Ernst Adolf Leipziger was a member of the SCHUFA Administrative Committee. We present his biography here, as documented in the report “An Institution Under the Radar? A Report on the SCHUFA During the Nazi Era”:

What was Ernst Adolf Leipziger's role at SCHUFA?

“Ernst Adolf Leipziger, born on April 2, 1889, in Berlin, worked for numerous companies in his hometown. In 1912, he ran Deutsche Reklame Zeitschriften GmbH together with the businessman Leo Lentz. Starting in 1915, he was a member of the executive board of Herdkessel-Industrie AG in Berlin; in 1922, he served on the supervisory board of Vereinigte Jaeger, Rothe & Siemens-Werke AG in Leipzig—a company founded in 1913 that produced, among other things, water supply systems. In 1925, he became the second director of Lindner Nutzwagen-Karosserien-AG, which had been founded that same year and specialized in the production of trucks. Nothing is known about Leipziger’s education; he is initially described as a merchant and later as a banker and stockbroker. He held an honorary doctorate (Dr. h. c.). On the SCHUFA administrative committee, he represented Kreditanstalt für Verkehrsmittel AG, of which he was a member of the executive board.”

What happened to Ernst Adolf Leipziger after the National Socialists seized power in 1933?

“Ernst Leipziger fled from Berlin to Italy after the first wave of terror against Jews on April 1, 1933. In 1934, he was living in Paris. There, he networked with other Jewish exiles and consequently came under the Gestapo’s scrutiny: “Some major Jewish smugglers are engaging in the most outrageous hate propaganda here” and would “be sought by our authorities without exception for common crimes, and thus rendered harmless even setting aside the political aspect,” according to a letter marked “strictly confidential” from the Ministry of the Interior to the German Consulate General in Paris. Leipziger lived together with the banker Stefan Jakobowitz (b. 1886), Oskar Steinberg (b. 1888), and Alexander Markiewitz (b. 1894) in an apartment near the Arc de Triomphe (22 Rue Beaujon). “All of these people are well-off thanks to capital they have transferred abroad; they also have elegant offices, etc., and are causing immense harm to Germany,” according to the German Ministry of the Interior. It is not known whether Leipziger felt threatened by the Gestapo and therefore left France. In 1936, he was living in Switzerland; he emigrated to New York on September 30, 1936, and applied for naturalization there. In the U.S., he changed his name to Ernest Adolf Lester. From that point on, all traces of him are lost. His date of death is unknown.”