The family owned on the Elbe next to the old Hamburg timber harbour and situated on the city's dyke the Baroque house "Stadtdeich" number 10 and the nearby houses "Stadtdeich" 3 and "Stadtdeich an der Elbseite" (on the Elbside) 159. "Stadtdeich" 10 (sometimes referred to as "Stadtdeich" 9) was a which was destroyed in the Operation Gomorrah end of July 1943 – the heaviest assault in the history of aerial warfare and later called the Hiroshima of Germany by British officials.