Historical portrait photographs arranged in two rows, one above the other. The top two portraits show Bernhard and Martha Ringer, and the bottom row shows Hans and Ruth Ringer.
The Ringer family in historical portraits from the Elstner photo studio in Werdau.

Werdau City and Steam Engine Museum

For over 35 years, the Ringer family supplied the people of Werdau with goods from their department store on the market square. During the Nazi era, they lost their business and their home. Much information about the family and their lives before 1933 has now been forgotten.

A merchant family in a small Saxon town

Historical portrait of Bernhard Ringer.
Bernhard Ringer had his portrait taken at the Elstner photography studio in Werdau.

Werdau City and Steam Engine Museum

Bernhard Ringer is born in Krakow on 2 May 1875. At this time, the city was located in the territory of Galicia, which belonged to Austria-Hungary as a crown land.

Three years later, his future wife, Martha Aronheim, is born in Konitz.

Historic postcard with a coloured illustration of the street at the market in Werdau. On the right side, the Ringer & Co. department store can be seen.
Bernhard Ringer opens his very first shop in the immediate vicinity of the Werdau town hall.

Werdau City and Steam Engine Museum

Around 1900, the young married couple moves to Werdau, a small town in the west of Saxony, a few kilometres from Zwickau. At Markt 2, they open a department store named Ringer & Co. Initially, there is a co-owner named David Präger.

On 12 October 1905, their first child, daughter Gisela Charlotte Ringer (known as Charlotte), is born.

Historic black and white postcard. Depicted is the front of the Ringer & Co. department store at Markt 6 in Werdau. In front of the shop is a queue of people. Two women are looking out of the first-floor window.
The Ringer & Co. department store is very popular. Two people can be seen in the window on the upper floor – presumably Martha and her daughter Charlotte.

Werdau City and Steam Engine Museum

Charlotte grows up above her parents' new shop at Markt 6 in Werdau. A few years later, the second child of Bernhard and Martha, Hans Wilhelm, is born.

Not much is known about Charlotte and Hans’s childhood and upbringing.

Charlotte marries Curt Lippmann in May 1928. The couple then live in Zwickau, where their daughter Ruth is born. Later, they move to Greiz in Thuringia, where their son Gunter Ludwik is born.

The Nazi regime of terror

Historic recording of a festival procession. Several people are carrying flags with swastikas. A banner hangs above them with the inscription "Heil Werdau!".
Nazi policies found a great deal of support among many people in the region.

Werdau City and Steam Engine Museum

With the National Socialists‚ ‘seizure of power', the Ringer family's lives change profoundly. Increasingly, they are restricted in their daily lives by antisemitic laws.

In Werdau, an NSDAP member is appointed police chief in spring 1933. The city administration, as everywhere in the German Reich, is placed under National Socialist control.

Hans studies law and in 1935 marries Ruth Kamm, a dentist from Beuthen. Together with Hans' parents, they live above the Werdau department store. Due to antisemitic legislation, Hans is unable to practise his profession as a lawyer and instead becomes a co-owner of the shop from 1937.

Context

Historical photograph of the Werdau market square during the Nazi era. Swastika flags hang from houses.
The Werdau market square during the Nazi era.

Werdau City and Steam Engine Museum

In the Reichspogromnacht on 9 November 1938, members of the Secret State Police, with the participation of neighbours from Werdau, destroy the Ringer & Co. department store. The family loses their home and their business, and Bernhard is severely mistreated during the acts of violence.

The Werdau Newspaper reports the assault on 11 November. It states that „a large crowd of people attended this event as spectators.“ The propaganda article describes Jewish people as perpetrators who are themselves to blame for the violence and assaults they suffer.

Following the assaults, Bernhard and Hans Ringer are taken into „protective custody“ and deported to Buchenwald concentration camp three days later. At the end of November, Bernhard is first released from custody, followed by Hans on 22 December.

Context

Family deportation

Historical records regarding the deportation of Leipzig Jews to Theresienstadt.
The Nazis recorded the names and addresses of Jewish men and women living in Leipzig in extensive lists for deportation to Theresienstadt.

Arolsen Archives, Register for Transport XVI/1: Deportation from Erfurt via Weimar, Halle and Leipzig to Theresienstadt on 19 September 1942.

The Ringer family leaves Werdau. At this time, their daughter Charlotte, along with her husband and two children, has already left the country, having fled to Brazil. Bernhard, Martha, Hans, and Ruth move to Leipzig. They likely hope to be less conspicuous in the large city. In Leipzig, Ruth and Hans live in a ‚Judenhaus' at Walter-Blümel-Straße 10, while Martha and Bernhard live at Humboldtstraße 9.

In February 1940, Bernhard passed away in Leipzig. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery there. Two years later, in September 1942, Martha Ringer was deported to Theresienstadt. She was forced to sell her possessions in order to finance her accommodation in the Theresienstadt Ghetto herself.

Context

Historical photograph of the entrance gate to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp.
The gate to the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz with the inscription „Arbeit macht frei“ (Work sets you free).

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In June 1943, Hans and Ruth Ringer are first deported to Theresienstadt and from there to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Shortly afterwards, the family’s remaining possessions are sold at the Klemm auction house in Leipzig.

Hans Ringer does not survive the concentration camp. After the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, Ruth Ringer leaves Germany and moved to the USA. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Martha Ringer returns to Leipzig for a short time after her liberation from Theresienstadt. She then emigrates to Brazil, where she lives with her daughter Charlotte.

Evoking memories

A photograph of an arched porcelain plaque.
The shop's porcelain plaque is a reminder of the Ringer family's history.

Werdau City and Steam Engine Museum

For a long time, the memory of the Ringer family in Werdau had all but disappeared.

In 2024, Markus Döscher, head of the Werdau City and Steam Engine Museum, seeks an examination of the collection for problematic provenance, following his own intensive preliminary work. This is part of a project financed by the German Lost Art Foundation and supported by the Provenance Research team at the State Art Collections Dresden. In the museum's storeroom, an unassuming porcelain plaque bearing the inscription „Ringer Markt 6“ is found.

A photograph of various documents and flowers on a table in Werdau Town Hall.
To mark the ceremonial handover of the returned items, historical photographs of the family members were also reproduced from glass plate negatives.

Markus Döscher

The sign is attributed to the Ringer & Co. department store on Werdau Market. In a ceremony at the town hall in 2025, it is restituted to the descendants of Charlotte Lippmann, née Ringer, along with many documents from the Nazi era. Today, the porcelain sign is back in the Werdau Museum as a donation from the family.

Thanks to the commitment of Jens Kunze from Werdau, who has been researching the family's fate for several years, there are now four Stolpersteine (stumbling blocks) in front of the former Ringer shop at Markt 6. Descendants of several generations of the family were present for the installation. The Stolpersteine commemorate the fate of Bernhard, Martha, Hans, and Ruth, who had to flee from Werdau and could never return to their hometown.