Ilse Sinclair

LIVING MEMORY OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY ILSE SINCLAIR Interviewed by Jennifer Wingate C410/011/01-06 IN PARTNERSHIP WITH Ilse SinclairC410/011/F131-A/Page 2 IMPORTANT Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, however no transcript is an exact translation of the spoken word, and this document is intended to be a guide to the original recording, not replace it. Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators. This transcript is copyright of the British Library. Please refer to the oral history section at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History British Library Sound Archive 96 Euston Road NW1 2DB 020 7412 7404 [email protected] Ilse SinclairC410/011/F131-A/Page 3 ACCESSION NO: C4lO/Oll PLAYBACK NO: SERIES TITLE: THE LIVING MEMORY OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY INTERVIEWEE'S SURNAME: SINCLAIR nee GUTENTAG SEX F. INTERVIEWEE'S FORENAME(S): ILSE DATE OF BIRTH: 5th July, l92l. DATE(S) OF RECORDING: 2Oth January, l989. INTERVIEWER'S NAME: JENNIFER WINGATE NO. OF REELS/CASSETTES: 6 SPEED: MONO OR STEREO: Stereo ORIGINAL OR COPY: Original. CLEARANCE AND COPYRIGHT: Ilse SinclairC410/011/F131-A/Page 4 This is Tape l in the interview with Ilse Sinclair, on the 2Oth January, l989, done for the National Life Story Collection, by Jennifer Wingate. Well, I'll start with the date of my birth. I was called Ilse Gutentag. I was born in Hamburg, Germany, on the 5th July, l92l. Before I start on my childhood, I'd quite like to tell you about my ancestors, of whom I know just a little bit. My mother's parents I actually knew, and I'll tell you about it in the course of my childhood. My father's parents, I didn't know. They died during the First World War, and I never met them. They were, I was always told, that they were rather sort of aristocratic people, apparently. They were Citizens of Hamburg which was a special honour that was bestowed on them, and Jews, in particular, were very proud of being Hamburger Bilge as it was called then. My grandfather started a business in Hamburg, which, as I'm going to tell you in a moment, was a sort of a family business, textiles, wools of various kinds, he was a wool merchant, but he actually had a large shop in the middle of Hamburg, in the sort of West End of Hamburg. He started it there. He must have started it in the early l9OO, mmm, I don't know, 2, 3, 5, something like that. Now, the story about my grandfather, the tiny little story which I'd like to tell you about showing you how he, how they lived. This is obviously not my own experience because I never met them, but my cousins who are much older than I, who met these grandparents, they had four daughters and one son, and I'm the daughter of their son. They lived in a large flat in Hamburg, and this obviously only had one toilet, and my grandfather kept his own toilet seat, so that when he came home from business or whatever, he had to go to the loo, he would take a little key from his watch-chain, and unlock a padlock, from, you know, unlock a padlock which was roun d his particular loo seat, and he would then let this down and sit on it! And nobody else in the house was allowed to use it, which always seemed extremely amusing to me! I had pictures of my grandparents, and they look very regal and very pleasant people, and I'm told by my relatives that they were very kind, and lovely looking. My cousin always says they were rather aristocratic looking, but you know, it's all in the eye of the beholder, isn't it. Now, my grandfather's father, of whom I have a painting at home, was born in l892, something like that, and he went into the Army, and fought against Napoleon. You must mean l792? I'm sorry, I do mean l792, yes, absolutely right. And he fought against Napoleon in l8l2, and his horse was shot from under him, and he got a medal from the, I never remember whether it was the King or the Kaiser, they, I think they said it was the Kaiser, but I couldn't really check this out. He had this medal handed to him, and I remember the story that the King, or the Kaiser, said to him, the equivalent of, "Nothing is so difficult to put up with as a number of good days", making a pun of "Gutentags". So this man was, I can't remember his name, he was called Gutentag, of course, and I've forgotten his first name now, he got this medal of which all the ancestors including myself, are terribly proud, and I have certification to prove that this is so, and all sorts of little bits of paper that prove that. I also have details about Ilse SinclairC410/011/F131-A/Page 5 his father's father, who is my great, great grandfather, and he was called Mayer Gutentag, he was born in l772, just over the border in Poland, and when he was a very young man, he became a wool merchant, and had permission to reside in Breslau during the week, and at weekends he would have to go back to his place of birth, which I'm not sure what that was, it was a small village, I believe, in Poland, and so he was allowed to work in Germany, and then had to go back home at weekends, and he started as a wool merchant, and this kind of business went right through the family. Later on, his son started a business in Berlin, there was also one in Breslau, and then there was ours, started by his grandson, who's my grandfather, in Hamburg. That is about all I know about these ancestors, and I have paintings of these two men and their wives at home, I had them restored, and I have these paintings, so the first one was born in l772, which was nice, you know. Have you any idea who painted the paintings? No, unfortunately not. I showed the painting of the old man to the Curator of the Bristol Museum, who had it restored for me, free of charge, because he thought it was a very good painting. He didn't think much of his wife's painting, he thought that was painted 2O years later, he didn't think the painting was any use, though they are really quite nice things to have, they're heirlooms. I think I can now start with my own childhood. I was just going to ask you one thing. You say that you have these dates going back to the l7OOs, have you any idea at all where the family came from before that? Do you think they were in Germany for even centuries before that? The man who was born in l772 obviously later lived in Breslau, and that's where the Gutentags, the family, lived, and had their children there, in Breslau. Yes, but before l772? I could look it up again to make sure that I haven't got the village or the little town, I do remember that my grandmother actually came from Posen. Where's that? In Germany? That was in Poland. In Poland? Yes. Just over the border as well. That was Posen, it's probably called Posnam now, or something like that. So my, actually, my grandfather was called Hugo Gutentag, and his wife was called Jacobine Gutentag, and there's quite an interesting family tree which I've got, because she was born Brühl, and there is a very large family of Brühl's, they were very much in the medical profession, there is all sorts of Professors of Medicine here, there, and everywhere, called Brühl, and they were related, my grandfather and my grandmother were supposed to be cousins, they are cousins, they were cousins. And so the family tree of Brühls and Gutentags are very much interwoven, they come from the same root, as it were, and there was a well-known Ilse SinclairC410/011/F131-A/Page 6 family Brühl in Berlin, and we were the only Gutentags of that tree, if you like, in Hamburg, and my father's business was called Brühl and Gutentag, and it was in a street the equivalent to Regent Street. I always thought it was a bit like The Needlewoman in Regent Street, which is long extinct now. But we were brought up to be very proud of our family's business, because it had been in the family some time, and it was the same sort of business in Berlin, and the same kind of business in Breslau, run by different branches of the family. So I was born in Hamburg, and knew the grandparents on my mother's side. My grandfather was called Mehrgut, he was called Marcus Mehrgut. I knew him as a very kind, very very small man. He died when I was about 5 or 6, so I don't remember very much of him. He was a wine merchant, I remember, and you know, children are awful snobs, and I always felt that my father's family were of much better stock than my mother's family! I don't know why that came about, but that's how it seemed to us.

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