Adolf Fuld
1868 - 1939

Adolf Fuld was the son of Dr. Salomon Fuld (1825-1911) and Emma Fuld, née Abenheimer (1845-1924), who had married in Mannheim in 1867. He had two younger siblings: Auguste Edinger (1869-1920) and Moritz Ernst Fuld (1873-1955). His father, the Geheime Justizrat Salomon Fuld, worked as a lawyer in Frankfurt on the Main from 1848 to 1904 and was also a co-founder of the Juristische Gesellschaft der Frankfurter Anwälte (Law Society of Frankfurt Lawyers). His father was also active in Frankfurt's Jewish community. For example, in 1881 he was deputy chairman of the community's board, and as such he also sat on the board of the Jewish community's secondary and elementary school (Philanthropin) at Rechneigraben street 14. This school could also be attended by girls, who were taught in the "Höhere Töchterschule" (secondary school for girls), partly by female teachers. Salomon Fuld was also active in the Alliance Israélite Universelle, which stood up for persecuted Jews all over the world. He was even elected to the Alliance's Central Committee in 1883. He supported cultural institutions in Frankfurt, too. In 1867, for example, he donated the 694-volume Hebrew library of his late father, the Talmud scholar Aaron Moses Fuld, to the Frankfurt City Library. Adolf Fuld's mother Emma was involved in social work as well. She was on the board of the girls' home for Jewish girls at Rückert street 9. After her husband's death, she also donated 250 marks to the Alliance Israélite Universelle. At the time, this large sum was roughly equivalent to three months' wages for a worker.

In 1890, Adolf Fuld's sister Auguste married Otto Edinger (1856-1917), a merchant from Worms who lived in London. She died in Chelsea, London, in 1920. His brother, the physician Prof. Dr. Ernst Fuld, was married to Eva Selma Luise Scharfe, born in Halle in 1879, daughter of the Christian physician Dr. Traugott Ewald Scharfe (1837-1918). Ernst Fuld emigrated to Great Britain and in 1938 to New York, where he died in November 1955.

In 1880, Adolf Fuld married Margarethe Amalie Jeidels, born in Frankfurt on the Main, daughter of the art collector and bibliophile Julius Heinrich Jeidels (?-1902) and Anna Jeidels, née Niederhofheim, a native of Frankfurt, too. The marriage was childless. In 1896, Fuld lived in his parents' apartment at Hoch street 17. In 1913, he continued to have his office at Hoch street 17, where his now widowed mother Emma Fuld also lived, while he now lived at Moltke-Allee 4. Adolf Fuld was also committed to the Jewish community. For example, he donated a watercolor depicting a "Partie des alten Friedhofs am Börneplatz" (section of the old cemetery on Börneplatz) to the Jewish community of Frankfurt on the Main, according to issue 4 of the Gemeindeblatt der Israelitischen Gemeinde Frankfurt am Main (Jewish Community's municipal gazette) from 1930. Until the forced end of his professional activity as a lawyer in November 1938, he had his office in Hoch street, but now lived at Beethoven street 19.

Dr. Adolf Fuld was admitted to the Frankfurt on the Main Regional Court and subsequently to the Frankfurt on the Main Higher Regional Court from 1894 to 1903. He worked as a lawyer in the Fuld-Bearwald-Geiger law firm founded by his father at Hoch street 17. In June 1913, he was appointed a councillor of justice and in August 1920 a notary. As a lawyer who had already practiced before 1914, he was allowed to continue working after Hitler came to power in 1933, although no longer as a notary since June 1933.

Dr. Eduard Baerwald had been a member of the society since the German Empire, first in 1916 and again since 1920 on the board of the Jewish community of Frankfurt on the Main and later its deputy chairman for many years. He was the son of the former director of the Philanthropin Hermann Baerwald (1828-1907). The obituary in the August 1934 edition of the Gemeindeblatt der Israelitischen Gemeinde Frankfurt am Main (Jewish Community's municipal gazette) said of him:

"Mit Eduard Baerwald ist der Mann dahingegangen, in dem wir in berechtigtem Vertrauen einen Führer in schwerer Zeit erblickten, den die ganze Gemeinde ausnahmslos als den Bekenner verehrte, der in seiner heißen Liebe zu Deutschland sich jederzeit für dessen Ehre und Glück eingesetzt, der aber zugleich seinem angestammten Glauben in unvergleichlicher Treue angehangen und ihm schwerste Opfer gebacht [hatte]." (With Eduard Baerwald, the man has passed away in whom we saw a leader in difficult times with justified trust, whom the entire community revered without exception as a confessor, who in his ardent love for Germany was always committed to its honor and happiness, but who at the same time adhered to his ancestral faith with incomparable loyalty and [had] made the most difficult sacrifices for it.)

