Another characteristic of Max Bergmann was his passion for nature, as his
son Hans mentions in the Bergmann family chronicle, from which most of the
information in this article has been taken. It is no surprise his first
social involvement was in the Verschoenerungsverein Laupheim
(association for the beautification of Laupheim, VVL), which he joined
shortly after the turn of the century. Until then, the association had
worked rather insularly and with moderate success. Max Bergmann was elected
secretary of the VVL in 1909 and three years later president, a position he
held until November 1933. Starting in 1913, trees were planted along the
streets of Laupheim and in the 1920s the Hoehenanlage was created, a
city park at the city’s highest point (VVL,
Verkehrs- und Verschönerungsverein
e.V.); Laupheim’s citizens replaced the rather bureaucratic and abstract
sounding term Hoehenanlage by the beautiful, but now forgotten name
Max’a Gaarta, which means “Max’s garden” in Swabian dialect. All
these projects were financed by various campaigns of the VVL and its
president. During the war, when Max served on the Russian front, the then
local administrator Schick wrote him a letter, explaining how much the city
missed him and how he had to hurry, win the war and come back as soon as
possible.
Since he had not been drafted yet, Max Bergmann was still able to hold the
annual meeting of the VVL on January 25, 1915, which took place in the
Schluessel, a restaurant in Laupheim. The Laupheimer Verkuendiger,
a local newspaper, published Max's speech verbatim from this event. The main
extracts quoted here document the patriotic and nationalistic mindset of
that year, which of course also infected the German Jews:
“Seventy-five of our members are fighting a war instigated by a
world of enemies against our beloved fatherland. They followed the call
to arms with courage and patriotic fire in order to defend our homes
against the enemy’s criminal rage. Thanks to God’s help and the heroic
courage of our troops, the war is fought in hostile lands in the East
and in the West and our fatherland is protected from any invasion.
Although the work is not yet fully done, we believe we can already say
that this, the biggest war of all, will have a fortunate outcome for us
and our children and we will be spared such a misfortune during our
lifetime. However, this terrible war has already left behind shocking
gaps among our armies. …” (Neidlinger, “Bergmann, Max”)
1928, inauguration of the town gym: On the left,
Max Bergmann as a member of the construction
committee and behind him, member of the Town Council
Anton Ganser. On the right, bank director
Richard Heumann and local administrator Konrad.
Max was not only the president of the Verschoenerungsverein, but also
president of the local Red Cross unit, which he co-founded in 1911. In the
same year, he was elected member of the Town Council for the first time.
However, he never belonged to any political party.
In May 1919 two members of the Bergmann family ran as candidates for the
first election of the Town Council after the lost war: Max Bergmann received
the most votes of all 26 candidates, whereas Elsa Bergmann, his cousin
Marco’s wife, was only a few votes short of making the Town Council. She had
compiled her own list of women including two candidates, but for all that,
Laupheim was obviously not ready for a female member of the Town Council
yet, since women’s suffrage had only recently been introduced.
Max’s social involvement became particularly apparent during the crisis year
of 1923, when he and a few citizens in a better financial position organized
a soup kitchen for fellow citizens and schoolchildren in need. Every day
until 1925, the soup kitchen provided a warm meal for up to 150 pupils and
120 elderly people.
After the flood catastrophe of 1926, he launched a fundraising campaign for
the victims, collecting 20,000
Reichsmarks, and after this, he vehemently promoted the regulation of
the Rottum River to prevent such incidents from happening again.
His son Hans further illustrates Max Bergmann’s commitment in his chronicle:
“Charity was also important in our home on a personal level. Never
were non-Jewish, well-wishers before Rosh Hashanah Holy Days or on
Christmas, nor even the most obnoxious of the many schnorrers sent away
without an appropriate gift, a piece of clothing, and sometimes a meal.
