The information available about the lawyer Dr. Franz Ledermann—his life and his fate—was still minimal as recently as half a year ago (mid-2022. Only certain aspects of his brief time in Amsterdam between 1933 and 1942 were known: his renewed legal training in order to assist Jews who were being legally persecuted in the Netherlands; and, after the occupation of Holland by Nazi Germany in 1942, the increasingly difficult family situation, documented in the “Briefe von den Ledermanns” (“Letters from the Ledermanns”) up until their deportation to Westerbork and the murder of the family in Auschwitz (1943).
Even compared with the biographical information on other Jewish lawyers who lost their profession after 1933, the ten lines in the documentation “Anwälte ohne Recht” are rather meager; apparently, only for a few of the more than 800 lawyers was and is even less known, and even in the new 2022 edition of the book, the situation has hardly improved. Yet precisely these few lines contain the crucial piece of information that made our reconstruction of the family history possible in the first place: in the source reference at the end of the lines appears the abbreviation “BAL, PAK,” which stands for “Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Abteilung Berlin-Lichterfelde, Personalkartei des Reichsjustizministers” (Federal Archives Koblenz, Berlin-Lichterfelde Section, personnel index of the Reich Minister of Justice).
There was—and still is—a personnel file for Dr. Franz Ledermann, as quickly became evident from checking the Federal Archives’ database: R 3000 / 66008. During a visit to the archive the file could be viewed and copied; the evaluation appears below. The most important result, however, was the first-time and newly discovered fact that the Ledermann family originated from Ostrow in the Prussian province of Posen; we already described this in the first part of this family history. Here and today the focus is on the personal history of Dr. Franz Ledermann.
Education and Studies.
Franz Ledermann was born in Hirschberg on 16 October 1889 as the youngest of the three children of the couple Benno Ledermann and his wife Lucie, née Schachtel. His father had shortly beforehand ended his work as a judge in state service and had settled in Hirschberg in the Giant Mountains (Riesengebirge). Similar to his brother Curd, who was ten years older than he, Franz Ledermann entered the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium in Hirschberg at Easter 1898. After six years in the lower grades (Sexta to Obersekunda) and two and a half years in the upper grades (Unterprima, Oberprima), he completed his Abitur at Michaelmas (September) 1907—without an oral exam, as the only student in his year. Before that, however, he had had to repeat one year (Unterprima).
Following his father’s example, Franz Ledermann studied jurisprudence—and in doing so followed his brother, who had enrolled in Munich, Freiburg, Berlin, and Breslau and earned his doctorate in Rostock. Franz studied in Breslau (winter semester 1907/08), Munich (summer semester 1908), Geneva (winter semester 1908/09), and Berlin (summer semester 1909). His residential addresses in Munich (Barerstrasse 37/3) and Berlin (Flensburger Str. 23) are known; the corresponding information from Breslau and Geneva is missing.
On 15 December 1910 he took the first state examination in law in Breslau (grade: good). Two months later, on 3 February 1911, he completed the Rigorosum (the oral doctoral examination) in Breslau after submitting a dissertation titled “Circumvention of the Law in Roman and Civil Law”—again comparable to his brother’s doctoral work. It was printed in Der Bote aus dem Riesengebirge in 1912. The examiners were the Breslau professors Rudolf Leonhard (1851–1921) and Richard Schott (1872–1934).
Although the curriculum vitae in his dissertation also mentions his first training post (Bolkenhain), the personnel file—opened with his swearing-in on 6 January 1911—is more detailed here and lists all training posts and the exact number of working days up to his appointment as Assessor on 15 January 1916. The seven stations were the following: district court (Landgericht, 19 months) in Bolkenhain, Hermsdorf u.K., and Hirschberg in Silesia; public prosecutor’s office in Berlin (3 months); attorney/notary in Posen (5 months); local court (Amtsgericht) in Beuthen (9 months); and higher regional court (Oberlandesgericht) in Breslau (6 months), plus vacation days, illness, and military service, a total of four years, thereby fulfilling the examination requirements. The training post with the lawyer took place in the practice of his brother-in-law Felix Kaempfer; the notarial training was conducted with his friend Placzek in Posen. During his Berlin training phase (public prosecutor’s office) he lived at Bambergerstr. 59, renting a room from a landlord named Herbst.
