The Käthe and Adolf Maass family and their relationship with Kühne & Nagel
By Christoph Laue (Herford Municipal Archive and Herford Cell Wing Memorial)
The businessman Adolf Maass, born as Abraham Maass (change of first name 14.4.1919 by the Hamburg Senate) on 9.10.1875 in Borgholzhausen, joins the Bremen head office of the Kühne & Nagel forwarding company, founded in 1890, as an apprentice after completing his A-levels. He completed his apprenticeship after just one and a half years and was given his own department. In 1902, company founder August Kühne sent him to Hamburg to set up a branch. He has lived in Hamburg since January 31, 1902. In 1910, Adolf Maass becomes a partner in Kühne & Nagel.
On April 10, 1911, Käthe Elsbach and Adolf Maass marry in Herford and celebrate in Hanover. On September 23, 1913, Käthe Elsbach’s sister Ellie Elsbach and Carl Lipmann also celebrate their wedding in Herford. Both daughters move to Hamburg with their husbands - who become members of the supervisory board of Herforder Elsbach AG after the marriages. Carl Lipmann founded the natural casing import company Carl Lipmann & Co. in 1895, which quickly grew into the largest casing sorting plant and casing factory in Germany.
The Maass and Lipmann families acquire villas on Blumenstrasse and Bellevue in Winterhude and are active in Hamburg’s social and cultural life. Käthe and Adolf Maass continued to expand their library and art collection. Their children Herbert, born in 1912, Lisa, born in 1916, and Gerhart, born in 1918, attend secondary schools in Hamburg.
Herbert Maass graduated from the Johanneum in 1930 and studied law in Hamburg until his final exams in 1933. At the age of 21, he obtained his doctorate in law in Hamburg in 1934. He was refused appointment as a trainee lawyer. In the same year, he emigrated to England because of the anti-Jewish measures. He continued his studies in England in 1934 and worked as a lawyer there until 1940.
Their daughter Lisa finishes school in March 1933 at the Firgau School at Sierichstraße 53. She begins training as a baby nurse, but is no longer allowed to graduate in Germany. She passes her exams in England in 1936. Lisa Maass emigrates to New York in the USA in December 1938.
Gerhart Maass leaves the Heinrich-Hertz-Realgymnasium am Voßberg in 1936 without a high school diploma and begins a commercial apprenticeship. In the mid-1930s, he was sent to the Swedish branch of the Rudolf van der Walde company. After a stopover in Stockholm, he emigrated to Canada in 1938.
In 1928, a new partnership agreement is signed between Adolf Maass and Kühne & Nagel. When the company founder August Kühne died in 1932, his sons Alfred and Werner took over the business, with Alfred managing the Hamburg office and his brother remaining at the parent company in Bremen.
The shareholding relationship between Adolf Maass and Kühne & Nagel is newly agreed in October 1932: »Mr. Maass only has a share in the business of Kühne & Nagel in Hamburg …. … Mr. August Kühne has a 15% share in the profits and losses of the Hamburg business, Mr. Maass has a 45% share, and each of Mr. Alfred and Mr. Werner Kühne has a 20% share…«. Maass also signs an acknowledgment of debt to Kühne & Nagel Bremen: »Kühne & Nagel in Hamburg owed Kühne & Nagel in Bremen an amount of RM 122635.91, which was settled by book transfer. Of this sum, RM 55186.15 falls to my share. … The amount is to be repaid in the course of the next few years by means of a special withdrawal settlement.«
Adolf Maass has to leave Kühne & Nagel in 1933. Käthe Maass reports this to her son Herbert Maass as early as March: »I hope that Dad will make up his mind today.« On April 22, 1933, an agreement is concluded on the departure of Adolf Maass: »Mr. Adolf Maass leaves the aforementioned general partnerships as of April 1, 1933 … and no longer participates in the profits and losses of the company.« The commemorative publication for the 75th anniversary of Kühne & Nagel states: »In April 1933, Adolf Maass leaves the company to join a wholesale company owned by his relatives as a partner. Alfred and Werner Kühne continue to run the company as sole owners.«
Adolf Maass joins the import company of his brother-in-law Lipmann & Co, which is liquidated in 1938. In 1938, he also had to give up his position on the supervisory board of Elsbach AG in Herford. The family’s assets are frozen and a »Jewish property levy« of 35,000 RM is imposed. The interest due to the family from oil production near Celle has to be transferred to the Hamburg Chief Finance President.
After the Pogrom Night of 1938, Adolf Maass is arrested and held in Sachsenhausen concentration camp for several weeks. The Lipmann family emigrated with four children to Montevideo/Uruguay in 1940.
In 1938, Käthe and Adolf Maass send their three children a container each with household goods, furniture and part of their library. After initially trying to hold out in Hamburg, they tried everything in their power to obtain an exit visa at short notice in 1941, without success. In the summer of 1941, they had to sell their house in Blumenstraße for less than it was worth, with the proceeds going into a blocked account. They escaped a planned transport to Lodz on October 25, 1941. At the end of 1941, they are relocated to the »Jews’ house« at Bogenstraße 25. On July 15, 1942, they are ordered to be deported to Theresienstadt. The couple were deported from there to Auschwitz on May 15, 1944 and were probably murdered immediately upon arrival, which the children only found out in the course of 1945.
As a German in England, Herbert Maass was suspected of espionage in 1940, arrested and interned in a camp in Australia until 1942. He then joined the British Army and changed his name to Edward Arthur Marsden in 1943. Shortly before the end of the war in 1945, he was sent to India and returned to England in 1946. He became Registrar of the Supreme Court of the British Control Commission in 1947 and from 1955 worked at the Supreme Restitution Tribunal based in Herford.
Gerhart (then Gerry) Maass joins the Canadian army in 1942 and becomes a naturalized citizen in 1944. He served in France, Holland and Germany. Stationed in Oldenburg in 1945, he worked intensively on the restitution of the company in Herford and the restitution proceedings. He returned to Montreal in September 1946.
Since 2013, the salvaged remains of the Elsbach-Maass family library have been on display in the Elsbach House in Herford, the former headquarters of Elsbach AG. In 2018, after extensive research, an exhibition on the Elsbach family and company history was shown there, which was subsequently changed into a permanent exhibition at the same location.
Further information and documents at https://www.zellentrakt.de/elsbach-bibliothek.html .