Each year, baskets filled with loaves of fruit bread (hutzelbrot),
knackwurscht, and freshly baked rolls were prepared the week before
Christmas and delivered a few days before Christmas to the residents of
the Home for the Elderly, located behind the old town wall. So that the
Max Bergmann family retained personal contact with the poorest of the
town, the children, Hans and Trudl, had to accompany the maids and help
deliver the presents by pushing the wheelbarrow or sled, to the house
for the needy. The word tzedakah, or charity, was never used in our
home, but it was always practiced.” (Bergmann 121, rephrased by the
translation team)
It must also be mentioned that Max Bergmann actively participated
in the local festival commission, helped improve the provision of medical
care in Laupheim’s County Hospital, organized a big agricultural exposition
at the end of the 1920s and attempted to provide Laupheim with a swimming
pool, since there were no lakes (however, when the pool was opened in 1933,
a new sign indicated that Jews were prohibited). Those are just a few of the
many examples of his social commitment. Many years later, his son recalled
that they never talked about anything else but Laupheim at home. It is
certainly not a coincidence that Max Bergmann’s son was to explore the
history of his family and of Laupheim’s Jewish community.
On January 5, 1933, shortly before the beginning of the German catastrophe,
Max and Henny celebrated their silver wedding anniversary with relatives in
Chemnitz. They received over 150 greeting cards from Laupheim. However, it
was in that very year that Max’s charitable commitment to the city would be
forcefully ended.
During the Nazi Era
The dismissal of the opposition and Jewish members of the Town Council (part
of the Gleichschaltung carried out throughout Germany) proceeded a
bit slower in Laupheim than in other parts of the country,
but on May 22, 1933, local administrator Konrad had to inform his
good friend Max Bergmann that he was no longer a member of the Town Council,
effective April 1. With great courage, Konrad mentioned Max Bergmann’s major
contributions to Laupheim twice in a public report in April 1934 on the
occasion of his 10th anniversary of service.
Max had a particular preference for the Verschoenerungsverein (VVL).
He was committed to it with heart and soul. On November 28, 1933, the local
Nazi leader Abdon Lemmle wrote to Paul Schmidt, the VVL’s second president
and his own father-in-law, that the Nazi state would no longer allow a Jew
to lead the VVL. Consequently, Max resigned from presidency
and 24 other members (not all Jewish) left the association as well.
Even the Nazi press had no choice but to acknowledge Max Bergmann’s merits
after his withdrawal because anything to the contrary would have been an
obvious lie.
Between October 1933 and March 1934 Max Bergmann left the following clubs
and associations: the Kneipp club (practice of water therapy invented by
Sebastian Kneipp), the Navy League, the Schwaebischer Albverein
(Swabian hiking club), the Laupheim poultry club, the shooting club, the
Musikverein (music society), the gymnastics club, the soccer club, the
Kriegerverein (veterans’ association) and the Choir Society
Concordia. His son Hans describes the situation in his chronicle as
follows:
“It was difficult for Max to comprehend the change taking place. He
continued for a while to frequent his favorite taverns to meet some of
his old cronies, but by the end of 1934 it was evident that his presence
was a liability to the innkeepers, who may still have been his
friend[s], and an embarrassment to some of the patrons. He realized that
the social isolation of the Jew[s] in Germany was now complete.
During 1937 he was for a few days under Town Hall arrest [,] accused of ‘Rassenschande’,
a new word in the Nazi dictionary meaning ‘consorting with an [A]ryan
woman’. He was falsely accused of having a relationship with one of the
workers. The source of the defamation was never discovered, but after a few
days he was vindicated of all charges and let go.” (Bergmann 123)
The Bergmann children
Max Bergmann’s daughter Gertrud (“Trudl”) was one of the first of the
extended Bergmann family to leave Germany, having immigrated to Spain in May
1934. She had worked as a medical laboratory technician in a doctor’s office
in Munich and pursued this profession in Valencia. In 1935 in Madrid, she
married Fred Faessler, a Catholic from Schwaebisch Gmuend, Germany. While
they were on vacation in San Sebastian, Northern Spain, in 1936 the Spanish
Civil War caught them by surprise and they were not able to return to their
home, since the rebels had blockaded Madrid. Their entire belongings were
lost. Eventually, they managed to escape to France on a British warship.
In July 1936 the couple was back in Germany, either in Laupheim or in
Schwaebisch Gmuend, waiting for their exit and permission to leave visa for
the USA. Fortunately, they had married shortly before the Nuremberg Laws
were enacted, and as such they were able to obtain all the necessary papers
to immigrate to New York in May 1937.
