Losing the Neumeyer family home and its contents, loss of livelihoods, arrest and murder of my grandparents Hans and Vera Neumeyer as well as Vera’s father Martin, wearing the yellow star and loss of education: these were all subjects of a long correspondence with lawyers that, unknown to me, stretched into my childhood. All I knew was that my mother Ruth and my uncle Raymond had managed to get some compensation after the war from the Bavarian State Compensation Office.
What wasn’t covered by compensation was the mental suffering through the emotional loss of having parents murdered and having to flee the country. The money offered was based on quite narrow assumptions of loss of earning power and material objects.
I have to confess steering clear of the contents of a file of legal papers, which superficially promised little. However, sorting through them and getting translations (some of them rather rough and approximate) cast new light on the family story.
The legal letters span 21 years, from 1950 to 1971, with the bulk of the correspondence in the 1960s. A number are missing, and only in a few cases do I have a draft of what Ruth wrote – typically on the back of an envelope – to her London-based lawyer George Cohn, who corresponded with the Munich lawyer Georg Ott, who was acting on behalf of the state. I can only guess at the frustration and anguish the whole slog must have caused Ruth and Raymond – but they did get something for their efforts.
There are requests for affidavits and all sorts of evidence – how Ruth’s and Raymond’s education in Dachau was curtailed, how Ruth had to train in caring for small children in Cambridge, evidence from witnesses as to the contents of the house and of Hans and Vera Neumeyer’s reduced earning capacity after 1933.
Numerous challenges were made to Ruth’s case, such as this :
I have the affidavit sent to me submitted to the Bavarian State Compensation Office. During an interview, the clerk responsible explained to me that the documents handed over so far did not prove that the persecution took place on racial grounds.
Reply to an affidavit Ruth made in 1962 about her loss of education in Dachau
What they claimed
The house On 9 November 1938 Nazi authorities forced the Neumeyer family to leave their home at Herman Stockmannstrasse 10 in Dachau. My grandfather Hans Neumeyer was made to pay for costs of repairs, and the contents were lost forever. In 1950: the Restitution Authority of Upper Bavaria ordered 10,000 Deutschmarks (£850) compensation to be paid to Ruth and Raymond who were officially recognised as heirs to the house, now occupied by Martina Mayer. The first 1,000 Deutschmarks were to be paid straight away and the rest annually with a 5% interest rate added, and a wealth tax of 7.5% subtracted from the amount and the interest. This is the earliest legal letter, and seems to have been quite straightforward.
Hans’ loss of freedom In 1959 damages for Hans Neumeyer’s loss of freedom was assessed as 4,800 Deutschmarks , calculated from the time of the wearing of the yellow star and the time of imprisonment from September 19, 1941 to his death in Theresienstadt on May 19, 1944 and a request for the certificate of inheritance from Vera so that damages for her loss of freedom can be claimed.
Martin’s persecution One of the saddest documents in the large file itemises the compensation in August 1962 of 450 Deutschmarks for Vera’s father, Martin Ephraim – once a very wealthy benefactor and patriotic German, murdered in Theresienstadt at the age of 84 – presumably the low valuation was based on his old age. Five beneficiaries were awarded 90 Deutschmarks (just under £9) each:
The award of just 450 Deutschmarks, split among five beneficiaries for Martin Ephraim’s persecution (click on arrow for second page)
The stark facts: imprisonment in Berlin, wearing the yellow star and deportation to Theresienstadt
Haft (= imprisoned) in Berlin 1942 – 7 days
Sterntragen (= wearing yellow star) in Berlin from 7 January to 6 April – 2 months 7 days
Deportation to Theresienstadt 1944
Total = 3 months, 6 days
Personal financial loss More bad news followed in 1962, as the Munich lawyer Georg Ott explained:
Since you had to emigrate at a very young age, there is hardly any personal financial loss. You are only eligible for compensation if it amounts to at least 500 Deutschmarks. Unfortunately, the office has already rejected your brother Raymond Newland’s educational damage.
Loss of Vera’s professional advancement For Vera, who was deported to an unknown destination in Nazi-occupied Poland (probably Auschwitz or Warsaw) in July 1942 compensation arrived 23 years later, in 1965: 6,000 Deutschmarks for her loss of professional advancement. We have no record of compensation for her arrest and having to wear the yellow star: if it happened, that letter is lost.
Loss of education Also in 1965 Ruth received 5,000 Deutschmarks for loss of training: she had really wanted to paint stage scenery but was denied that career. Happily in 1950 she attended the Canterbury School of Art, and so managed to realise that part of her dream.
