08/30/2026
Anton Münden was born in Hamburg in 1867. Shortly after his marriage to Hedwig Salomon in 1903, he joined the company of his brother-in-law Moritz Glückstadt, which operated a publishing firm for postcards. In 1909, he became a co-owner of the company. For the company Anton Münden, though only an amateur in this field, took photographs himself using a camera, tripod, and magnesium flash. IThe business was not interested in artistic photography but rather in the most extensive and sellable selection of motifs possible. For this reason, there was a preference for images of hotels and nature scenes.
The family of Hedwig Münden, née Salomon, came from Lüneburg, where her father, Siegfried Simon Salomon, worked as a broker in hides and leather. His father, Simon Salomon (died probably in 1889) had been a leather manufacturer and head of the synagogue in Lüneburg. As early as 1877, Siegfried Salomon, by then a leather manufacturer himself, moved with his wife and daughter Gertrud (born in 1876) to Hamburg. In 1879, daughter Hedwig Sophie was born in Hamburg-Neustadt. The home was a manifestation of Siegfried Salomon’s economic success, a man who liked to play skat [a popular German card game] and kept a parrot in the apartment. Arguing, "I can pray to the good Lord wherever I wish,” Siegfried Salomon turned away from the Jewish religion and toward a Freemasons’ lodge. Hedwig's brother Ernst Salomon (born in 1877 in Lüneburg) was killed in action on the western front in 1916. Her father died of natural causes the following year.
Anton Münden and Hedwig Salomon met at Carl Hagenbeck’s Zoo (Tierpark Carl Hagenbeck). It is not known whether this meeting was arranged or not. The couple moved to a spacious five-bedroom apartment in 1916, after the birth of their second child.
As was the custom with spacious, representative apartments, the Mündens had, among other things, three balconies (one to the street and two to the rear); an elegant smoking room for men in dark oak with a desk (featuring the telephone), a sofa, leather armchairs, a bookcase, and four oil paintings by a marine painter; a dining room with a pull-out table seating up to 24 persons and an elaborately finished sideboard decked with glass and silver-plated Art Nouveau vases and bowls as well as crystal decanters with silver necks and silver lids; a living room finished in cherry wood with a table and six chairs, two cupboards, a modern built-in sofa, a French piano, a French mantelpiece clock made of green marble, and a woman’s desk; as well as a small room for the maid that helped Hedwig Münden. In addition, she also employed a domestic help for sewing and other household work. In this way they were typical of the upper tier of the middle class German world of the time.
For reasons of age, Anton Münden was not drafted to serve in World War I. Instead, he patrolled in Eppendorf as part of the "home guard” ("Bürgerwehr”) in 1917/18. He later told his daughter, without any pride or pathos, that the rifle he had shouldered for that purpose had never been loaded.
Anton Münden was a member of the official German-Jewish Community of Hamburg as well as the Temple Association (Tempelverband). His brother Daniel Münden was a board member of the liberal Temple Association since 1922.
January 1928 saw Anton and Hedwig Münden’s silver wedding anniversary celebrated at the Esplanade Hotel in Hamburg-Neustadt. The guests paid tribute to the couple of honor with poems, songs, and a wedding newspaper. They had a daughter Annelise and a son, Herbert.
In May 1929, Herbert joined the enterprise as a co-owner.
The world economic crisis in 1929/30 led to a drop in sales, as picture postcards were a dispensable article in those precarious times. Things worsened economically for the company with the N**i seizure of power.
In the pogrom of Nov. 1938, Herbert Mündenwas taken into custody. He was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and in detention there for six weeks. Upon his release on 23 Dec. 1938, he was forced to sign a written pledge to remain silent about the exact circumstances of his imprisonment.
In 1939, the family business was "Aryanized.” At the same time, new laws started to diminish the families financial assets.
Daughter Annelise Münden had planned to become a dental assistant, but N**i laws soon prohibited her from placement. She then found work, through her family connections, at a bank, but she was dismissed from this training as well.
However, after only one year, the regulations were tightened once again and on 15 Nov. 1938, Annelise Münden had to quit the apprenticeship already started, due to her Jewish descent. On 10 Nov. 1938, the day after the progrom, she received a guarantee from the USA for her and her boyfriend Franz Bunzel, and they were engaged on the same day.
At Christmas in 1938, Franz Bunzel, who was a lawyer, emigrated to Amsterdam. From a phone booth, he informed his fiancée in Hamburg about his successful arrival.
Probably on 28 Dec. 1938, Annelise Münden followed to join him. On the last day of December they left on a steamer for the United States.
Annelise Münden and Franz Bunzel hastened to reach Rotterdam, where the Dutch steamer "Volendam” took to sea on 31 Dec. 1938.
Herbert Münden, who had taken his sister to the train at the end of Dec. 1938, emigrated with his wife Ellen, née Reginbogin, via Amsterdam, London, and Cuba to La Paz (Bolivia) five weeks later.
In the period following, Annelise and Herbert Münden explored where their parents might be able to emigrate to, putting their sights on Bolivia as a country of asylum, even though there were reservations concerning the climate and altitude. On 21 Aug. 1939, Franz Bunzel wrote from the USA to his brother-in-law Herbert Münden in Bolivia, "Regarding possible immigration of your parents to Bolivia, we did make some concluding comments in the last letter. As for everything else, the parents have to decide themselves. Dani Münden wrote to me a few days ago that he deemed it a crazy idea, to put it mildly. In my view, Cochabamba (Bolivia) is obviously to be considered far more preferable to La Paz [note: altitude 3,700 meters, approx. 12,000 ft].” However, Anton Münden did not want to go into exile in Bolivia.
Anton and Hedwig remained in their hom, but to make ends meet had to take in boarders (only Jewish ones being allowed). Pressured by state authorities, the Münden couple moved to a one-room apartment of a Jewish retirement home in March 1942. The building was used by the N**is as a "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”) for concentrating Jewish occupants prior to their subsequent deportation. Food for the Jews was calculated so stingily that the Münden couple was dependent on additional food donations that were slipped to them by a non-Jewish friend.
On 15 July 1942, Anton and Hedwig were deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto. From there they were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp on 23 Sept. 1942.
In Jan. 1939, Annelise Münden married Franz Bunzel in the USA, taking on US citizenship together with her husband in 1944. In 1949, her brother Herbert Münden also moved to the USA from Bolivia, where he had found work as a photographer.
In 1951, during a visit to Hamburg, the Hanseatic City of Hamburg offered Franz Bunzel his old position as judge at the Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht). Even though the position of judge in Hamburg was very enticing, Franz and Annelise decided against it, fearing what life would be like in Germany following the Holocaust. Anneliese, later in life, expressed that even returning to Germany to visit later in life was, for her, a mistake, as it brought great emotional anguish.
The photograph of Anton Münden and this text comes from the Stolpersteine Hamburg website.
