Röschen Wollstein née Marcuse

Location 
Michaelkirchplatz 18
District
Mitte
Stone was laid
16 April 2002
Born
13 June 1878 in Berlin
Occupation
Kauffrau / Stadtverordnete
Deportation
on 15 August 1942 to Riga
Murdered
18 August 1942 im Ghetto Riga
Röschen Marcuse came from a Jewish family and married Ludwig Wollstein, a lathe operator who ran an office of the newspaper Vorwärts in the 1920s. She was a member of the SPD and head of the Mitte branch of the worker's welfare association, AWO. In 1920, she became a member of the Mitte district council. In 1930, she and her family left the Jewish community. In March 1933, Wollstein was re-elected to Mitte council and in June 1933 she became a member of the town council, replacing a colleague. She was unseated and barred from acting as a district or city councillor after the Decree for Safety of the Leadership of State was passed in July. When a motorized Nazi procession of SS and SA men passed the stall where she was selling wares in Neukölln in June 1935, she reportedly said: I thought it was the idiots from Dalldorf [Dalldorf city asylum, today Karl Bonhoeffer Psychiatric Clinic Wittenau] on an excursion.“ She was reported to the police and arrested in October 1935. Although it could not be proven that she had said these words, she was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment for slander. Her husband died in 1940. On 13.8.1942, Röschen Wollstein was deported to Riga. There are no further traces of her. Her son Artur emigrated to Denmark in 1933. His brother Max, who had spent one year in a concentration camp, joined him there with his wife and daughter in 1937. Their sister Editha died in Berlin in 1940. Lastly, Herbert Wollstein, who was protected by the fact that he had children with his non-Jewish wife, was not deported and survived in Berlin.