Like Fuld, Baerwald was also a friend of the mountains. In 1934, a report in the municipal gazette on Baerwald's death stated that he had been "von früher Jugend an bis in die letzten Jahre hinein ein begeisterter Wanderer und Bergsteiger" (an enthusiastic hiker and mountaineer from his early youth right up to his final years).

Dr. Adolf Fuld joined the Frankfurt on the Main section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club as early as 1895. From the "Mittheilungen des Deutschen und Oesterreichischen Alpenvereins", volume 1899, p. 247, we know that Adolf Fuld, together with his brother Dr. Moritz Ernst Fuld, undertook tours with mountain guides in the Ötztal Alps and the Valais Alps. In August 1899, Adolf Fuld was involved in a fatal glacier fall on the Otemma Glacier, which claimed the life of mountain guide Josef Reinstadler, while he and his brother survived unharmed. Adolf Fuld also reported on his mountain tours at an early stage, for example on an ascent of Piz Bernina in May 1899.

In 1907, his father Salomon Fuld acquired share certificates for the Taschachhaus worth 25 marks. He had become a member of the Frankfurt on the Main section in 1882, but only remained in the Section until 1904. He is no longer listed among the members in the annual report for 1905. In 1911, his wife, who was also not a member of the Frankfurt section at the time, donated 100 marks to the section for charitable purposes. The section donated this amount to the community of Lusern in South Tyrol, which had been badly damaged by fire. In 1912, Adolf Fuld donated 5 marks for the extension of the Gepatschhaus. He was still recruiting new members for the section in the early 1930s.

The Nachrichten-Blatt of the Frankfurt section noted that in 1931, together with the judicial councillor Dr. Ernst Moritz Heertz (1865-1937), also a Jewish lawyer and notary, he recommended their professional colleague lawyer and notary Dr. Alfred Grünebaum as a new member, as well as the businessman Heinrich Schröder together with Prof. Dr. Johannes Bernhard Heinrich, known as Hans Trumpler (1875-1955). Trumpler was non-Jewish and married to the Jewess Irmgard Brach (1890-1979). Both emigrated to the USA via Great Britain at the beginning of 1939 due to Nazi persecution. In March 1933, Fuld, together with Prof. Dr. Max Neisser, recommended the admission of the students Heinz Alexander and Klaus Neisser, Max Neisser's son, and in this way promoted the expansion of the student department. Prof. Dr. Max Neisser (1869-1938) was a full professor of hygiene and head of the Institute of Hygiene at the University of Frankfurt on the Main, but was removed from all offices by the National Socialists due to his Jewish origins.

As Adolf Fuld had already been a member of the section before 1914, he was able to remain in the Frankfurt on the Main section even after the amendment to the statutes in 1934 and the associated introduction of the so-called "Arierparagraf" (Aryan paragraph). Whether he resigned after 1933 or was later excluded from the section leadership cannot be determined at present due to a lack of sources.

Dr. Adolf Fuld was first registered as a lawyer with the District Court of Frankfurt on the Main from 1894 to 1903 and then with the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt on the Main from 1903. He was therefore able to continue practicing law after 1933 as a so-called "Altanwalt" (old lawyer). However, in June 1933, the National Socialists revoked his appointment as a notary, which he had held since 1920. After the November pogroms in 1938, he was banned from practising and removed from the list of lawyers with effect from December 1, 1938. Adolf Fuld died in Frankfurt on the Main on January 31, 1939.

His brother Prof. Ernst Fuld (1873-1955) managed to flee to Great Britain. In September 1938, he emigrated to the USA, where his son Albrecht Eugen Fuld (1908-1945) had been living since 1934. Ernst Fuld's son Wolfgang Adolf Fuld remained in Great Britain.

Adolf Fuld's mother-in-law Anna Jeidels was able to emigrate to Switzerland in 1938. She was helped by her son, the banker Otto Jeidels, who was Margarethe Amalie Fuld's brother.