Rosa Landauer, geb. Oppenheimer

Rosa Landauer was born on June 25, 1870 in Munich to the leather goods merchant Abraham Oppenheimer and his wife Charlotte, née Billmann. On September 12, 1892 she married the merchant Jakob Hirsch Landauer of Binswangen. The couple had four daughters: Regina, born in 1893, Alice, born in 1895, Emmy, born in 1901, and Charlotte, born in 1909. In 1911 the Landauer family moved into the third floor of Sophienstraße 6; on July 2, 1934 Jakob and Rosa Landauer moved to Tengstraße 25. Together with her husband, Jakob Landauer, and later their sons-in-law Leo Leiter and Theodor Adler, Rosa Landauer ran the wholesaler L. Heilbronner & Cie at Sonnenstraße 3, selling white fabric, wool, hosiery and linen goods. The company had 22 employees. It is unclear how the family business was impacted by measures enacted against Jewish merchants after the Nazi seizure of power. On December 15, 1937, after the death of her husband, Jakob, Rosa Landauer stepped down from the company management. That same year she had to part from her daughter Charlotte Wertheimer and her granddaughters, who emigrated to the USA and Denmark. In November 1938, Rosa Landauer saw her sons-in-law Theodor Adler and Leo Leiter imprisoned for several weeks in Dachau concentration camp by the Gestapo (Secret Police) following the “Kristallnacht” pogroms. They were forced to sell the company to the “aryan” firm Leuze und Söhne in Schillerstraße 15. Rosa Landauer died on January 16, 1939 of a heart attack – perhaps worn down by the disenfranchisement and persecution of her family. After her death, the rest of the Landauer family was scattered to the four winds. Rosa Landauer’s daughter Emmy made it to the USA in 1939 together with her husband Leo Leiter and their daughter Gerda Sophie; her daughter Regina Adler was able to flee via Bratislava to Palestine with her husband Theodor. (text Elisabeth Rosa M. Noske, editor C. Fritsche, translation T. Axelrod)