42 HANAUER Babette

This photo must have been taken in the courtyard of Kapellenstrasse 49 around 1903/1904, the portrayed owner of the goats and carriage is “economist” Ludwig Nördlinger. For according to the painted writing on the sturdy-looking children’s carriage, and only to be discerned by using a magnifying glass, is “Benno” the name of his eldest son. Benno is most likely standing next to his father and dressed in similar clothes.

He looks very important, is well aware of his importance as owner of the carriage and eldest son and looks with his adult clothes much older than eight or nine years. The most definite name can be attributed to the youngest on the coachman's seat: There is Hermann Nördlinger, three years old, with the reins and a stick in his hands. He looks the same on the school

In the center: Julia and Hermann Nördlinger pupils of the Israelite Volksschule,

On the left: Fredel (Frida) Nathan, on the right: Gretel Gideon, in 1909 (photo: Leo-Baeck-Inst. NY)

His elder sister Julia, born in 1898, three years older than him, is almost certainly sitting behind him facing the photographer. The girl in the middle of the three girls, with glasses and fair curls, is, according to Gretel Gideon, Julie Hanauer, a cousin of the Nördlinger children. Julia's mother, Babette Hanauer, née Nördlinger, was married to Samuel Hanauer in Esslingen and after his death in 1893 moved back to Laupheim where she found accommodation in her brother's house. Julie Hanauer would have been twelve years old in 1903, which sounds likely.

The third girl, ten years old, is correctly named as Johanna Heimann. Johanna Heimann had moved to Laupheim only one or two years beforehand. Her mother Jeanette, called Jenny, was, by birth, a Steiner, a former neighbor of the Nördlinger family and married to Julius Heimann in Kaiserslautern. After the death of her husband in 1901 she moved with her daughter to Laupheim again and lived in rent in Ulmer Strasse 28/1 (today No 29). Jenny Heimann died on July 21, 1934 at the age of 64 and is buried in Laupheim. After that her daughter, who had lived with her mother, moved to Freiburg on November 1, 1934.

The two older boys on the cart are, according to Gretel Gideon, Hugo Höchstetter and Julius Einstein, which can be proved by comparing several photos in this book. Both lived in Kapellenstrasse, a bit further down. However: In 1903 both, born in 1887, would have been 16 years old. According to present-day opinion, sixteen-year-olds do not look like that and they would also not join little children in a cart to go for a ride.

That photo is proof of how far and fast puberty has moved to an earlier age. Then it shows how strongly Jewish families stuck together and with what natural solidarity single widows and their children were supported and integrated into entire families.

But above all one can see what attention and care was given to the children. Ludwig Nördlinger certainly was not a particularly rich farmer. But he allowed himself the “luxury“ of a children's toy that gave them, especially his oldest son, a visible feeling of self-confidence and pride. Benno was so grateful for this that he became the image of his father as a child, ready to follow in his footsteps.

Benno's and Julia's further development has been described in other essays before. It was rather the youngest, Hermann, who was to follow in his father's footsteps. He seems to have taken up a training in agriculture after school and later worked as a farmer and cattle trader. His name can be found in the “Results of a Price Competition” of carried out at the „Landwirtschaftliches Bezirksfest“ (Agricultural District Festival) which was to be found on many pages in the local newspaper. In the showjumping event in class A he came in seventh. The district agricultural festivals were major events with parades, different competitions, awarding of agricultural products and such, where the whole district met every few years.

Ludwig Nördlinger died in October 1932 at the age of 67. In the “Gemeindezeitung für das jüdische Württemberg” (The communal newspaper for Jewish Württemberg) of December 1, 1932 there was an obituary that said among other things:

„Laupheim. On November 2 a commendable member of our community, farmer Ludwig Nördlinger was buried. The extraordinarily numerous participation at his burial showed how much the deceased enjoyed a general esteem. The coffin lay out in state at the synagogue. There was not enough room for all those who wanted to honor the deceased. The synagogue choir sang a last song for their trustworthy fellow member and religious instruction teacher Kahn honored the outstanding qualities of the deceased in a funeral speech. For the synagogue choir Jacob Adler then uttered cordial words of thanks and appreciation for the loyal singer who, for decades, had contributed his energy to the glorification of the services. For the “Verein Talmud Thora” Fritz Hofheimer spoke in a moving fashion and thanked him for his exemplary long-lasting activity as first chairman.“

The National Socialist period

Why Hermann Nördinger, from 1936 to the summer of 1938, was in Sorgau (Niederlausitz), where he worked as an “agricultural foreman”, is not clear. But probably he got to know his later wife Irmgard Bodländer there, for she came from Breslau. From July 1938 both lived again in Laupheim and there they married on August 8, 1938. A few days later the couple moved to Gross Breesen (Brandenburg). And if the J. Bergmann Estate had not included the printed obituary of Hermann Nördlinger of 1983, their traces would have been lost.

(John-Bergmann Estate, Reel 1, Box 2)

Thus it is clear that they managed to emigrate the US – not to Israel but to the US although Hermann Nördlinger also was a member of the Zionistischen Vereinigung für Deutschland (Zionist Association for Germany) and although he would have been welcomed there as a trained farmer.

Mother Pauline, left behind alone, had to move to the Rabbinat like all the others and to live there in degrading and cramped conditions. Nevertheless, she radiates optimism and good mood in all the photos in which she can be seen. This was certainly helpful for all the others there. She was spared deportation by a merciful fate . She died on December 4, 1940 and was buried beside her husband in the Laupheim cemetery.

Pauline Nördlinger (to the right) as inhabitant of the Jewish Old People's Home