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Religion, culture and the struggle for human dignity | JANUARY 29

This drawing shows the interior of the Prinzregentenstraße Synagogue in Berlin (Wilmersdorf). Built in 1930, the building was designed to fulfill the needs of a liberal congregation. As shown in the picture, the synagogue boasted a magnificent organ. Rabbi Leo Baeck gave the sermon at the opening ceremony. From 1933, when Jews began to be pushed out of Germany’s cultural life, the synagogue also became a Jewish cultural center.

 

A forced move | JANUARY 26

There are many ways to describe Leo Perutz: novelist, mathematician, native of Prague, chess lover—to name but a few. He was admired by his colleagues and millions of readers. His success as a writer was so great that he decided in 1923 to give up his bread-and-butter job as an actuary. The Great Depression hit him hard, since the crisis not only negatively impacted the bookselling trade but also rendered the family company, in which he had a share, less profitable. To make matters worse, after the Nazis’ rise to power, his Jewish publisher, Paul Szolnay, lost his largest market in Germany. This is one of the last photographs taken before Perutz’s emigration from Vienna to Tel Aviv, Palestine in 1938.

 

Karl Adler’s 48th Birthday | JANUARY 25

Born in Buttenhausen, Wuerttemberg on January 25, 1890, Karl Adler studied music at the Stuttgart Conservatory, where he became Director in 1921. He was a cofounder of the Verein zur Förderung der Volksbildung, an adult-education organization, and director of its music department. In 1926, he was among the leading forces that built the Jüdisches Lehrhaus Stuttgart. After his dismissal from his position at the conservatory in 1933, he initiated and directed the Stuttgarter Jüdische Kunstgemeinschaft, a branch of the Kulturbund. In 1935, he became the head of the music department of the Mittelstelle für jüdische Erwachsenenbildung, a division of the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland dealing with adult education.

 

The Fifth Column | JANUARY 24

In the 78th and last year of its existence, the orthodox weekly Der Israelit reports on measures of the anti-semitic, pro-German Goga-Cuza government in Romania: The country’s Jews were subjected to various chicaneries and occupational bans similar to those in Germany. As a result of gains in territory and population in WWI, about 30% of Romanians belonged to minority groups, who were seen as a “Fifth Column.” Jews especially were the object of fears and suspicions which easily turned into violent hatred.

 

Victory of the underdog | JANUARY 22

With Adolphe Adam’s comic opera “If I were King” and Ladislaus Bus-Fekete’s “Cape of Good Hope,” the Berlin Kulturbund offered its guests lighthearted distractions. The Jewish audience in Berlin in 1938 must have been receptive to an opera in which the powerless but honest hero wins and the bad guy gets his well-deserved punishment.

 

Counting refugees | JANUARY 21

After the Nazis’ rise to power, the economic historian and journalist Kurt Zielenziger fled to Amsterdam with his wife and son. There he co-founded the “Jewish Central Information Office,” the goal of which was to document the persecution of Jews by the Nazis and to spread the information. In this release, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency quotes his computation of Jewish emigrants from Germany according to destination countries. According to Zielenziger, by the end of 1937, a total of 135,000 Jews had left the country.

 

The “Harrods of Berlin” | JANUARY 20

This picture-postcard shows Berlin’s oldest and for some time largest department store, named after the founder of the business, Nathan Israel. The Israel family had taken up residence in Berlin in the 18th century. The business was last located at 28 Spandauer Straße, across from the Rotes Rathaus (“Red City Hall”). Under its last director, Wilfrid Israel, the department store distinguished itself by providing uncommonly generous benefits to its employees, such as health and social insurance.

 

Markus becomes Mischa | JANUARY 19

Markus Wolf (center in the photo above), one of the sons of the communist physician and writer Friedrich Wolf (right), was born in 1923 in Hechingen in the Swabian Alps. After the Nazi seizure of power the family initially emigrated to Switzerland, then to France, and in 1934 to the Soviet Union. The Wolf family resided at the Hotel Lux in Moscow where a large number of communist refugees from Germany had been given shelter. During the years of the Great Terror (1936–38), deeply suspicious of the foreigners, in whom it saw potential spies for the Reich, Stalin’s regime tortured and interrogated many of the German emigrants. Among the approximately 600,000 victims of the purge were 178 German communists, most of them residents of the Hotel Lux. The Wolf family survived.

