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Sally (Meshulam) Heinemann was born in Lüneburg in 1818. He was the second of five children of banker and merchant Simon Heinemann and his wife Betty, née Sußmann, who had come to Lüneburg from Bleckede around 1810. Sally grew up in the circle of his large family in Bardowicker Straße.
Like his younger brothers Marcus and Salomon, Sally Heinemann also became a banker and merchant. After their father died in 1855, the three of them took over the already well-established business and continued to expand it with great success.
In 1861, Sally married Seraphine Bauer in Peine, who moved to Lüneburg to live with him. The couple lived in the family home in Bardowicker Straße. In the following years, their children Albert, Louis and Betty were born. The sons remained in Lüneburg, Louis later became a director of the Heinemann Bank (together with his relatives Gustav Heinemannund Adolf Lindenberg. Sally"s wife Seraphine died in 1886, after which Sally continued to live in Lüneburg as a widower.
Like his brothers, Sally was very active socially and culturally. He was one of the founding members of the Lüneburg Museum Association and was involved in many social causes. After his death, his heirs donated a large sum to the Israelitische Gartenbauschule in Ahlem - Sally Heinemann had probably already supported this institution during his lifetime. They also set up a foundation in Lüneburg for the Lüneburg Council Library, from which books on local and regional history were to be purchased.
Sally Heinemann died in 1901 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Lüneburg. His gravestone reads in Hebrew: “Here is buried a man, humble in all his affairs, righteous in all his ways and pious in all his works, striving for peace all the days of his life, the Torah scholar Mr. Meshulam, son of Mr. Shimon, he died aged in good old age on the night of 25 Shavat 661 according to the small count.”
Sally Heinemann"s gravestone is one of the few that still exist today, following the destruction and complete leveling of the cemetery during the Nazi era. Together with several other gravestones, Sally"s stone was built into the foundations of a makeshift home erected in 1944. When this makeshift home was demolished in 1967, the stones came to light. It was several years before the gravestones were re-erected in the early 1970s, albeit not in their original location and only as fragments.
Sources and info:
Gravestone for Sally Heinemann: epidat - Forschungsplattform jüdische Grabsteinepigraphik, Lüneburg, lbg-7
Sally Heinemann Memorial Fund, January 1918, Lüneburg Town Archives, Signature SA 1056
Name variants: Meschullam Meshulam
