Max Salomon
1884 - 1961

Max Salomon was born on November 3, 1884 in Frankfurt on the Main as the youngest child of the Jewish stockbroker Emil Karl Salomon (1852-1933) and Hilda Salomon, née Mayerfeld (1855-1934). Max had three siblings: Alfred Simon Salomon (born 1879 in Mayence), Adolf Salomon/Adolphe Sandersen (Mayence 1880-1969 Aspen/Colorado) and Bella Babette Bertheim (Frankfurt 1883-1974 Frankfurt).

Hilda Mayerfeld came from Homberg/Ohm and was the daughter of David Mayerfeld and Hannchen Bacharach (from Neustadt). She had five siblings who were also born in Homberg: Dorah (born 1846), Emma (born 1850), Salomon (1852), Elias (born 1856) and Maximilian (born 1858). Her father David Mayerfeld was chairman of the Jewish community in Homberg/Ohm around 1860.

Max Salomon went to the Goethe gymnasium in Frankfurt on the Main and graduated from there at Easter 1903. His family lived at Mainzer Landstraße 1 at the time, but later moved to Guiollettstraße 8 and finally moved to Feldbergstraße 38 in April 1913, where Max Salomon's parents lived until their death.

Max Salomon married the Old Catholic Elsbeth (also Katharine Elsbeth) Schellens from Zabern in Alsace in May 1914. She was the daughter of the former senior teacher Professor Dr. Jakob Schellens (born in Neersen in 1843) and Katharina Schellens, née Hofmann. Elsbeth and Max Salomon had three children, who were baptized Catholic: Emma Judith (born 1915), Ulrich (born 1919) and Agnes (1921-2005). The family first lived at Holzhausen street 11 and then at Landvogt street 4 until they moved to Elberfeld in 1925. The family lost a lot of old furniture and works of art in a fire in the house, but escaped without further damage. After returning to Frankfurt in 1934, the Salomons lived at Eppsteiner street 45.

Max Salomon studied law and received his doctorate in law with a thesis on the foundations of legal philosophy, which was published by Dr. Walther Rothschild Berlin and Leipzig in 1919. During his legal clerkship, he worked for four months as a trainee at the Mayerfeld & Co. bank in Frankfurt on the Main. From March 1913, Dr. Max Salomon worked for Disconto Gesellschaft (D-G) in Frankfurt on the recommendation of the mayor of Homburg, Dr. Ernst Ritter von Marx (1869-1944). During the First World War, he worked in various cases as a state-appointed administrator of confiscated "enemy assets".

In March 1919, Max Salomon was appointed authorized signatory of the Frankfurt branch of D-G. His internal assessment by the branch management was quite positive: "[Max Salomon] hat sich in seine Stellung gut eingearbeitet und sich zu einem wertvollen Mitarbeiter entwickelt. Seine gute Allgemeinbildung und seine Vertrautheit mit den Frankfurter Verhältnissen kommen ihm bei seiner Tätigkeit sehr zustatten." (Max Salomon has familiarized himself well with his position and has developed into a valuable employee. His good general education and his familiarity with the Frankfurt conditions are of great benefit to him in his work.)

In December 1921, he was appointed deputy director of the branch at Rossmarkt 18, before taking over the internal management of the Elberfeld branch of D-G in 1925. From 1921 to 1924, he held a stake in Lederwerke Friedrichsdorf A.G., a company in which only family members held shares and whose supervisory board also consisted solely of family members, such as his brother Dr. Adolf Salomon and the Frankfurt banker Anton Mayerfeld, who had been a member of the Frankfurt section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club since 1893. In July 1929, Max Salomon finally became director of the Erfurt branch and remained so even after the merger of Disconto Gesellschaft with Deutsche Bank.

