Siegmund Kaiser
1882 - 1942

Siegmund Kaiser was born in July 1882, the son of the Eschwege cloth manufacturer Moritz Kaiser (1835-1908) and his wife Henriette Kaiser, née Heilbrunn (1848-1891). After attending the Progymnasium in Eschwege, he transferred to the Gymnasium in Weilburg/Lahn and passed his Abitur there at Easter 1900.

In June 1923, Siegmund Kaiser married the Christian Dora Martha Kühn. She was born in Hartmannsdorf (near Chemnitz, Saxony) in April 1896. They had three children: their son Ulrich was born in July 1924, their daughter Ursula Dorothea in July 1925 and their youngest daughter Gisela in October 1927 in Frankfurt on the Main. The children were Protestant. At that time, the Kaiser family lived at Eichendorff street 31 (in Frankfurt's Dichterviertel district). From March 1940, the family was forced to live in a so-called "Jews' house" at Ranke street 9.

The Kaiser family moved to Augsburg (Bavaria) after the bombing of Frankfurt on the Main in 1943. The son Ulrich Kaiser then supported his mother and siblings as an agricultural worker on the Fugger Wellenburg estate.

After graduating from secondary school in Weilburg/Lahn in 1900, Siegmund Kaiser studied law at the universities of Munich, Berlin, Freiburg (im Breisgau) and Göttingen. In July 1903, he passed his first state examination in law and then worked as a trainee lawyer in Steinbach, Wiesbaden and Hanau. In 1909, he passed the second state examination in law in Berlin. From August 1909, Siegmund Kaiser was registered as a lawyer at Frankfurt on the Main District Court. According to the Frankfurt address book of 1910, he had his office at Kaiser street 3, while he lived at Blumen street 9.

From 1914 to 1918, Siegmund Kaiser did military service as a front-line soldier and was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class in 1917. After the First World War, he reopened a law firm at Kaiser street 6, but now lived at Hoch street 12. In June 1923, Siegmund Kaiser was appointed notary. However, the National Socialists stripped him of his notary's office in June 1933, while he was allowed to continue working as a lawyer as a former "Frontkämpfer" (front-line fighter). In 1932--and until 1938, Siegmund Kaiser's office was located at Taunus street 52-60. During this period, he lived at Eichendorff street 37 in the Dichterviertel district of Frankfurt. For the first time in 1939, there is no longer an entry for Siegmund Kaiser in the Frankfurt directories. After being disbarred, he worked as a so-called "Konsulent" (consultant) until his arrest in July 1942 and was therefore only allowed to provide legal services to Jews.

Siegmund Kaiser joined the Frankfurt on the Main section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club in 1920. We do not yet know how he participated in the life of the section. As a so-called "Frontkämpfer" (front-line fighter), he could have remained a member of the section after the introduction of the so-called "Arierparagraf" (Aryan paragraph). Whether he nevertheless left the section in 1933 or was expelled is beyond our knowledge for the time being.

As a so-called "Frontkämpfer" (front-line fighter), Siegmund Kaiser was still able to work as a lawyer after the National Socialists came to power in January 1933. However, he was stripped of his notary's office already in June 1933. During the November pogroms of 1938, Siegmund Kaiser was arrested and deported to Dachau concentration camp, from where he was released on December 29, 1938. On December 1, 1938, his license to practice law was revoked. After this time, Siegmund Kaiser was only able to work as a so-called "legal consultant" for Jewish clients. His efforts to emigrate to Bolivia failed.

The Frankfurt Gestapo arrested him in July 1942 and transferred him to Buchenwald concentration camp three months later in October. From there, he was deported to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp in November 1942 and murdered there at the end of December 1942. His son Ulrich was forcibly removed from the Goethe Gymnasium in Frankfurt on the Main in August 1942 as a so-called "Mischling 1. Grades" and was therefore unable to graduate from high school.

Siegmund Kaiser's non-Jewish wife Dora Kaiser and their three children survived the persecution. After the Second World War, Ulrich Kaiser worked temporarily as an interpreter for the French station commander in Bregenz (Vorarlberg, Austria). The Kaisers emigrated to Argentina via Switzerland and lived in Buenos Aires from July 1947. Dora Kaiser received a widow's pension from West Germany retroactively to November 1, 1953 because of the murder of her husband Siegmund Kaiser. She died in Buenos Aires (Argentina) in December 1983. Their daughter Gisela Kaiser married Peter S. Wood and later lived with her two children in Milwaukee on Lake Michigan (Wisconsin, USA).