PAUL MITTELSTEDT 1889? - 1970



Paul in 1926


Paul Mittelstedt was, like his brothers and sisters, born in Magdeburg.

In 1913 he lived in Hamburg, as evidence by a telegram sent by Hans Mittelstedt to him from Magdeburg when their mother died.
By 1916 he lived in Munich and was married, as evidenced by a postcard [see previous page] sent by his half sister, Marta, who addressed it to Paul and a sister in law.

Munich is where Paul lived most of his life and where he was an interior decorator.

Paul researched his family back to1537 and prepared copies of the Mittelstedt Wappen der Familie i.e. coat of arms. He was secretive about his discoveries and when he died the information was lost. His brother Max Arthur Adolf Mittelstedt told me in 1974 that Paul's wife burned the family history after Paul's death.

Paul may have started his research after the Nazi regime introduced the Nuremburg laws. Effective from January 1, 1936, these laws prohibited marriage between Germans and Jews and placed many employment, educational and travel restrictions on Jews. A Jew was defined as someone with three or four Jewish grandparents. People with one or two Jewish grandparents were usually classed as "Mischling" i.e. mixed race and faced fewer restrictions. Officers in the Germany army had to prove their German ancestry back to 1700. It therefore became necessary in 1930s-1940s to be able to prove one's ancestry back at least several generations. Paul, however, traced records back to 1537. Two relatives of Paul told me they saw his research and that the 16th century Mittlestedts included some convicted robbers and highway men.


Paul had a daughter (who had a son) and she died in a bombing raid in 1944.

Relatives told me Paul had many defacto relationships and three illegitimate children in Saarbruecken
one girl was surnamed Dallmeyer.

One relative supplied Paul's birth date as September 16.

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