Forfeiture of Munich property A payment of 23,000 Deutschmarks made in 1966 for land or a building in the Munich suburb of Grosshadern was paid in 1966. This had been owned as Hans – perhaps as an office or a teaching room – but I know nothing else about it.
Loss of house contents In November 1962, a claim for loss and damage to property and assets within the house was rejected as Ruth and Raymond failed to submit evidence before the deadline.
Quite what happened to the claim for the contents of the house is unclear. Ruth put in a claim but missed a deadline. Ruth appealed, though I don’t know on what grounds.
The probability speaks for the fact that a large part of the extensive furnishings had to be left behind in the Dachau house and were lost there due to a lack of supervision.
As heirs, the plaintiffs require proof of the whereabouts of the furniture left behind by husband and wife Neumeyer.
In her affidavit dated February 14, 1967, Ms. Locke made credible statements regarding the fate of the furniture. Apparently, the Bavarian State Compensation Office did not take this sufficiently into account. It is clear from the testimonies that there were two grand pianos. It contradicts every life experience that a grand piano was placed with friends. As is well known, the transport of a grand piano is only carried out by special transport companies. So, at least one grand piano remained in the house in Dachau. Surely this was not the only item of furniture. Everything indicates that objects had to be left behind when the family moved in great haste.
Letter reporting the decision, 18 September 1967
Evidence and testimony
Here I have picked out some of the most illuminating statements that were made for the claim.
What happened to Ruth
Several new bits of information here. Testimony states how she moved from the Klosterschule (convent school) in Dachau to another school Obermenzing (a short distance out of town) but she was bullied for being Jewish under Nazi law, and returned to Dachau. After Jewish children were barred from schools in 1938, nuns at the Klosterschule secretly gave her lessons. Also the date Hans was offered a post at the Academy of Music in Munich is confirmed as 1935 (not 1933, as I had originally supposed):
It was about this time [1933] that economic difficulties between races began for both parents, since they taught privately and only the most loyal and strongest of the students went with them continued to study. However, the difficulties only became public in 1935, when my father had to turn down the offer to become a professor at the music academy.
After about a year I also left the school in Obermenzing, as it was under quite a lot of Nazi influence. In Dachau I attended the newly created Protestant school, which had a short lifespan and where my brother and I were often expelled from school functions, with [Hitler Youth] shouting and throwing stones at us.
The last school year took place in the same convent school where my school life had started. The sisters suffered visibly from the various prohibitions they had to assign me. At the beginning of 1938 they advised me to come to them only at night, which I did for a few months. It is easy to see from this that further training was then impossible. Unfortunately, I have no proof of these times. At most, a few who stayed behind could vouch for it.
Draft of letter from Ruth, 1962
Above: Ruth (far left, front row) at school in Dachau, c.1935)
This affidavit from Ruth gives a succinct summary of her life in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1939 and the her training in England:
I, Ruth Locke, née Neumeyer, born 1923 in Dachau, attended the elementary school from 1931 to 1938. Since from 1933 my parents were no longer allowed to practise their professions in music theory, they were unable financially to send me to a secondary school in Munich in 1935. It was then planned that it should continue with my education after 8 years of elementary school on the junior high school in Munich. However, it was no longer possible to visit any schools after a Nazi attack in our home where they threw out participants and audience of a theatrical performance. I had some lessons in secret at night with the nuns in the monastery, until we were then thrown out in November 1938 overnight from our house.
Until May 1939 we lived in Munich mostly in hiding among different people until we then managed to emigrate with a children’s transport to England. I immediately attended the Hall School in Weybridge. After the outbreak of war, this school was evacuated to the countryside and I to Cambridge, where I hoped to do my Matric exam with the help of private friends. I would very much have liked to have trained eventually in an art school for stage painting, so I also took private lessons in drawing.
In April 1941, however, these plans were thwarted. The Refugee Children’s Committee considered it better that foreigners should be educated in the home school. That’s why I had to stop everything again and visit a household school for some time and then, as provisionally, go through a course for nursing sisters. Because of the war conditions, I was only able to continue working in the nursery school. Later, in 1949, I accepted the offer to attend an emergency training for teachers set up by the State.
All of these were temporary, provisional measures that in no way corresponded to my original intention to study art as my life’s career, which my parents, who were murdered by the Nazis, had in mind for me and which was repeatedly prevented by tragic circumstances.
