Auerbachstrasse 2, apartment building in Berlin.
Auerbachstraße got its name in 1898, in honor of idealistic author and ardent supporter of German unification, Berthold Auerbach, born Moyses Baruch Auerbacher. The gracious apartment house at number 2, called Nickel’sches Haus, was built a year later and still stands, a minute’s walk from the S-bahn station, not far from the edge of the Grunewald Forest and a lake.
In 1920, the building belonged to the Jewish community, from whom Ismar Freund bought it in 1921. His tenants, then, included government functionaries, attorneys and factory owners.1Blumenau-Nieselk, Jutta. Stolperstein Auerbachstraße 2. From the website of the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf District. Not much had changed by the time Freund’s nephew, Ismar David, a student at the Städtische Kunstgewerbe- und Handwerkerschule Berlin-Charlottenburg, moved in. As Berlin telephone books of 1931 and 1932 show, David’s neighbors were a solidly middle-class group: a city employee, a masseuse, a director, a business man, a sculptor, a banker, a purveyor of fine foods, a (graduate) engineer and two people of private means.
Seven years after David left for Jerusalem, author Frida Kalischer lived on the third floor and records show her rent (180 Reichsmark) paid to Elise Freund in Jerusalem. Some time in 1942, the National Socialist authorities struck Elise Freund’s name from the property owner registry. In December Frida Kalischer was deported. She perished in Auschwitz on New Year’s Day 1943.2 Ibid.
In 1938 Nazi administrators had changed the name of the street to Auerbacher Strasse, to disassociate it from its Jewish namesake. In November of 2012, the district authorities sought to right at least one wrong and decided (at the express wish of the area residents) to rename the street, Auerbachstrasse.3Auerbachstraße (ehem. Auerbacher Straße). From the website of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf District.
