Richard Merzbach
1873 - 1945

Richard Joseph Merzbach was born in Frankfurt on the Main on October 26, 1873. He was the son of Emanuel Merzbach (1837-1895) and Marie Heim (1844-1927). His father came from one of Offenbach's most important Jewish banking families: Richard's grandfather Selig Siegmund Merzbach founded the "S. Merzbach" bank. The family ran this successful bank until the 1930s. Felix Heim, Marie's father, was also a banker.

Richard Merzbach had four siblings: Therese Schreiber (Frankfurt 1867-1948 Seattle), Sigismund Merzbach (1869-?), Felix Merzbach (Frankfurt 1872-1932 Karlsruhe) and Ernst Merzbach (1878-1932).

Together with his brothers Arnold and Salomon Merzbach, his father Emanuel Merzbach ran the company A. Merzbach, Bank- und Wechselgeschäft in Frankfurt at Zeil 37, which was later transformed into "A. Merzbach, Bankgeschäft GmbH". When Richard was born, the Merzbach family lived at Uhland street 11, in 1878 at Uhland street 39 and around 1890 at Rückert street 5. More than two thirds of the apartments in Uhland street, located in Frankfurt's Ostend district, were rented by Jewish families around this time, meaning that Richard Merzbach grew up in a very strongly Jewish environment. After the death of his father, Marie Merzbach, Richard's mother, became co-owner of the company, as did Mina (also Minna) Merzbach, née Schwarzschild, the widow of his uncle Arnold Merzbach, who died in 1896.

According to Mahlau's Frankfurt address book from 1900, Dr. Richard Merzbach lived at Gutleut street 95 as a trainee lawyer, as did his brother Felix. From 1901, the two lived together with their mother at Westend street 5. In 1908, Richard Merzbach married Gertrud Alexander (1886-1945), daughter of Siegfried Alexander and Hulda Holz, both of whom came from Königsberg in Prussia and were also Jewish. The couple had two daughters before the First World War: Hilde Birnbaum (1909-2003) and Edith Alice Lobe (1914-1993).

After their marriage, Richard Merzbach's family moved and from then on lived at Niedenau 51, while he had his law firm at Am Salzhaus 1. Even then, Richard Merzbach was very active in Frankfurt's Jewish community: He sat on the community committee in 1909, was second treasurer of the "Jewish Library and Reading Hall" association founded in 1905 and secretary of the "Association for the Distribution of Heating Materials to the Local Israelite Poor". At this time, his brother Felix was a merchant and co-owner of the company A. Merzbach, now located at Schiller street 16, and lived at Im Trutz Frankfurt 35, their mother at Westend steet 5.

Richard Merzbach and his wife lived at Niedenau 51 until 1936, and then at Westend street 21 until their emigration to the USA. In 1936, his daughter Edith Alice married Ludwig Loeb, who was born in Warburg in 1909 and had worked as a trainee lawyer in Düsseldorf in 1933. After their subsequent emigration to the USA, they changed their surname to Lobe. Both had two sons and lived in Seattle.

Dr. Richard Merzbach was admitted to the Frankfurt on the Main District Court as a lawyer in April 1900. At the time, he had his "office" at Am Salzhaus 1. However, after the First World War, Richard Merzbach's office was located at Kaiser street 11 according to the Frankfurt address books and at Kaiser street 58 from 1927 until his emigration in 1938. He was appointed notary in August 1920. As a lawyer admitted before 1914, he was allowed to continue practicing law after the beginning of the National Socialist dictatorship in January 1933. However, his notary's office was revoked in November 1935.

Richard Merzbach was very active in the Jewish community of Frankfurt on the Main after the First World War: for example, he sat on the community committee in 1919, was a member of the school committee of the Philanthropin, the most important Jewish school in Frankfurt, secretary of the "Gumpertzschen Siechenhaus" (Gumpertz' Infirmary) and the Minka von Goldschmidt-Rothschild Foundation as well as an assessor on the board of the "Jüdische Bibliothek und Lesehalle" (Jewish Library and Reading Hall) association.

Richard Merzbach was chairman of the 32-member community council of the Jewish community in Frankfurt on the Main for many years. He was also long-time chairman of the office of the Jewish community. Dr. Siegfried Katzenstein worked here for a time as one of its three secretaries. In 1927, for example, Richard Merzbach also chaired the Philanthropin school board, was secretary of the Gumpertzschen Siechenhaus and the Minka von Goldschmidt-Rothschild Foundation as well as chairman of the "Freisinniger Verein für Jüdisches Gemeindeleben" (Liberal Association for Jewish Community Life). Until 1930, he also sat on the board of the main synagogue as a delegate of the community council. But his brother Felix Merzbach was also committed to Jewish causes: In 1927, for example, he was the auditor of the Israelite Men's Health Insurance Fund, which had already been founded in 1738.

