Paul Freymuth (1881 - 1944)

Born on 20 July 1881 in Danzig as the son of a Jewish doctor, Paul Freymuth studied law and then embarked on a career in the court system. From 1927 he worked as a district court director in Dortmund. As a front-line fighter in the World War, he was initially allowed to continue working as a lawyer in 1933, but was demoted in the legal hierarchy and forcibly transferred. In 1935 he was dismissed from the judicial service and forced into retirement. In 1937 he moved with his family to Jena, where the family lived in seclusion. Arrested after the Reich Pogrom Night of November 9, 1938, Freymuth was interned in the Buchenwald concentration camp for over a month.

On June 14, 1944, he was arrested again and taken to the Gestapo prison in Weimar. His wife received official word from the Gestapo a few days later that he had died there on June 25 "of heart failure." The question of whether the seriously ill Paul Freymuth was executed or died during the interrogations cannot be clarified on the basis of the sources. His wife Margarethe Freymuth and their three daughters survived the Nazi era.

Paul Freymuth was a brother of Arnold Freymuth (1872 - 1933), who as a democrat and pacifist had advocated a democratic judiciary in the Weimar Republic and committed suicide in 1933 while fleeing from the Nazis.

The stumbling stone for Paul Freymuth was placed at Johannisplatz 16 on August 17, 2009 (initiative of the Jenaer Arbeitskreis Judentum).

Hier wohnte Paul Freymuth, Jg. 1881, verhaftet 15.6.1944, Gestapogefängnis Weimar, ermordet 25.6.1944.