Meta Räsener

Meta Räsener was born Meta Littmann on 5 June 1895 in Berlin. She was the youngest child of the merchant Salomon Littmann, who was born around 1867, and Dora Littmann, née Leiser, who was born in Exin (Kcynia) in 1867. Her older brother Hans Littmann was born in Berlin in 1897.

In 1920, Meta Littmann married the merchant Max Räsener, who had been born in Schwedt in 1881, and the couple had a baby just one year later - their daughter Asta was born in Berlin on 16 March 1921. The family lived at Große Hamburger Strasse 30 until around 1933, then at Brunnenstrasse 5 in Berlin.

The Räsener family was persecuted as Jewish in Nazi Germany. Max, Meta and Asta Littmann were deported on 27 November 1941 and shot in the Rumbula massacre near Riga on 30 November 1941. Max Räsener's sister Lucia (born 1885 in Schwedt) and her husband Isidor Schaingold (born 1881 in Hamburg) suffered the same fate. Meta's father Salomon Littmann had died in Berlin in 1935. Her mother Dora Littmann, née Leiser, was murdered in the Treblinka concentration camp in 1942. Her brother Hans Littmann and his wife Edith née Eisenstaedt (born 1895 in Berlin) were murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943.

The marks of provenance and objects connected to Meta Räsener are listed here in the co-operative provenance database Looted Cultural Assets.

If you have information that may be helpful in returning these objects, please get in touch.