Military Service in the First World War.
At the outbreak of the First World War, he was drafted on 19 February 1915 into Infantry Regiment 22 (Fusilier Regiment 22, Gleiwitz), but after only a few days—on 28 February 1915—he was discharged as unfit for service because he suffered from an earlier kidney condition. On 18 May 1915 the president of the Higher Regional Court of Breslau petitioned the Ministry of Justice for permission for him to take the second state examination, which—owing to the war—was held as an “emergency examination” on 23 October 1915 and which he passed with the grade “good.” On 15 October 1915 he again volunteered for military service and was assigned to the 1st Replacement Battalion of Fusilier Regiment No. 33 in Brandenburg an der Havel. He fell ill again with a kidney condition after several months of training, spent six weeks in Reserve Hospital II in Brandenburg, and was again discharged as unfit for service.
Professional Career.
He was appointed Gerichtsassessor (judicial assistant) in Berlin on 15 January 1916 and remained in this position in Berlin until the end of the war. Because he is not listed in the Berlin address directory during this time, we can only assume that he lived—at least then—with his brother at Kochstraße 49, where the latter had both his apartment and his office. Supporting this assumption is the fact that after his brother’s death on 21 September 1918, Franz is recorded in the address directory with the same address.
On 10 October 1918 Dr. Franz Ledermann was admitted to practice as an attorney at Regional Court I (Landgericht I); on 21 June 1919 he was also admitted at Regional Courts 2 and 3 (the abbreviation following this, “R 7,7h,” in the personnel file remains unexplained). On 10 February 1928 he applied for admission as a notary—this was rejected by the Bar Association, as he had not yet completed the required waiting period. He was finally admitted on 16 November 1928 for the Schöneberg district court jurisdiction, and on 28 February 1929 he was also admitted as an attorney in the Schöneberg district. This is connected with the move from Kochstraße (Mitte district) to Genthinerstraße, which belonged to the Schöneberg district. As previously described (mittendran, 13 March 2023), Franz Ledermann and Ilse Citroen had married on 15 October 1924, and when their second daughter (Susanne, 1928) was born, they moved into their new apartment at Genthinerstraße 5A. They would remain there for another five years.
The Beginning of the End.
We do not know how Franz and his family perceived the increasingly antisemitic atmosphere in Berlin, but the Nazi seizure of power on 3 January 1933 and the rapidly ensuing anti-Jewish legislation apparently prompted them to leave the country. The “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” of 7 April 1933 affected not only civil servants and employees in the public sector but also lawyers, who were independent professionals but still subject to legal supervision by the Ministry—hence the existence of a personnel file on Dr. Franz Ledermann in the Federal Archives in the first place. Under this law, all non-Aryan civil servants in public service were required to be dismissed. On the same day, the “Law on Admission to the Legal Profession” was enacted, resulting in a professional ban for all non-Aryan lawyers—they were thereafter permitted to represent only Jewish individuals and firms.
Shortly thereafter, like almost all of his 1,800 Jewish colleagues in Berlin (out of a total of 3,400 licensed attorneys), Franz Ledermann received a notice forbidding him to represent non-Jewish clients. A legal objection to this decision (letter dated 10 April 1933, referring to the naturalization certificate of his great-grandfather, Gerson Ledermann) was unsuccessful and resulted in his being barred, with immediate effect, from entering court buildings. In rapid succession, his admissions to Regional Courts I (15 June 1933), II (26 June 1933), and III (23 June 1933), as well as to the Local Court Berlin-Schöneberg (24 June 1933), were deleted (3).
Farewell Concert.
According to the guestbook of the Ledermann family, fourteen house concerts were held between November 1930 and April 1933—the first on 23 November 1930 and the last, described here as a “farewell concert,” on 14 April 1933. A few days later, the family left their Berlin home, which they would never see again. Franz Ledermann must already have been involved in house concerts much earlier, as he had written his delightful satirical piece on the difficulties of assigning parts in such chamber-music evenings (“Auf Wiedersehn bei der Fermate”) many years earlier (1924), and must already at that time have been able to draw on considerable experience. When and where he received his musical training is unknown.