Gertrud’s brother Hans immigrated to New York in November 1934. His school
career in the 1920s was not very straightforward. He had to attend three
high schools in Laupheim, Stuttgart and Frankfurt am Main before he, with
much difficulty, was finally able to pass the high school leaving
examination in 1929, two years later than scheduled. Afterwards, in order to
follow in his father’s footsteps and to be able to take over the technical
management of Bergmann J. & Co.,
he started studying chemistry at the University of Frankfurt am Main, yet
with moderate success. But then, he had an identity crisis, as ironically
described in his chronicle:
“Somehow to spend the rest of his
life in Laupheim never appealed to him, nor did he
anticipate with pleasure working for many years for his rather impatient
and excitable father, nor his uncles. Since he was afflicted with
chronic thirst for beer, his intention to become a master-brewer,
against the violent opposition of his parents, was really not
farfetched. The family had only one reaction, ‘Jetzt verkommt er
vollends’ (‘[N]ow he will go […] to the dogs!’), and in the Ochsen in
Laupheim one could hear ‘Wann laesst er sich schmadden?’ (‘When will he
get baptized?’). Though there existed quite a few breweries in Germany
owned by Jews, (some with marriageable daughters), he was contemplating
emigration right from the beginning of his brewing studies.” (Bergmann
92)
Hans gave up on his chemistry studies in 1931 and went to the Faculty for
Brewing Science at the Technical University of Munich in order to pursue his
dream job as a brewmaster. In 1933 he worked in a brewery in Freiberg/Saxony
and stayed with relatives in a city close by, Chemnitz, where he witnessed
intense anti-Semitic rioting. After other workers had seriously beaten up
one of his Jewish colleagues, Hans decided to quit his job and to leave
Germany for a short while upon the advice of his employer. He managed to
cross the border to Czechoslovakia, where he hiked through the Sudetenland,
from brewery to brewery, before returning to Germany without difficulty.
During the semester break of 1933-1934, he worked at the Lowenbrau brewery
in Munich, and in the summer of 1934 he graduated as a brewmaster and
immigrated to the USA shortly afterwards. Prohibition in the US had just
been lifted a year earlier and there was a high demand for skilled personnel
in this field. He had only been able to graduate due to a provision for the
children of Jewish veterans of the First World War: As an exception they
were allowed to complete studies or apprenticeships they had previously
started.
As far as the true intentions of the Nazi regime are concerned, Hans
Bergmann already had a pessimistic opinion at the beginning of 1933 when
Hitler became Chancellor of the German Reich; later his opinion was
validated when he and his cousin Fritz Hofheimer witnessed the big military
parade, “Day of Potsdam”, in Ulm in March of the same year. Further
confirmation of his apprehensions, which would subsequently become reality,
grew stronger after a noteworthy encounter at the train station in Ulm in
the summer of 1934:
“The highest ranking SS officer in Laupheim was Friedrich Rueckert
Sturm Fuehrer
(captain), a young bank official, personally known to and friendly with
many Jews of his age group. Rueckert held an unjustified or possibly
justified grudge against his former Jewish employer and became an early
Nazi. One day during 1934 Hans saw him in his dreaded black uniform,
skull and crossbones, swastika, shiny riding boots and all, at the Ulm
Railway Station. Hans was extremely uneasy and embarrassed and tried to
avoid him, but Rueckert approached him, shook hands, and asked him about
his emigration plans. When he was told that [Hans] was presently
finishing university[,] he suggested in all earnestness to leave Germany
immediately and [to advise] all Laupheimer ‘friends’ to do the same,
indicating that ‘these people’, namely the Nazis, meant business.”
(Bergmann 148)
Max and Henny’s emigration
However, it was not until the middle of 1938 that Max and Henny faced the
painful truth that there would be no future for them in Nazi Germany.
Meanwhile, the Jewish citizen Max Bergmann was no longer allowed to sit on
the park benches that he had once paid for in the park that he had built.
