Erna Eisner née Grünthal

Location 
Bachstelzenweg 16
District
Dahlem
Born
19 November 1897 in Hindenburg (Oberschlesien) / Zabrze
Escape
1936 Holland
Survived
06 November 1981 in Den Haag (NL) gestorben

Erna Eisner, née Grünthal (1897-1981) was the wife of the entrepreneur Curt Eisner, who was successful in the 1920s and was born in 1892 in Hindenburg, Upper Silesia (today Zabrze).
In the 1920s he was director of the Jewish Rawack & Grünfeld Eisenerz AG.
The business flourished in these years thanks to the intensive industrialization in Germany after the First World War.
In 1926 he commissioned the Berlin architect Harry Rosenthal (1892-1966) to design a villa for himself and his family. This consisted of him, his wife Erna Eisner, née Grünthal (1897-1981) and their two daughters Ruth (1920-2009) and Eva (1924-1965). The villa on Bachstelzenweg was completed in 1928.
Harry Rosenthal was a modern architect from the Bauhaus school who received his commissions primarily from Jewish citizens. He left Nazi Germany for Palestine in 1933.
In addition to being a successful businessman, Curt Eisner was also an entomologist with a significant collection of Parnassinae butterflies (a subspecies of swallowtail butterflies). There was an entire room in the villa dedicated to his collection. Today this unique collection can be admired in the “Museum of National History Naturalis” in Leiden, Netherlands.
The Eisner family was very happy in their new home. Their way of life was as modern, as free and as unconventional as the villa itself.
Unfortunately, National Socialism became more and more threatening and in 1936 Curt Eisner and his family had to leave their beloved home forever. They sold the house and went to The Hague in the Netherlands, where a new branch of Rawack and Grünfeld AG based in Rotterdam was opened in 1934 and where Curt Eisner became director.
The German invasion of the Netherlands took place in May 1940, but it was not until August 1942 that the family was forced into hiding to avoid persecution and deportation.
They found refuge in various places and with various people around Eindhoven until its liberation in September 1944. The rest of the Netherlands was liberated in May 1945.
Curt Eisner, his wife Erna, their daughter Ruth and her husband, their daughter Eva, his mother, his sister and brother-in-law, the entire persecuted family from Berlin had managed to survive the Holocaust thanks to those who were willing to support them hide and risk their own lives.
After the war, Curt Eisner returned to The Hague with his family, where he became director of the “Verenigde Ertshandel Maatschappij” (VEM).
In 1953, Curt Eisner was able to build a new house for himself and his family. Again in a very modern style.