These fourteen house concerts in just under three years evidently all took place in the Ledermanns’ apartment at Genthinerstraße 5A (today located where house number 14 now stands). According to the recollections of their daughter Barbara, it was a large apartment with space for two grand pianos. An inspection of the building file shows an apartment of about 400 square meters on the first floor, possibly supplemented by rented office rooms on the ground floor. When they moved in in 1924, a doctor’s practice had still been located there, later an insurance company—so there was certainly enough space for a couple with two children, a nanny, and two grand pianos.
The musicians gathered for the concerts (between three and seven, for trios up to septets) were accompanied each time by audiences that varied in size, although on average they were rather small and often consisted mainly of close family members. His sister Käthe Kaempfer was present frequently (seven times), as was his mother-in-law (“Mutti”) Ilse Citroen, née Philippi, and his nephew Heinz Kaempfer, son of Käthe Kaempfer. The farewell concert on Saturday, 29 April 1933 had the largest audience. The program that evening included Brahms’s Septet Op. 18, Schubert’s C major Quintet, and Brahms’s Septet Op. 36.
As far as could be determined using address directories, the names of the listeners listed in the guestbook were identified and matched: on that evening there were, in addition to the musicians, 14 people, including Käthe and Heinz Kaempfer and Ilse Citroen, as well as Mrs. Lotte Lichtenstein (Wilmersdorf, Kaiserallee 172); attorney and notary Georg Arnheim and his wife Elke (Brunnenstraße 194); the widow Martha Liebrecht (Wilmersdorf, Kaiserplatz 1); engineer Dr. Anton Macholl and his wife Adele (Heilbronner Str. 5); Gertrud Moses (Wilmersdorf, Augustastraße 52); Marie Wohlgemuth, dressmaker (Neukölln, Reuterstraße 54); Gertrud Caro (Speyererstraße 22), and other persons whose names were not legible or could not be assigned. We assume that they were, overall, the family’s close personal friends who had gathered to bid farewell. The next concert by the Ledermann family took place—according to the guestbook—on 14 January 1934 in Amsterdam.
Even compared with the biographical information on other Jewish lawyers who lost their profession after 1933, the ten lines in the documentation “Anwälte ohne Recht” are rather meager; apparently, only for a few of the more than 800 lawyers was and is even less known, and even in the new 2022 edition of the book, the situation has hardly improved. Yet precisely these few lines contain the crucial piece of information that made our reconstruction of the family history possible in the first place: in the source reference at the end of the lines appears the abbreviation “BAL, PAK,” which stands for “Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Abteilung Berlin-Lichterfelde, Personalkartei des Reichsjustizministers” (Federal Archives Koblenz, Berlin-Lichterfelde Section, personnel index of the Reich Minister of Justice).
There was—and still is—a personnel file for Dr. Franz Ledermann, as quickly became evident from checking the Federal Archives’ database: R 3000 / 66008. During a visit to the archive the file could be viewed and copied; the evaluation appears below. The most important result, however, was the first-time and newly discovered fact that the Ledermann family originated from Ostrow in the Prussian province of Posen; we already described this in the first part of this family history. Here and today the focus is on the personal history of Dr. Franz Ledermann.
Education and Studies.
Franz Ledermann was born in Hirschberg on 16 October 1889 as the youngest of the three children of the couple Benno Ledermann and his wife Lucie, née Schachtel. His father had shortly beforehand ended his work as a judge in state service and had settled in Hirschberg in the Giant Mountains (Riesengebirge). Similar to his brother Curd, who was ten years older than he, Franz Ledermann entered the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium in Hirschberg at Easter 1898. After six years in the lower grades (Sexta to Obersekunda) and two and a half years in the upper grades (Unterprima, Oberprima), he completed his Abitur at Michaelmas (September) 1907—without an oral exam, as the only student in his year. Before that, however, he had had to repeat one year (Unterprima).
Following his father’s example, Franz Ledermann studied jurisprudence—and in doing so followed his brother, who had enrolled in Munich, Freiburg, Berlin, and Breslau and earned his doctorate in Rostock. Franz studied in Breslau (winter semester 1907/08), Munich (summer semester 1908), Geneva (winter semester 1908/09), and Berlin (summer semester 1909). His residential addresses in Munich (Barerstrasse 37/3) and Berlin (Flensburger Str. 23) are known; the corresponding information from Breslau and Geneva is missing.
