1909–1913
Martiniplan 19/21
Paul’s address in the Halberstadt Alpine Club rolls during the years in which the neighboring commercial property was being remade.
A geography of belonging and loss
Places
Addresses turn biography into a map: the stores and homes in Halberstadt and Wernigerode, the streets that changed names, and the Swiss hotel from which Dolf wrote in exile.
Known places · not a reconstructed route
A family geography
Surviving documents, photographs and family memory connect these places. The line between them is a reading path through the archive; it does not claim to reconstruct undocumented journeys.
Schwerin · family and marriage
Goldine Marcuse’s city
Goldine Marcuse was born in Schwerin on 8 February 1850. She married Adolf Reichenbach there on 27 July 1872, joining a Schwerin Marcuse household to the Reichenbach family in Halberstadt.
The family Ahnentafel names her parents as the merchant Louis Marcuse and Johanna Cohn. Paul’s Halberstadt birth record independently names Goldine and Adolf as his parents.
Halberstadt · Commercial center
Hoher Weg 27 / Martiniplan 10
The two adjoining premises were remade between 1910 and 1913 as the J. Reichenbach department store. The building was destroyed in the bombing of Halberstadt in 1945; its modern replacement now stands within a streetscape transformed by the war and reconstruction.
The municipal catalogue identifies important historic views of this block and of the Reichenbach façade. Their scans remain off this site until the Städtisches Museum confirms publication terms.
Search the Städtisches Museum Halberstadt finding aid for AH_F_DS_0099 and AH_F_05499c
8 April 1945 · destruction and absence
The commercial center after the bombing
The City of Halberstadt records that incendiary bombs reduced the city center and large parts of the old town to rubble on 8 April 1945. The family’s department-store building at Hoher Weg 27 and Martiniplan 10 was among the structures lost.
This family-held print looks across the ruined center toward the damaged Martinikirche. It shows the physical destruction that later remade the family’s commercial quarter, though not every ruin in the frame belonged to the Reichenbach property. The exact camera position and date of the photograph remain open questions.
Family addresses
Three Halberstadt records, mapped forward
Historic street names and numbering do not always map cleanly onto the rebuilt city. The contemporary views therefore distinguish an exact modern pin from an approximate street corridor.
1930–1932
Moltkestraße 46
Paul’s address in Ruth’s 1930 marriage record and the 1931/32 Alpine Club membership roll. The street is now Rudolf-Breitscheid-Straße.
1935
Sedanstraße 52
Paul’s final recorded home and the place of his death on 20 November 1935. The street is now Thomas-Müntzer-Straße.
Wernigerode · Breite Straße 7
The same family, in another Harz town
Salomon Gustav Reichenbach, son of Jacob and Helene and brother of Adolf, established his household in Wernigerode with Jeanette Rosenbaum. A published 1938 photograph records Jeanette’s J. Reichenbach name above the display windows; it remains linked but not reproduced while publication permission is pending. Daniel’s present-day photograph returns to the same number, where a shop still opens to the street and four Stolpersteine outside name Jeanette, Fritz, Martha and Werner Reichenbach.
Follow the complete Wernigerode branch, its records and images →
The 2017 exterior and individual Stolperstein photographs are published under CC BY-SA 4.0 with the photographer’s credit and source links.
Four names at one address
The Stolpersteine
Each licensed photograph opens to a full object record with the creator, source page and Creative Commons license.
St. Moritz · 26 November 1938
The Carlton Hotel
The hotel’s letterhead and the St. Moritz dateline place Dolf at the Swiss threshold of exile. From here he asked his mother to hold her head high and look forward to the family being together again.
The wider landscape
Jewish Halberstadt and remembrance
The family’s addresses belonged to a larger civic and Jewish geography, from Judenstraße and the synagogue quarter to the Stolpersteine in Wernigerode.
Domplatz · remembrance in the civic center
Names returned to the city
Beside Halberstadt Cathedral, memorial stones carry names and dates of Jewish residents persecuted and murdered under National Socialism. Family photographs from the 2022 return preserve both the setting and the act of looking for Reichenbach names.
Each photograph opens to its source, treatment note and a complete translation or an explicit reading note where the visible inscription consists only of names and dates.
