Museum Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt –biographie

Lothar Brieger was born in Kanth in 1882. His parents moved the family to Berlin when he was four years old. He completed commercial training and worked for the Haus Bergmann A.G. cigarette factory. Lothar Brieger took part in the First World War as a private first class. In 1917 he married the non-Jewish Ella Dolschall; the marriage initially protected him from deportation.
In early November 1938, Lothar Brieger had to undergo an eye operation in Berlin’s Jewish Hospital. The clinic had staff shortages as a result of the November pogroms, meaning he did not receive proper aftercare and lost his eyesight entirely.
In 1940 he trained as a brush-maker, presumably in one of Otto Weidt’s retraining courses for visually impaired people. He worked in Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind until the end of 1943.
The Briegers’ apartment was destroyed in an air raid in mid-December 1943. Ella Brieger died several weeks later. Lothar Brieger died in the Jewish old people’s home in Berlin-Niederschönhausen on February 25, 1951.