Lothar Conitzer – a jewish doctor in Hamburg

Tornquiststrasse 9 no longer exists

Tornquiststrasse is now a bicycle street. We ride along it twice a week on the way to our daughter’s gymnastics practice. Tornquiststrasse crosses Doormannsweg, a four-lane road. Lothar Conitzer lived from 1908 to 1939 at this intersection of Tornquiststrasse and Doormannsweg, when it was not yet an intersection. So every week we pass through his living room at least twice.

First steps in life

Lesser (called Lothar) Conitzer was born on 7 February 1865 in Jeschewo (Polish: Jezewo) as the seventh child. Jeschewo is a small village in West Prussia in what is now Poland. The nearest town is Schwetz on the Vistula (Polish: Swiece). Danzig is about 100 km away and Berlin can be reached after about 400 km. He was the youngest of seven siblings. His grandfather, Aron Israel Conitzer, was a merchant and later a teacher. He had achieved modest prosperity and enabled Moses, Lothar’s father, to establish himself in the small village of Jeschewo as a small-scale merchant. All four of Lothar’s brothers became merchants and in 1882, together with their father Moses, founded the department store company M. Conitzer & Söhne in Marienwerder, which at its peak operated 22 department stores [7]. One of these merchant brothers is my wife’s great-great-grandfather. Above all through the mutual support within the family, all members were able to build a certain level of prosperity. This allowed Lothar Conitzer, the only member of the family, to study medicine in Berlin and Halle. In Berlin he studied under Prof. Dr. Du Bois Reymond [4], who was among the “founders of modern physiology as a scientific discipline.” He wrote his doctoral thesis in Halle. Its title was “On the surgical treatment of pleuritic exudates in childhood with special consideration of the purulent forms.” [3]

Arrival in Hamburg

In 1892 he received a position at the Jewish Hospital in Hamburg. In 1894 he obtained his state medical license and opened a practice on Eppendorfer Weg [1]. In 1900 he married Frieda (Rika) Lewy [2].

Image: Lothar and Frieda Conitzer (Source: private)

Frieda was adopted as a small child by the Hamburg art dealer Ludwig Lewy and his wife Minna. She grew up in their house at An der Alster 74. The Hotel Atlantic now stands there, built in 1909. Her biological parents died when she was four years old.

Image 2: Frieda Lewy probably with her adoptive mother Minna (Source: private)

Lothar Conitzer and his wife Frieda (Rika) moved in 1908 into their own house at Tornquiststrasse 9, where they lived with their three children: Ludwig, Margarete and Manfred.

Image 2: Frieda Lewy probably with her adoptive mother Minna (Source: private)

It was a large house. It had three floors, central heating, a dumbwaiter and a wine cellar. The family employed a cook, a housemaid, a nanny, a medical assistant, a gardener and a chauffeur. On the ground floor were the kitchen, storage rooms and the bathrooms. On the first floor Lothar Conitzer had set up his medical practice. On the second floor the family lived, and there was a salon where large gatherings were often invited and up to 30 guests were entertained. Tornquiststrasse 9 was a meeting place for many doctors and academics from Hamburg. His practice prospered: he was able to buy additional real estate in Hamburg and shares in various companies. Lothar Conitzer had established himself in Hamburg. He was a wealthy citizen of the city. Lothar Conitzer loved German painters and many paintings hung in his house. He was a philanthropist, his granddaughter wrote about him [5]. During the First World War, for example, he treated a young artist and received in return a painting of his daughter. Frieda Conitzer loved opera and at any time—only a small occasion was needed—she could begin singing a song from a famous opera. She loved her salon and the social gatherings she could host there.

The escape

From 1935 onward Lothar Conitzer was able to treat fewer and fewer patients. In 1938 changes in the law made it impossible for him to continue practicing as a doctor and he had to close his practice. He sold his houses far below their value to Aryans in Hamburg. On 20 October 1938, shortly before the Reich Pogrom Night, he emigrated to Cape Town in South Africa, where his son Manfred had already fled in 1934. His daughter Margarete fled in 1939 with her husband Hans Jacoby and their daughter Annette to Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. His first son Ludwig, also a doctor, had already died in 1929 as a result of surgery to remove a brain tumor. Lothar and Frieda Conitzer arrived in Cape Town without money. They depended on the help of their children. Both died in Cape Town in 1947. Lothar on 09.07.1947 and Frieda on 27.11.1947 [6]. Their granddaughter Annette Stannett wrote about them in her biography “The colours of my life”: “The loving devotion that I sensed between my grandparents, and equally between my parents, made me feel safe and secure when I was young.” [5]

Image 4: Lothar Conitzer and his granddaughter Annette Stannett (née Jacoby) (Source: private)

Restitution

Lothar Conitzer died before the restitution process of the Federal Republic of Germany even began. His heirs Manfred Conitzer and Margarete Jacoby pursued the claims in the Hanseatic City of Hamburg. In the restitution files it can be read that compensation payments were made. The restitution process was not concluded until 1 January 1967. The material damage was compensated. Nevertheless, to this day we all continue to struggle with the immaterial consequences of the political decisions made in Germany at that time.[6]

Epilogue

Tornquiststrasse 9 no longer exists. Nevertheless, twice a week we remember the philanthropist and physician Lothar Conitzer and his opera-singing wife Frieda when we once again ride through their former living room.

Postscript

In the book “Wo die Wurzeln waren …” – Jews in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel we discovered an entry about Lothar Conitzer [8]. “A contemporary witness who worked as an apprentice in a coffee and chocolate shop at Weidenstieg 11 told the working group that Dr. Conitzer had been a welcome customer in the shop. She remembers that –

“when Jews began to have difficulties buying things…” – her boss sometimes told her: “Take a pound of coffee on your way home and place it in front of the (Conitzers’) kitchen window.”

The witness would then walk along Tornquiststraße and place the coffee in front of a barred basement window. Time: between the witness leaving school in 1936 and Dr. Conitzer’s emigration around 1938.”

Aron Israel Conitzer | Moses Conitzer | Lothar (Lesser)  Conitzer