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Sub-clan AP — matriarchal anchor: Hermine Lebenhart née Porges,
proprietress of the "Herma Porges" fashion salon
(d. St. Gilgen, Salzkammergut, suddenly on Tuesday 28 July 1936).
Funeral Sunday 2 August 1936 at 11 a.m. at the Jewish Cemetery in Strašnice.
(Day-of-week check: 28 July 1936 = Tuesday ✓; 2 August 1936 = Sunday ✓.)
"Modesalon Herma Porges" — first documented Porges-owned business
Hermine is uniquely identified as "Inhaberin des Modesalons Herma Porges"
("proprietress of the Herma Porges fashion salon") — making her the
first documented Porges-affiliated commercial business owner in the
obituary corpus.
The "Herma Porges" Modesalon would have been:
- A women's haute-couture / made-to-measure tailoring business
- Operating under the trade name "Herma Porges" (using the diminutive Herma of Hermine as the brand identity)
- Most plausibly Prague- or Vienna-based (her residence was Prague but Salzkammergut summer residency suggests possible Vienna anchoring)
Inter-war Modesalons were significant commercial-cultural institutions in the
Vienna-Prague Habsburg-successor world, often run by women entrepreneurs and
particularly by Jewish women, providing both an upper-bourgeois clientele
service and a respected female professional identity. Hermine Lebenhart's
salon places her in this select inter-war cohort, opening a previously-undocumented
"luxury commerce / fashion" sector to the Porges affinity profile.
Death at St. Gilgen — Salzkammergut Alpine resort
St. Gilgen is a famous Austrian Alpine resort town on the Wolfgangsee in
Salzburg state, ~35 km east of Salzburg city. Hermine's "sudden" death at a
summer resort suggests cardiovascular event or stroke during vacation — a
typical inter-war upper-bourgeois pattern of summer-residence mortality.
Family
Husband: Emil Lebenhart (alive 1936, signs the obituary as widower
"in the name of all bereaved"). The minimalist faire-part requesting that
"condolence visits be foregone" follows a discretion convention often
associated with the Reform-Jewish or assimilationist Bohemian-Jewish
bourgeoisie of the inter-war period — see also Anna Borchardt 1928 (Sub-clan T,
explicit Reform-Jewish identification).
Holocaust trajectory
Hermine's death in 1936 spared her the Anschluss-era persecution. Her
husband Emil Lebenhart (alive 1936) would have been at extreme Anschluss-era
risk after March 1938 if Vienna-resident, or Protectorate-era risk after
March 1939 if Prague-resident.
- Search holocaust.cz, DÖW, and Yad Vashem for Lebenhart Vienna or Prague transports 1938-1944
- The "Herma Porges" Modesalon would have been "aryanised" under Nazi commercial laws after 1938; business records may survive in Austrian or Czech state archives
Source: obituaries published in Prager Tagblatt (Prague, 1878–1938) and Neue Freie Presse (Vienna, 1864–1939).
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