Ruth arrived with Raymond on a Kindertransport in May 1939, initially staying in with the Eckhard family Weybridge. In 1940 she moved to another branch of the family in Cambridge, where training was organised by the Cambridge Refugee Children’s Committee, led by the formidably energetic Greta Burkill, who had arranged for hundreds of refugees to enter Britain, including those arriving on a Kindertransport. Greta gave this reference in 1960, confirming Ruth’s nursery training:
I hereby confirm that Ruth, now Mrs Locke, was in the care of the Cambridge Refugee Children’s Committee when she arrived in England in September 1939. She lived with Mr and Mrs Stirland and had private lessons. In April 1941 she attended the household school in St Chads, for the further education of refugee girls which our committee had founded. She attended this school until November 1941, where she passed her final exam. Then she briefly helped Mrs Cole, 5 St Peter’s Terrace, while the committee for Ruth arranged the visit to Wellgarth, at reduced study fees, which were paid by guarantors.
She started this training on December 3, 1941, and carried it out. In April 1943 Ruth returned to Cambridge and took a position in the day care centre for small children.
What was lost from the house
Ruth stated that the various household effects were housed with various friends and a lot of it was destroyed during air raids on Munich. It is unclear how much if anything was successfully claimed. It was suggested that some items might have been sold off before the house was seized. There were originally two grand pianos, but the office could not accept that the Bechstein had been moved from Dachau to the the Köbners’ apartment Thorwaldsenstrasse in Munich, where the Neumeyers lived from late 1938 until Hans and Vera were deported from there in summer 1942.
We were no longer allowed by the Dachau authorities in November 1938 to live in our house in Dachau. My parents were later given permission to come back for one day to take some bare necessities from the house. A piece of furniture, as well as two wings were housed in stowed away in Munich, but they were completely destroyed during the war by air raids and other actions. Only one grand piano is said to survive, with one of my father’s students. Any precious metals more than two pieces per person we owned had to be handed in.
Statement from Ruth
Vera’s sister Marianne (known as Janni) survived the war and made a statement (not in my possession) describing the contents of the house. We have some excellent detail provided by Raymond supplementing what his aunt had reported:
The living room furniture was made to the best of our knowledge at least partly from lemon wood or with lemon wood. It was all in prime condition but its age is unknown to us. A considerable part of the furniture of the whole house was most likely acquired by my parents in the 1920s and 1930s, but there were also a greater number of antiques among them; this applies especially to the mentioned showcase, the buffet, the desk and some chests and cupboards. The mentioned “girls room” owed its name not to the fact that it was inhabited by our maids, but that it contained a part of the furniture that brought my mother from her girlhood in the marriage. The bedroom set also included a small table and desk; this furniture was in the Biedermeier style but whether real or imitation I cannot say.
Some additions to my aunt’s composition: we had two French stoves in the style of Louis Quinze and at least one stone sculpture, about 25 cm high, which stood on a pedestal in the studio room. My mother had a taste for cut glass – in the mentioned buffet stood a large number of conical wine and liqueur glasses and decanters, etc.
There was also blown and coloured glass in the Venetian style – I remember especially coloured vases and a magnificent blue sugar bowl. Of course, we have no way of accurately assessing the value of household effects because we were still children at the time and because we do not have the necessary expertise. However, we should emphasise that both parents came from decidedly wealthy backgrounds and brought much into the marriage and later still when the households of the grandparents were dissolved. In addition there is the artistic disposition, especially from my mother, to conclude that among the things was hardly anything without aesthetic value.
Part of the household was in our last apartment in Munich (Thorwaldsenstrasse 5) from where my parents were deported in 1942. The remainder was put to the best of our knowledge among various acquaintances. We have never heard of details because the correspondence with our parents after the outbreak of the war was limited to censored telegram-like news about the Red Cross. In the postwar years 1946-1952 we found only a smaller number of garments books and notes with those acquaintances whose addresses we had. What has become of the majority of the household, including that left in Thorwaldsenstrasse 5, we have never been able to find out.
Hans’s secretary Dela stayed on in Thorwaldsenstrasse after his deportation, and created this list of possessions stored in the apartment. The list only came to light after its discovery in Sweden in 2021. Did some or perhaps all of these belong to the Neumeyers?
