Robert de Taube

Robert de Taube was born in 1896 as one of seven children of the Jewish cattle dealer and slaughterer Samuel de Taube (1855-1949) and Rosa de Taube (1861-1948), née Weinberg, in Neustadtgödens, East Frisia. De Taube attended elementary school in Neustadtgödens and  then attended the Oberrealschule in Wilhelmshaven. In a short biography, which de Taube most likely wrote shortly after the war, he described in English that in 1916 he received a call to join the army, "from which I was discharged in 1919." Robert de Taube began working on his father's estate in early childhood and was introduced to all the tasks that were involved in an agricultural business. The "Horster Grashaus", an estate near his birthplace Neustadtgödens, had been bequeathed to de Taube by his father as tenants together with his brother Ernst in 1923. Samuel de Taube had bought this estate together with about 150 hectares of land around 1920. While his brother Ernst was more concerned with economic matters, Robert de Taube was responsible for organizing the day-to-day work on the estate. The de Taube family had already been resident here since the 18th century. Especially in agriculture and animal husbandry the family was successful for decades. The brothers de Taube developed the estate, among other things, with a horse breeding, to a "modelfarm", as Robert de Taube proudly reported.

In a 23-page report Robert de Taube described in the 1970s his experiences in the Nazi era, about the "expulsion as tenant of my father [...] , to the recovery and struggle for the Gorster Grashaus estate", whereby the discrimination of Jews already began with the National Socialists' seizure of power in 1933 with " boycotts, [...] furthermore when purchasing grazing livestock [...] by affixing a poster - Jews unwanted [...]". The November pogroms of 1938 de Taube described impressively: "In the meantime [...] quite a few SA men broke in. The leader was Haake, he asked me in a brusque tone what I had done, I replied that I had called the police because they wanted to break in here. Haake insulted me and drove me upstairs with his rifle. I was to get dressed immediately [...] When I came downstairs the SA people had stirred up everything and torn open cupboards looking for valuables. People were yelling at me, where do you have your money? [...]" All male members of the family were arrested in their apartment within a short time and deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. Already here, "Many of our people [...] went to the electric stockade and sought death." Together with his brothers, Robert de Taube had to endure four weeks of imprisonment in Sachsenhausen before he could return to his hometown on December 9, 1938. 

The "Horster Grashaus" became more and more the focus of the Neustadt Goedens National Socialists and was to be, in their parlance, "Aryanized" or "de-Jewified". For a "scandalous price" the animals of the de Taubes' estate were sold and "they forced my father to sell the farm for very cheap money". Furthermore, de Taube described in a letter to the military government of the city of Hagen on September 6, 1947: "[...] an area of about 80 hectares was distributed in various sections to 25 farmers in Horsten and the surrounding area, who had proven to be particularly suitable because of their National Socialist attitude, and who thus enlarged their farms, thus becoming beneficiaries of the Nazi regime in the truest sense of the word". With this, Robert de Taube hit the nail on the head of these "Aryanizations," from which many private individuals profited and therefore often welcomed them. He tried to obtain an emigration to the USA and was on the waiting list of the American Consulate General in Hamburg. De Taube's parents were able to emigrate to England, while his brother Kurt saved himself by going to Shanghai and all of his sisters also saved themselves by emigrating. The brother Ernst de Taube could not escape in time. Together with his wife Frieda de Taube, née ter Berg, Ernst de Taube was deported on March 1, 1943, on the 31st Osttransport and murdered in Auschwitz. The entire family of his uncle, Salomon de Taube, was deported and perished in various concentration camps.

From "Gestapoführer Kaiser [...] in the Gestapo building at Rathausplatz" Robert de Taube  was given the "choice" between Hamburg and Berlin to do forced labor here. Since he had spent his military time there, de Taube chose Berlin. From January 1942 to February 1943, Robert de Taube performed forced labor at the Deutsche Benzinuhren-Gesellschaft, Aerobau Lehmann, Berlin SW in Belle-Alliance-Strasse. He continued to try to organize emigration to Australia, Bolivia or the USA and learned Spanish and English for this purpose. In October 1941, de Taube, like many Jews in Germany, was to be deported to the concert ration camps in the East. De Taube was able to escape this by feigning back pain and remaining in the St. Hildegard Hospital in Berlin-Charlottenburg "from 12.10.41 - 1.12.41 under inpatient treatment for lumbago and influenza bronchitis". "Without any ration cards and money and being continually fallowed by the Gestapo," de Taube remained undiscovered for several weeks with the help of the staff of the time until the Gestapo made inquiries about his whereabouts at the end of 1941. Under a new identity, as "August Schneider, landscape gardener, Landsbergerstraße 38," he lived in open hiding in Berlin-Dahlem at high risk of always being discovered. As a gardener he earned some extra money and thus saved his life. Here Robert de Taube experienced the liberation by Russian soldiers. 

While still in Berlin, Robert de Taube filed an application for restitution of his looted property by the Nazis, which continued into the 1990s. The lengthy process, documented by hand drawings according to the land registry and countless lists of property appraisals, but also death declarations of close relatives, testifies to the grueling processes of the postwar period for many relatives and victims of the Nazi regime, they had to struggle for years back to their old lives. Robert de Taube returned to Horsten in 1946 on foot and by bicycle. He later described how his bicycle was stolen several times, then "All at once Russian riders came. Riders - one jumped off the horse and stopped me and took off my beautiful boots and gave me his long boots with many stains. I put them on and couldn't walk in them. So I took them off again and walked on barefoot - I had a rage like never before." It was not until 1954 that de Taube obtained the restitution of part of his parents' estate, which "already made a dissolute and neglected impression on the outside" and was spread over many farms. Another process dragged on until the post-reunification period in the early 1990s, because Robert de Taube and his brother Ernst de Taube still owned a knight's estate of about 120 hectares called "Caspa" in Saxony. This process was continued after de Taube's death  by his nephew John S. Forrester in the USA, who also bequeathed Robert de Taube's estate to the Jewish Museum in Berlin. De Taubes parents came back to Neustadtgödens in 1947. Robert de Taubes mother died in 1948 at the age of 87 and his father died in 1949 at the age of 99 ½.

On July 16, 1973, Robert de Taube wrote to his sister Edith, who lived in New York, regarding an achieved compensation payment "[...] From enclosed documents you can see the negotiations of my complaints and unfortunately it has been of no use. [...] One is getting so slowly into the years where one forgets some things and unfortunately the hearing is also affected. Hopefully, all of you are still doing well and I can report good health for the time being. Our hay harvest is finished and we have had a wonderful pre-summer here. [...] Robert de Taube managed the "Horster Grashaus" from 1954 to 1974, until he sold it "for health reasons and as a consequence of the Nazi period the Horster Grashaus estate". Here he also spent his retirement. On August 26, 1982, Robert de Taube died and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Neustadtgödens in Wilhelmshaven. He bequeathed his inheritance to his three still living sisters and their descendants. According to his will, he also left a part to the "Jewish Community West Berlin" and the "Hildekrankenhaus Berlin Charlottenburg". Robert de Taube fought in the post-war period until his death for the "reparation" of the suffering of his family. The laborious and long  process makes the term "reparation" used for these processes in a mocking light the persecutees of the Nazi regime.