Leni Henriette Weber

Leni was the fourth child and only daughter of David and Sophie Weber. After the brothers Wilhelm (born 1910) and Arthur (born 1912), the third son Emil died in 1915 already with eight months. Until 1932, the family lived in Lechhausen on Neuburger Strasse. Then they moved to 8 Waterloostrasse. This was also the address of her parents‘ menswear shop, where Leni would work as well.

Contrary to her older brothers, a reference to Leni’s Bat Mitzwa cannot be found in the civil registry of the Jewish Community. In the Synagogue on Halderstrasse, it was quite the custom to “confirm” girls. Presumably, the traditionally orthodox Weber family considered this as too liberal.

The first newsletter of the former Augsburg Rabbi Ernst Jacob (Pessach / April 1941) says, that Leni Weber and Richard Mendelsohn live in North Rhodesia (Presumably correctly “South Rhodesia”) and that Adele Mendelsohn and the Webers have moved to their children. Whether Leni succeeded to escape from Germany with her parents in 1939 or already in 1937 along with her husband, is unclear, as well as date and place of their marriage.

Richard Mendelsohn was co-owner of the retail-store for distinguished clothing for gentlemen and boys at 16 Philippine Welser-Strasse, founded by his father Heinrich in 1902. The business closed already in 1933 after the Nazis assumed power and after the father’s death. Richard first emigrated to Cape Town, later to Salisbury, South Rhodesia, and there, again, opened a clothing store. Like his brother-in-law Sigmund Weber, in World War II, he served in the South Rhodesian Army on the side of the Allies.

Leni and Richard had two sons: Henry Ronald (born February 28, 1944) and Michael Irvin (born January 20, 1946). In the sixties, the Mendelsohn family returned to Kapstadt. Leni’s parents had died, and Richard’s mother Adele had moved in 1947 to New York to her daughter Franziska.

Since, meanwhile, also the sons had left South Afrika, Richard and Leni returned to Germany around 1970. They settled in Frankfurt am Main.

Richard Mendelsohn died on October 12, 1984. The sons Henry Ronald, died on January 4, 2013 in Melbourne and Michael Irvin, died 2002 in New York, also preceded Leni. Leni Henriette Mendelsohn, née Weber, died in 2014.

Ruth Sander (translation by Michael Bernheim)