People

Merchant Siegmund Behrens, whose origins lay in Mecklenburg, was not related to the long-established Lüneburg Behrens family. He was born in 1855 in Teterow in Mecklenburg as a child of local merchant Bernhard Behrens and his wife Henriette nee Cohn. His family had been living in Teterow since the 18th century.

His brother Emil"s biography provides an insight into Siegmund"s origins: "The father was apparently a merchant. Teterow was a Jewish community grown over the ages. The year 1792 saw the establishment of a Jewish cemetery; a synagogue with an associated religious school, destroyed during the November Progrom of 1938, was probably built around the same time. For the early nineteenth century, it is possible to ascertain the names of 41 Jewish families in Teterow. - One may therefore assume that Emil Behrens was born into a Jewish family and a sufficiently cohesive Jewish municipal community. Presumably, it was the grandfather who changed his name from Lazarus Behr to Lazarus Behrens in 1814, thus adjusting it to North German conventions. The children obviously no longer received Jewish first names. [...] Possibly the family used the freedom of movement associated with the Act of Emancipation passed in the North German Federation on 3 July 1869 to move away from Teterow, maybe directly to Hamburg, as did many residents of Mecklenburg."

Like his siblings Emil, Helene, and Therese, he lived in Hamburg. There, in 1888, he got married to Emilie Esther Meyer, a daughter of merchant Gumpel Meyer from Lüneburg. Initially, the couple stayed in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel where they had their first two children.

In 1897 they moved to Lüneburg, where two more children were born. The family lived on Barckhausenstraße. Siegmund Behrens died there in 1903 and was buried in Lueneburg"s Jewish cemetery.

Sources and info:

Hamburg Stumbling Stones biography for Emil Behrens