Hermann and Mathilde Loeb




Hermann Loeb was born in Stuttgart, Germany, on May 30, 1878.  He had four brothers. In 1904 he married Mathilde Straus, daughter of Isaac Straus and Rosalie Uhlmann Straus. Mathilde had six siblings, two of whom had died in infancy, and at least one or two who died in the Holocaust.

Hermann and Mathilde had one child, Dora, my mother, born in 1905. Complications in childbirth prevented Mathilde from having additional children. To my knowledge she did not go to college or work in Germany as her husband provided a very comfortable life for the family.

Hermann and his brothers owned a large textile mill in Stuttgart, named “Gebruder Loeb.”  Its products were sold all over Europe and the United States. Before World War I, Hermann used to make a yearly sales trip to the United States. In April 1912 he was in Southampton, England, seeking passage on a liner making its maiden voyage. Luckily, he was unable to secure passage, sailing to the U.S. on the General Grant rather than on the Titanic.

By 1938 the other four brothers had either emigrated from Germany or had died so that Hermann was the only brother left to operate the factory. During the Kristallnacht pogrom, November 9-10, Hermann was arrested during a roundup of Jews and wastransferred from Stuttgart to Dachau, an internment camp for political prisoners, which later became a brutal Nazi concentration camp.He was later released. On July 1, 1939, the factory was seized by the Nazis who took over the family’s factory and sent over one of their lackeys to take charge. “My grandfather had to send a letter to customers thanking them for their patronage and introducing them to the new owner,” recalls his grandson, Warren Heilbronner. The business was operated under the Nazis until 1945 when it was destroyed by the RAF.

By May 1941, Hermann had been arrested and released twice more. He and Mathilde, forced to move twice into smaller and smaller quarters, were grateful for the assistance provided by Marie Schied, the maid who had worked for Dora. “She hated the Nazis,” says Warren. “When our family left for America, Marie returned to be with her own family living in a small village in the Black Forest. But she would occasionally sneak into Stuttgart and bring food to my grandparents, who otherwise would have had very little to eat. She took great risks to do this. If she had been caught, she would have been shot.”

Hermann had applied to emigrate to the U.S. early in 1938. Finally, in early April 1941, he and Mathilde received an exit number. On May 26, 1941, they became the second to last Jewish couple allowed to leave before the U.S. shut down its consulate in Stuttgart. Flying to Madrid and traveling by train to Lisbon, they obtained passage to the U.S. on a Portuguese ship. They were allowed to take only six suitcases between them, all that remained of the beautiful possessions they once owned.

Once in the U.S., they travelled to Perry, New York, and moved in with their daughter and son-in-law, Dora and Harry Heilbronner, and grandchildren. At 63, and with heart failure, he did not work. When he and his wife began to receive reparation payments from the German government, they were able to move into their own apartment, above a couple who owned a dry cleaning business. Mathilde, very good with needle and thread, began to make clothing repairs for the business as well as for private clients. In this way, she built up a nice little business which kept her busy even after Hermann’s death in August 1957. She continued to receive German reparations until her death on March 7, 1972.

Written by their Grandson, Warren Heilbronner