Memorial plaques for Ida Dehmel Ida Dehmel was born into a wealthy Bingen Jewish family. Together with her second husband, Richard Dehmel, her house became a centre for poets and artists and she took a great interest in feminist issues. Though she travelled to the West Indies and America in 1937, she was loath to leave the Richard Dehmel house after the outbreak of World War II. In a letter Ida recorded the details of the rounding up and deportations of Hamburg’s Jews - her fear of the same fate led her to commit suicide by an overdose of sleeping tablets on September 29, 1942.