Max Wallach was born in Geseke near Paderborn on October 9, 1894, the son of Heinemann and Julie Wallach. He grew up with nine brothers and sisters. Max Wallach served in the Imperial Navy from 1898 to 1899 and later travelled the world as a merchant seaman and engineer. After the First World War, his brothers, Julius and Moritz Wallach, brought him to Bavaria. In 1919, they had acquired the building of the Autenried cardboard factory in what is now Hermann-Stockmann-Straße in Dachau, and wanted to establish a weaving and fabric printing works there. Max Wallach managed the firm from 1920 until 1938 and supplied the fashion store Trachtenhaus Wallach at Residenzstraße 3, which was founded by his brother Moritz and was well known far beyond Munich. The brothers also ran the art gallery Volkskunsthaus Wallach at Ludwigstraße 7 together from 1920. On August 14, 1923 Max Wallach married Melitta Elisabeth (Melly) Holländer, who was born in Darmstadt on January 8, 1894. It is possible that he had met her in the Volkskunsthaus, where she worked. Their son Franz Julius was born in Munich on May 22, 1924. Close family and business ties took Max and Melitta Wallach frequently to the Bavarian capital, and they could be found especially often in the fashion store at Residenzstraße 3, where the fabrics produced in Dachau were sold.
The Nazis “aryanized” the Trachtenhaus Wallach and the weaving works in Dachau. In the course of the “Kristallnacht” pogroms Max and Melitta Wallach were driven out of Dachau with their 14 year-old son Franz on November 11, 1938. They moved to Munich to live with Max Wallach’s sister, Betty Epstein. Max and Melitta Wallach were able to send Franz to England in August 1939 on one of the last children’s transports, and so to save his life. They themselves went to stay with relatives in Paderborn in 1939. Their relatives who had escaped to the USA made every effort to enable them to join them, but in vain. On July 21, 1942 the Gestapo (Secret Police) deported them from Münster to Theresienstadt ghetto and from there, on October 28, 1944, to Auschwitz extermination camp. There, the SS murdered them both.
Max Wallach’s sister Betty Epstein and his brothers Hugo and Adolf were also murdered in the Shoah. Five other siblings managed to emigrate to the USA, South Africa and Argentina. His sister Grete survived, protected by her marriage to a non-Jew in Bielefeld. Max Wallach’s son Franz anglicised his name and called himself Frank Wallace. He became a professor at the University of Bath and was a recognised expert on diesel engines. Prof. Frank Wallace died in Bath in 2009.(text Barbara Hutzelmann, Jamie Hall, editor C. Frtische, translation C. Hales)
