Hans Simmel

Frank Dietze translated the main statements about Simmel's life from this German article, which talks also about the Stolperstein stones. They commemorate people who died during the Nazi regime. Stoplern is to stumble.

Professor Dr. Hans Eugen Simmel was the only son of the famous sociologist Georg Simmel and the painter and publicist Gertrud Kinel. The paternal family is of Jewish origin: Hans Simmel (born 1891 in Berlin) was married to Else, they had four children Marianne (born 1923), Eva (born 1925), Arnold ( born 1926) and Gerhard (born 1930). During the First World War, Hans Simmel was a soldier.
He worked as an internist and head of the Gera Forest Hospital (Waldkrankenhaus) from 1928-33. Because he had Jewish grandparents (who had converted to Evangelical Christianity), he was defamed by the Nazis. He was wrongly accused to get fire him from his work and finally he got arrested. Even though, he was released, he lost the permissioon for his private practice in his house at Vollersdorfer Str. 13 in Gera. The family moved to Stuttgart. In the November pogrom in 1938, Prof. Dr. Simmel was arrested there again. He came to the Dachau concentration camp. In early 1939, he and his wife managed to escape to the United States. Their children escaped on separate routes. Prof. Simmel died in Colorado Springs in 1943. His wife Dr. Else Simmel started to practiced in New York. Daughter Marianne became a teacher, Eva laboratory assistant, Arnold physicist, Gerhard was a student in Princeton, New Jersey.