Arthur Dreyer was from a Jewish banking family in Bielefeld. After graduating from secondary school, he studied medicine, amongst other cities in Berlin and Munich. In 1894 he attained his doctorate and was licensed to practice as a physician. He worked for a time as a ship’s doctor with the Hamburg-America Line. In November 1896 he opened a “medico-mechanical private sanatorium” at Karlstraße 45 in Munich, which was much like a rehab center with equipment for strengthening muscles. In 1898 Arthur Dreyer married Paula Lehmann from Munich. Their daughter Mathilde was born two years later.
Arthur Dreyer was forced to close his private sanatorium just a few months after the Nazis took power, in October 1933. In the same month, his daughter Mathilde fled to Palestine with her husband, the journalist Sally Grünebaum, who was a Social Democrat sympathiser. In 1934 Arthur and Paula Dreyer moved into the ground floor of the Johann-von-Werth-Straße 2. Arthur Dreyer met the “Aryan” businessman Hanns Ebner apparently while out walking his dog. The men soon became close friends. Hanns Ebner continued to meet his Jewish friend despite hostility and supported him after the breakout of the war by providing food.
Presumably in the summer of 1940 Arthur and Paula Dreyer received notice that they had to leave their apartment. They moved into a room in the Pension Patricia in Goethestraße 54. Because of the little space they had, they were forced to auction off much of their furniture far below its real value, for instance valuable dining room furnishings for 300 Reichsmark. Arthur Dreyer forgot to notify the finance authority of the proceeds from the sale and was then fined 6 000 Reichsmark. After his wife Paula died on November 27, 1940, Arthur Dreyer was on his own. At the beginning of December 1941 he was forced to move into the “Milbertshofen Jewish settlement,” a barracks camp in Knorrstraße 148. From there he was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto on June 24, 1942. The 72-year-old endured the catastrophic conditions there for eight months. Arthur Dreyer died on February 24, 1943.(Text Ingrid Reuther, editor C. fritsche, translation P. Bowman)
