Nathan Bergmann

Nathan Bergmann was born in Gochsheim in the administrative district of Schweinfurt on March 10, 1857. He was the son of merchant Kallmann Bergmann and his wife Jette, née Wormser. He probably left for Nuremberg as a young man. At the time, it was the world trading hub for hops. There, Nathan Bergmann ran the hops wholesale company Bergmann & Co., which was founded in 1860, together with his brothers. In 1889, following the early death of his first wife, he married Mina Spear. The couple had three children, Wilhelm, born in 1894, Else, born in 1895, and Helene, born in 1897. The death of Wilhelm in 1908 aged just 14 must surely have been a heavy blow of fate for the family. During the Nazi period, the Jewish Bergmann family suffered massive restrictions. The Nazi seizure of power put an end to the success story of the Jewish hops dealers in Nuremberg. In 1930, some 40 percent of all trading businesses were owned by Jews. Now they were gradually taken over by “aryan” business people. At the same time, an especially unparalleled anti-Semitic hate campaign began in the “Stadt der Reichsparteitage” (“city of the Nuremberg Rallies”) under Gauleiter (regional Nazi party leader) Julius Streicher. In 1934, Nathan Bergmann moved away from Nuremberg to Tengstraße 25 in Munich with his wife Mina, his daughter Helene and his granddaughter Anneliese. In Munich, Nathan Bergmann ran the hops retail business N. Bergmann & Co. with his brothers Michael and Philipp at Wilhelmstraße 15. The business was forced to close on June 29, 1938. Just under two years later Nathan Bergmann died of cancer at the age of 83 in the the Israelitische Privatklinik (Israelite Private Clinic) at Hermann-Schmid-Straße 5. Many members of Nathan Bergmann’s family did not survive the Nazi period. His wife, Mina, was deported by the Gestapo (Secret Police) to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where she died on June 30, 1942. His daughter, Helene Bergmann, was also murdered in Theresienstadt, on April 8, 1944. (text Elisabeth Rosa M. Noske, editor C. Fritsche, translation C. Hales)