Wolf Meier Ehrenreich was born in Bad Kissingen on September 9, 1880 as the son of the teacher Lazarus Ehrenreich and his wife Dina, née Lonnerstädter. His parents had moved to Bad Kissingen in the 1870s. In 1876, Meier’s father founded a “Curmäßigen und streng religiösen Privatkosttisch” (curative and strictly religious private eating place) which developed into the kosher restaurant and future Hotel and Sanatorium Ehrenreich, which was run by Wolf Meier’s sister Rifka and her husband Emil Jeidel till the end of the 1920s. Wolf Meier had two sisters, Rifka and Miriam, and a brother, Josua Moses, called Max.

Wolf Meier and his siblings were raised in a strictly religious manner, their mother was the daughter of a rabbi from Veitshöchheim, and the father worked as a teacher and cantor of the community in Bad Kissingen. Hotel Ehrenreich was very popular with Jewish spa guests because of being strictly kosher. In 1892, Wolf Meier’s father died, his mother kept on running the house until she also died in 1901. The “Geschwister Ehrenreich” (Ehrenreich siblings) went on running the house, first and foremost Rifka Ehrenreich did that – as mentioned – who married Emil Jeidel in 1903. 

Wolf Meier lived with his parents in Theresienstrasse and between 1890 and 1897 attended Kissingen Realschule which he finished successfully. Then he got a commercial education. He took part in World War I, was promoted to sergeant, and returned to his hometown for a short time at the end of the war. Since 1915, Wolf Meier Ehrenreich had been engaged to Margarete Hoffmann, a teacher who came from Breslau/ Wroclaw and lived in Berlin. She had converted to Jewry when they got engaged. In January 1919, Wolf Meier Ehrenreich moved to Berlin and married his fiancée in March. In December 1919, their daughter was born whom they named after her grandmother Dina. In 1925, their second child, Ernst Wilhelm, was born. The children who often spent their summer holidays with their grandparents in Bad Kissingen were raised as religious Jews. 

In 1920, Wolf Meier registered a trading company “Friedemann und Ehrenreich”, which was renamed “Ehrenreich & Co.” shortly after. It was a wholesale trading company that exported and imported goods of all kinds. In 1929, presumably because of the Great Depression, the wholesale business was given up and Wolf Meier Ehrenreich limited himself to representations. He worked for four firms that produced toiletries such as hairnets. (See Dr. Michaela Haas, Biografische Zusammenstellung, Stolpersteine in Berlin).

After the Nazi’s seizure of power, the economic situation of the family further deteriorated, and pressure was put on the couple to get divorced as Margarete was “Aryan”. After the November Pogrom 1938, Wolf Meier had to give up his representations. In December 1938, the couple got divorced. Wolf Meier had insisted on that because he thought it would thus be easier to protect his wife and children from discrimination and to secure the upkeep of the family by transferring his representations to Margarete. Afterwards they tried to get the permit for their emigration, supported by his brother-in-law who vouched for them but, for the time being, didn’t get a visa. 

Margarete Ehrenreich left the Jewish Community and adopted her maiden name again. The couple realized only later, that their divorce was based on a terrible misjudgment. At first Margarete continued two representations of her husband. Wolf Meier continued living in Wielandstrasse but rented other furnished rooms as a camouflage. After their divorce, the couple stayed in close contact. Their daughter Dina Ehrenreich had an apprenticeship in a photo studio in Berlin but had to give it up when her (Jewish) business was disbanded in the November of that year. In April 1939, she managed to flee to England at the age of 20. With the help of the Red Cross, Margarete Ehrenreich managed to stay in contact with her daughter. Their attempt to get a permit for emigrating to Palestine for Ernst within the framework of the Hakhshara (=preparation, enabling) failed as Ernst was regarded as too weak. (Ibid!)

In 1940, Wolf Meier was obliged to work. He could find a workplace in the Reich Association of Jews and first worked in the wardrobe, then in the administration of the cemetery, and later as a porter in the Collective Camp Große Hamburger Strasse 26. When the Ehrenreichs finally got a visa for Cuba, from where they had hoped to proceed to the USA, it was tragically too late as since October 1941 any kind of emigration was forbidden. 

