Ludwig Philipp Cohn Estate Collection

Ludwig Philipp Cohn was an industrialist who ran a hosiery factory in Görlitz, Saxony (Germany), with his brother Fritz. The haberdashery had been founded in 1846, and developed into a large hosiery factory by Ludwig’s uncle, Louis Cohn. Ludwig’s father Leopold had joined the company in 1865. Leopold was also one of the founders of the Jewish community in Görlitz. Ludwig Philipp died in the concentration camp Buchenwald in July 1938. Before his death, his daughters Hildegard Dorothea (Hilde, born 1909) and Susanne Bertha Stein (Susan, 1911-2000) had emigrated to the U. S. along with Susan’s husband, the physician Albrecht Stein (1905-1960). Ludwig’s widow Meta Cohn née Klinkowstein (1888-1968) followed them later. All three—Hilde, Susan, and Meta—disclaimed Ludwig’s inheritance out of political reasons and Susan’s newborn son Robert A. Stein (born in February 1939 in New York) became the only heir of Ludwig Cohn’s estate. The estate was partly sold under duress and partly expropriated without compensation by the German government in 1942 by declaring the certificate of inheritance to Robert Stein invalid. Stocks, bank accounts and furniture which were under the administration of the lawyer Hans Schwidtal in Görlitz were gradually lost. Most of the furniture was destroyed in the war, the stocks lost their value and the bank accounts were devaluated. The real estate was expropriated by the German Democratic Republic in 1946. After 1945, Meta Cohn took up the procedure to claim legal succession. In 1956, the inheritance to Robert was withdrawn and granted to Meta Cohn and her daughters. Robert Stein challenged this in the 1960s in order to claim compensation at the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (FCSC). His certificate of inheritance was renewed in 1967 by the court of Hildesheim and he received compensation for his grandfather’s estate in the 1980s. In the context of a new claim against the GDR in the 1990s, Robert’s certificate of inheritance was withdrawn again by the court of Görlitz in 1993. The cases related to the restitution of this estate continued through the 1990s.