People

Hermann Parnes, known also as Leib Hirsch or Chaim Parnes, was born in 1858 (according to other sources, 1859) in Szczerzec near Lviv. Szczerzec, known as Shchyrets in Yiddish, was a small town in Austrian Galicia with a large Jewish community that was extremely influential both religiously and politically.

In 1905, merchant Hermann Parnes came from Grodek in Galicia to the North German town of Harburg, which at that time still belonged to Prussia. From 1906 onwards, Hermann lived there with his wife Sabine Hilsenrath, who was 25 years his junior and also came from Galicia.

In the following years, the couple moved frequently. Their daughter Paula (Perl, Pepi) was born in 1907 in Körösmezö in the Western Carpathians in Hungary, and their son Jakob was born in 1909 in Delatyn, the hometown of Hermann"s wife Sabine. However, the family then returned to Germany. They lived in Harburg again, then in Oldenburg from 1912 and in Lüneburg from 1914.

The Parnes/Hilsenrath family established a textile business in Lüneburg. Their home and place of business was initially at An der Münze 8. In 1919, they bought a house at Salzstraße 4, where they lived and worked from then on. Hermann Parnes died there in 1924. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Lüneburg. 

Sources and information:

About the Jewish community in Hermann Parnes" birthplace:
https://myshtetl.org/lvovskaja/shchyrets.html
https://www.esjf-cemeteries.org/survey/shchyrets-jewish-cemetery/

Hamburg Stolperstein biography for Sabine Hilsenrath-Parnes: https://www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de/en.php?&LANGUAGE=EN&MAIN_ID=7&BIO_ID=4591

Sybille Bollgöhn, Jüdische Familien in Lüneburg, Lüneburg 1995, p. 146

Name variants: Chaim Leib Hirsch Parness Parneß Parnass