Toni Salomon née Stadthagen

Toni Bertha Salomon née Stadthagen was born in Berlin on the 8th of July 1887 to Agnes née Jacobi (1864-1938) and the Justizrat Dr Julius Stadthagen (1855-1912) at Mauerstraße 80 in Mitte, the family moving on to an apartment at Zimmerstraße 94. Her mother Agnes was born in Hamburg, her father Julius, born in Berlin, was a practising lawyer at the Berlin Landgerichte (Regional Courts), with his office opposite the family apartment at Zimmerstraße 16-17. Among many relatives in the professions was her uncle, the distinguished Social Democratic (SPD) Reichstag Member Arthur Stadthagen (1857-1917).

Toni was the eldest of three siblings, her sister was Lilli (1891-1941/42) and her brother Paul (1893-1943), enjoying a warm relationship within a close family who moved in 1900 to Am Karlsbad 2 south of the Tiergarten. Unlike her siblings Toni did not train or study at university level, she was musical and literary, and worked as a Kindergarten assistant. Her father Julius was an amateur Egyptologist and had a collection of antiquities in the family apartment. Returning from a visit to Egypt in 1912, Julius died of a heart attack aboard ship on the 9th of March. Julius’s body was returned by train from Naples and he is buried at the Weißensee Cemetery in Berlin.

Toni married the neurologist Dr Ernst Oberndörffer (1876-1916) from Munich, on the 29th of September 1913 in Berlin, and their son Arnold was born on the 7th of August 1914. At the outbreak of the Great War (1914-18) Ernst left Berlin before the birth of his son, to serve in the German Army as a medical officer on the Western Front, where he received the Iron Cross 2nd class and Bavarian Military Merit Medal. In 1915 he transferred to the Ottoman Army and was appointed medical doctor to the staff of Field Marshal von der Goltz, Commander of the Ottoman Sixth Army in Mesopotamia. Ernst reorganised the military hospital in Baghdad along German lines, for which he was awarded the Iron Crescent. Ernst contracted epidemic typhus from a patient and on the 10th of March 1916 died in Baghdad, where he is buried in the Jewish Cemetery.

Toni, now a war widow, moved with her son Arnold and mother Agnes in 1916 to Hölderlinstraße 10 in the Westend neighbourhood of Charlottenburg. The family lived on the ground floor, with Agnes in her own apartment on the first floor. Toni’s sister Lilli and brother Paul would also raise their respective families nearby in the Westend.

Toni’s second marriage, on the 10th of July 1919, was to the physician Dr Julian Nathanblut (1877-1942). Born in St Petersburg in 1877, Julian had moved with his family to Warsaw and then to Berlin in 1883. Julian grew up in Berlin, studied medicine, gaining his doctorate from Leipzig University in 1906 and practised as a physician in Berlin. Toni and Julian divorced a year after their marriage with no children. Unable to treat patients within the public health system, due to antisemitic legislation after 1933, he emigrated to Belgium and subsequently to France.

Julian Nathanblut was deported from the Drancy Concentration Camp in France on the 28th of August 1942 to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camp, where he was murdered.

Toni’s third marriage on the 18th of April 1922 was to the Justitzrat Dr Philipp Salomon (1867-1941), a lawyer at the Kammergericht (High Court). A chess player and amateur pianist, Philipp became a close member of the extended family, playing the piano at family parties and accompanying his brother-in-law Hans Rehfisch (1891-1960) in song duets. Philipp was able to advise and assist the extended family with their legal needs.

Toni and Philipp’s daughter Evamarie was born on the 18th of September 1924, she proved to have learning disabilities and attended special schools. The families of Toni and her sister Lilli and brother Paul were close and supportive during the Weimar period. However, after Hitler came to power in 1933, Toni’s son Arnold, the eldest of his siblings and cousins, was unable to begin his university education in Germany to study medicine (due to a fixed percentage placed on the number of students of Jewish descent) and emigrated to the Netherlands. Arnold returned to Germany in 1936, suffering from a serious illness, to recover in a sanatorium at the spa town of Obernigk, Lower Silesia. Arnold died on the 16th of February 1937 and is buried at the Weißensee Cemetery in Berlin.

The Salomon family endured oppressive social conditions with the racial laws of the late 1930’s. The family moved in 1938 from Hölderlinstraße 10 to Württembergallee 8, their last address of free choice. Toni’s mother Agnes died on the 22nd of June 1938 and is buried in the Weißensee Cemetery next to her husband Julius. The family’s plans to emigrate to Palestine were delayed by Philipp’s ill health during the late 1930’s. Philipp died at the family home on the 27th of April 1941 of a heart attack and his ashes are interred at the Weißensee Cemetery.

On the 29th of November 1941 Toni’s younger sister Lilli Rehfisch was deported to the Jungfernhof Concentration Camp outside Riga, where she was murdered.

In 1942 Toni and her daughter Evamarie were forced to move to a building probably designated for Jews (a Judenhaus) at Maikowskistraße (Zillestraße) 107. They were deported together to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camp on the 11th of July 1942.

Toni and Evamarie Salomon were both murdered at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camp.

Toni’s brother Paul Stadthagen was deported to the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp on the 23rd of September 1942, where he was murdered.

Toni leaves no direct descendants but is remembered by the descendants of her younger siblings and is honoured for her integrity and love as a sister, mother and aunt. Her niece Beate Rehfisch remembered her as a central person in their extended family, possessing a warmth and generosity, an essential goodness.

This biography has been written by Toni’s great-nephew Stephen Duncan with the assistance of her great-great nephew Robert Duncan. London 2022. Toni Salomon’s Stolperstein has been sponsored by the descendants of her sister.

© Stephen Duncan

Sources: LAB-Landesarchiv Berlin; Czitrich-Stahl, Holger, Arthur Stadthagen: Anwalt der Armin und Rechtslehrer der Arbeiterbewegung (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2011); Unseren Gefallen Kameraden: Gedenkbuch für die im Weltkrieg gefallen Münchener Juden (München: Verlag der Schild, 1929) P. 80/227; BayHStA-Bayern Hauptstaatsarchiv; Barch PA-Bundesarchiv Abteilung Personenbezogenene Auskünfte Berlin-Reinickendorf; BLHA-Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv Potsdam; Arolsenarchiv

Weblinks to be inserted:

Lilli Rehfisch https://www.berlin.de/ba-charlottenburg-wilmersdorf/ueber-den-bezirk/geschichte/stolpersteine/artikel.1146516.php

Paul Stadthagen https://www.berlin.de/ba-charlottenburg-wilmersdorf/ueber-den-bezirk/geschichte/stolpersteine/artikel.179349.php

Beate Rehfisch https://www.berlin.de/ba-charlottenburg-wilmersdorf/ueber-den-bezirk/geschichte/stolpersteine/artikel.1146516.php