Rosa Pauson

Rosa Fechheimer Pauson was born on 16th May1864 in Mitwitz as the daughter of Sigmund Fechheimer and Regina Frank Fechheimer. She married Pankraz Pauson (1856-1916) and had  the children Tekla (1884-1968), Stefan (1887-1963) and Robert (1897-1960) with him.

After the death of her husband in 1916, Rosa took over responsibility for the family business as the "basket maker's widow." She transformed the company into a general partnership, thus laying the foundations for the company's steady growth in the 1920s.

At the same time, she showed exemplary social commitment: The company helped the local elementary school through a cold winter with 100 hundredweight of coal and donated, among other things, 1000 marks for the construction of rest homes for soldiers, for which she was honored with the Bavarian King Ludwig Cross.

On the night of November 9-10, 1938 Rosa was the only one of the family in the Bahnhofstrasse property when a horde of Nazi henchmen broke down the front door. The seventy-four-year-old lady stood up to the mob, of course without being able to do anything. Trusting in law and order, she called the police, but got the terse reply, "Police don't listen." The estate was ransacked and vandalized. A precious concert grand piano was thrown from the second floor into the street, the globe from the boss's desk was stolen, all the windows smashed.

Together with her son Stefan and his family, she managed to escape to England in March 1939, where she lived with her son Norbert and his family in Leicester. She died in 1949.