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.