Cramer, Hans Siegfried, 183?-1886

This collection primarily contains original and reprographic architectural records, photographs, correspondence and personal and professional records related to the design, construction, and ownership of the Haus Cramer in Dahlem, Berlin, Germany, designed by German architect Hermann Muthesius in 1911-1913 for Hans and Gertrud Cramer, with later additions by Muthesius and other architects. A significant portion of the collection also documents the Cramer family's efforts to obtain restitution after World War II for the seizure of the house in the 1930s. Also included are records documenting the restoration and reuse, an effort led by noted architectural historian Julius Poesner.

Haus Cramer, commissioned by Hans and and Gertrude Cramer, is located at Pacelliallee 18/20 (formerly Cecilienallee 18/20) in Berlin-Dahlem. The collection contains a comprehensive set of drawings dating to the construction of the house in 1911-1914, including drawings of the exteriors, interiors and gardens. During the 1930s, the Cramer family ran into financial trouble due to the oppressive anti-Jewish policies of the Nazi government, which placed numerous restrictions on Jewish businesses. Prior to this, Hans Cramer had run a profitable import/export business dealing mostly in grains. His family was of Jewish descent, although they had converted to Lutheranism at some point during the mid-nineteenth century.

Hans Cramer's daughter, Charlotte, married an American and moved to New York in the early 1930s. At this point, Hans Cramer began shipping some of the family's furniture and art to his daughter. In this same year, due to his inability to pay taxes on the house and property, the city of Berlin seized his house and eventually auctioned off much of the contents. Hans Cramer, his wife Gertrud and son Frederick, followed Charlotte, emigrating to the United States in 1933. After World War II, Hans Cramer waged a long battle to gain restitution from the government of Germany for his lost property. Correspondence between Hans Cramer and his lawyer, Helmut Ruge, forms a large part of the records of the collection. According to the family, the house survived the war only to be destroyed in a gas explosion sometime during the 1950s. Julius Posener, the noted architectural historian, intervened in the 1970s and petitioned the city of Berlin to reconstruct the house for use by Stanford University, which eventually purchased Haus Cramer in 2000 to house their Bing Overseas Studies in Berlin.

Charlotte’s father, Hans Siegfried Cramer, was born to Moritz Cramer (183?-1886) and Emma Lachs Cramer (d. 1890s) in Brandenburg, Germany. Moritz Cramer, a successful Jewish businessman in Brandenburg, worked in textiles along with his brother Siegmund Cramer (1840-1903) under the name H.S. Cramer & Söhne.[5] Hans was one of five children, Elsbeth (1871-1940), Ernst (October 1, 1873-1948), Margarete (1875-late1950s), and Toni (1879-1967). After his father’s death in 1886, Hans left school at age fourteen to apprentice in an unidentified business to help support the family. In 1894, at the age of twenty-two, he established the firm H.S. Cramer & Co. in Berlin, specializing in the import and export of grains from Europe, with branch offices in Hamburg and Bremen.[6] Cramer advertised his business of grain and feed stuffs and work as a grain agent and commission merchant in U.S. publications.[7]
Hans Cramer married Gertrud Bruck (1875-1946), a Lutheran convert since 1893, on December 17, 1903. Known as “Trude,” Bruck was one of six children born to Adalbert Bruck (1842-1909), a judge in Berlin, and Anna (neé Flato, 1852-1904). Gertrud completed her education in Bonn, earning her Abitur (German high school diploma) in 1893. As an “Abiturientin” Gertrud was entitled to move directly to university, but she did not attend. She was one of only thirty-six women in Germany to receive the Abitur.[11] Gertrud authored From the diary of a high school girl (Aus Dem Tagebuche einer Gymnasiastin) in 1902.[12]
Both the Cramer and the Bruck families were of Jewish origin, but in 1900, Adalbert and Anna Bruck converted to Lutheranism.[19] There is no evidence the Cramer family converted to Christianity and Hans Cramer was listed in the 1931 Jewish Address Book for Greater Berlin.[20] The Cramer Family did not practice their religion and neither Hans nor Gertrud identified with religious or political organizations while living in Berlin. At some point in the twentieth century, Gertrud purchased a German Bible translated by Martin Luther from 1545, but it is unclear if the family used it in any religious context. Charlotte and her brother Fritz were christened in the Lutheran Church, Fritz in 1909 and presumably Charlotte at the same time.[21] Cramer Sachs fondly recalls Christmases (lighting candles, singing carols, exchanging gifts and Christmas stollen) in her memoir, providing evidence that the family observed a secular celebration of the holiday. In the United States, Charlotte did not identify with her Jewish roots, or Lutheranism, but continued to both speak and write German with her parents.
H.S. Cramer & Co.
Early in his business career, Hans Cramer sought to expand his business throughout Europe and overseas, even considering a move to Switzerland around 1907-1908. He began establishing business contacts outside Germany, especially in the United States. He traveled to the United States for the first time in 1902 to visit his younger brother, Ernst Cramer. Ernest, as he was known in the United States, worked as a salesman for a baking company in New York City.[29] He was the first Cramer family member to emigrate from Germany to the United States in 1902.[30]

