Who was Alfred Landecker?

The biography Alfred Landecker. Ein deutsch-jüdisches Leben 1884 - 1942 (Alfred Landecker: A German-Jewish Life, 1884–1942), published in November 2024, tells the story of a man who saw himself as a patriotic and conscientious citizen. Yet, under Nazi rule, he was systematically marginalised, stripped of his rights, until every aspect of his existence was taken from him. Author Annette Prosinger also shines a light on Landecker’s children, who were at the heart of his life as a widowed father. His greatest concern was about protecting them from the terror of the Nazi regime.

East Prussia

Alfred Landecker was born on 4 June 1884 in Nordenburg, East Prussia — a town now called Krylowo, located in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. His father was a merchant and vinegar brewer, and his mother raised seven children: six sons and a daughter. Like most Jewish families in Nordenburg at the time, the Landeckers were well-integrated into local society. Following in the footsteps of his brothers, Alfred trained as a merchant. But unlike them, he longed for a change of scenery. In January 1913, he moved to Mannheim — a bustling contrast to the more sedate pace of life in East Prussia.

At the time, Mannheim was a forward-looking industrial powerhouse, with busy ports, large chemical factories, and thriving motor production. It was also a city where Jews were not only well integrated but played a significant role in its economic, social, and cultural life. Alfred Landecker quickly found both work and accommodation. However, by August 1914, he had already left Mannheim. The First World War had begun, and Landecker volunteered for military service. He returned from the front only in 1918 as a sergeant and a recipient of the Iron Cross Second Class. Like many Jewish soldiers who enlisted, Landecker believed that demonstrating his patriotism in this way would shield him from antisemitic hostility. It was a bitter realisation, some years later, that this hope had been nothing more than an illusion.

The 1920s, despite the economic and political upheavals of the time, were initially good years for Alfred Landecker. In Mannheim, he met Marie Geßner. Their differing faiths — she was Catholic, and he was Jewish — posed no obstacle to their relationship. The couple married, had three children, Emilie, Gerda, and Willi, and settled in a spacious flat in the Lindenhof district, near the banks of the Rhine. Landecker advanced to the position of authorised business representative at his company and managed to keep his job even during the worst years of the economic crises. The family enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle, with a nanny for the children, music lessons, and regular outings to concerts and the theatre.

But in 1928, tragedy struck: Marie suddenly died from an infection. For Alfred Landecker, it was a devastating blow, the full ramifications of which he could not yet foresee. With help from Marie’s sisters, he managed to maintain a loving family environment for his children. However, the stability he painstakingly rebuilt was shattered once again — and this time permanently — with the rise of the Nazi regime.

Exclusion

Like many in Mannheim, Alfred Landecker initially believed the Nazis would not hold on to power for long. Yet it took only a few months for the modern, tolerant city that had once welcomed him to transform into a place of military-marches and swastika banners, where Jews were increasingly ostracised and stripped of their rights.

Annette Prosinger’s biography vividly illustrates, through numerous examples, how the Nazis defamed, tormented, and drove Jewish people in Mannheim to despair, even in the early years of their regime. For those like Alfred Landecker — well-integrated, largely secular, and with little connection to their Jewish heritage — it was especially harrowing. They were forced to confront a feature of their identity they had long believed left behind. For Landecker, a decorated war veteran, the humiliation was profound. He was barred from holding any senior position, labelled “unwelcome” at theatres, concerts, and even his beloved men’s choir. Eventually, he was forced to wear the yellow star, a public marker of his Jewish identity.

He watched in horror as his children, now officially labelled “half-Jews,” saw their educational opportunities vanish. Despite their talent, Landecker was forced to withdraw them from grammar school. His anguish was compounded by worry for his youngest daughter, Gerda, who suffered from seizure-like episodes resembling epilepsy.

Under Nazi ideology, epilepsy was one of the conditions targeted for eradication through so-called “racial hygiene” measures. The risk that Gerda might fall victim to the Nazis’ euthanasia programme — facing forced sterilisation or even death — was terrifyingly real. Desperate to protect her, Landecker made the heartbreaking decision to send her away. He entrusted Gerda to her aunt, Vroni, in Bavaria. Vroni had close ties to the Nazis, a fact that Landecker hoped might ironically ensure Gerda’s safety.

