Objects from the property of Henny and Siegfried Insel

Three special items in the collection of the Stadtmuseum Oldenburg (Oldenburg City Museum) come from the former property of the Jewish married couple Henny and Siegfried Insel from Oldenburg. The objects provide insight into the history of the Insel family and their painful fate during the National Socialist era. All four Oldenburg family members were murdered in Nazi extermination camps.

The objects from their possessions are a pewter jug bearing a dedication inscription for a wedding feast and a jewelry set for the silver wedding anniversary, consisting of an ornately crafted tiara and a pin made of silver-plated metal. In 1997, these objects came into the custody of the museum as a donation made by an Oldenburg citizen.

His parents had friendly contact with Henny and Siegfried Insel in the 1930s. When they left Oldenburg in September 1936, the Insel couple gave them the pewter jug and the wedding jewelry. Shortly after their move, the "Islanders" (Insel means Island in German) from Hanover wrote a postcard to their Oldenburg friends in which they thanked them cordially "for all their efforts". Presumably, they had helped them prepare the move. Both this as well as another postcard were gifted to the Stadtmuseum in 2021.

The businessman Siegfried Insel, born in Berne in 1859, and his wife Henny, born in Hameln in 1873, had moved from the Wesermarsch to the nearby town of Oldenburg in 1903, where from 1910 they lived in a large apartment in the so-called "Yellow Castle" at the noble Roggemannstraße No. 25. The couple had two children: Grete, born in Berne in 1903, and Hermann, born in Oldenburg in 1910. Siegfried Insel had been working as an insurance agent since 1914. From 1924 to 1933, he represented the insurance company Rhein-Mosel as its main agent in Oldenburg. He lost his job as a representative in 1934. Siegfried Insel was still listed as a merchant in the city's commercial register until 1935. After that, his professional entries in the Oldenburg address book also dry up.

Pressured by the increasing discrimination and economic hardship experienced by all Jews as a result of the National Socialists' anti-Semitic measures, Henny and Siegfried Insel decided to relocate to Hanover in the late summer of 1936 and moved into a small newly built flat together with their 33-year-old daughter Grete. Like many other Jewish citizens in Germany, they hoped that by moving to the more anonymous surroundings of a larger city, they would be less exposed to everyday repressions. They were unable to take large parts of their Oldenburg household with them due to lack of space. Shortly before they left, they had deliberately offered items from their household to the Landesmuseum Oldenburg (Oldenburg State Museum) for purchase. They were only able to sell a few of them at very low prices.

In February 1939, both the parents and their daughter emigrated from Hanover to Amsterdam, fleeing the German persecution of the Jews and hoping for a safe existence outside of Nazi Germany. Siegfried Insel had to sell his parents' house in Berne to finance their emigration. Their son Hermann had already moved to Amsterdam in 1933. After the invasion of the German Wehrmacht and the capitulation of the Netherlands in May 1940, the Insel family, like other Jews, was no longer safe there. On 25 May 1943, Henny and Siegfried Insel were arrested by the German occupying forces in Amsterdam and taken to the Westerbork transit camp. From there, they were deported by train to the Sobibór Nazi extermination camp in Poland and murdered. Their two adult children had already been deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Westerbork in July 1942 and suffered the same fate there.

Against the backdrop of political events and their personal situation, it becomes clear that the Insel couple involuntarily had to part with many things and reduce their household items in order to minimise their relocation goods as early as 1936, when they were forced to move from a large flat in Oldenburg to a small flat elsewhere. Henny and Siegfried Insel's disappointment at these unintended circumstances is expressed in their later list of items to be moved to Amsterdam, which was demanded by the foreign currency office. The gifting of very personal objects to a family friend should be understood in this context, as should the sale of household goods to the Landesmuseum Oldenburg. Due to the very private nature of the items, the couple presumably did not consider the pewter jug and the silver wedding jewellery to be worth selling. Given the burdensome circumstances, the gift from Henny and Siegfried Insel to their non-Jewish Oldenburg friends at the time must indeed be considered as a case of “Nazi-confiscation” because of persecution, even if the exact circumstances can no longer be traced in detail. However, it is very likely that under other circumstances the Insel family would not have had any reason to part with these personal possessions, which are part of their family history.

The City of Oldenburg has therefore offered the heirs of Henny and Siegfried Insel either a restitution, i.e. the return of these collection items, or another fair resolution. The Stadtmuseum is in contact with the descendants of the Insel family and an official restitution is in preparation.

The German Lost Art Foundation (Stiftung Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste) generously funds provenance research at the Stadtmuseum Oldenburg.

Reports of objects from the property of Henny and Siegfried Insel in the Lost Art Internet Database »

Memorial sheets of the international Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem for the Insel family:

Henny Insel »

Siegfried Insel »

Grete Insel »

Hermann Insel »