The open trading partnership Dampfsägewerke Böttcher & Ahrens in Wesenberg (Mecklenburg-Strelitz) was a steam sawmill with a plywood factory on the Havel. According to the Sternberg volume Friedrich Ahrens took over a sawmill in Wesenberg on 1 July 1903, although elsewhere the volume also calls him co-founder and partner [5][8]. By 1938 at the latest he and his son Herbert were the only owners [8]. On 10 December 1938 the Mecklenburg State Ministry ruled that Herbert Ahrens was "a Jew within the meaning of" the Nuremberg legislation, thereby declared the firm a business owned by Jews, and ordered its sale within three months [1]. According to the Sternberg volume the business was transferred still in December 1938 to timber entrepreneurs from Holzminden, Lauenau and Güstrow, whereby the proceeds were never paid to the owners [8].
The works
The plant lay on the navigable Havel and, according to the account in the Max-Samuel-Haus volume, was among the most modern in the country [3][8]. In the Sternberg volume Friedrich Ahrens is described once as co-founder and partner and once as the taker-over of a sawmill (1 July 1903) [5][8], whereby the sources do not distinguish between the two; whether the firm was founded or taken over in 1903, and who Böttcher was, has therefore not been documented so far. Ahrens had previously run the grain firm Josephy & Ahrens in Parchim and Sternberg together with his brother-in-law Gustav Josephi and gave up the Sternberg firm in 1907 to concentrate on Wesenberg [8].
Friedrich Ahrens lived with his family in Rostock, according to the 1919 census at Orleansstraße 21 [8]. According to the account by Schröder he was economic adviser of the Deutsche Holzwirtschaftsbank AG Berlin, committee member of the Deutscher Versicherungs-Schutzverband e. V. Berlin, member of the main board of the Verein Ostdeutscher Holzhändler und Sägewerke e. V. Berlin and, from January 1925, honorary member of the University of Rostock [3][8]. His son Herbert worked in the Wesenberg business from 1929 and later became a partner [1][3][8]. When the original partner Böttcher left is not known [8].
December 1938: the order
On 10 December 1938 the Mecklenburg State Ministry, Department of the Interior, ruled under the file number H. 10100 that the co-owner Herbert Ahrens, a merchant in Berlin-Zehlendorf, was "a Jew within the meaning of § 5 of the 1st Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law" of 14 November 1935 [1]. The basis was certified church-book copies from Sternberg, Grevesmühlen and Goldberg and an extract from the register of the Jewish community of Parchim, according to which Herbert Ahrens had, by the ministry's count, three Jewish grandparents, while it was left open whether his paternal grandmother was Jewish [1][8]. Since for an open trading partnership one Jewish personally liable partner sufficed, the whole business counted as Jewish under the Third Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law of 14 June 1938 [1].
On the basis of the ordinance of 3 December 1938 on the use of Jewish property the owners were ordered to sell the business within three months. The director of the Mecklenburgische Treuhandgesellschaft, E. H. Brasch in Schwerin, was appointed trustee, and on delivery the owners lost the right to dispose of the partnership's assets, whereby an appeal to the Reich Minister of Economics was possible within two weeks [1]. The letter was addressed to Herbert Ahrens, while a corresponding letter of 17 December 1938 was directed to Fritz Germer, the general plenipotentiary of the owners [2][8].
The transfer
According to the Sternberg volume the "Aryanization" was carried out in the same month. On 12 December 1938 Fritz Germer concluded "under compulsion" a contract in Berlin with Otto Sasse of Holzminden, Karl Sasse of Lauenau and Paul Bruchhäuser of Güstrow, all timber entrepreneurs, who entered the open trading partnership in place of the former owners, and Brasch approved the contract immediately afterwards [8]. The proceeds were never paid to the Jewish owners [8]. A Rostock publication, however, gives 24 January 1939 for the "Aryanization" of the firm Böttcher & Ahrens [4], so that the date of the "Aryanization" has come down to us in contradictory form, the contract being dated 12 December 1938 according to the Sternberg volume [8].
The family after 1938
After the expropriation Friedrich Ahrens and his wife Auguste, née Josephy, moved to Hamburg-Eppendorf, to Husumer Straße 14, where Friedrich Ahrens died in 1940. His widow returned to Mecklenburg and died on 15 June 1945 [8]. Herbert Ahrens, born on 27 September 1886 in Sternberg, had been a non-commissioned officer in the First World War and was wounded [8]. On 19 December 1940 the Gestapo Berlin took him to Buchenwald concentration camp, where, according to the Buchenwald Memorial, he died as a prisoner of the punishment company (quarry) "of pneumonia" on 8 April 1941 [6][7]. His descendants survived the Shoah [8].