Hans Cramer made twelve trips to the United States between 1902 and August 1938. Many of these trips were between Germany and New York from 1924 to 1931 and were business-related. However, by the fall of 1924, Charlotte was married and living in New York, as was Ernest and his family. Hans and Gertrud Cramer sought renters for their Dahlem home to ease some of their financial burdens. The poor economic climate in Germany and Europe in the 1920s deterred them from a move to Switzerland. The growing threat of Nazism would be the final factor forcing a departure for England in the spring of 1933 and ultimately immigration to the United States in December 1934. Hans and Gertrud arrived in New York in early January 1935. Observing the economic opportunities in the United States to expand his business further reinforced Cramer’s decision to move to New York versus Switzerland. The value of the Reichsmark had, by 1921, sunk to around 7 percent of its value of 1913; it had declined to 1 percent by mid-1922 and by the beginning of 1923 to less than 0.0004 percent.[31]

Cramer’s business in Berlin suffered from the anti-Jewish legislation and specifically the April 1, 1933, boycott of Jewish businesses.[32] In later years, while trying to gain war restitution and reparations, Cramer wrote, “The tendencies of Hitlerism had compelled me to leave Germany and to build up an existence elsewhere. The decrees of the Hitler administration resulted ultimately in the foreclosure and sale of this property [Haus Cramer]. The sale at a price of RM 180,000 (roughly $1.1 million in 2010 USD) was one of those waste sales, general at the time, of real estate in Jewish possession.”[33] Cramer further elaborated, “Money was lent to me and my wife in 1934 while in London. We were not able to pay the interest on the mortgage and real estate taxes on Dahlem.”[34] Cramer owned two mortgages amounting to RM 150,000 (roughly $961,000 in 2010 USD), plus accrued interest as of 1935 and 1936 respectively and penalty claims. “It was due to the duress conditions prevailing since 1933 that I lost my business (established 1894) in grain and feeds and with it my income and found myself unable to continue payment of interest. I had to go abroad to try and build up a new existence.”[35]

Cramer joined other Germans leaving the country. Thirty-seven thousand of the approximately 525,000 Jews in Germany left the country in 1933. In 1933 about 73 percent of the emigrants left for countries in Western Europe, 19 percent for Palestine, and 8 percent chose to go overseas.[36] The material difficulty of emigrating from Germany was considerable, especially in a period of economic uncertainty; it entailed an immediate and heavy material loss: Jewish-owned property was sold at lower prices, and the emigration tax (the Brüning government’s 1931 “tax on capital flight,” which was levied on assets of two-hundred thousand Reichsmark and up, was raised by the Nazis to a levy on assets of fifty thousand Reichsmarks and up) was prohibitive.[37]

Hitler’s rise to power and Cramer’s personal financial situation resulted in his final departure from Germany for England in 1933. Cramer and his wife remained in England where he had business contacts until their December 1934 departure for New York.[38] While in England, the Cramers were joined by Charlotte and her daughter, Eleanor, who lived with them before returning to New York in June of 1936. During this period (1933-1938), Charlotte, an American citizen, traveled to Germany frequently to visit the house at Dahlem to inventory the family’s possessions.[39] Hans Cramer’s decision to leave Germany influenced the decision of his sisters, Margarete Cramer and Toni Cramer Orgler, to emigrate to Palestine. Elsbeth Cramer was killed by the Nazis in Chelm, Poland.[40]

With the help of business contacts cultivated by himself and his brother Ernest, Hans Cramer succeeded in establishing himself in New York City where his firms were known as H.S. Cramer & Co, exporter, importer and commission merchant and H.S.C. Trading Company, Agricultural Products.[41] Hans was a member of the New York Produce Exchange among other associations.[42]

Cramer’s financial success in the United States was solid. In a relatively short time, by 1939, the Cramer Family lived in Manhattan (1200 Fifth Avenue) and employed a maid, Ellen Fox from Ireland. Hans Cramer’s export/import businesses, H.S. Cramer & Co. and H.S.C. Trading Company were located at 2 Broadway.[43] In 1941, H.S. Cramer & Co. did $5,500,000 (about $81.4 million in 2010 USD) of import and export business and Cramer’s personal income was $7,500 ($111,000 in 2010 USD).[44]

Cramer Sachs wrote in her memoir that, “My father always liked the wide horizons of America. He had felt that on that continent, untroubled of the echo of the murmur of history through thousands of years, a nation surged forward, un-handicapped by its past, strong, healthy, optimistic, promising.”[45] It is Hans Cramer’s business savvy, work ethic, and perseverance that allowed the family to immigrate to the United States with relative financial ease and begin a new life.