As after the divorce, Wolf Meier was no longer under the protection of the so-called “privileged mixed marriage”, he was specified for deportation in 1943. At the beginning of March, the Gestapo searched for him at his official address in vain but some days later he was seized and arrested. In May 1943, he was deported to Theresienstadt together with 99 other Jews. 

The conditions there were disastrous and killed lots of the inmates. Wolf Meier was sent parcels by Margarete on a regular basis which he always acknowledged by writing a postcard. The last of these postcards received by Margarete was dated on October 26, 1944. When she got it, Wolf Meier was possibly no longer alive: On October 28, 1944, he was sent on to Auschwitz/ Oświęcim. Probably, he was – like most of this transport train – selected shortly after his arrival and killed in the gas chamber, as one can’t assume that a man of 64, who had been weakened by one and a half years in a Concentration Camp, was regarded as “fit for work”. (Ibid.)

Wolf Meier’s son Ernst also became a victim of Nazi tyranny. In Michaela Haas’ Berlin Stolperstein-Biography, she describes it graphically and in a detailed manner: “Ernst who is portrayed as a cheerful youth and Jazz enthusiast – he played the drums himself – cared as little as possible about the things banned for Jews and refused wearing the Star of David which was required of any Jew since September 1941. He started an apprenticeship as a metal worker, but was forced in 1942, at the age of 17, to work in the factory of Elektrogerätehersteller Ehrich & Graetz in Treptow where he had to work just like the other forced labourers in other arms companies.

On February 27, 1943, all the Jews still working in German factories were arrested at their workplace in a nationwide campaign. This so-called ‘Fabrikaktion’ (= factory action) also took place at ‘Ehrich & Graetz’, Ernst was arrested with the others. As a “Geltungsjude”, who is according to Nazi jargon someone who has one non-Jewish parent but was raised in a Jewish-religious way, he was arrested in Rosenstrasse 2-4, where partners of ‘Mischehen’ (mixed marriages) were also interned. Women and relations – Margarete being surely among them – met in spontaneous protest in front of the building and demanded the release of their partners and children for several days. Eventually, all of them were released, Ernst among them. Like all the others he was given a new kind of forced labour. This time, he was to take the corpses of suicides to the cold store in the Jewish hospital. He refused to do this and also reported to the Jewish job centre only after some time – a protest that obviously didn’t have any immediate consequences.

While Margarete was absent, Ernst housed two Jewish girls in hiding in the apartment in Wielandstrasse 31. The Gestapo got to know about it, presumably due to denunciation, and arrested the three of them on June 30, 1943. Ernst was taken to the police prison at Alexanderplatz and in the middle of July, was transferred to the youth education camp Großbeeren, then to the one near Wartenberg. From there he was taken back to the police prison on October 1. Margarete was not allowed to talk to him, she could only take fresh laundry to him. Between Christmas and New Year, she was told he was ill. On December 29, 1943, Ernst was brought into the Jewish Hospital in the state of being unconscious, in the same night at 2 A.M., he died. It remains unclear whether he died from the hunger typhus which he had contracted in the labour camp or from the maltreatment in the police prison – or both. His “residues”, a broken pair of glasses and some laundry was to be offset with the costs of his treatment (17.- Reichsmark) and the funeral (270.- RM). After the Chief Financial Directorate had had his ‘property’ estimated, (“1 set of used clothes 10.- RM”) and Margarete consented to meet the demands of the hospital, the things were “released to the Aryan mother” after more than half a year.” (Ibid.)

After the war, Wolf Meier’s former wife tried in vain to reverse the divorce. In 1948, she rejoined the Jewish Community. She died in Berlin in 1956. Her daughter Dina married a Jewish emigrant in England. Wolf Meier’s Kissingen relatives were lucky enough to escape from the Nazi terror in time. His younger sister Miriam had married in London at the beginning of the century. His brother Max and his wife Elfriede, née Wolkiser could flee to the USA with their two sons in 1939, and his oldest sister Rifka and her husband had died in Bad Kissingen in the 1920s. All of their four children survived. (ibid.)

(Most of the detailed information we owe to the Berlin Stolperstein-Biography of Michaela Haas.)