Metadata: Estate of Hugo Schriesheimer
Collection
- Country:
- Switzerland
- Holding institution:
- Archives of Contemporary History at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich
- Holding institution (official language):
- Archiv für Zeitgeschichte der ETH Zürich
- Postal address:
- Hirschengraben 62, CH-8092 Zurich
- Phone number:
- +41 44 632 40 03
- Web address:
- https://www.afz.ethz.ch/
- Email:
- afz@history.gess.ethz.ch
- Reference number:
- NL Hugo Schriesheimer
- Title:
- Estate of Hugo Schriesheimer
- Title (official language):
- Nachlass Hugo Schriesheimer
- Creator/accumulator:
- Schriesheimer, Hugo
- Date(s):
- 1905/2011
- Language:
- German
- French
- Extent:
- 0.4 shelf metres
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The biographical material and the photo collection form the main focus of the collection of Hugo Schriesheimer. There are many identity cards, passports, permits and certificates, including work certificates from the Gurs camp. Numerous photos document the youth of Hugo Schriesheimer in Constance, his time in the internment camps in Switzerland and his marriage to Eva-Maria Mendelsohn. The collection also contains correspondence and the reappraisal of his experiences in the 1980s. Schriesheimer gave many lectures on his experiences in Gurs and collected numerous newspaper articles on National Socialism and the fate of Jewish people. He also maintained private contact with Erich Bloch and wrote down his memories of Gurs for the first time for his book about the Jews of Constance. He made intensive efforts to obtain financial restitution for his parental property., although there is little correspondence on this subject in the estate. The State Archives in Freiburg, however, have a separate file on the Schriesheimer case.
A transcript of the interview that Erhard Roy Wiehn conducted with Hugo Schriesheimer and his wife in 1985 can be found in Wiehn’s book “Jüdische Rückblicke auf die deutsch-schweizerische Grenzregion am Bodensee im 20. Jahrhundert” (Jewish retrospectives on the German-Swiss border region on Lake Constance in the 20th century), published in 2012.
- Archival history:
- Hugo Schriesheimer appointed Siegfried Gideon as his executor. After his death in October 1989, his apartment was cleared and his estate came into the private possession of Erhard Roy Wiehn. In 2011, Marie-Elisabeth Rehn wrote a commemorative biography from this historical material. Since Hugo Schriesheimer had lived in Kreuzlingen for almost 20 years, there are close ties to the historical archive of the Jewish Community Kreuzlingen.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Hugo Schriesheimer was born in Constance on 13 September 1908 and died in Kreuzlingen on 7 October 1989. He was the only child of Max Schriesheimer and Rosa Dukas and attended schools in Constance. He became a member of the Zionist "Blue and White" group, studied engineering at the Constnace Technical College and then started working in his father's hardware store. The store was "voluntarily Aryanised" in June 1938 by selling it to long-time employees. Schriesheimer was arrested on 9 November 1938 during the destruction of the synagogue in Constance and held in protective custody for four months in Dachau, until he was released due to objections by Swiss relatives. In 1940, the family was resettled in "Judenhäuser" in Constance and deported to Gurs with 6,500 other Jews from Baden and the Saar Palatinate. In 1942, he fled to Switzerland as a stateless foreigner. His parents died in Pontaqc in short succession in 1943 and 1944. Schriesheimer was interned in the Bonstetten and Hasenberg labour camps, moved to Zurich in 1944 and worked as a kitchen boy and from 1946 on at Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon. In 1946, he participated in the 22nd Zionist Congress in Basel and in 1946 he started to apply for financial reparations. In 1947, he emigrated to Rochester, USA, and in 1949 he married Berlin-born Eva-Maria Mendelsohn. The couple moved to New York in 1952 and to Kreuzlingen in 1971. From 1980, Schreisheimer held many lectures about his experiences in Constance and Gurs. On 22 May 2009 three ‘stumbling blocks’ were placed in Constance for Max, Rosa and Hugo Schriesheimer (Bodanplatz No. 10).
- Access points: locations:
- Switzerland
- Subject terms:
- Internment
- Memoirs
- Personal records
- Finding aids:
- An online finding aid is available.
- Links to finding aids:
- http://onlinearchives.ethz.ch/
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Museum Hohenems
- Author of the description:
- Severin Holzknecht; Jewish Museum of Hohenems; 2020