Auguste Hirsch, geb. Amschel

Only very little is known about the life of Auguste Hirsch. She was born in Frankfurt am Main on February 28, 1857. She was the daughter of the trader Adolf (Adolph) Amschel and his wife, Josephine, née Oppenheimer. She lost her mother when she was two. On June 8, 1883, Auguste Hirsch married the banker Hermann Hirsch, who was nearly 20 years older than her. At first, the couple lived in Augsburg and had five children, Paul, born in 1885, Josephine, born in 1887, Käthe Helene, born in 1888, Fritz, born in 1890, and Gertrude, born in 1891. The family moved to Munich in 1890 and lived in affluent circumstances at Königinstraße 13 by the Englischer Garten (English Garden). Auguste Hirsch was financially secure even after the death of her husband in 1892. In 1913, she moved into a large apartment on the second floor of Königinstraße 85. The life of 76 year old Auguste Hirsch changed radically in the Nazi period. In 1935, she had to take leave of her daughter and her family when Josephine Kronheimer and her doctor husband Hermann Kronheimer emigrated with their children, Lisa and Paul Peter, to Den Haag in the Netherlands. Auguste Hirsch, too, managed to escape to the Netherlands shortly before the beginning of the Second World War. From August 1939, she lived firstly in Den Haag and then later with the Kronheimer family at Gabrielenstraat 22 in Arnheim. She died there on April 1, 1942, at the age of 85. She was buried in the Moscawa Jewish Cemetery in Arnheim. Of Auguste Hirsch’s five children, only Fritz Hirsch and Käthe Emden survived the Shoah. Paul Hirsch, Gertrude Masser, Josephine and Hermann Kronheimer and her grandchildren Lisa and Paul Peter Kronheimer were all murdered in Nazi extermination camps.(text Barbara Hutzelmann , editor C. Fritsche, translation C. Hales)