Jakob Hirsch Landauer

Jakob Hirsch Landauer was born on September 7, 1858 to Isaak Landauer and his wife Regina, née Heilbronner, in Binswangen, Swabia. When he was 14 he moved to Munich, perhaps to begin a commercial apprenticeship. In 1892 Jakob Landauer married Rosa Oppenheimer, who came from a merchant family with deep roots in Munich. 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; in 1934 Jakob and Rosa Landauer moved to Tengstraße 25. Jakob Landauer ran the wholesaler L. Heilbronner & Cie at Sonnenstraße 3, selling white fabric, wool, hosiery and linen goods, together with his wife and later also with his sons-in-law Leo Leiter and Theodor Adler. The company had 22 employees. Since the 1920s, the National Socialists had constantly grown in popularity. In 1924 they desecrated the Jewish cemetery in Jakob Landauer’s birthplace, Binswangen. It is unclear how L. Heilbronner & Cie was impacted by measures enacted against Jewish businesses after the Nazi seizure of power. Jakob Landauer died on May 12, 1937 at the age of 78, in Munich. He did not live to see his sons-in-law Theodor Adler and Leo Leiter forced to sell the business one year later to the “aryan” business Leuze und Söhne. During the Nazi period, Jakob Landauer’s family was scattered to the four winds: His daughter, Charlotte Wertheimer, emigrated to New York with her husband Sigbert and their son Hanns in November 1937. Emmy Leiter, her husband Leo and their daughter Gerda Sophie managed to emigrate to the USA in October 1939. Jakob Landauer’s grandchildren fled to Denmark and Palestine. Only his wife, Rosa, stayed in Munich. She died there on January 16, 1939 of a heart attack. (text Elisabeth Rosa M. Noske, editor C. Fritsche, translation T. Axelrod)