Munich Stories Gutman, Sofie & Emanuel
Lindwurmstraße 205, Department store Gutman
.“As part of the renovation work in our house in 2000, we discovered a note in the building files of the Munich local building commission: “belonged to the Jew Gutmann” and underneath a stamp with a swastika and the words “Munich – capital of the movement”,” explains the current owner of the house at Lindwurmstrasse 205.
“We suspected that great injustice had been done here in our house. Further research by the Sendling Initiative in Munich confirmed the sad certainty that the former owners Sofie and Emanuel Gutman had been disenfranchised and murdered by the National Socialists.”
Sofie (born Marx) came to Munich in 1901 at the age of 23 from Heilbronn and Emanuel Gutman in 1893 at the age of 20 from Gemmingen. The house in the Lindwurmstraße 205 was already under construction between 1897 and 1899 including stores in the basement and a courtyard. There was a restaurant dowstairs called “Frohsinn”.
Married since 1905, and with all civil rights to live in Munich, Sofie and Emanuel Gutman bought the house in the Lindwurmstraße 205 in 1910. They opened their department store called after their name in May 1912 to sell white and woolen goods.
Their business was on the Lindwurmstrasse but, according to the Memorial Book of the Munich Jews, Sofie and Emanuel Gutman lived in a home in the Nymphenburg area, on the southern driveway, in 1927. And from August 1931 they lived on Tengstrasse in Schwabing.
Three months after the Nazis came to power, they inmediatly organized a far-reaching boycott against Jewish merchants, doctors and lawyers in April 1933. In this light, the Gutmans were most probably forced to “sale” their department store to Helferich. Emanuel Gutman was arrested and taken to the Dachau concentration camp near Munich to be released again – supposedly blackmailed into accepting a deal to give up not only the business but their building as well. Emanuel Gutman came back from Dachau terminally ill. The department store in Sendling changed hands on April 1, 1934.
From the first of January 1939, a law resulted in the forced closure of Jewish businesses. In the same month, the protection of Jews tenants was lifted, as well as other laws that caused the isolation of Jews. On September 24 1939, the Gutmanns had to give up the radio and in May 1940 they got their telephone contract terminated.
From September 15 they have to wear the Jewish star. After changing addresses several times, Sofie and Emanuel Gutmann were expelled from Elisabethstrasse in September and they were forcibly admitted to the AH of the IKG Kaulbachstraße 65. Sofie was 63 years old and Emanuel was 68.
In March 1942, Sofie and Emanuel Gutmann were deported from the IKG nursing home to the camp in the Knorrstraße 148 in Milbertshofen. Three months later they were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp on June 23, 1942.
A total of 1,600 people were deported from Munich to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 40 transports. The Gutmans were with fifty other people in the 10th transport, from which only two persons survived. Emanuel Gutman was murdered in October 1943; he was 70 years old. Sofie Gutman was assassinated in October 1944; she was 66 years old.
Their commitment is remarkable. To remember Sofie and Emanuel Gutman, they had also placed two stumbling blocks laid on their private property.
