the merchant Hendrik Roelof Citroen, and his wife Ellen Citroen, née Philippi, lived at Hallesche Straße 24 at that time, in close proximity to Anhalter Bahnhof (opened in 1841, expanded in 1871), the largest and most important of the city’s so-called “terminal stations” around the turn of the century. However, the family had only lived there since 1898; in the four years prior (since 1894), they had lived at Bülowstraße 82 in the 2nd courtyard. At the time of their wedding (18 May 1893) (he was 25, she was 21 years old), Hendrik lived at Oranienstraße 110 in Kreuzberg, and Ellen lived with her parents at Dorotheenstraße 49.
Ilse had three siblings: Charlotte Lena Pauline, born 18 March 1894; Roelof Paul, born 15 December 1896; and finally Hans Albert, born 2 November 1905. Ilse was thus the youngest daughter. The stories of her siblings will be told another time.
The father’s origins: Hendrik Roelof Citroen (1865–1932).
Hendrik came from a Dutch Jewish family that can be traced back to his great-grandfather, Roelof Raphael Jacob Limoeneman Citroen, born in 1782 in Amsterdam and died there in 1814; he was married to Roosje Isaac Smit (1780–????). His grandfather was Barend Baruch Roelof Citroen (1808–1895), an assistant to a jeweler in Amsterdam, married to Jeanette Rooseboom. Hendrik’s father was Roelof Barend Baruch Citroen (1832–1896), a jeweler in The Hague, married on 5 December 1850 in Amsterdam to Lena Spanjaard (1827–1871). In each generation, the Citroens had many children, and some of them moved to Germany.
A brother of Hendrik’s father, Roelof Barend Baruch Citroen, was Abraham Baruch Citroen (1848–1928), who first appeared in the Berlin address book in 1872 (Spittelmarkt 5). He had previously learned the furrier’s craft in Paris and, after the Franco-Prussian War, came to Berlin via Brussels, where he opened a fur workshop at a prominent location, the Werderscher Markt. The invention of a fur-sewing machine made him a well-known and wealthy man, as it revolutionized the production of ready-to-wear fur goods—pre-manufactured items not made for a single person—and made them accessible to a broader clientele.
He married Martha Goldstein on January 25, 1884, in Magdeburg (born November 21, 1858, in Zerbst), daughter of the local merchant Simon Goldstein and his wife Julia, née Wolff.
Already in 1882, he brought his then 17-year-old nephew Hendrik Roelof, son of his younger brother Roelof Barend Citroen, to Berlin and incorporated him into his firm. After Hendrik completed his commercial apprenticeship, he became a partner in the firm and was primarily responsible for international business. As a result, when Abraham Citroen’s children reached adulthood, the succession of the fur business had already passed into Hendrik Citroen’s hands. Benno, Abraham’s son, opened his own business but was less successful than his father, while Hendrik’s son Hans became his father’s right-hand man and continued the business after Abraham’s death in 1932.
In 1907, Hendrik and his wife Ellen, along with their children, moved into the Belle Étage of the house at Derfflingerstraße 21, a residence built between 1875 and 1877. In 1906, the merchant Albert Unger (Kurfürstenstraße 126) took over the building, and in the same year a private clinic for his son, surgeon Ernst Unger, was established in the rear courtyard. This is where Ilse and her three siblings grew up. Hendrik died here on October 9, 1932, less than six months before his wife left Berlin with their daughter Ellen and her husband.
The maternal lineage: Ellen Citroen, née Philippi (1872–1945).
The Jewish Philippi family originated in Stettin, where there had been no Jews until the Prussian “Jewish Edict” of 1812: Jews were not allowed to settle in fortified cities such as Stettin. Where the first twelve families who settled in Stettin in 1816 came from is unknown, but presumably from the east (East Prussia). Since the 1812 decree that allowed settlement also required the adoption of family names, the name “Philippi” would have been established at that time. Whether it indicates a local origin (as many Jewish surnames do) is doubtful; it is more likely a Latinization of the given name Philippus (or Philipp). Abraham Philippi, the first person with this name that we could trace in Stettin, was thus Abraham, son of Philipp.
Abraham Philippi was not among the twelve founding fathers of the Stettin synagogue community, but he was found on the first church board of the synagogue in 1834.
A merchant Louis Philippi appears in the Berlin address book for the first time in 1862 (agency and commission business, Louisenstraße 24); he was 29 years old at the time. Merchants in Berlin already carrying the Philippi name were not part of this Stettin family, as a merchant Eduard Philippi appears on the list of the Berlin merchants’ corporation as early as 1830, before the Stettin Philippis had left the city.
Louis Philippi was born on October 13, 1833, in Stettin. According to information from his death certificate in 1905, his father was Abraham Philippi, who died in Stettin, and his mother was Friederike Sprinze, née Moses. The merchant Abraham Philippi ran a “cloth and manufactured goods business” at Grapengießerstraße, house number 166 (in Stettin at that time, houses were numbered independently of the street). From 1858, the business was listed as “Louis Philippi jun.” under number 515 in the Stettin merchants’ registry, indicating that he had taken over his father’s business.
It is unclear whether he moved alone to Berlin or whether other members of the Stettin Philippi family also relocated there, as the address book data does not provide this information. However, the marriage certificate of his daughter Ellen to Hendrik Citroen was signed by a merchant Philipp Philippi, who may have been his brother.
Louis Philippi married Pauline Cronheim in Stettin in 1859, and they had eight children in the following years: Paul (1861–1892), Sophie (born August 21, 1862), Margarethe (March 1866), Richard (December 1866), Martin (August 24, 1867–1941), Gertrud (March 5, 1869), Bruno (January 3, 1871–1871), and finally Ellen (June 30, 1872–1945). All children except the first were born in Berlin.