Klein Quenstedter Straße · photographed and recorded
The Reichenbach stones
The family’s photographs preserve four named stones—Adolf, Paul, Salomon Gustav and Miriam Mathilde—and one further stone that cannot yet be identified responsibly. Select any photograph for its complete record, transcription, translation and related historical views.
Daniel and Paul J. Reichenbach · Halberstadt
Walking the family cemetery
Rabbi Daniel Dolph Reichenbach and his father, Paul J. Reichenbach, made this visit together during the family’s return to Halberstadt. The brief film keeps the cemetery’s own sound: footsteps, wind and birdsong.
The family record now names eighteen Reichenbach burials across two Halberstadt Jewish cemeteries. Some exact relationships remain unresolved, but the span of those graves—from 1833 to 1936—makes the larger fact unmistakable. The Reichenbachs were not passing through Halberstadt. Generations lived, worked, married, raised children and died there.
Visual and audio description: Daniel walks past Adolf and Goldine Reichenbach’s grave, visible on the right at the beginning, and continues among the overgrown rows of stones. Long grass moves around the graves while birdsong fills the cemetery.
About this film
A walk through the Jewish cemetery at Klein Quenstedter Straße during Daniel and Paul J. Reichenbach’s return to Halberstadt.
- Archive reference
- RB-VID-0007
- Date
- 27 May 2022
- Evidence
- Family-held modern video
- Source
- Family video recorded 27 May 2022 and exported from the family Photos library album “Friedhof Halberstadt”; archival MOV and a 720p H.264 web derivative preserved by the Reichenbach Family Archive.
- Credit
- Reichenbach Family Archive
- License or permission
- Family-owned video; cleared for publication by the archive owner.
- Media treatment
- The source HDR MOV and a 720p H.264 derivative are preserved in the canonical archive. A compact mobile-friendly derivative is published here; its sequence and original sound are unchanged.
- Text and translation
- No spoken narration or visible running text requires translation. The original cemetery sound is preserved.
Miriam · Mathilde
A Hebrew name, a civil name, one woman
The stone and cemetery register identify her as Miriam Mathilde Reichenbach, née Loewenthal, wife of R. Moshe HaLevi Reichenbach. The adjoining register entry records the same husband under his civil name, Moritz Reichenbach, a merchant connected with Quedlinburg; the register also records their child Paul, who died in 1904.
The date letter is a dalet: 4 Tevet 5689 corresponds to 17 December 1928, exactly matching the cemetery register. Read Miriam Mathilde’s sourced biography → Read Moritz · Moshe HaLevi’s sourced biography →
Hebrew transcription
פ״נהאשה החשובה מ׳תמרים מאטהילדעאשת ר׳ משה הלוי רייכענבאךהלכה לעולמה ד׳ טבת תרפ״טאשה צנועה וכשרהעטרת בעלה ובניהחסד וגמלה לחיים ולמתיםביתה פתוחה לענייםוזכרה הטוב לברכהתנצב״הFull English translation
Here is buriedThe important woman, Mrs.Miriam MathildeWife of R. Moshe HaLevi ReichenbachShe passed away on the 4th of Tevet 5689A modest and righteous woman,Crown of her husband and her children.[She performed] kindness and charity for the living and the dead.Her house was open to the poor.May her good memory be for a blessing.May her soul be bound in the bond of life.
Institutional cemetery register · 18 burials
Names preserved beyond the photographed stones
A register supplied by Jutta Dick of the Moses Mendelssohn Akademie records Reichenbach burials in two Halberstadt Jewish cemeteries. A name in the register proves a burial; it does not by itself prove how that person fits into this family.
Halberstadt Jewish cemetery
Am Berge
The older Halberstadt Jewish cemetery. The register preserves four Reichenbach burials here, but does not identify their surviving stones.
Abraham Reichenbach
1780 — 6 February 1833
Stone not identified
Merchant.
Täubchen Reichenbach, née Grank
1788 — 14 November 1861
Stone not identified
Isaak Reichenbach
1814 — 17 November 1872
Stone not identified
David Otto Reichenbach
1851 — 20 August 1857
Stone not identified
A child whom the family genealogy records as a son of Jacob and Helene.