The inventory of objects owned by Dela Blakmar. (Click on arrow to view slide show)
Raymond then scored an own goal by making this statement, which effectively admits that the Nazis did not take these items from the house in Dachau:
After we were expelled from Dachau, the furniture and household effects from our house in Dachau were housed at various places, and a large part of it was destroyed during more serious air raids on Munich. Among these items was a Bechstein grand piano. It was part of the furniture and household effects in our two-room apartment in Thorwaldsenstrasse and had to be abandoned at the time of my parents’ arrest.
Vera’s work as a teacher
Marianne confirmed Vera wrote and composed songs and rhythmic games used in student performances and ran courses in Munich, Genoa, Rome and Schreiberhau, as well as training classes at Catholic nursing colleges. This is the first evidence I have had that Vera composed music.
Another new piece of information is in the form of a handwritten note from Ruth lists testimonials from seminaries written in 1938 and sent to her lawyer: St Elisabeth Anstalt in Bamberg (closed by Nazis in 1941), Maria Ward Schule in Wurzburg (dissolved by Nazis in 1938), the Kindergarten der armen Schulschwestern, Niedermünster in Regensburg (dissolved by Nazis 1938), and a seminary in Aschaffenburg.
Vera with a eurythmics class for children in Dachau; Ruth is fourth from the right
Three Dachau friends gave evidence to the Bavarian State Compensation Office about Vera’s work:
Aranka Wirsching, a family friend who lived in the oldest house in Dachau. Ruth wrote to the British authorities after the war to defend her son Anselm from accusations of being a Nazi. He had been in military service and a POW in Egypt. Her evidence tells us that she was also a pupil of Vera’s, and that Vera also taught piano, which I was not aware of.
The major piece of new evidence here is that Vera did slave labour at Lohhof, the notorious flax roasting works outside Munich where she would have been for long hours each day and under atrocious conditions. Previously all I knew that she worked in market gardening in Munich and that some of the people she was deported with had been at Lohhof.
I was the first student of the Dalcroze rhythmic gymnastics system for the deceased. I therefore know that the deceased gave lessons from 1924 onwards. I believe their business was at its peak around 1931.
In the course I took part in from 1927, there were 6-8 students. Participation in the lessons was so lively that we were able to approach each other and then the next participants came. We in Dachau had the courses in the mornings, in the afternoons the deceased drove to Munich.
The deceased also gave piano lessons. From 1927 to 1936 I sent girls from my teaching household there to give piano lessons. I remember that the girls were very enthusiastic about the musical and rhythmic style of the deceased.
I paid 2RM for the gymnastics lesson. I don’t know the price for the piano lessons because the girls paid for them themselves. From 1933 to 1938 times were very bad. I still remember that the deceased was afraid she had to go because the children were being bullied while they were on the street. From 1938 the deceased gave no lessons. She only told me that she was going to teach nuns in Munich and that the nuns were very enthusiastic about her. The deceased informed me of this under the seal of secrecy. Between 1940 and 1942 I visited the deceased once in her apartment in Thorwaldsenstrasse.
She told me that she had to walk to Lohhof and there had to do manual work. She didn’t tell me about language lessons… [rest of text illegible, on a faded photocopy].
It was also known throughout the city that in the years 1935/1936 the mayor at the time, Dobler, broke into the house of the deceased and disturbed a celebration, probably a Christmas party. This caused a great stir in Dachau at the time. There were anti-Semitic statements. As far as I can remember the deceased moved away in 1938. Whether her husband left by then, too, I cannot say. It was my personal impression that the deceased’s work did not generate much income, but enough to enable her to live as a family with her husband and children. I still remember that a kind of domestic help was often to be seen there.
The Neumeyer family enjoyed great respect in Dachau, they were very popular because they were very friendly and approachable.
The Lohhof flax-processing factory in 1937 (Stadtarchiv München)
Anni Broschart, a girlhood friend of Ruth’s, who mentions ‘the incident with the then major Dobler’ when Nazis burst into the house when a children’s play was being performed, shouted to the audience ‘aren’t you ashamed to be in the house of a Jew?’ and arrested the lodge Julius Kohn, taking him to Dachau concentration camp. We learn here that Anni also took eurythmics/rhythmic gymnastics lessons from Vera:
I was in the same elementary school class with the daughter of the deceased, Ruth. That’s why we got to know each other. At first our acquaintanceship was more sporadic, but over time it became more solid.
I also frequented the Neumeyer home and was therefore also actively involved in the 1933 Christmas play. As far as I can remember, such plays took place three more times.
The incident with the then mayor Dobler is only known to me insofar as the participants in the Christmas play were already in costume waiting for the instructions to begin. Suddenly, dismay was felt among the spectators, most of whom were the children’s parents, and I learned that the plays were banned.