Deportation

In 1940, the Nazi regional leaders (Gauleiter) of Baden and Saarpfalz decided to cleanse their regions "free of Jews", arresting and deporting a large number of Jewish residents to the internment camp at Gurs in southern France. More than 2,000 Jews were deported from Mannheim alone. Alfred Landecker was spared from deportation; as the husband of an “Aryan” woman, he was exempt from these measures. However, this exemption no longer held when the Nazis began systematically implementing their plans for the "Final Solution" in 1942 — the systematic extermination of Jews across Europe.

In April, Landecker received notification that he was to be sent on a “transport to the East”. The family decided to fight back. Together with his boss, Anton Pott — a steel construction entrepreneur who had become a friend to Landecker and did not want to lose his capable representative — they travelled to Berlin to appeal the order and, at the very least, secure a delay. Their desperate plea for mercy took them to the Reich Security Main Office, the very heart of the Nazi regime’s genocide operations. It was a reckless, high-risk endeavour that was doomed from the start. The Mannheim group didn’t even make it to the door of the office; they were swiftly turned away by the guards.

On 24 April 1942, Alfred Landecker was deported along with 29 other residents of Mannheim. His son, Willi, who had stayed with him in their apartment until the police arrived to take Landecker away, wanted to carry his father’s suitcase. But Alfred Landecker refused — he didn’t want anyone to associate his son with the yellow star that he himself was forced to wear. In his farewell letter to his three children, his greatest concern was for their future: “Be good people” he urged them. He had no illusions about his own fate: “If I should survive the end of this war, perhaps there will still be a glimmer of a future, but at the moment, the likelihood of that is 99 percent against me”.

Izbica

After a gruelling multi-day train journey, Alfred Landecker and around 600 fellow prisoners arrived in Izbica, in the eastern part of the “General Government,” the German-occupied area of Poland. The overcrowded town was a place of unimaginable suffering. It served as a transit ghetto for the Nazis — a kind of waiting room for death, from where prisoners were transported to the extermination camps of Sobibor, Belzec, or Treblinka.

The last sign of life Emilie, Gerda, and Willi Landecker received from their father was a letter in the summer of 1942, in which he asked them to send him food. The exact place of Alfred Landecker’s death remains uncertain. It could have been in Izbica, where so many perished from illness, exhaustion, or Nazi violence. But for those who survived Izbica, a violent death awaited them by suffocation in Sobibor or Belzec.

It was not until April 1949 that Emilie, Gerda, and Willi Landecker received a letter from the Mannheim district court officially confirming the death of their father. By then, the extermination camps of Sobibor and Belzec, where millions had been murdered, no longer existed. They had been dismantled in 1943, the grounds were levelled, and the area was then reforested. The Nazis had gone to great lengths to erase all traces of their atrocities.

After the war, Nordenburg, along with Königsberg, was administered by the Soviet Union. The town centre was dismantled, and since then, the area has remained a wasteland. Where the town hall, market square, and Landecker’s family home once stood, there is now an overgrown patch of land, swallowed by thick greenery. Alfred Landecker’s birthplace and probable place of death have been obscured, left to nature as if his story were never meant to be told.

But it has been told. The family was the first to ensure this. Landecker’s children preserved the memory of their father, and in his old age, his son Willi Landecker wrote the family chronicle. His recollections of his father serve as the basis of the biography presented here.

Commemoration

On 8 November 2023, Alfred Landecker was honoured with a small memorial. In Mannheim’s Lindenhof district, where his house once stood at Rheinaustraße 11, a Stolperstein now lies in his memory, commemorating his life and fate.

He is also the namesake of the Alfred Landecker Foundation, which was established by his descendants. Through the relationship of his eldest daughter, Emilie, with Albert Reimann Jr., three children were born. This connection brings together two very different family histories.

Reimann Jr., along with his father Albert Reimann Sr., managed the medium-sized chemical company “Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH” in Ludwigshafen. Whilst Emilie, as a so-called "half-Jew," not only endured daily exclusion by the Nazis but also lost her father due to their racial hatred, the Reimann’s were committed antisemites and Nazis. Today, members of the Reimann family are shareholders in the "JAB Holding Company," which emerged from the Benckiser legacy.

With the establishment of the Alfred Landecker Foundation, the descendants aim not only to preserve his memory but also to contribute to today addressing the Nazi past, to combat antisemitism, and to strengthen democracy.