Max Wertheimer was born on June 8, 1881 in Misslitz (today Miroslav), a small town in the Moravian district of Krumau. Like most of the Jews in the region, his parents Therese and Moritz Wertheimer were traders. In 1907, Max Wertheimer moved to Munich, working as a merchant and accountant. He had two children with his first wife Elsa: Erich, born in 1911, and Anna, born in 1913. Anna died just four years later. Following the death of Elsa Wertheimer, Max Wertheimer married Bertha Baum in 1918. On April 23, 1920 their son Kurt was born, followed by Herbert Werner on October 2, 1923. In the mid-1920s the family ran into financial difficulties as a consequence of the hyperinflation and managed to make ends meet by selling still existing stock. The boys were temporarily placed in the Jewish children’s home at Antonienstraße 7. Together with their sons, Max and Bertha Wertheimer were then able to move into an apartment in Nymphenburger Straße 29 in 1926. The deprivation of rights and persecution of Jews that followed in the wake of the Nazi seizure of power soon had grave consequences for the family. Max Wertheimer’s eldest son Erich emigrated to New York in 1935. A year later, Kurt Wertheimer fled to Palestine via Prague. Max and Bertha Wertheimer were forcibly removed from their apartment in Nymphenburger Straße in April 1939 and sent to a collective accommodation facility at Reichenbachstraße 27. In 1940 the Gestapo (Secret Police) arrested their youngest son Herbert and moved him to Dachau concentration camp, where he was shot on March 12, 1941. A year after his murder, on March 24, 1942, the Gestapo moved Max and Bertha Wertheimer to the “Heimanlage für Juden” (“home facility for Jews”) in the Clemens-August-Straße 9 and then later to the “Judensiedlung” (“Jewish Quarter”) Milbertshofen at Knorrstraße 148. On April 4, 1942 the Gestapo deported Max and Bertha Wertheimer to Piaski ghetto in German-occupied Poland, after which there is no further trace. (text Helene Weber, editor C. Fritsche, translation P. Bowman)