Anni Broschart (right) with Raymond, around 1930
I am quite certain that I received piano lessons from the deceased from the beginning of 1934 when the deceased left Dachau. I worked an hour every week and had to pay 1.50 Reichsmarks for it.
I was also involved in learning rhythmic gymnastics. However, after 1934 I no longer had time for these lessons, because I then went to secondary school. From 1934 I only took piano lessons.
I still remember with certainty that in 1935 I once again took part in rhythmic exercises that were performed in Munich in front of the nuns of the Order. I attended the Lyceum of the Servite nuns in Munich.
I would like to add that in the end the situation had become dangerous for the deceased. She once said to me that she shouldn’t let herself be caught doing rounds. So she came to my house alternately, sometimes I went back to her house.
Anna Kürzinger, who acted as the nanny for the family and was also a close friend:
From April 1930 to October 1935 I was employed by the Neumeyer family as a nanny. I received the money from the deceased.
I received 15 Reichsmarks, most recently 30 RM a month. I had Sundays off and was busy from 7am to 7pm on other days.
I don’t know how many students the deceased had and how many lessons she gave. But I can say that she had lessons every day. She drove to Munich every day to give lessons there. I know that the deceased lived in a certain way because of the constant change.
I well remember that the deceased gave me the fees for gymnastics and piano lessons several times, but unfortunately I forgot these figures. When it is pointed out to me that the witness Broschart only paid 1.50 RM for the piano lessons, I would like to point out that the deceased was very accommodating towards others, especially since Miss Broschart played with her daughter Ruth.
I lost my position at Neumeyers because they were no longer allowed to employ me.
With the best will in the world, I can no longer give any information about the number of students. I only know that the deceased was quite busy until 1933, starting at 9:00 am.
Anna Kürzinger, with an unknown small child
Later, the number of students also decreased.
[She presented a letter from the deceased dated 30.9. 1941, stating that Vera worked doing market gardening in Neubiberg 12 hours a day from 7am and could only give a few private lessons at the weekends. From the letter it can be seen that the deceased worked in a garden centre in Neubiberg from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and that was only able to give a few private lessons on Saturdays and Sundays. She had to wear the Star of David.]
I have another letter which shows that the deceased received 35-45 pfennigs an hour. The deceased also gave lessons to individual well-to-do people.
Upon further questioning: I remember that the plaintiff spoke about a divorce. She thought it would make things easier.
I know that Herr Neumeyer was wealthy by birth and that the family could therefore afford a good standard of living.
Spending the legacy
My parents lived frugally, with five of us based in a house in what was then inexpensive southeast London on my father’s teaching salary. They had something of a fatalistic and disapproving attitude to money. Ruth’s dislike of ostentatious wealth was very likely linked up to the history that the family once had a lot of it but it had all gone, first through the German hyperinflation of the early 1920s with the sale of her grandparents’ villa in Görlitz and then with the systematic seizure of family property by the Nazis.
Revisiting the German Alps, 1967 – Ruth is on the right: the simple mountain hut called Berghäusle. I am in the red top, on the roof.
The compensation of course did not make up for the loss of four family members to the Holocaust and the upheaval that followed, but must have been a welcome boon for Ruth and Raymond. We did have some very special family holidays using this money, including two to Germany.
In 1966 we stayed at an idyllically simple Alpine mountain hut named the ‘Berghäusle’, lit by oil lamps and with just a chemical loo, all alone on a hillside above the town of Sonthofen and looking into the high peaks of Austria. Absolute perfection for Ruth, whose happiest memories of Germany tended to be of the mountains.
We revisited the same spot the following year, after a couple of weeks in a huge village farmhouse in the Taunus. The latter was a house exchange with the Martens, an extremely compatible family who became close friends after we met in Germany at the end of our respective stays. Gero Marten had served in the German army in the Second World War, at the end of which he swam across a river to surrender to the Americans rather than be taken by the Russians, and subsequently settled in America and married an American, Linde. My parents got on extraordinarily well with Gero and Linde and we shared a later holiday in Norfolk with the family.
We also spent a few days at the end of our 1967 trip in Dachau with Anselm Wirsching and his family in the oldest house in town (the Pollnhof). There Ruth re-established contact with Anna Kürzinger and the Steurers, and had a brief look inside one of the apartments converted from the former Neumeyer house.
The Ephraims and the Neumeyers 