Herzfeld family

In May 1921, the lawyer Dr. Manfred Herzfeld (born 1887) joined the law firm of Dr. Julius von der Wall at Mühlenstraße 25. The law firm was one of the largest in the Higher Regional Court district of Celle and for a long time the only one run by Jewish lawyers in Celle. Herzfeld, his wife Hedwig (born 1891) and their daughter Eva (born 1919) lived on today's Bahnhofsplatz until they moved into their own newly built house at Schwicheldtstraße 19 A at the end of 1930.Herzfeld was not a member of the Jewish community in Celle and had little contact with it. He also belonged to a minority of organized Jews in Germany who belonged to the Zionist Association for Germany (Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland“). The boycott campaign against Jewish lawyers that began in April 1933 had a drastic effect on the financial situation of the law firm, which therefore had to be relocated to Herzfeld's apartment in Schwicheldtstrasse. In August 1935, Herzfeld had an altercation with SA members in Hanover who wanted to prevent him from entering a cigar store run by a Jewish owner. His wife and daughter had already emigrated to Palestine, and now he too left Celle for Jerusalem in a hurry. Herzfeld worked there as an insurance cashier, supported by his brother Arnold, who lived in New York, and his office and apartment in Schwicheldtstrasse were destroyed in the November pogrom of 1938, although they were empty in the meantime. In 1950, Herzfeld was offered the opportunity to work as a lawyer in restitution cases for the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO) and returned to Germany. From 1956, he worked as a freelance lawyer, primarily for the United Restitution Organization (URO). He regularly wrote for the journal „Rechtsprechung zum Wiedergutmachungsrecht“.