Katzenstein Family Collection

Martin Katzenstein was born in Eschwege, Germany, on March 8, 1885. He was the oldest son of Ida Katzenstein (née Plaut), born on November 10, 1860, and Saroni Katzenstein, born on December 23, 1853. Saroni died on July 19, 1927 and Ida died on January 10, 1940. Martin Katzenstein had one sister, Else, born July 23, 1889, and one brother, Ludwig (1890-1919). Martin became a lawyer in 1908 and got married on April 27, 1926. His wife Anna Charlotte Katzenstein (née Boehm) was born in Berlin August 29, 1893, daughter of Eugen Boehm, born November 30, 1856 and Selma Boehm (née Alport), born in Posen (today Poznań, Poland) in 1870 or 1871, died in Berlin on August 28, 1936. Anna obtained certification to teach English in 1912 and enjoyed a brief friendship with Peter Nansen, the Danish novelist, from 1914 to 1918. She worked as a prisoner aide during the First World War and as an editorial assistant in the 1920s. After their marriage, Martin and Anna lived in Berlin, where their daughter Irene was born on November 7, 1928.

Irene escaped to England via "Kindertransport" in January 1939. Her mother Anna followed one month later. Both were sponsored by Valerie Alport, Anna’s aunt in England. Because Valerie only guaranteed Martin a temporary visa, he emigrated to Chile that same year. The Katzenstein family was separated for the next several years, eventually reuniting in Santiago de Chile in June 1946, where Martin had started working as a salesman. Despite the reunion, the family members had become somewhat estranged after a lengthy separation. Martin died in Chile in August 1948.

Even though Anna held German and British citizenship, she remained in Chile at least until the 1960s. She died in London, England, on August 25, 1982. In New York, in 1969, her daughter Irene had married Ernst Schmied, born in Czechoslovakia on January 25, 1917. Irene, who had performed some family research in the 1990s and 2000s, died in New York on December 17, 2010.