Haus Cramer
Circa 1909-1910, Hans and Gertrud Cramer commissioned “Haus Cramer,” a villa, completed in 1912 by German architect Adam Gottlieb Hermann Muthesius (1861-1927). Prior to building their home, the Cramer family lived in an apartment at Brückenallee 10 in Berlin from 1903 to 1913. Haus Cramer would become a focal point for the family around which their lives (and later, fond memories) would revolve. Muthesius was known for promoting the English Arts and Crafts Movement and his main concern was with domestic architecture. His early domestic buildings were erected for wealthy clients in Berlin between 1905 and 1912.[46] Muthesius promoted the comfort, the simplicity, and the connection between house and garden which he had observed in England.[47]

Haus Cramer was built of gray limestone and located at Pacelliallee 18/20 (formerly Cecilienallee 18/20) at the corner alley of Im Dol parks and gardens with a total acreage of 40,000 sq. feet with buildings covering 4,000 sq. feet. The remainder of the estate included gardens (rose and fruit), lawns, a tennis court, and a chicken yard. With ample room for the family, the house also contained apartments for a gardener or chauffeur, servants’ quarters, as well as a gymnasium and dark room.[48] Cramer’s choice of Muthesius as an architect and the Dahlem neighborhood for his private home are evidence of his financial stability and status in Berlin. The house symbolized success and was a source of great pride and happiness to those who lived there. Cramer Sachs wrote in 1929, “My parents built it with great care and love, and it carried, if invisible, an inscription to: Aux Enfants. Everything to delight children, from a fully stocked playroom, to an indoor and open air gymnasium was thought of.”[49]

Haus Cramer fell into disrepair during World War II and was later partially destroyed by a gas explosion in the 1950s. After World War II, Hans Cramer waged a long battle to gain restitution from the government of Germany for his lost property.[50] Ultimately the City of Berlin provided funds to reconstruct Haus Cramer and restore the gardens. Julius Posener, a noted German architectural historian, intervened in the 1970s and petitioned the city to reconstruct the house for use by Stanford University which eventually purchased the home in 2000 from the City of Berlin for their Stanford in Berlin program.[51] Cramer Sachs retained fond memories of her childhood house and extensive grounds in Dahlem throughout her life, even crediting its wine cellar—unusual in that it provided separate, climate-controlled environments for red and white wines—as the inspiration for her successful line of custom-built, vibration-free wine storage units that would later make Cramer Products Company a household name among wine connoisseurs.

Haus Cramer, commissioned by Hans and and Gertrude Cramer, is located at Pacelliallee 18/20 (formerly Cecilienallee 18/20) in Berlin-Dahlem. The collection contains a comprehensive set of drawings dating to the construction of the house in 1911-1914, including drawings of the exteriors, interiors and gardens. During the 1930s, the Cramer family ran into financial trouble due to the oppressive anti-Jewish policies of the Nazi government, which placed numerous restrictions on Jewish businesses. Prior to this, Hans Cramer had run a profitable import/export business dealing mostly in grains. His family was of Jewish descent, although they had converted to Lutheranism at some point during the mid-nineteenth century.
Hans Cramer's daughter, Charlotte, married an American and moved to New York in the early 1930s. At this point, Hans Cramer began shipping some of the family's furniture and art to his daughter. In this same year, due to his inability to pay taxes on the house and property, the city of Berlin seized his house and eventually auctioned off much of the contents. Hans Cramer, his wife Gertrud and son Frederick, followed Charlotte, emigrating to the United States in 1933. After World War II, Hans Cramer waged a long battle to gain restitution from the government of Germany for his lost property. Correspondence between Hans Cramer and his lawyer, Helmut Ruge, forms a large part of the records of the collection. According to the family, the house survived the war only to be destroyed in a gas explosion sometime during the 1950s. Julius Posener, the noted architectural historian, intervened in the 1970s and petitioned the city of Berlin to reconstruct the house for use by Stanford University, which eventually purchased Haus Cramer in 2000 to house their Bing Overseas Studies in Berlin.