by | Mar 7, 2023

Jewish life in Harxheim: Johanna Mayer

Johanna Mayer was born in Harxheim on June 9, 1909. She spent her school years in Harxheim and Mainz.

Harxheim elementary school, ca. 1920, grades 1910 to 1913. Herta (1913, 2nd row, 3rd from right) and Johanna (1910, 3rd row, 3rd from right, with hands on Herta’s shoulders).

Image source: Collection Rüdiger Gottwald

She lived with her mother at Hegelstraße 7 in Frankfurt until she left the country. In 1936 she was maid of honor at the wedding of her brother Fritz to Karola in Frankfurt. Johanna left Germany on the liner Hamburg on November 25, 1937, bound for New York. She arrived there on December 2. She moved into the apartment of the couple Gustav and Rose Halle, with whom her sister Sara and her husband Gerhard Zapun were already living. By profession, she was an office worker. Hannah, as she now called herself, later married Saul Hahn; the marriage remained childless. Johanna passed away in New York. 1) 2) 3) 4) 5)

References:

1) Archiv der Verbandsgemeinde Bodenheim, Personenstandsregister der Mairie Harxheim-Gau-Bischofsheim; Standesamtsregister Harxheim.

2) Stadtarchiv Frankfurt/M., Standesamtsregister.

3) HHStA Wiesbaden 518-77557.

4) United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1940. Taken from www.ancenstry.de. (02/2023).

5) Information from Thomas Mayer (02/2023).