On 15 December 1910 he took the first state examination in law in Breslau (grade: good). Two months later, on 3 February 1911, he completed the Rigorosum (the oral doctoral examination) in Breslau after submitting a dissertation titled “Circumvention of the Law in Roman and Civil Law”—again comparable to his brother’s doctoral work. It was printed in Der Bote aus dem Riesengebirge in 1912. The examiners were the Breslau professors Rudolf Leonhard (1851–1921) and Richard Schott (1872–1934).
Although the curriculum vitae in his dissertation also mentions his first training post (Bolkenhain), the personnel file—opened with his swearing-in on 6 January 1911—is more detailed here and lists all training posts and the exact number of working days up to his appointment as Assessor on 15 January 1916. The seven stations were the following: district court (Landgericht, 19 months) in Bolkenhain, Hermsdorf u.K., and Hirschberg in Silesia; public prosecutor’s office in Berlin (3 months); attorney/notary in Posen (5 months); local court (Amtsgericht) in Beuthen (9 months); and higher regional court (Oberlandesgericht) in Breslau (6 months), plus vacation days, illness, and military service, a total of four years, thereby fulfilling the examination requirements. The training post with the lawyer took place in the practice of his brother-in-law Felix Kaempfer; the notarial training was conducted with his friend Placzek in Posen. During his Berlin training phase (public prosecutor’s office) he lived at Bambergerstr. 59, renting a room from a landlord named Herbst.
Military Service in the First World War.
At the outbreak of the First World War, he was drafted on 19 February 1915 into Infantry Regiment 22 (Fusilier Regiment 22, Gleiwitz), but after only a few days—on 28 February 1915—he was discharged as unfit for service because he suffered from an earlier kidney condition. On 18 May 1915 the president of the Higher Regional Court of Breslau petitioned the Ministry of Justice for permission for him to take the second state examination, which—owing to the war—was held as an “emergency examination” on 23 October 1915 and which he passed with the grade “good.” On 15 October 1915 he again volunteered for military service and was assigned to the 1st Replacement Battalion of Fusilier Regiment No. 33 in Brandenburg an der Havel. He fell ill again with a kidney condition after several months of training, spent six weeks in Reserve Hospital II in Brandenburg, and was again discharged as unfit for service.
Professional Career.
He was appointed Gerichtsassessor (judicial assistant) in Berlin on 15 January 1916 and remained in this position in Berlin until the end of the war. Because he is not listed in the Berlin address directory during this time, we can only assume that he lived—at least then—with his brother at Kochstraße 49, where the latter had both his apartment and his office. Supporting this assumption is the fact that after his brother’s death on 21 September 1918, Franz is recorded in the address directory with the same address.
On 10 October 1918 Dr. Franz Ledermann was admitted to practice as an attorney at Regional Court I (Landgericht I); on 21 June 1919 he was also admitted at Regional Courts 2 and 3 (the abbreviation following this, “R 7,7h,” in the personnel file remains unexplained). On 10 February 1928 he applied for admission as a notary—this was rejected by the Bar Association, as he had not yet completed the required waiting period. He was finally admitted on 16 November 1928 for the Schöneberg district court jurisdiction, and on 28 February 1929 he was also admitted as an attorney in the Schöneberg district. This is connected with the move from Kochstraße (Mitte district) to Genthinerstraße, which belonged to the Schöneberg district. As previously described (mittendran, 13 March 2023), Franz Ledermann and Ilse Citroen had married on 15 October 1924, and when their second daughter (Susanne, 1928) was born, they moved into their new apartment at Genthinerstraße 5A. They would remain there for another five years.
The Beginning of the End.
We do not know how Franz and his family perceived the increasingly antisemitic atmosphere in Berlin, but the Nazi seizure of power on 3 January 1933 and the rapidly ensuing anti-Jewish legislation apparently prompted them to leave the country. The “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” of 7 April 1933 affected not only civil servants and employees in the public sector but also lawyers, who were independent professionals but still subject to legal supervision by the Ministry—hence the existence of a personnel file on Dr. Franz Ledermann in the Federal Archives in the first place. Under this law, all non-Aryan civil servants in public service were required to be dismissed. On the same day, the “Law on Admission to the Legal Profession” was enacted, resulting in a professional ban for all non-Aryan lawyers—they were thereafter permitted to represent only Jewish individuals and firms.