Members of the Hitler Youth organization were allowed to abuse Laupheim’s
once most-respected citizen and his employees in the firm were forbidden to
get in touch with him directly. Contact was allowed only via middlemen. But
before they could emigrate, Max and Henny had to experience the
Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938. Like other Jewish men, Max was
dragged out of his house by SA members and had to witness the destruction of
the synagogue. All the while big stones were hurled from the neighboring
carpenter’s workshop, through the windows of his bedroom, where Henny had
been left totally unprotected and alone. The arrested Jewish men were
brought to the Dachau concentration camp the day after.
On the morning of November 10, 1938, as the news of the Kristallnacht
appeared in New York newspapers, an indescribable panic
broke out among the German-Jewish emigrants and was further escalated
with the arrival of the first personal news from Germany. The Bergmanns in
New York heard about what had happened in Laupheim from Uncle Max Biedermann
from Winterthur, Switzerland. He had expressly sent one of his employees who
had a Swiss passport to Laupheim to investigate the situation. When it
became known that people in concentration camps who could show exit visas or
similar documents were more likely to be released, John Bergmann made
intense efforts to get such papers faster for his father, but was not
successful.
“The time and income lost for visits to consulates, meetings
and telegraph expense[s] (...) was considerable.” (Bergmann 128) The US
consulate in Stuttgart always gave the same information: Max and Henny
Bergmann’s emigration was set for February or March 1939 and a
preferential treatment or a faster handling of the process was
impossible.
“When it was learned that somebody was arriving [in
New York] from Laupheim, whoever had time welcomed the person at the
pier. One of the first after the Dachau arrest was Dr. Josef (Seppl)
Friedberger. He looked ghastly, his hair shorn; he had come straight
from the concentration camp. His report was reassuring. The treatment
was brutal and humiliating, but for those who could stand the strain
there existed a good chance of survival. Sick people, however, were in
danger.” (Bergmann 129)
Therefore, it was a great relief for the Bergmanns in New York when they
learned that Max had finally been set free from Dachau on December 14, six
weeks after his arrest. He was the last of the whole Bergmann family to be
released.
Afterwards, Max and Henny stayed a good four months in Laupheim until they
could emigrate. At the time, the Jewish community consisted of more than a
hundred unemployed members who needed support, along with the numerous
non-local Jews who had roots in Laupheim and had returned penniless and were
also in need of support. Max, as a member of the synagogue executive board
and of the Chevra Talmud Thora (chevra: Hebrew for
“brotherhood”), helped wherever he could.
Before they could emigrate, Max and Henny were forced to liquidate the firm
and their personal assets. It became increasingly clear that the Nazi state
aimed for completely depriving the emigrants of their possessions. Many
taxes were imposed, such as the Reich Flight Tax and the Jewish Property
Levy (Judenvermögensabgabe), and the possibility to transfer capital
was more and more limited. Furthermore, the family was only allowed to take
some pieces of furniture with them, which were packed on March 9 supervised
by a customs officer, who did not miss the opportunity to slit open all
upholstered furniture to search for hidden valuables. The remaining
belongings were packed under surveillance on March 21, and jewelry and
precious metals were seized. On March 22 Max signed a declaration in the
town hall to waive his claim on
Bergmann, J. and Co. and the day after, Max and Henny Bergmann left
Germany from Friedrichshafen toward Switzerland, where they wanted to say
goodbye to their relatives, “(…) with $4.00 each in their possession, broken
in spirit, with their health impaired, never to see Germany again”.
(Bergmann 131)
The son of a distant neighbor, also an eyewitness to history, remembers that
several days before emigration, Max Bergmann, a totally distraught and
broken man, had tried to sell some garden furniture in the neighborhood to
collect some cash for the journey. The father of this eyewitness to history,
who prefers to remain anonymous, had then actually bought the furniture for
an unknown price.
A new beginning in the USA
At first, Max had found a poorly paid and primitive job in a wig factory for
12 dollars per week in Harlem, New York. Then, in 1944, at the age of 65, he
borrowed some money and opened a small company in the field of bleaching and
dyeing hair. Yet, if his cousin Marco, who had been more successful with his
own business right across the street, had not bought most of Max’s products,
the small company would have gone bankrupt in next to no time. Max was able
to work and earn a modest income for five years until he eventually had to
quit due to illness in 1949. His generous cousin Marco kept paying him a
small personal pension, which was, however, barely enough to live on.
