Max Moses Lieber was born on 20 November 1883 in Demycze, the district of Zabłotów, in Galicia, which at that time belonged to Austria-Hungary. His parents were the merchant Chaim Lieber and Jetty, née Thau.
On August 10, 1910, he married Sima Ruchel Fröhlich in Kosów, not far from Zabłotów. Sima was born in the neighbouring village of Kosów Stary November 7, 1886.
Sometime before the wedding, Moses had moved from Kosów to Berlin, probably to live with his brother Jützig Meier, who had emigrated earlier. To facilitate the integration of the family in Berlin, they took on the names Max and Sabine and gave the name Herta to their daughter, who was born on July 18, 1910. Their son Alfred was born July 25, 1911, and their daughter Franziska, known as Fanny, on February 11, 1913. The family then moved to Munich, where Max Lieber was registered from January 1, 1913.
In Munich, Max Lieber had become a very successful and wealthy businessman and was an assessor of the synagogue associations Linath Hazedek and Agudas Achim.
In 1913 he had taken over the company Heinrich Georg, Möbelherstellung, which manufactured furniture in Sendling at Welserstrasse 20, and he ran at the same time a furniture shop at Lindwurmstrasse 5/I-III. From 1920 to 1924, the Munich enterprises were a branch of the Lieber brothers´ company with the main office in Berlin. The factory produced all kinds of household furniture, but also equipped shops and restaurants, e.g. in 1925 the then well-known Cafe Orlando di Lasso. Max also ran the Max Lieber company in the same building, a retail store with men’s, women’s and children’s clothing and shoes. In August 1938, about 60 workers and 10 employees were employed by the company. Most of them worked in the factory.
Max Lieber was also the owner of the commercial building in Lindwurmstrasse, which he acquired in 1919. To the plot of land also belonged the adjacent Fliegenstrasse 8. He also owned the factory building at Welserstrasse 20, which he bought in 1928, as well as the renthouses at Adelheidstrasse 15 and 35 and Agnesstrasse 47, and a house at Höchlstraße 2.
Probably since the end of the 1920s, the Lieber family lived in their house at Adelheidstrasse 15 / 2. There, a tenant harassed them so dreadfully, that they moved out of her own house on September 1, 1934, „into a rented apartment at Martiusstrasse 6“. „This apartment was as spacious as their own apartment at Adelheidstrasse. It consisted of 5 rooms, a hallway and adjoining rooms. The family of five and a maid lived there. „The two daughters lived in one room, the son in another, the parents had a bedroom, and there was also a dining room and a master´s room. The hallway was furnished as a living room. It was a well-furnished stately apartment.“
The Lieber couple had received German citizenship in the 1920s but were then expatriated by the National Socialists according to a law dating from July 14, 1933, and thus became stateless. Due to the „Law on the Revocation of Naturalizations and the Revocation of German Citizenship“, Jews from Eastern Europe, so-called „Eastern Jews“, were particularly affected by expatriation.
Immediately after the seizure of power, Max Lieber was exposed to National Socialist terror and was „arrested and seriously injured on the night of the revolution in March 1933“. At the same time, his passport had been taken from him. In the night of March 9 to 10, his two valuable cars, a Lincoln limousine and an Auburn convertible, were expropriated by the Gestapo without compensation. According to other sources, the cabriolet was confiscated by an SA organization, which threatened that Max Lieber’s situation in the Stadelheim prison would deteriorate if he wouldn´t accept this. As a result of these events, Max Lieber was „under pressure and was therefore no longer free in his actions”, and “finally, recommended by the Bankhaus Hardy, he hired Dr. Rottner in order to be able to negotiate with the authorities and other institutions on his behalf.“
According to other sources, Otto Rottner had been appointed manager of the Georg company in 1933 during the process of the expatriation of Max Lieber by the German Labor Front (DAF). He was responsible for all business transactions and was supposed to initiate the planned „Aryanization“, i.e. the displacing of Max Lieber from the company. Rottner was a former party comrade and participant in the march to the Feldherrnhalle on November 9, 1923.