In addition to his work for the Philanthropin, Richard Merzbach also supported another famous Jewish educational institution: in 1931, together with his siblings, he donated the manuscript of a Jewish-German cookbook from family property to the Museum of Jewish Antiquities in Frankfurt's Fahrgasse.

Richard Merzbach was actively involved in Jewish affairs far beyond Frankfurt. In 1925, he was elected a member of the Prussian State Association of Jewish Communities. While the Frankfurt lawyer Dr. Eduard Baerwald was a member of the 15-member "Standing Committee" of the Prussian State Association, Merzbach was one of the deputies of this committee. In 1926, he also became a member of the "Liberal Education Committee" of the Prussian State Association, which dealt with issues such as Jewish school education. In 1931, Richard Merzbach was elected as a Liberal Party delegate from the Frankfurt on the Main constituency to the Association of the Prussian State Association of Jewish Communities.

Until his emigration in October 1938, Richard Merzbach worked as a lawyer and at the same time campaigned intensively for Jewish interests in Frankfurt on the Main and throughout Prussia.

The lawyer Dr. Richard Merzbach joined the Frankfurt on the Main section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club for the first time in 1910 (section report 1911, p. 28). The annual report of the Frankfurt section of the Alpine Club for 1918 states on page 8 that the lawyer Dr. Richard Merzbach, a lieutenant in the reserve, was killed in action or died in a military hospital. As there was only one lawyer with the name Richard Merzbach in Frankfurt in the years before and during the First World War, this appears to be a false report.

However, Richard Merzbach must have left the Alpine Club, as he is later listed as having joined in 1923 (on page 57 of the Frankfurt Section report for the years 1919-1924). Why Richard Merzbach left and rejoined is currently beyond our knowledge. We also do not know whether he left the section again in 1933 or was expelled by the section leadership after the introduction of the so-called "Aryan paragraph". As a former "front-line fighter", he could have remained in the association.

So far, we do not know whether and how Richard Merzbach participated in the life of the Frankfurt on the Main section because the sources we have consulted to date contain no information on this.

Dr. Richard Merzbach was able to continue working as a "former lawyer" during the first years of the Nazi dictatorship. His daughters Edith Alice, married name Lobe, and Hilde, married name Birnbaum, emigrated to the USA in 1933. He was stripped of his notary's office in November 1935. He finally emigrated to the USA together with his wife Trude (Gertrude) in October 1938, so that he was no longer affected by the professional ban imposed on him a month later. Merzbach lived with his family in Seattle. In August 1945, Richard Merzbach died as a result of an surgery, according to Aufbau of September 7, 1945. His wife Trude Merzbach died a few days later in Seattle from an overdose of morphine, as Zygmunt William Birnbaum reported.

Zygmunt William Birnbaum, Hilde's husband, who was married in 1940, wrote about the Merzbach family in a letter in December 1940:

"The essential facts are: Her name is Hilde Merzbach. I met her a few months ago in her father's apartment here. Her father, Dr. R. Merzbach, was an outstanding lawyer in Frankfurt on the Main, came out in time and settled with his family in Seattle. She spent the last year working in San Francisco and visiting here. Her background: a law degree from the German "Referendar", then a senior position at the "Etam" company in London. An attractive, clever, courageous girl, a good sportsman and a good companion. The family is excellent, the girl is a great person--by all accounts--we like each other very much. I don't think you can ask for more than that."

Hilde Birnbaum was granted US citizenship in February 1944. At the time of her parents' death in August 1945, she and her husband had two children. Zygmunt William Birnbaum wrote about Hilde's mother Gertrude Merzbach:

"She was lively, you could have a good conversation with her and she was a good listener. Only one quality was a little hard to bear: she lived with a set of constraints, a set of principles, a code of rigid rules that said what was right and what was wrong. It seemed to me that she had a kind of 'categorical imperative' that gave her character both its strength and its weakness."

Richard's sister Therese and her husband, the Jewish lawyer and notary Norbert Schreiber, who came from Schrimm in the Prussian province of Posen, were also able to emigrate from Höchst on the Main near Frankfurt to the USA and lived in Seattle (Washington), where Therese died in 1948 and Norbert in 1950. Norbert Schreiber was a friend of Dr. Julius Blau, the long-time chairman of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, who also came from the province of Posen, and had worked for Farbwerke Höchst and most recently in the law firm of his brother-in-law Richard Merzbach.