Barbara Elisabeth “Betty” Schwarzhaupt was born on May 3, 1873, in Munich. Her parents were Gustav Mandelbaum (1846–1917), a manufacturer in Munich, and Berta Mandelbaum, Midas. Berta was born in 1850 and died in Regensburg at the end of 1919. She may have moved in with her daughter after the death of Betty’s husband in 1919.
One of Betty’s sisters, Emma Schwarzhaupt, was born on February 2, 1875, in Munich. She married her brother-in-law Karl Schwarzhaupt (born in 1866), the brother of Betty’s husband Salomon. Together, Emma and Karl operated the Straubing branch of the Vereinigte Kaufhaus AG, a department store chain owned by the Schwarzhaupt merchant family in a prime location on Ludwigsplatz in Straubing. The couple chose not to emigrate. Emma was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp on June 18, 1942, along with her husband. Karl was murdered there on January 20, 1943, and Emma died on March 8, 1944.
In August 2008, stumbling blocks (Stolpersteine) were laid for them in Straubing in front of their home at Obere Bachstraße 12.
Other siblings of Betty included:
- Ida Mandelbaum, born July 12, 1877, who died in infancy.
- Hugo Mandelbaum, born November 24, 1880, in Munich, died November 3, 1920, in Regensburg.
- Guido Mandelbaum, born January 4, 1883, in Munich, died in Regensburg in 1934.
- Josef Mandelbaum, born January 29, 1879, in Munich. He married Irma Einstein (born July 21, 1895, in Fellheim) on March 22, 1920. Josef and Irma were deported to Kaunas on November 21, 1941, and murdered there on November 25, 1941.
The Mandelbaum family ran a goods agency for leather, drive belts, and upholstery materials located at Klenzestraße 57 in Munich. The house was family-owned. After Gustav Mandelbaum’s death in 1917, his son Josef became co-owner of the property and moved in on February 7, 1918. The house was sold in the mid-1920s.
Since around 1893, Betty Schwarzhaupt had been married to Salomon Schwarzhaupt and lived then in Regensburg. The couple had two children:
- Heiner (Heinrich), born August 27, 1900, who died February 28, 1980, in Argentina.
- Rosa Rachel („Rosel“), born November 2, 1894, who died May 5, 1985, in New Jersey, USA.
Salomon’s parents were Emanuel Schwarzhaupt and his wife Babette, née Springer. Emanuel came from a Regensburg merchant family. In 1904, Emanuel and Babette founded aa department store in the centre of Regensburg – a more than just stately building complex in the square between Watmarkt and Goliathstraße. Emanuel and Babette died shortly after each other in 1905, and Salomon, born March 1865, took over the business with his other six siblings.
Betty’s husband Salomon died on February 18, 1919. After his death, Betty took over his share of the business and the management of the Schwarzhaupt department stores.
Persecution and Aryanization
The seizure of power by the National Socialists in 1933 was a fundamental change for all Jewish residents of the city and, of course, for the Schwarzhaupts. From now on, Jewish companies were prohibited from any advertising and calls for boycotts were part of the everyday life. Anyone who nevertheless preferred the selection of first-class quality goods at cheapest prices risked vilification and denunciation. In the summer of 1935, a three-page boycott list was printed for this purpose in the magazine „Die Ostmark“. Since August 1935, Jewish businessmen were no longer contracted by the city in public contracts.
The extermination campaign against Jewish citizens was preceded by a systematic process in which the legal system was reshaped to mirror National Socialist ideology and enforce exclusionary bans. As early as autumn 1934, the introduction to the newly enacted Tax Adjustment Acts declared:
„The tax laws are to be interpreted in accordance with the National Socialist worldview.“
One such instrument was the Reich Flight Tax, defined in a 1936 circular. It required Jews to pay between one-third (for assets from 100,000 RM) and three-quarters (for assets of 500,000 RM and more) of their property to the state. This, however, did not satisfy the Nazi regime. All proceeds from “sales” of forcibly Aryanized (i.e., “de-Judaized”) property were placed in blocked accounts at the German Gold Discount Bank (Golddiskontbank). When converted into foreign currency or transferred abroad, the bank applied exorbitant deductions—starting at 68% in June 1935 and worsening to a staggering 95% in September 1939.
Aryanization of the Schwarzhaupt Villa
The Schwarzhaupt family, who were well known in Regensburg, soon came into the sights of the Nazi regime. In particular, the extremely representative villa of the Jewish family in Klarenangerstraße, as D.-Martin-Luther-Straße was called until 1933, aroused the desire of the NSDAP. The renowned architect Heinrich von Hügel (who also built the train station in Regensburg, the theatre in Franzensbad, the casino in Bad Kissingen and the Munich armoury, among other things) had designed the late classicist villa with its Palladian echoes in 1868/69.
In the eyes of the Regensburg NSDAP party leaders, the impressive building was a perfect fit for their megalomaniac plans – the district capital of Regensburg absolutely needed a dignified and powerful „party castle“. Without further ado, the Schwarzhaupt villa was „forcibly Aryanized“, with the city of Regensburg taking over a good half of the purchase price of 61,500 Reichsmark, which was anything but voluntary. In the autumn of 1935, the villa belonged to the „Ostmark-Bauverein“, and the Gauleitung and NSDAP office moved in.