 

The noose tightens | JANUARY 16

The “Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden” (Reich Representation of German Jews) was established in Berlin in September 1933 as an advocacy group. After the passing of the Nuremberg Laws, it had to change its name to “Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland” (Reich Representation of Jews in Germany). Its president was Rabbi Leo Baeck. As a result of the increasing pauperization of the Jewish population, whose possibilities to earn a living were systematically taken away, the Reichsvertretung appealed to the government in January 1938 to desist from additional limitations depriving Jewish professionals of their jobs. The Reichsvertretung argued that not only was the increasing unemployment a burden on the welfare system, but it also made emigration impossible.

 

Staged normalcy | JANUARY 14

The January issue of the Berlin Kulturbund magazine conveys a sense of normalcy—local businesses advertise merchandise and services like cosmetics, women’s apparel and car repairs, while the Kulturbund schedule offers Eugene Scribe’s “The Ladies’ Battle.” The comedy must have provided a welcome respite from the worrisome situation.

 

Advice from New York | JANUARY 13

A representative of the New York office of Intria International Trade & Investment Agency Ltd., London, advises a client in New York to use the “Haavaramark” for “transfers to persons of Jewish descent residing in Germany.” The Haavara (transfer) Agreement had been made between Zionist representatives and the Nazis in 1933. It enabled emigrants to deposit money in a German account, which was used to pay for the import of German goods to Palestine. The proceeds from the sales of these goods in Palestine, after the deduction of costs, was disbursed to the new immigrants.

 

“Who won’t betray us in the end?” | JANUARY 11

As German Jews were getting arrested or being forced to leave the country, the performances put on by the local branches of the Jewish Kulturbund (Culture Association) were among the few places of refuge where Jews could enjoy culture as in earlier days. Among other things, in the winter season of 1937/1938 the Jüdischer Kulturbund Berlin performed Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (Director: Dr. Kurt Singer) and Scribe’s The Ladies’ Battle (Director: Fritz Wisten). Since 1935, the Kulturbund’s venue had been the theater at 57 Kommandantenstrasse, the former Herrnfeld Theater, where popular Jewish plays had once been staged.

 

One-way ticket | JANUARY 10

If advertisements in newspapers reflect the main needs of society, then the Berlin Jüdisches Gemeindeblatt (Jewish Community Paper) from January 1938 can serve as a perfect example of such needs in times of crisis. By January 1938, when the majority of German Jews were preparing for emigration or actively looking for ways to leave the country, advertisements for travel agencies and shipping companies dominated the commercial space of the newspaper. The main destinations of German-Jewish emigrants were Palestine as well as North- and South America.

 

Where strength and joy flow | JANUARY 9

In his opening speech at the inauguration ceremony for the new Jewish community center in Hamburg, Max M. Warburg, scion of a renowned family of bankers, describes the challenges the community is facing at the present moment and states the mission of the building and its leadership in troubled times. Describing theater as a source not only of “uplift and joy” but also of “moral fortitude,” Warburg declares the community center to be intended first and foremost as a home for the performances of actors and musicians of the Jewish Kulturbund.

 

Doing fine under the circumstances | JANUARY 8

Preparing for emigration to the United States, Alfred Rahn sold the family business, the M.S. Farrnbacher Ironmongery, in November 1937 without the consent of the Nazi authorities. Instead of leaving for the US at the end of December as planned, he therefore had to serve a 14 month prison term. From his prison cell in Fürth, Alfred Rahn expresses gratitude to his wife for gifts already received and asks for further necessities. His wife Lilly was a literary scholar and the last Jewish doctoral student to have graduated from the University of Erlangen (in 1934).

 

Crisis management | JANUARY 5

On January 5, 1938, Kuno Fleischer wrote to the shareholders of his family’s paper factory in the small Baden-Wurttemberg town of Eislingen about a recent business dispute and alluded darkly to a time when “grave decisions will have to be made swiftly.” He told his fellow owners—his brother and nephews—that he would soon travel to the United States to “orient himself” adding, “No one of us can predict how things will turn out, and no one can take offense at our holding on for as long as possible to what we have built together.”

 
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