Hermann Raff was born on August 23, 1868, in Göppingen to Elias Raff and his wife Therese, née Monheimer. His father was a factory owner and died as Hermann was just one year old. In 1872 his mother remarried and moved with her second husband, Bernhard Raff, Hermann and his older sister Marie to Munich. In 1873, a half-sister was born, Helene. After attending the Maximilian Secondary School, Hermann Raff studied law in Munich and Erlangen. He specialized in commercial and property law and opened a solicitor’s office in Munich, at first in Weinstraße and then in the late 1920s in Schäfflerstraße. He was also counsel to the Bavarian Estate Agent Association, which he founded. In 1900 Hermann Raff married Katharina Siegel, a Catholic born in 1871. The couple had two children: Elisabeth, born in 1900, and Hans, born in 1904. In 1908 the family moved into the ground floor of the building at Ohmstraße 13.
Two years after the Nazis came to power, Hermann Raff converted to Catholicism. Still categorized as a Jew according to the Nazi race laws, his conversion failed to protect him from ongoing discrimination. To evade persecution, in 1936 Hermann Raff and his wife moved to a house in Füssen that belonged to non-Jewish relatives of Katharina Raff. After the “Night of Broken Glass” on November 9, 1938, his son Hans talked him into hiding at the Luckengraben Alm near Kreuth, close to Tegernsee. On the way to the hideout Hermann Raff attempted to take his life; his son was able to prevent the suicide. Immediately after the two men had left Füssen, Nazis rioted in front of the Raff family house and the police searched it. Hermann Raff returned two weeks later. Because he was living in a “mixed marriage” with a non-Jewish wife, he was not deported. Physically and emotionally ravaged by persecution, Hermann Raff died on September 29, 1943, in Füssen, aged 75. (text Neumann & Kamp, editor C. Fritsche, translation P. Bowman)
