Mother, widow, emigrant

Margarete Reichenbach née Liebenthal

1889 — 7 August 1966

The recipient of Dolf’s St. Moritz letter and the person around whom the family’s reunion was imagined.

Margarete married Paul in 1908 and raised Ruth and Dolf in Halberstadt. In 1937 she crossed the Atlantic and returned; a playful verse written by a friend aboard the S.S. Manhattan remembers her bridge and bingo victories.

By 1937–38 she was a widow in Berlin-Wilmersdorf and shared a recorded interest in Martiniplan 10 with Ernst Reichenbach. Dolf’s November 1938 letter shows that she had not yet rejoined her children.

Passenger records place Margarete and Dolf together on New York arrivals aboard the S.S. Washington in 1937 and the S.S. Paris in 1938. Her Massachusetts declaration of intention, dated 12 August 1938, records her birth date and names Paul as her spouse. The 1940 census places Margarete and Dolf in the same Brookline household; these records document travel and residence, not the exact chronology of her final emigration.

Ruth and Albert Rothschild were already in the United States before Margarete and Dolf made their own escape there. The family dates Margarete’s arrival to 1939 and remembers her bringing a baroque chest and a small number of personal objects from Germany. Her granddaughter Susan Reichenbach Heyman recalls furniture and valuables being used as portable wealth when cash could not leave Germany. The surviving chest, lidded sugar caster and repoussé box are now preserved together in the archive.

Her grandson Paul J. Reichenbach remembers that Margarete died on 7 August 1966. An aggregated public cemetery index independently gives the same date and places her burial at Temple Israel Cemetery on Lakeside Avenue in Wakefield, Massachusetts; no Massachusetts civil death certificate has yet confirmed it.

Sources

Records and testimony

Marriage notice
Children’s civil birth records
1935 mourning card
1937 shipboard verse
1937 and 1938 New York passenger records
Massachusetts declaration of intention, 12 August 1938
1940 U.S. census, Brookline
1938 letter
Family tree
Family-held chest and detail photographs
Susan Reichenbach Heyman oral history, 5 August 2026
Paul J. Reichenbach testimony, conveyed by Rabbi Daniel Dolph Reichenbach, 9 August 2026
Family chronology clarification, August 2026
Cemetery index (aggregated, unverified) — PeopleLegacy

FamilySearch — Margarete Reichenbach, Massachusetts declaration of intention, 12 August 1938 FamilySearch — Margarete and Dolf, S.S. Washington arrival, 1937 FamilySearch — Margarete and Dolf, S.S. Paris arrival, 1938 FamilySearch — 1940 census, Brookline household

Evidence note

Passenger and census records now document Margarete’s repeated Atlantic travel and her 1940 Brookline household, while the family dates her final emigration to 1939. The precise final-emigration route and Massachusetts death certificate are not yet in the collection.

All people Family tree Related documents

American years · family-held photograph

“Mutti” late in life

Two surviving states of the same photograph preserve Margarete at home late in her life.

The high-resolution direct scan retains the print’s border, fading and creases. The adjusted copy is presented separately as a derivative, and each About record links back to the other.

Late-life portrait of Margarete Mutti Reichenbach seated in an upholstered armchair at home — Margarete “Mutti” Reichenbach late in life — original scan

Adjusted presentation copy of the late-life portrait of Margarete Mutti Reichenbach seated in an upholstered armchair — Margarete “Mutti” Reichenbach late in life — adjusted presentation copy

Family-held object

What Margarete carried forward

The object reveals its materials and construction. Susan Reichenbach Heyman preserves the account of how Margarete carried it from Germany.

A lidded silver-coloured sugar caster beside a rectangular hinged box with a raised tavern scene — Margarete’s silver household objects

Archive photographs: Edited presentation photograph with six linked unedited views; family chest with four linked detail photographs
Surviving objects: Three-drawer walnut-veneered commode; lidded powdered-sugar caster; rectangular repoussé box
Likely origin and date: Chest: Probably German or Central European, likely mid-eighteenth century. Smaller objects: probably German or Central European, c. 1880–1914. All are provisional visual attributions, not expert examinations.
Historical cost: Unknown. No purchase receipt or 1939 export valuation has been found, so its original price and its declared emigration value cannot responsibly be reconstructed.

The attributions are based on surviving photographs. Photographs of the chest’s back, underside, drawer joints, locks and any labels or marks—and close photographs of hallmarks on the smaller objects—are needed before assigning a maker, town, metal standard or firmer date.

Three-drawer walnut-veneered chest with gilt-brass rococo mounts — The family chest

Family memory identifies the chest, a lidded sugar caster and a rectangular repoussé box as belongings Margarete was able to take out of Germany in 1939. The objects themselves survive in family custody. Their journey is inherited memory; no packing list, export permit, DEGO valuation or foreign-exchange file has yet been found.

The smaller pieces are preserved as household objects, not yet as identified works by a named maker. Their forms suggest a late-nineteenth- or early-twentieth-century German or Central European setting, but without hallmark photographs and an expert examination, no maker, metal standard or precise date is claimed. The unedited photographs are linked from the object record.

That memory fits the documented machinery of Jewish emigration under National Socialism. Emigrants could not simply withdraw their savings, exchange them freely or carry their money abroad. Tax authorities and foreign-exchange offices supervised assets and the export of household goods; the Reich Flight Tax and additional levies stripped away capital. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that, from 1937 to the outbreak of war in 1939, emigration cost Jewish refugees between 60 and 100 percent of their capital.

Approved household possessions could sometimes leave after inventory, valuation and payment, even while cash and bank wealth were blocked or consumed by taxes and charges. This explains how a chest could cross a border when money could not. It does not prove why this particular chest was approved, or that it carried value in place of cash; those remain open questions until Margarete’s own emigration papers are found.

Family testimony · secondary cemetery index

Death and burial in Massachusetts

Date of death: 7 August 1966
Burial place: Temple Israel Cemetery
Location: Lakeside Avenue, Wakefield, Massachusetts 01880

Paul J. Reichenbach remembers his grandmother’s date of death as 7 August 1966. The cemetery index independently gives the same date, carries Margarete’s full name including Liebenthal, and places her burial in the Jewish cemetery at Wakefield.

PeopleLegacy describes its entries as public-source aggregations that it does not independently verify. The archive therefore cites the record openly; a Massachusetts death certificate, an interment card or a photograph of the marker would confirm it independently.