Jägerslust farm estate

In 1906, the Wolff family of industrialists from Berlin purchased the estate Gut Jägerslust (lit: hunter’s pleasure) located on the western outskirts of Flensburg. They modernized the manor house, enlarged the stables and moved to Flensburg. The estate was farmed with the help of farm laborers, while Georg Wolff, the paterfamilias, concentrated mainly on his passion -- hunting. After his death in 1917, his widow Katharina and his son Alexander Wolff continued to maintain the farming business, while his daughters Susanne and Lilly trained to become teachers.

After the Nazis seized power in 1933, the family was forced to witness how they were shunned from city society and stigmatized for being Jews. This development led to a return to their Jewishness and their decision to make their estate available to the HeHalutz as a teaching estate for emigrants. The HeHalutz office in Beneckestrasse in Hamburg was responsible for the direct management in this case. In 1936, its director Schimon Reich took stock of the activities completed in the Hamburg community newsletter and included the Jägerslust estate, where, according to his information, twelve internships had begun in 1934. In view of the continually growing demand, he announced that they would double the capacity: “Right now the kibbutz in Flensburg is about to be expanded. With the help of the Central Office in Berlin, we were able to secure the funds to rebuild and expand the premises, so that we now have the possibility of increasing the number of khaverim to 25 in the near future.”

The men and women who completed their Hakhshara at the Jägerslust estate were from large cities and were therefore more used to urban life than the rural setting in the Schleswig-Holstein countryside. Their ages ranged from 18 to 35.

When the first 12 halutzim and halutzot came to the estate in the fall of 1934, they were housed on the top floor of the manor house. In 1936, a so-called worker’s house was built about 200 meters away as part of the expansion. From then on, the Palestine pioneers, as the participants were also called, were housed separately according to gender: the women were housed in the manor house and the men in the rather plain new building, where the kibbutz-like communal life also took place.

The young people who lived and worked on the estate did not form a homogenous group. Many of them changed their Hakhshara site after a few months, continuing their training or internship of one and a half or two years at other sites. “It was a constant coming and going,” Alexander Muschinsky recalled.

Another factor in favor of Jägerslust was its proximity to the Danish border, which could still be crossed relatively easily in the first few years after 1933. The so-called Groschenpässe or penny passports provided good opportunities to escape to Denmark and make contacts there. There was no passport photo required to get this kind of identity document, which was originally intended for German-Danish excursioners. The fee was one groschen, or ten pfennigs. This document was repeatedly used to escape. With the introduction of the identity card on October 1, 1938, penny passports were discontinued.

There was also an exchange program that had been arranged between the Landøkonomisk Rejsebureau of the Royal Danish Agricultural Society in Copenhagen and the HeHalutz central office in Berlin which facilitated finding paths to a new life. The program initially continued even after the Nazi takeover. The driving force and key person in Denmark was the Zionist Binjamin Slor. This established and still operational German-Danish exchange program for agricultural trainees gained in importance in the face of the increased pressure on the Jewish population and was supported by both the German and the Danish HeHalutz. The teaching estate Jägerslust also participated in this program, as it was relatively uncomplicated for agricultural trainees from Flensburg to switch to Danish farm estates and continue their Hakhshara there.

The Jägerslust estate was, with its 77 hectares, the second largest agricultural estate in Flensburg at the time. It took a lot of effort to wring a harvest from the barren, sandy Geest soil. The men who were taught by Alexander Wolff in theory, and – above all – in practice about methods of improving the soil by using fertilizer and marl also had to find this out. Machines were not used. The participants were not used to the physically demanding work and it was a new challenge. Käte Wolff took care of the women and taught them home economics; in addition, there were practical tasks in the estate’s garden, which adjoined the manor house. Of course, the Gestapo always had their eye on what was happening on the Hakhshara farms, also in Flensburg, where the local Gestapo chief Hans Hermannsen initially let the Jägerslust estate and its trainees continue their work.

The period of toleration ended in Flensburg with the November Pogrom in 1938, when the farm and the kibbutz were attacked in the night of November 10th. The commando was led by the Flensburg police chief and SS Standartenführer Hinrich Möller.
The attack, in which not only the uniformed police, but also forces from the Gestapo, the SS and the SA took part, marked the sudden end to the grace period toward the Wolff family and their Hakhshara activities. “In the fall, the Zionist retraining camp Jägerslust near Flensburg was disbanded due to its scandalous conditions,” noted the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), SS intelligence agency, of the SS Senior District Northwest in its annual report for 1938.

What the SD report called “scandalous conditions” were in reality the result of the attack instigated by Möller. During the night raid, all Jägerslust residents – members of the Wolff family as well as the agricultural and home economics trainees – were arrested, some of them abused and the buildings were completely desolated. The attempt to set the manor house and the stalls on fire and burn them to the ground failed. The attackers went looting through the manor house; they were particularly interested in the family silver and Alexander Wolff’s hunting rifle. He managed to save himself by escaping to neighboring Denmark during the pogrom night.

In the period from the fall of 1934 until the violent end of the emigrant teaching estate Jägerslust, around 100 men and women participated in the Hakhshara in Flensburg. Of these, so far 73 are known by name: 46 men and 27 women. In 21 cases their fates are unknown. It is known that at least 47 people survived Nazi persecution. Most of them – namely 33 – made Aliyah; five found refuge in the USA.

The Jägerslust estate, which had been abandoned after the attack in the pogrom night of 1938, was “aryanized”. The buildings and land became the property of the state tax authorities, which, in view of the impending war, used it to expand the neighboring airfield Flensburg-Schäferhaus.

After the end of World War II and the collapse of the Nazi regime, the estate buildings, which now included several simple barracks, served as emergency accommodation for refugees from the German eastern territories. From the USA with the help of German lawyers, Alexander Wolff had to fight for years for compensation for the former family estate in Flensburg. The legal proceedings ended in 1952 with a settlement: financial compensation of a total of 75,000 marks for the buildings, land and lost inventory.

The former estate property has remained in public hands until today. The Bundeswehr, the West German army, used it as a military training area. The once stately manor house was blown up in 1967 as part of a military exercise. The history of Jägerslust reached its final end in 2004, when the Schleswig-Holstein foundation for nature conservation, which had taken over the property from the Bundeswehr in 1998, had the last remaining stall torn down. Following a suggestion from local politicians, the city of Flensburg had an information stand put up on the edge of the former estate. It provides an overview of the eventful and ultimately tragic history of the estate in text and pictures.