After the seizure of power by the Nazi´s, business initially continued undisturbed. But more losses in the retail business resulted, for example,”from the non-Aryan status regarding outstanding payments. From 1933 onwards, it was no longer possible to carry out actions even against the most malicious debtors.“ When claims for compensation were filed in 1948, the losses from these unpaid bills amounted to 30,000 RM.
Since the Nazi authorities increased their pressure on Max Lieber to give up his business, sales negotiations had been conducted in 1937 with a long-time employee of the company, Karoline Grill. The transaction failed because the Chamber of Industry and Commerce argued, that she held an important position in the company and maintained family relations with Max Lieber. The Chamber of Industry and Commerce remarked: „Since 1933, such business relations are against the party´s principles!“ According to her own testimony in 1952, Mrs. Grill had been working in Mr. Lieber’s business since „1920 and was the confidante of the Lieber family.“ In the last years she was the managing director of the company.
In the autumn of 1938, Rottner and the head of the Augsburg branch of the „Heinrich Georg“ company, Josef Eder, took over the furniture and clothing business. Apparently, however, this was a sham transaction with the cooperation of Rottner, so that Karoline Grill could remain in her position to take over the company, as Max Lieber had intended.
With the pogrom night on November 9, the pressure intensified and the Lieber family’s scope for action was significantly restricted.
On November 9, 1938, fourteen large shop windows were smashed at the furniture store in Lindwurmstrasse, „and 95% of the furniture warehouse in the store was severely damaged. The damaged furniture had to be repaired if possible – and sold below price.“ In total, this resulted in a damage of approx. 16,500 RM. After the November pogrom, Max Lieber had to pay 39,600 RM as a so-called „Jewish property levy“. According to the text of the law, this arbitrary levy, which, like others, had the intention to completely rob the Jews, had been introduced by the Nazi state as an „atonement“ for „the hostile attitude of Jewry towards the German people“.
In the meantime, the increasing pressure led to the fact that all houses except the commercial buildings on Lindwurmstrasse had to be sold below their standard value in 1937 and 1938.
After the pogrom night, Rottner was also appointed by the DAF as liquidator and trustee. In this capacity, he was to liquidate the manufacturing company that had yet not been taken over. On December 5, 1938, Alfred Lieber was forced to unconditionally hand over the power of attorney to Rottner. From then on, Max Lieber lived on allocations from the liquidator, i.e. advance payments derived from a blocked account. Such accounts were set up for Jews and they were not allowed to dispose of the money freely. The Lieber family was now dependent on payings from the liquidator and on income from house and landownership.
The original intention to liquidate the furniture factory was abandoned, as the company J. Herrmann, which manufactured shop furnishing, was now interested in the takeover. In the takeover application, the plant manager Dahlke emphasized that both he and the three shareholders of the company were party members. In a further letter in January 1939 addressed to the responsible Chamber of Industry and Commerce, Dahlke asked for an early „Aryanization“ so that he would be able to carry out army orders and complained, that earlier negotiations on the purchase of the factory had failed due to „excessive“ demands from the „Jewish part“. Presumably, Lieber wanted to sell at a realistic price at the time. This was no longer possible after the pogrom night, and the forced sale took place on March 10, 1939, at a price of 105,000 RM. This corresponded to about half of the actual value. The proceeds came into a blocked account that Max Lieber could not dispose of and from which he never received a payout. Dahlke subsequently took over several other Jewish businesses through „Aryanization“ and merged all the companies into Industria Holzverarbeitungs-GmbH. At this point, Rottner was also no longer completely free in his decisions, because DAF had repeatedly told him that if the sale to an “Aryan” owner was not completed in the shortest possible time, DAF would remove him as operator. According to a witness, Rottner, after the war, explained this pressure by saying that Dahlke only received the business at an extremely low price because he compensated to the real price through donations to the DAF and other party offices. The pressure exerted by the DAF during this Aryanization is also illustrated by an incident in the summer of 1938. When Alfred Lieber, Max’s son, refused to guide a prospective buyer sent by DAF through the factory, the latter turned to Rottner and threatened to take Alfred Lieber to Dachau if he ever again would interfere in sales negotiations.