When the National Socialists came to power in the German Reich in January 1933, the situation for director Salomon changed quite quickly. As early as December 1933, a memo on the Erfurt branch of Deutsche Bank stated:

"Mit Herrn Direktor Russell habe ich heute die Erfurter Personalverhältnisse besprochen. Da neben ihm Herr Dr. Salomon als Mitleiter der Filiale und die beiden nächsten Herren Kahn und Hess Nicht-Arier sind, ist es nach Ansicht von Herrn Dr. Russell unumgänglich, in absehbarer Zeit – darunter versteht er etwa das Frühjahr [des] nächsten Jahres – eine Aenderung eintreten zu lassen. Ein akuter Anlass zu sofortigen Massnahmen ist nicht gegeben, obwohl nicht nur hie und da aus dem Betriebe, sondern auch aus der Kundschaft an der derzeitigen Besetzung der Filiale Kritik geübt wird. Herr Dr. Salomon ist in einem nach unseren Begriffen pensionsfähigen Alter, hat aber in der letzten Zeit familiär viel Unglück gehabt, sodass Herr Russell es auch aus menschlichen Gründen für richtig hält, im Augenblick nichts zu unternehmen." (I discussed the Erfurt personnel situation with Director Russell today. Since Dr. Salomon, as co-manager of the branch, and the next two managers, Mr. Kahn and Mr. Hess, are non-Aryans, Dr. Russell believes that a change is inevitable in the foreseeable future - by which he means around spring [of] next year. There is no urgent need for immediate measures, although criticism of the current staffing of the branch has been voiced here and there, not only by the company but also by customers. Dr. Salomon is of an age to retire by our standards, but has had a lot of misfortune in his family recently, so that Mr. Russell also considers it right for human reasons not to take any action at the moment.)

In fact, Deutsche Bank gave Max Salomon early retirement in the summer of 1934 with effect from January 1, 1935, but granted him a transitional allowance, a relocation allowance and an annual payment of RM 600 per child until they reached the age of 21. Dr. Max Salomon tried to get a job, but all attempts failed - one of them due to bad experiences with his brother Dr. Adolf Salomon.

Dr. Max Salomon joined the Frankfurt on the Main section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club in 1905. In 1922, his wife Katharine Elsbeth Salomon also became a member of this section. Max Salomon received the silver badge for twenty-five years of membership in 1930. He therefore remained a member of the Frankfurt section despite moving to Elberfeld and later Erfurt. Accordingly, Max Salomon is neither listed as a member nor as a guest in the Elberfeld membership directory of January 1, 1927.

The way in which Max Salomon participated in the life of the Frankfurt section before and after the First World War cannot be determined at present due to a lack of relevant sources. However, the files that have been consulted do reveal that the young Salomon family spent a vacation in the summer of 1920 in the hilltop village of Bernbach near Bad Herrenalb in the northern Black Forest. This clearly shows their closeness to nature. Unfortunately, we have not yet found any documents that demonstrate hikes in the Alps, for example in the Frankfurt section area, or in the various German low mountain ranges. We are also currently unable to say whether Max Salomon left the Frankfurt on the Main section in 1933 or was expelled. As he had already joined before 1914, he could have remained a member despite the introduction of the so-called "Aryan paragraph" in 1934.

Dr. Max Salomon was appointed co-manager of the local branch of Disconto-Gesellschaft in Erfurt in 1929. He remained so even after the merger of Disconto Gesellschaft and Deutsche Bank. However, after the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship, he was retired at the end of 1934 at the age of 50 due to his Jewish descent. In mid-1934, the Salomon family returned to Frankfurt on the Main, where they had lived until 1925. According to the Frankfurt address book of 1935, the family of Dr. Max Salomon, "Bankdirekt. a. D.", lived at Eppsteiner street 45, second floor, not far from the Westend synagogue. Ten years earlier, they had lived in Dornbusch at Landvogt street 4.

In November 1938, Max Salomon was arrested during the November pogroms and deported to Buchenwald concentration camp. After his release on December 20, 1938, he organized his emigration. He was finally able to leave for Great Britain in April 1939. His non-Jewish wife Elsbeth Salomon and their three children Judith, Ulrich and Agnes remained in Frankfurt on the Main for the time being. They emigrated to the USA in May 1941 and went to Great Britain after the end of the war. There, Max Salomon changed his surname to Shellens. He died in Plymouth in February 1961.

His brother Dr. Adolf Salomon, later Adolphe Sandersen, also survived persecution. After the Second World War, he lived in the USA in Aspen, Colorado, where he died in 1969. His son Gerhard Ludwig, later Gerard Louis Sandersen, born in 1910, only outlived his father by one year, as he died in Denver, Colorado, in 1970. His daughter Elfriede Irene Lederman, born in 1919, also died in the USA, in New Preston/Connecticut in 1967.