Werner Merzbacher
swiss-American businessman (1928–2024)
Werner Merzbacher (June 11, 1928 – October 5, 2024) was a Swiss-American businessman, fur trader and art collector of German origin.
Early life and origin
Werner Merzbacher was born June 11, 1928, the second of two children, to Julius Merzbacher (1890–1943) and Hilde Merzbacher (née Haymann; 1898–1943), into a Jewish family. He had an older brother, Rolf Merzbacher (1924–1983). They were raised in Öhringen, Baden-Württemberg.
Nazi era
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Jewish families were persecuted under Hitler's anti-semitic laws. Merzbacher's father, a World War I veteran and recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Friedrich Order, was initially allowed to continue his medical practice before it was shut down by the Nazis. At the end of 1937, the father was sentenced to two months in jail in Heilbronn, and Rolf and Werner were placed with their grandparents Ida and Jakob Haymann in Konstanz. The parents gave up their medical practice in Öhringen and moved to Konstanz, where Julius Merzbacher was arrested after the Nazis Kristallnacht Pogrom against the Jews in 1938 and held for a month in the Dachau concentration camp.
In Konstanz, the parents tried to gather the necessary documents to emigrate to the United States. However, they failed to obtain them in time.
“Werner Merzbacher” enters the record as swiss-American businessman (1928–2024). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Werner, Merzbacher and swiss-American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16101783. VIAF identifies the subject as 26984547. The Library of Congress control number is nr99020890. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 2024, 1890 and 1943.
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This entry incorporates text from “Werner Merzbacher” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.