Michaelis and Lina Cohn (née Meyring)

Michaelis Cohn (1835–1918)
Amalie Göldner Cohn (1836–1884)
Lina Meyring Cohn (1852–1940)

For more than half a century, Michaelis Cohn was one of the most respected Jewish figures in Görlitz — a merchant, factory founder, and community representative whose life reflected both the prosperity and tragedy of Jewish life in Silesia before the Holocaust.

Born in Schwerin in 1835, Michaelis settled in Görlitz in the 1860s, where he became a successful industrialist and civic leader. From his home at Demianiplatz 46, he oversaw the founding of the Moyser Pappenfabrik (Moys Paperboard Factory) in 1888 in Görlitz-Moys (today Zgorzelec, Poland). The factory produced high-quality paperboard and cardboard using advanced steam-powered technology. The original factory building still stands today, one of the last surviving industrial sites tied to Görlitz’s Jewish entrepreneurs.

Michaelis was also a long-serving member of the Görlitz Jewish Community’s representative assembly, remembered for his integrity, fairness, and civic devotion. When he died in 1918 at the age of 84, community records praised his “long years of esteemed and dedicated service.”

First Marriage: Amalie Göldner Cohn (1836–1884)

Michaelis first married Amalie Göldner, with whom he had four children:

• Hedwig Cohn Hinzelmann (1863–1931) – born in Görlitz, later lived in Dresden.
   
• Hugo Cohn (1865–1933) – industrialist and civic leader. A co-director of the family paper factory, he was also a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and served from 1930 to 1933 as President of the Görlitz City Council, one of the highest offices ever held by a Jewish citizen of the city.
  
  On April 5, 1933, the Oberlausitzer Frühpost ran the headline “Görlitz – Jew-Free City Parliament Meets” after the Nazi Party seized control of the city council. The article celebrated the purge of Jewish and Social Democratic officials. Hugo’s successor, Edmund Hoeltje of the NSDAP, declared: “With today, a new spirit enters the City Hall — a spirit of work, fulfillment of duty, and willingness to make sacrifices.”
  
  Hugo Cohn died suddenly and under suspicious circumstances in January 1933 while visiting Berlin. His body was never returned to Görlitz, where he should have been buried beside his family — a symbolic erasure of the Jewish civic leadership that had shaped the city.
  
  Hugo’s daughter Charlotte “Lotte” Cohn Oppenheimer (1896–1942) married Dr. Erich Oppenheimer (1894–1942), a physician remembered today for founding the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (Workers’ Samaritan Federation) in Görlitz and pioneering sports medicine in the city. A street in Görlitz still bears his name, yet until recent research by Lauren Leiderman, few realized that his connection to Görlitz came through his wife Charlotte, whose family had helped build the Jewish community from its earliest days through her grandfather Michaelis.
  
  While Erich is honored for his civic work beyond the Jewish community, Charlotte’s family represents the deep Jewish roots of Görlitz’s history. Both Charlotte and Erich took their own lives in May 1942 in Tormersdorf to avoid deportation to Lublin. Their son, Werner Oppenheimer (1921–1942), was later deported and murdered in Majdanek or Sobibor.
   
• Siegfried Cohn (1867–1916) – merchant in Görlitz; died during World War I; buried in the Görlitz Jewish Cemetery.
   
• Berthold Cohn (1869–?) – born in Görlitz; later life unknown.

Amalie died in 1884 and is buried in the Görlitz Jewish Cemetery.

Second Marriage: Lina Meyring Cohn (1852–1940)

After Amalie’s death, Michaelis married Lina Meyring of Königsberg (Kaliningrad) in 1886. Seventeen years younger than her husband, Lina was remembered as warm, modern, and compassionate. Though less strictly religious than Michaelis, she maintained a kosher kitchen and ensured that Jewish tradition remained central in family life.

They had four children together:

• Ludwig Cohn (1886–1886) – their first child, who died in infancy and is buried in the Görlitz Jewish Cemetery.
  
   
• Alfred Cohn (1887–1918) – killed in France during World War I; his name is inscribed on the memorial to fallen Jewish soldiers in the New Görlitz Synagogue.
  
   
• Stillborn daughter Cohn (1889) – born in Karthaus (today Kartuzy, Poland).
  
   
• Walter Cohn Meyring (1891–1985) – emigrated to the United States, where he became an engineer. In memoirs written in the 1970s, Walter recalled his cultured Görlitz childhood filled with music, study, and Jewish values.

Walter Cohn Meyring said to many that his father died of heartbreak after losing Alfred in the war, a grief that marked the end of an era for their family.  After Michaelis’s death in 1918, Lina moved to Dresden, where she lived until her deportation and murder during the Holocaust in 1940. She was meant to be buried beside her husband in Görlitz, but the Nazis never returned her body.

Legacy

The Cohn family home at Demianiplatz 46, Michaelis’s grave in the Görlitz Jewish Cemetery, and the standing Moyser Pappenfabrik building in Zgorzelec remain enduring witnesses to the family’s profound contributions to Görlitz’s civic and Jewish life.

Through their descendants — from Hugo the reformer, to Charlotte and Erich the humanitarians, to Walter the chronicler — the Cohn family’s story spans industry, faith, public service, and remembrance. It embodies both the heights of Jewish integration and the devastation that followed, and it endures as a cornerstone of Görlitz’s recovered history.

© Lauren Leiderman