Elisabeth Heims (born July 25, 1895, in Berlin) decended from the Heymann family, mostly lectures at universities in Berlin. Her father was Paul Heims-Heymann, university professor and laryngologist in Berlin, and her mother Adele Heims, née Josephy. She had two siblings, Eduard, born November 28, 1884 in Berlin, who emigrated to California in 1937 and died there in 1964, and Fritz, born in Berlin in 1887, who died in the Black Forest in 1917.
Her family left the Jewish community in 1905; later the family changed the Jewish-sounding surname to Heims.
Probably in 1923, Elisabeth Heims met the Jewish business lawyer Alexander Dünkelsbühler from Munich, who was 20 years her senior. She moved to Munich on February 23, 1924. Although Alexander had been separated from his wife Eleonore Sporner since 1918, Eleonore did not agree to a divorce. Therefore, Elisabeth Heims and Alexander Dünkelsbühler could not marry. Contrary to all social rules, on December 1, 1925, they found an apartment to share at Arcisstrasse 14 (today Katharina-von-Bora-Strasse 10), into an apartment which also offered space for the law firm.
Elisabeth Heims was Dünkelsbühler’s closest collaborator. She organized the law office with one or two employees. For seven years, the couple lived on the second floor of the house, which belonged to the mathematics professor Alfred Pringsheim (father-in-law of Thomas Mann), who lived right next door.
The „seizure of power“ by the National Socialists fundamentally changed the couple’s lives. Because he had been a soldier in the First World War, Alexander Dünkelsbühler was initially allowed to continue working as a lawyer.
To make room for a monumental administrative building, the NSDAP forced Alfred Pringsheim to sell the property. Therefore, the apartment and law firm had to be moved to Akademiestrasse 5. But the boycott against the Jews did its work. The firm’s income decreased noticeably, and more and more clients hired an „Aryan“ lawyer. After the enactment of the „Nuremberg Race Laws“, Alexander Dünkelsbühler saw no future for himself. On September 24, 1935, he took his own life in Dresden.
Elisabeth remained in the apartment until December 31, 1935, moved for two weeks to the Pension Siebert at Kaulbachstrasse 22a, and then found accomodation with Dr. Roßnitz at Äussere Prinzregentenstrasse 25, later with Dr. Rosenbaum at Hohenzollernstrasse 8.
In 1938, Elisabeth Heims joined the Quakers. During the Nazi era, the community supported Jews fleeing Germany. The main contact persons for the Quakers in Munich were the physicist Dr. Rudolf Cohen, as well as his wife, the physician Dr. Annemarie Cohen, who had been close friends of Alexander. Elisabeth Heims helped them as much as she could. On November 1, 1938, she found lodging at Julius and Helene Rapp´s apartment in Bauerstrasse 22. After their emigration September 1, 1939, Elisabeth took care of Flora Böhm (see article), Helene Rapp’s mother, and took in old Jewish people needed care. From 1939 until its dissolution by the Gestapo in March 1941, fifteen people lived in the „small private retirement home“, as Annemarie Cohen called it.
From March 21 to March 28, 1941, Flora Böhm and Elisabeth Heims had to move to the former apartment of the Haimann family at Martiusstrasse 8. Flora Böhm, Rosa Bechhöfer, Simon Blum and Max Steinmeier (see articles) came with them from Bauerstrasse 22 to Martiusstrasse 8. They all had to leave Martiusstrasse 8 on March 28, 1941.
After short stays in the Jewish old people’s home at Mathildenstrasse 8/9 and Frundsbergstrasse 8, Elisabeth Heims had to do forced labor in the Lohhof flax roastery from August 1941 onward. As deputy camp director, she primarily cared for the younger Jewish forced laborers. Although her brother Eduard, who lived in the USA, provided her with the documents necessary for her escape from Germany in 1941, she did not seize this opportunity to emigrate to a safe foreign country. With the words „How are the young supposed to accept fate if we old people run away?“ she tore up the papers. On November 20, 1941, Elisabeth Heims was deported to Kaunas in Lithuania and murdered there five days later.
Before she was deported, Elisabeth Heims had appointed her closest friend Annemarie Cohen as her main heir. In 1960, the heirs donated the entire, hard-won reparation sum to the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation in Berlin, because – as they said – it would have been in Elisabeth Heims‘ interest to use the compensation „for this good cause“.
In July 2020, a stele in front of Katharina-von-Bora-Straße 10 was erected as a memorial to Elisabeth Heims and Alexander Dünkelsbühler.