Shortly thereafter, like almost all of his 1,800 Jewish colleagues in Berlin (out of a total of 3,400 licensed attorneys), Franz Ledermann received a notice forbidding him to represent non-Jewish clients. A legal objection to this decision (letter dated 10 April 1933, referring to the naturalization certificate of his great-grandfather, Gerson Ledermann) was unsuccessful and resulted in his being barred, with immediate effect, from entering court buildings. In rapid succession, his admissions to Regional Courts I (15 June 1933), II (26 June 1933), and III (23 June 1933), as well as to the Local Court Berlin-Schöneberg (24 June 1933), were deleted (3).
Farewell Concert.
According to the guestbook of the Ledermann family, fourteen house concerts were held between November 1930 and April 1933—the first on 23 November 1930 and the last, described here as a “farewell concert,” on 14 April 1933. A few days later, the family left their Berlin home, which they would never see again. Franz Ledermann must already have been involved in house concerts much earlier, as he had written his delightful satirical piece on the difficulties of assigning parts in such chamber-music evenings (“Auf Wiedersehn bei der Fermate”) many years earlier (1924), and must already at that time have been able to draw on considerable experience. When and where he received his musical training is unknown.
These fourteen house concerts in just under three years evidently all took place in the Ledermanns’ apartment at Genthinerstraße 5A (today located where house number 14 now stands). According to the recollections of their daughter Barbara, it was a large apartment with space for two grand pianos. An inspection of the building file shows an apartment of about 400 square meters on the first floor, possibly supplemented by rented office rooms on the ground floor. When they moved in in 1924, a doctor’s practice had still been located there, later an insurance company—so there was certainly enough space for a couple with two children, a nanny, and two grand pianos.
The musicians gathered for the concerts (between three and seven, for trios up to septets) were accompanied each time by audiences that varied in size, although on average they were rather small and often consisted mainly of close family members. His sister Käthe Kaempfer was present frequently (seven times), as was his mother-in-law (“Mutti”) Ilse Citroen, née Philippi, and his nephew Heinz Kaempfer, son of Käthe Kaempfer. The farewell concert on Saturday, 29 April 1933 had the largest audience. The program that evening included Brahms’s Septet Op. 18, Schubert’s C major Quintet, and Brahms’s Septet Op. 36.
As far as could be determined using address directories, the names of the listeners listed in the guestbook were identified and matched: on that evening there were, in addition to the musicians, 14 people, including Käthe and Heinz Kaempfer and Ilse Citroen, as well as Mrs. Lotte Lichtenstein (Wilmersdorf, Kaiserallee 172); attorney and notary Georg Arnheim and his wife Elke (Brunnenstraße 194); the widow Martha Liebrecht (Wilmersdorf, Kaiserplatz 1); engineer Dr. Anton Macholl and his wife Adele (Heilbronner Str. 5); Gertrud Moses (Wilmersdorf, Augustastraße 52); Marie Wohlgemuth, dressmaker (Neukölln, Reuterstraße 54); Gertrud Caro (Speyererstraße 22), and other persons whose names were not legible or could not be assigned. We assume that they were, overall, the family’s close personal friends who had gathered to bid farewell. The next concert by the Ledermann family took place—according to the guestbook—on 14 January 1934 in Amsterdam.
Part 6.
Map of Silesia (highlighting Hirschberg), city map of Hirschberg (highlighting the Gymnasium), photo of the Gymnasium in Hirschberg (postcard, c. 1900), and list of Abitur graduates for the school year 1907–1908 from the annual school report.
Enrollment certificates from the universities of Munich, Berlin, and Geneva.
Title page and curriculum vitae from Franz Ledermann’s 1912 dissertation.
Original text of the article from the Berliner Tagblatt dated 9 May 1924.
: Façade drawing and floor plan of the apartment at Genthinerstraße 5A (today no. 10), along with the file cover from the Berlin State Archive, file no. B Rep. 202 no. 4086.
Screenshot of the guestbook page with the concert of 29 April 1933, the last house concert in Berlin.
Source: https://www.juele.eu/
Translations: Chat GPT.
weggum.com
The stories about the family of Franz Ledermann were also published in this Berlin newspaper.