Pauline Philippi, née Cronheim, died on July 10, 1874, and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Weissensee. A year later, the widower remarried on October 28, 1875, in Stettin to Selma Wald (born 1852 – she was 23, he was 42), and they had four more children: Pauline (December 15, 1876), Fritz (February 25, 1878), Erich (August 27, 1880), and Werner (December 27, 1883).
Louis Philippi died on November 15, 1905, in Berlin – his death was reported by his son-in-law Hendrik Citroen, the husband of his daughter Ellen. At that time, Louis Philippi lived very close to the Citroens, namely at Lützowstraße 42, approximately where Derfflingerstraße merges into Lützowstraße. This proximity was certainly no coincidence, even though Louis Philippi, during the more than 40 years he spent in Berlin, had very few residences by Berlin standards (Image 1), which suggests some degree of wealth:
1862–1866: Louisenstraße 24 (from 1864: Louisenstraße 46)
1867–1873: Karlsstraße 26
1874–1900: Dorotheenstraße 49 (finally engaged in banking, funds, and bills of exchange)
1901: Dessauerstraße 6
1904 until his death: Lützowstraße 42
How Ilse and Franz might have met.
What follows is pure speculation and not really part of a historically oriented series, since it involves unverified (and unverifiable) assumptions. Yet: even love follows patterns, including its beginnings.
Ilse and Franz could, of course, simply have met on the street, while shopping at Wertheim, or during a walk in the Tiergarten, and it could have been love at first sight. Or: perhaps the merchant Citroen had a legal problem that lawyer Ledermann helped solve, and during one of these occasions…
Much more likely, however, is that shared interests brought them to the same place at the same time – ultimately, just as one goes shopping or for a walk – but in a more specific location where Berlin did not present itself as a mass of almost four million pedestrians, but rather as a smaller, more manageable group, which allowed a proper introduction.
The little we know about the Ledermann family allows us to assume that music was a very central shared interest. Both were devoted to music, and apparently not just passively as listeners, but actively: there were two pianos in the Ledermann household on Genthinerstraße, there were house concerts, and the small satirical article “Auf Wiedersehn bei der Fermate” suggests more than occasional engagement with music, at least on Franz Ledermann’s part. Whether Ilse, as family legend claims, was a trained pianist, is difficult to verify.
And on what occasion could they have met?
To answer this, one must know that the Lützow district, perhaps more than any other quarter of the city, had a multitude of concert halls, which will be discussed elsewhere and at a later point. These included the Blüthner Halls, the Bach Hall on Genthinerstraße, the Schumann Hall on Lützowstraße, the Harmonium Hall on Steglitzer Straße (today: Pohlstraße), the Scharwenka Conservatory on Genthinerstraße, and the (old) Philharmonie on Bernburger Straße.
A little closer toward Friedrichstadt, where Franz Ledermann lived, there was also the Stern Conservatory (Bernburger Straße) and the Neue Akademie der Tonkunst (Große Friedrichstraße). Together, all of these venues offered the opportunity to attend a concert practically every day.
And even though we cannot assume that Ilse Citroen attended any of Berlin’s 28 conservatories, there were also 18 music institutes, 11 music schools, 2 music academies, 6 music institutions, over 100 other music schools of various kinds, and 175 piano factories, and she could have had lessons with one of more than 750 piano teachers in Berlin around 1910. Most of these were located in or near the Lützow district.
But enough speculation…
Engagement, wedding, children.
On August 28, 1924, Hendrik Citroen and his wife Ellen announced in the newspaper of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith the engagement of Ilse Citroen to Dr. Franz Ledermann. At that time, Ilse, 20 years old and thus not yet of legal age, lived with her parents at Derfflingerstraße 21, while the lawyer lived at Kochstraße 49, the same building where his brother Curt had his apartment and practice until 1918.
Less than two months later, the wedding took place: on October 15, 1924, Ilse and Franz were married at the Berlin Registry Office III. The witnesses were Käthe Kaempfer, widow of a lawyer, Franz’s sister (residing at Potsdamerstraße 109), and the bride’s father, the merchant Hendrik Citroen.
No reason for the very short engagement period is apparent. Their first child, Barbara, was born on September 4, 1925, and Susanne, their second daughter, three years later.
We learn two things from this announcement:
The new family continued to live at Kochstraße 49, where Franz had his law practice, and the birth took place in a private clinic in Wilmersdorf, a good five kilometers west of their residence. Whether this indicates a difficult pregnancy or complications during childbirth is not apparent; it could just as well have been a precautionary measure—for example, suggested by Ilse’s parents.
Three years later, at the birth of Susanne, they had moved to Genthinerstraße 5a, their last residence in Berlin before fleeing to Amsterdam.
Part 5.
Map of the residences of the Citroen family (blue), Philippi (red), and Ledermann (green) in chronological order. A and B (yellow) mark the locations of the Abraham Barend Citroen company at Spittelmarkt and Werderscher Markt. From 1900 onwards, the families gradually settled in close proximity in the Lützow district.
Steel engraving by Christian Adolf Eltzner (1816–1891): Stettin around 1860 – somewhere in the hustle of the old town near the Oder river was Grapengießerstraße (Source: Wikipedia , public domain).
Excerpts from the Stettin address book 1856 and Berlin 1862.
Signatures on the marriage certificate of Hendrik & Ellen Citroen; note the very dominant signature of the groom.
Graves of Pauline & Louis Philippi at the Jewish Cemetery Weissensee.
Marriage certificate of Ilse and Franz Ledermann from October 1924, Registry Office Berlin III.
Engagement announcement of Franz Ledermann and Ilse Citroen 1924; birth announcements of their children Barbara (1925) and Susanne (1928).
Source: https://www.juele.eu/
weggum.com