What made Max Bergmann ill was most notably his homesickness for Laupheim,
but also the anonymity of the big city of New York and the fact that he was
a poor man, as can be taken from his letters to his old friends in Laupheim.
His wish to return to his hometown for at least a few months became stronger
and stronger. “Sadly he overlooked completely that so much had been changed
in Laupheim and that many of his friends had died or were somehow implicated
in the crimes against him and his people.” (Bergmann 143) Yet, this did not
keep him from planning his return when the restitution negotiations of his
house and beloved garden began in 1950.
On May 29, 1951, Henny and Max Bergmann wanted to go to Europe by boat and
stay there for three months. The journey was booked, the papers in order and
his cousin Marco, who was already in Laupheim for business, wrote in a
letter to Max and Henny on June 22 that their upcoming return was the talk
of the town. He asked if the rumors were true: Did they really intend to
spend their golden years in Laupheim? In this case, they would have been the
only members of the town’s Jewish community, since none of the Holocaust
survivors had returned permanently after the war.
Unfortunately, the two of them were not able to travel to Laupheim since
Max’s doctor did not allow him to. Max Bergmann died one year later, on
August 1, 1952, at the age of 72, near New York, only six weeks after his
cousin Marco had been tragically killed in a car accident near Laupheim.
For John H. Bergmann, the beginning in New York was easier than for his
father and most of his cousins. Only three hours after his arrival in the
USA in 1934, he already had a job in a brewery, but he had to do hard
physical work to climb his way up to brewmaster. Besides, in the New York
breweries, which were strongly German-dominated at the time, there were
quite a lot of Nazi sympathizers and John had to suffer from their
anti-Semitic insults and attacks. John married Elsie Guggenheim from
Pittsburg, whose father Jonas came from Laupheim and was a friend of Max’s.
The couple had two children, Barbara and Kenneth Joseph.
1945, John Hans Bergmann and his parents.
In June 1942 John H. Bergmann was drafted in to the US army. After being
deployed to several different countries during the Second World War, he
volunteered to take part in the invasion of Normandy in May 1944. In the
fall of 1944 he was severely injured in a battle against Hitler-Germany near
Aachen. His full recovery took an entire year so that he would not return to
civil life before November 1945, with marks of honor. Afterwards, he
continued his career in breweries around the world. After his retirement in
1975, John began thoroughly researching and recording the family history.
Without his book The Bergmanns from
Laupheim, completed in 1983, this article would not exist. John’s
pessimistic closing statement, which expresses the fear of his father’s
lifetime achievements being soon forgotten, has not come true. The merits of
Max Bergmann, the local politician and devoted citizen, and of the whole
Bergmann family are still appreciated in Laupheim to this day. In fact,
there is a memorial stone for Max in the Hoehenanlage park and an
exhibition about Laupheim’s Jewish community in the Museum for the History
of Jews and Christians in Laupheim.
1989, Ernst Schaell and John Hans Bergmann at the Jewish cemetery in
Laupheim.
References
Bergmann, John: The Bergmanns
from Laupheim. A Family
Chronicle. Web. Archive. John H.
Bergmann Collection. 1983.
Feb. July 9, 2015.
http://www.archive.org/stream/johnhbergmann16_reel16#pae/n1136/mode/1up
“Meilensteine der Vereinsgeschichte.“ VVL Laupheim.
Verkehrs und Verschönerungsverein Laupheim e.V., August 26, 2009
Web. May 20,
2015.
Neidlinger, Karl: “Bergmann, Max.“ Gedenkbuch der
jüdischen Gemeinde Laupheim. Gesellschaft für Geschichte und
Gedenken e.V.,
modified April 25, 2015. Web. July 9, 2015.
http://gedenkbuch.de/KAPITEL/13%20BERGMANN%20Max.htm
Neidlinger, Karl: “Bergmann, J.,
& Co.“ Gedenkbuch der jüdischen Gemeinde
Laupheim. Gesellschaft für Geschichte und
Gedenken e.V., modified October 7, 2014. Web. April
30, 2015.
http://gedenk-buch.de/KAPITEL/10%20BERGMANN%20Firma.htm
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BERGMANN,
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13 Schillerstrasse
