My grandfather Gerson Igersheimer’s parents ran a general store in Bad Mergentheim before they later moved to Frankfurt. My grandfather was the owner of a banking business, but it must have been so small that, by all accounts, he still shared the only errand boy with another bank in the same building. A friend of my father’s stated that the grandfather went bankrupt shortly before his death in 1913. My grandfather Max Minden, on the other hand, was - at least for a time - incomparably more successful. He built up a flourishing business importing agricultural products from Russia to Germany and England. From 1894 to 1904, he managed the English branch in Hull, where several children were born, including my mother. Reportedly, he also ran into financial difficulties shortly before his death in 1914, which may have contributed to his demise.
In the next generation, my mother’s brother, Ernst Minden, was the most successful. He was unable to study during the difficult period for the family after 1918, but then worked his way up in the Max Warburg banking business in Hamburg and after 1933 managed the bank’s operations in England. In his commitment to the persecuted, he was very much like his father. He enabled not only relatives but also many others to emigrate. He also supported my parents in this.
My father did an apprenticeship at the metal company Beer Sontheimer in Frankfurt. In 1914 he was drafted and served, with an interruption due to simulated illness, until the end of the war. Although he felt German, he was opposed to any nationalism and saw the war as a great misfortune from which he wanted to keep away. Thus, he navigated his way through the war period much like the good soldier Schwejk. He spoke quite openly about his behavior in the war, and although this bothered me as a child, I later found it quite positive. He was always very interested in politics, without getting involved in party politics. His attitude was democratic. In the Weimar Republic, he faithfully voted for the German Democratic Party (merged into the German State Party in 1930) from January 1919 to March 1933. In 1919 he joined the chemical company Ludwig Netter in Ludwigshafen and then in 1921 he went to Hamburg, where his sister lived, as the manager of its branch there. In 1925 he went into business for himself in the metal industry and shortly thereafter married my mother.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Zwei Seiten der Geschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002, p. 53f (translation)