The two daughters Herta and Franziska and their son Alfred Lieber managed to emigrate to Palestine together in the spring of 1939, when the family still lived at Martiustrasse 6. „At that time, everything they wanted to take with them had to be specified. They were allowed to take clothes, linen, dishes and the like with them.“ Alfred Lieber had a Persian carpet in his room, before he „emigrated, he asked the Gestapo to be allowed to take the carpet with him. The Gestapo replied: ‚The carpet is valuable ’state property‘ that must not be taken abroad, and it must therefore be ’secured'“.
The possibility for this expropriation was a decree issued by the Reich Ministry of Economics to the Chief Finance Presidents of May 13, 1938. The essence of this decree was, that all Jewish emigrants were accused of capital flight and therefore their valuable objects were declared as „public property“ and confiscated. A further step towards total deprivation of rights was a decree of the Reich Security Main Office of October 19, 1939, according to which Jews had to hand over their radios to the Reich without compensation. At the end of 1939, a valuable radio set was confiscated from the Lieber family by the Gestapo.
By January 20, 1941, the Lieber couple was expelled from their apartment at Martiustrasse 6 and sent first to the Haimann family’s apartment at Martiusstrasse 8 and then on September 17, 1941 to Schillerstrasse 14 / 1 to live there with Justizrat Esslinger. „When the apartment in Martiustrasse had to be given up,“ Karoline Grill helped to bring „some of the furniture, crockery, etc. to the shop at Lindwurmstrasse 5, otherwise the Gestapo would have taken it away. The people from the shop helped.“ The „first-class things“ brought to Lindwurmstrasse were later „all burned in an air raid“. The rest of the furniture, „such as the parents‘ bedroom and the large dining room, I took into custody and kept it in an extra storage facility of the furniture store.“ Alfred Lieber sold this furniture in 1951 during a stay in Munich.
In Schillerstrasse, the Lieber couple was left with a room of about 25 square meters, into which „the bedroom of the two daughters, one tea table, one carpet, one lamp, chairs, dishes, all the beds“ were brought with the help of Karoline Grill.
Max Lieber and his wife Sabine were deported from Schillerstrasse to Kaunas on November 20, 1941, in the first transport of Munich Jews and they were murdered by the SS on November 25, 1941, during the mass shootings in Kaunas.
Karoline Grill witnessed in 1952: „On November 20,1941 the Lieber couple left. At the time, it was said that everything would be sealed and secured. But the Liebers´ didn’t get back any of their belongings.“ „The Lieber family was allowed to take only 30 kg of luggage with them when they left. Valuable items of clothing were left behind in the wardrobe, including tailor-made suits belonging to Mr. Lieber.“
The room, where the Lieber couple stayed in Schillerstrasse, was cleared by a moving company on December 17, 1941, ordered by the so-called „Aryanization Office“. The furniture was being confiscated. The Nazi state now also confiscated the remaining assets of whatever was left of their real estate and consigned it for „exploitation“. The Oberfinanzdirektion registered its interest in the commercial buildings in Lindwurmstrasse and Fliegenstrasse besides other prospective buyers. They wanted to take over the property to locate the Munich-Land tax office here. These considerations became obsolete after the complete destruction of the commercial buildings in Lindwurmstrasse and Fliegenstrasse in an air raid on December 17, 1944.
As a result of the reparation proceedings, the children Alfred, Herta and Franziska, who lived at that time in Israel, were given back all their real estate and received compensation for the Aryanization of the furniture factory, for confiscated assets and for parts of the confiscated furniture.