Alfred Kessel

Alfred Kessel was born in Berlin on 24 June 1881, the first child of Bernhard Kessel and his wife Zerlina (known as Lina), née Alexander. His parents had moved to Berlin, a rising centre of industry, from what was then the province of Posen during the major wave of emigration of the 1860s-70s. This was partly caused by the tighter legal restrictions on Jews in the province of Posen than in other Prussian provinces, and partly by the constant struggle for dominance between the Polish-Catholic and German-Protestant populations, during which Jews were alternately used and harassed by the Prussian state, which had annexed the province of Posen in 1793.
Alfred’s father Bernhard Baer (Baer was his religious name) Kessel was born the fourth child of Lewin Kessel, a tailor, and his second wife Luise Hammel in the small town of Kosten in the province of Posen. He had six siblings who all moved to Berlin, where they all – apart from his sister Auguste, who married a banker – traded in ornamental trimmings and manufactured goods, linens and boot-making items.
Alfred’s mother Lina Zipora (Zipora was her religious name, meaning ‘little bird’) was born on 23 December 1849 in the provincial capital of Posen, the daughter of Josef Alexander, a merchant, and his wife Johanna Friedländer. She had two siblings who, like her parents, moved to Berlin: Salomon (known as Sally), a doctor and later ‘privy medical counsellor’, and Philipp, a stockbroker.
Bernhard Kessel and Lina Alexander were married on 3 August 1880 and moved into an apartment at Andreasstraße 59 in what is now Friedrichshain, where they ran a linens and ornamental trimmings shop.
On 16 June 1884, Alfred’s brother Erich was born; on 16 August 1885 his brother Felix, and on 7 December 1887, his sister Hedwig. While their mother Lina assisted in the shop on the ground floor, she in turn had the help of a maid in the apartment above, which did not necessarily indicate great wealth in those days. Although Lina was the only one who had a higher education – she attended the Lyceum school for girls in Posen – the children enjoyed an urbane middle-class upbringing. Their parents took them to the theatre; Alfred and Erich attended grammar school where they learned Latin, and all four children learned to play a musical instrument (Alfred, the violin) to entertain the family with home concerts.
At the time of his father’s early death, in 1902, Alfred was working in sales. Bernhard Kessel had provided well for his family and his widow Lina now became the owner of two apartment buildings. By 1913 the family could afford to move to an apartment at Apostel-Paulus-Straße 19 in the newly built Bayerisches Viertel quarter in Schöneberg.
Alfred’s sister Hedwig, who had married a clothing manufacturer named Arthur Rosenthal in 1907, lived nearby. Alfred served in the First World War as a ‘one-year volunteer’ and returned with a prosthetic leg. Henceforth he had to use a walking stick and received a disability pension.
Alfred and his brother Erich lived with their mother until the early 1930s. In the early 1920s, Erich had set up a wholesale florist and feather business together with a girlfriend, Anna Hahn, and another friend. In 1931, Alfred, Erich and Anna Hahn opened a ‘fineries shop’ and moved into an apartment at Neue Grünstraße 32. After the night of pogroms ("Kristallnacht") on 9-10 November 1938, they were forced to give up the shop but, as Anna was not Jewish and the main tenant, were all three able to remain in the apartment for the time being.
Alfred Kessel was arrested in his home and deported to Theresienstadt on 3 October 1942, where he was murdered on 12 November 1942.