Dr. Robert Remak

Location 
Manteuffelstr. 22 a
Historical name
Manteuffelstr. 23
District
Lichterfelde
Stone was laid
07 September 2008
Born
14 February 1888 in Berlin
Occupation
Mathematiker / Privatdozent
Deportation
1942 to Auschwitz
Declared dead
13 November 1942 in Auschwitz
Robert Erich Remak was born on 14 February 1888 in Berlin, the son of renowned neurologist Ernst Julius Remak and his wife Marta Remak, née Hahn. He had two sisters, Feodora Litthauer and Fanny Remak, and a brother, Georg Remak. His grandfather, also named Robert Remak, was the first Jew to qualify as a professor in Prussia without renouncing his Jewish faith.
Robert Erich Remak was a mathematician. He developed the group theory known as Remak decomposition and also worked in the fields of algebraic number theory, mathematical economics and geometry of numbers.

Robert Remak studied at Berlin University under Ferdinand Georg Frobenius and gained his doctorate in 1911 with a dissertation on “the decomposition of a finite group into indirect indecomposable factors”. He went on to gain a postdoctoral lecturing qualification and worked from 1929 to 1933 as a junior professor at Berlin University.
After Hitler seized power, Remak was dismissed from his position on account of his Jewish background, arrested in 1938 and interned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp for several weeks. Following his release, he left Germany for the Netherlands. In January 1941 he was expatriated and his assets were confiscated.
In 1942, his “Aryan” wife Herta Remak, née Beier, filed for divorce through her legal advisor, Dr. Richard Marcuse. When the divorce came through, Remak was arrested, taken to Westerbork, then deported to Auschwitz and murdered.

His statement of assets shows that he owned a rowing boat, a single scull, which he named “Logarithmus”.