personal data


Apolant Emma

Surname
Apolant
Birth Name
Wolff
First Name
Emma (Emmy)
Date of Birth
28.09.1872
Place of birth
Posen
Other family members

Parents: Siegmund und Ida Wolff
Spouse Dr. Edgar Apolant sen.
Children: Edgar Apolant jun. (Siegmund), Eva married Schröder
Sister in law: Ella Apolant

Address

Bismarckstraße 20/22, later Menzelstraße 8

Profession
manager of sanatorium
Emigration/Deportation
Date of death
Place of death

biography


Emma Apolant, née Wolff, was born on September 28, 1872 as the daughter of the banker and Kommerzienrat (honorary title for a merchant) Siegmund Wolff and his wife Ida in Posen. She married Edgar Apolant senior in Stettin and had two children with him who were both also born in Posen: Edgar Sigmund jr. (*1894) and Eva-Luise (*1898). Emma’s husband worked as an assistant physician and consultant in various hospitals in Posen and Berlin. Among other postings he worked with Prof. Hiss in Charité clinic in Berlin and got his training as a specialist for internal medicine there. Later he opened his own successful doctor’s office in Kaiserallee 23 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. He shortly mad a name of himself as an excellent doctor. Emma Apolant and her family converted to Protestantism. 

In 1903 the family moved to Bad Kissingen.

In 1906, Emma’s husband was appointed ‘Geheimer Sanitätsrat’ (honorary title for a doctor) and in the same year he had Kurhaus Dr. Apolant built, a sanatorium for internal diseases and diet cures, which he named after himself. The three-story building was built in a baroque art nouveau style according to the plans of architect Paul Schultze-Naumburg. Because of increasing demand an even grander building was built next to it in 1912/13. In the next decades, Sanatorium Apolant developed into the presumably most modern and clearly structured sanatorium of the spa town. Dr. Benno Latz who was the medical director of ‘Apolant’ later, described the sanatorium “as a model institution that has contributed a lot to founding the prestige of German science and hospitality in the world. The magnificent spacious building was the ideal of any owner of such an institution. All wishes, even the ones of the most demanding guest, were fulfilled. Nothing had been forgotten that could guarantee continual joy for the sojourn of people seeking recreation. Guest rooms, lounges, bathrooms, the kitchens, the garden, the verandas, the doctors’ consulting and waiting rooms were perfectly fitted. Expediency as well as taste were combined to form a harmonious ensemble that was testimony of the high culture of the Apolant family. Haus Apolant was not just one of a lot of guesthouses and boardinghouses of a spa, but it was something special, of which Bad Kissingen rightly could have been proud.” (Sta WÜ: Wiedergutmachungsbehörde IV A 1928, quoted and evaluated by Hans-Jürgen Beck, Bad Kissingen war unsere Heimat) In all those years, Apolant Sanatorium was only open in the Summer months from March 1 to October 31. The family continued to spend the winter in Berlin, where Edgar Apolant sen. practiced as a successful physician in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. 

After Emma’s husband had died in 1929, her son Dr. Edgar Apolant took over the medical management of the sanatorium, while it was Emma Apolant’s job to manage the hotel. Dr. Benno Latz describes her as “a born manager of a sanatorium, she combined the characteristics of a vigorous, thrifty housekeeper, who was well aware of having to care for 150 patients and employees […], with a rarely found heart-felt kindness, which enabled her to accomplish the most difficult social tasks.” After 1933, Emma Apolant found herself increasingly confronted with the restrictions imposed by the National Socialists. “The Nazis of Bad Kissingen – as Dr. Kurt Hasse, a guest for many years, states – ruined “the sanatorium the management of which had been exemplary before”. Jewish guests who had visited for many years were massively put under pressure, “Jewish spa guests were expelled from the spa gardens, swimming baths, restaurants, destinations for excursions. Our Christian and foreign guests were treated likewise, they were infamously harassed, asked why they stayed in a Jewish house, threatened that in future they would be treated like Jews if they wanted to use the facilities of the spa (baths, drinking cures). [...] Again and again groups of people turned up to control the cleanliness of the kitchen, to taste the food for the employees, to control the medical conditions of the swimmings baths. Continously, there were disturbances to the running of the establishment. In most of the cases performed in a way that the guests got to know about them and were intimidated with the aim to make them leave the town or move to a different (Aryan) house.” (according to Dr. Benno Latz) 

In spring 1938, Emma Apolant was forced by order of the town council, to attach big signs on the outside of the house and inside the hall with “Jewish House” written on them. Finally, by Ocotober 1938 her concession was entirely annulated. Emma Apolant kept trying till the very end to keep the house and in 1939 even tried to get another concession – in vain. Helplessly she was forced to witness from Berlin, how Sanatorium Apolant was foreclosed at a ludicrously small price to Bayerische Vereinsbank. According to a lawyer in the redress procedures (Wiedergutmachungsverfahren), she was “sitting in Berlin, physically and mentally broken, deprived of any means, and didn’t have the chance to go to Kissingen, especially as she had been told that she would be arrested as soon as she appeared in Bad Kissingen.” (Sta Wü: Wiedergutmachungsbehörde IV A 1928, quoted according to H.-J. Beck)

Emma Apolant decided to leave Germany and in July 1941 was able to emigrate from Berlin via Barcelona to the USA where her son Edgar had been living since 1936. Sie died in New York in December 1948 at the age of 76.

11_Sanatorium-Dr.-Apolant
Advertisement in the Bad Kissinger address book 1928/30
                           
11_Emmy-Apolant-Todesanzeige
Obituary notice in "Aufbau", December 17th, 1948


References


Hans-Jügen Beck, Kissingen war unsere Heimat
- Sta Wü: Nachlass Deeg 96
- Sta Wü: Wiedergutmachungsbehörde IV A 1928
- SBK, C 57 Konzessionierung der jüdischen Kurheime
Meldeakten Stadt Bad Kissingen
Datenbank German Jews 1933 One-Step Search Resultsexterner Link
Datenbank Ancestry, New York, Passagierlisten, 1820-195externer Link7
Datenbank Ancestry, New York, bundesstaatliche und föderale Einbürgerungsregister, 1794-1943externer Link
Datenbank Ancestry, New York, Sterbeindex, 1852-1956externer Link

Photo credits


Werbeannonce: Kissinger Adressbuch 1925/27 © Stadtarchiv Bad Kissingen
© Todesanzeige im "Aufbau", 17.12.1948, S. 33 (225/729)externer Link



Back