Aryanization of the Schwarzhaupt businesses
After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, the „de-Judaization“ of the Betty Schwarzhaupt fashion houses began (Betty had taken over the department stores after the death of her husband). It comprised of two large buildings in a prime location: „Watmarkt 1, department store with shops, electric passenger and goods elevator, 0.032 ha (2 basements, 4 sales floors, 2 attic floors, which are used as apartments)“ and „Watmarkt 3, residential building with shops, 0.029 ha (sales rooms, at the front Watmarkt shops, the remaining floors contain apartments).“ Both buildings went to the Munich businessman Ludwig Hafner, who was a tenant in the Watmarkt and also „took over“ the Straubing company for fashion manufactory, white goods and women’s ready-to-wear founded by Emanuel Schwarzhaupt. Reading the Regensburg sales contract of January 16, 1939 today leaves a more than bitter aftertaste. The sales price for both buildings on Watmarkt was 250,000 RM, as a „technical report“ dated 16 January 1939 and included into the purchase contract, had deducted 120,000 RM from the market value for the remedy of various defects. On top of that, the „Jewish property levy“ of 91,000 RM was also due.
In the report of the building expert Oberberger, based on an inspection in May 1938, it says, among other things: „The floors of the ground floor and upper floor in the sales rooms Watmarkt 1 and 3 are in complete need of renewal. To be able to continue to use the current rooms as sales rooms, the installation of a closed staircase is necessary, as well as the widening of the main entrance, the conversion of the elevator system and the entire electric lighting and power system under plastering and the installation of an emergency lighting system. All windows in both buildings are to be re-cemented, painted, as well as the doors, including the renewal of the door locks. All rooms of the sales departments as well as the stairwells, atriums, including the cellars are to be cleaned thoroughly from their present condition and re-whitewashed in accordance with the regulations. Likewise, the façade surfaces are to be completely renewed, the doors and windows are to be painted in the same way, all sheet metal covers and roof surfaces, etc. are to be repaired, and the tower is to be removed after official measures. The inspection showed that not the slightest building maintenance had been carried out in the main part or in the adjoining rooms since its construction. (…) When determining the sum, the business situation of the two buildings is fully taken into account”. On April 3, 1939, the city of Regensburg issued new demands that Mrs. Schwarzhaupt was to remedy all listed deficiencies by May 1, 1939, at her own expense. Failure to do so would result in judicial enforcement. An internal report criticized the building’s neglected state, remarking that such conditions were “only known from Jews.”
The legal representative of the Schwarzhaupt family, Karl Jakob Michael was downgraded to „consultant“ after the ban on Jewish lawyers from practising his profession on 30 November 1938. Therefore, he was not allowed to wear a robe in court, instead he had to visibly wear the Jewish star, could not work as defendent in criminal cases and had to pay a proud seventy percent of his income to the tax authorities. When he later asked at the Nuremberg Regional Finance Office after the whereabouts of the „Aryanized“ assets of the Schwarzhaupt family, he received the laconic answer on March 10, 1942: „The assets of the aforementioned emigrated Jews have undoubtedly been forfeited to the Reich because they have lost their German citizenship through emigration.“
Flight and Emigration
Heiner Schwarzhaupt, Betty’s son, had once played football for Jahn Regensburg. He and his wife Lorle, née Löwenthal, managed to save their lives and their daughters’ lives by emigrating to Palestine in July 1938, even before the forced sale of the family’s business properties. From there, they traveled by steamer to Argentina, eventually settling in Buenos Aires. They initially took only their eldest daughter Eva, who was eleven at the time.
Irma (age seven) and Ruth (age two) followed in February 1939 under the care of their aunt Rosa Rachel (Rosel) Frank, Heiner’s sister. Rosa Rachel who then returned to Germany joining her husband Dr. Julius Jakob Frank, a Munich lawyer. The Frank family managed to emigrate to New York in April 1940, including their two sons (see the Frank article for more).
During two visits to Munich, Betty stayed at Pension Daser at Martiusstrasse 8—first from October 9–13, 1939, and again from February 17 to March 18, 1940. At that time, Rosa Rachel and Dr. Julius Frank, along with his mother Pauline Frank, were living in the apartment of Clarissa Haimann at that address.
Betty most likely coordinated her own emigration to Argentina and supported the Franks‘ emigration to the USA during this uncertain time. She might also have visited for the last her relatives in Munich. In November 1940, Betty Schwarzhaupt finally escaped, traveling via Madrid and Bilbao and then by ship across the Atlantic to Argentina, joining her son Heiner’s family.
She died in Beccar, Argentina, on June 22, 1951.
The next generations
Heiner´s daughter Eva, married Rodriguez, remained, like her father, „faithful“ to the German language. Eva was an opera singer, and at the same time she worked as an assistant director and lecturer in German language and German phonetics at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires from 1960 to 1987. In 1982, she was hired as a professor of German language and phonetics at the private university Universidad del Museo Social Argentino. From 1988 on she was a lecturer at the Universidad Católica de Buenos.
According to her, the foundation for this passion for music and her career was laid by her grandmother Betty, of whom she said: „Grandmother was my guardian angel, the best person in the world.“ Eva Rodriguez was 76 years old when she died in Buenos Aires in 2003.
Betty´s granddaughter Irma (born in 1931, another daughter of Heiner) currently lives in New York (as of 2025), and Claudia Gross, Betty’s great-granddaughter, lives in Philadelphia, USA.
IHK Regensburg, Gedenkbuch Münchner Juden, Genis, Hausbuch Martiusstrasse 8 (Münchner Stadtarchiv)