Halberstadt Jewish cemetery
Klein Quenstedter Straße
The later cemetery photographed by the family. The register supplies names and plots even when a stone has not yet been matched to a photograph.
Adolf Reichenbach
26/27 December 1900
A 19
Paul’s father. The stone gives 5 Tevet 5661, corresponding to 26 December; the cemetery register records 27 December.
Helene Reichenbach, née Heynemann-Löwenheyn
1 October 1903 in the register
F 5
Jacob’s wife; another family source gives 12 October, so both dates remain preserved.
Paul Reichenbach
died 18 October 1904
D 2
A child of the Quedlinburg merchant Moritz Reichenbach; not Paul Reichenbach (1876–1935).
Georg Reichenbach
died 31 October 1909
G 15
Goldine Reichenbach, née Marcuse
died 12 October 1913
A 20
Adolf’s wife and Paul’s mother.
Amalie Helft, née Reichenbach
died 4 January 1915
F 20
Fanny Reichenbach
died 10 September 1915
K 7
Recorded as unmarried.
Lina Reichenbach, née Asch
died 14 December 1918
II 9
Ludwig Reichenbach
died 7 May 1920
II 10
Salomon Gustav Reichenbach
died 19 June 1928
VIII 3
Jacob and Helene’s son, Adolf’s brother and the documented link to the Wernigerode branch.
Miriam Mathilde Reichenbach, née Loewenthal
4 Tevet 5689 · 17 December 1928
VIII 5
Her Hebrew stone names her as the wife of R. Moshe HaLevi Reichenbach, the Moritz Reichenbach recorded in the adjoining plot. The household’s relationship to the principal family line remains unresolved.
Betty Hirsch, née Reichenbach
died 16 September 1929
VII 8
Paul Reichenbach
20 October 1876 — 20 November 1935
XXIV 19
The Halberstadt merchant, civic participant and father of Ruth and Dolf.
Moritz Reichenbach · Moshe HaLevi
died 6 June 1936
VIII 6
A Quedlinburg merchant, husband of Miriam Mathilde and father of the child Paul; his plot adjoins hers.
Recorded stone · identity still open
A monument that cannot yet be matched responsibly
This additional photograph preserves a stone among the family’s cemetery images whose name, date and relationship cannot yet be read securely. It belongs in the archive without being forced into the family tree.
Return through research · Halberstadt
Two stones, two acts of care
These family videos record Daniel caring for two Reichenbach gravestones in Halberstadt: his great-grandfather Paul’s, and his great-great-grandfather Adolf’s, a few steps away.
Paul Reichenbach · Halberstadt
Cleaning Paul’s gravestone
Visual description: Daniel kneels beside Paul’s gravestone and gently clears its weathered surface by hand.
Paul’s Hebrew inscription names him Yaakov son of Avraham.
Adolf Reichenbach · Halberstadt
Cleaning Adolf’s gravestone
Visual description: wearing a red kippah, Daniel works across the Hebrew face of Adolf’s gravestone so that its inscription can be read again.
Adolf Reichenbach was Paul’s father and the family’s Halberstadt merchant. His stone carries his name in both languages: Adolph Reichenbach on the German face, Baruch Achiezer on the Hebrew.
Hebrew · normalized reconstruction
פ״נ
האיש היקר ר׳ ברוך אחיעזר
המכונה אדולף רייכענבאך
איש צדיק אשר הלך בתום
גדול בעצה ובמעשה ידיו
ישר אמריו רב פעלים ומטיב לבריות
בוכים אנו בעמדנו פה ולבנו נשבר
שים רחמיך ביד מנחיל נחלה רבה
נפטר ביום ד׳ ה׳ טבת שנת תרס״א לפ״ק
תנצב״ה
The stone is weathered. This normalized Hebrew reconstruction follows the preserved reading and is not presented as a letter-perfect diplomatic transcription.
English translation
Here lies Baruch Achiezer, known as Adolf Reichenbach.
A righteous man who walked with integrity; great in counsel and in the work of his hands, upright in speech, performing much good, and beneficial to others.
We weep as we stand here, our hearts broken. Place Your compassion into the hand of the One who grants abundant inheritance.
He passed away on Wednesday, the 5th of Tevet, in the year 5661, according to the minor reckoning — 26 December 1900.
May his soul be bound in the bond of life.