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The Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin presents the year 1938 through the eyes of Jews, whose personal documents detail their experiences and the hardships they suffered as well as the growing tensions in Europe and diminishing hope for Jews in Germany and Austria.

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15

THURSDAY

15

The plain truth

Ban to practice for lawyers

“[...] I must say it again and again, much as we miss you and long for you, we are happy and content that you are doing so well.”

Hamburg/Broadstairs, Kent

Julie Jonas in Hamburg and her daughters, Elisabeth and Margarethe, had sworn to report to each other truthfully on their emotional well-being. Almost daily, there was an exchange of postcards. For a few weeks, the two girls had been in England. Their father, the lawyer Julius Jonas, had outlasted several Nazi laws aimed at pushing Jews and opponents of the regime out of the legal professions. But with the issue of the “Fifth Decree Supplementing the Reich Citizenship Law” on November 30th, 1938, he was disbarred. December 15th was his birthday. Already on the day before, Julie Jonas had written to the children that their nerves had worn “rather thin” and that they weren’t at all in the mood for a birthday. Nevertheless she bravely tried to show her joy about the girls’ well-being.

TAGS: Broadstairs, children, December 15, family, Hamburg, letter, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, persecution of Jewish professionals

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Elizabeth Melamid Collection, AR 25691

Original:

Box 1, folder 1

5

MONDAY

5

Ungrateful fatherland

A former front-line soldier loses his business

Hamburg

All six sons of the Hamburg industrialist, S. Anker, were among the 85,000 Jewish soldiers who went to battle for Germany in World War I. Two of of them, Heinrich and Richard, belonged to the 457 Hamburg residents among the 12,000 Jewish fallen. Otto Anker, b. 1883, survived, badly wounded. After the Nazis had been voted to power in 1933, his sons left the country and tried to get their parents to do the same. However, decorated with the Iron Cross and married to a non-Jewish woman, Otto Anker felt safe. The gratitude of the Fatherland kept within limits: in 1938, Otto Anker’s business was “aryanized.” This ID, stamped on December 6th, is marked with a conspicuous “J.”

TAGS: Aryanization, December 5, dispossession, economic persecution, emigration, Hamburg, ID, Jewish property, WWI, WWI veterans

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Anker Family Collection, AR 5424

Original:

Box 1, folder 1

26

MONDAY

26

“We’re emigrating.”

A new year, a new start

HAMBURG

Would the sisters Helen and Eva Hesse remember this year’s Rosh Hashanah someday? For their parents, Wilhelm and Ruth Hesse, the new year’s celebration of 1938 was a break with tradition. The family had made the decision to emigrate from Hamburg. Helen was five years old at this point in time. Her little sister Eva had just turned two. Their father kept a diary for both his daughters during this period. Over the entry for Rosh ha-Shana 5699 in large, typeprinted letters are the words: “We’re emigrating,” the theme of this year’s new year celebration. The rest of the entry Wilhelm wrote by hand. Until then, however, he wanted his daughters’ lives to be as carefree as possible. That it went very differently for their parents is clear at the end of the diary entry. There Wilhem Hesse wrote: “Later they’ll be amazed what their parents had to suffer in these times. We’re emigrating.”

TAGS: children, diary, emigration, family, Hamburg, Jewish holidays, religion, September 26

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Helen and Eva Hesse Family Collection, AR 25327

Original:

Box 1, folder 3

8

MONDAY

8

Escape plan with a detour

A travel agency helps Ursula Meseritz with her travel planning to the USA

“Following up on your visit to our office today, we are sending you the itinerary and the bill.”

NEW YORK

As the only member of her family, 18-year-old Ursula Meseritz left Germany in July and embarked from Le Havre to New York aboard the R.N.S. “Britannic.” Adolf Floersheim, a former neighbor and a resident of the U.S. since 1937, provided an affidavit for the young woman. Her parents, Olga and Fritz Meseritz, who had arranged for her emigration, remained in Hamburg. A travel agency, Plaut Travels, on Madison Avenue in New York, apparently run by German-Jewish immigrants, prepared the itinerary for Ursula’s next journey to the West Coast, with a leisurely detour to the capital, and sent it to her on August 8th.

TAGS: affidavits, August 8, displacement, document, emigration, family separation, Hamburg, immigration, immigration procedures, Le Havre, letter, Los Angeles, New York, refugees, transnational networks

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Ursula Meseritz Elgart Family Collection, AR 25544

Original:

Box 1, folder 14

2

TUESDAY

2

No strength to write

A father's despair leaves him unable to keep a journal

“Helen has become a big girl. In the last few months, there would have been more to write than ever, but the times are so serious that I have neither the strength nor the leisure to write."

Hamburg

Ruth and Wilhelm Hesse, residents of Hamburg, had two little girls, Helen (b. 1933) and Eva (b. 1936). Wilhelm kept diaries for both girls. Between the May 3 and August 2 entries, there is a long gap (a very brief notice regarding Helen’s birthday on June 30 seems to have been added later). As Wilhelm writes, the seriousness of the times made it hard to write, so much so that 5-year-old Helen, who had been in a children’s home in Wohldorf-Duvenstedt since the middle of May, complained that she was not receiving any letters from her parents. While Wilhelm is generally pleased with his daughter’s development, he mentions that Helen and three of her little friends had taken a beating for picking 20 unripe peaches from a tree and biting into them. Perhaps the children’s blissful lack of awareness of what was brewing around them and their innocent transgression provided the young father with a minimal sense of normalcy.

TAGS: August 2, children, diary, family, Hamburg, photo

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Helen and Eva Hesse Family Collection, AR 25327

Original:

Box 1, folder 3

30

THURSDAY

30

A 5th birthday

Little Helen turns a year older

Hamburg

Wilhelm Hesse was a loving and profoundly involved father. Since the births of his daughters, Helen (1933) and Eva (1936), he had meticulously documented the girls’ development in diaries which he kept for them. In addition to little texts and poems he composed, he included numerous photographs as well as material referring to Jewish holidays. Occasionally, the frequently humorous, sometimes even childlike tone is interrupted by material documenting the political situation, such as a call by Rabbi Leo Baeck for Jewish unity and solidarity in the name of the Reich Representation of German Jews. But Helen and her sister Eva were lucky enough to be too young to grasp what was looming around them. June 30 was Helen’s 5th birthday.

TAGS: children, diary, Hamburg, Jewish Community, Jewish holidays, June 30, photo, politics, prominent people, rabbis, religion, welfare organizations

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Helen and Eva Hesse Family Collection, AR 25327

Original:

Box 1, folder 3

24

FRIDAY

24

Skills training for Palestine

Graduation at the Jewish Professional School for Seamstresses in Hamburg

Hamburg

When the Halutz (Pioneer) Movement first began to establish itself in Germany in the 1920s, it had a hard time gaining traction among the country’s mostly assimilated Jews, who saw themselves as “German citizens of Jewish faith.” The Movement, which aimed to prepare young Jews for life in Palestine by teaching the Hebrew language as well as agricultural and artisanal skills, got its first boost during the Great Depression (from 1929), which made emigration more attractive as an opportunity for economic improvement. But even more significant growth took place after the Nazis’ rise to power: so-called “Hachscharot” sprung up all over Germany, instilling young Jews with a meaningful Jewish identity and imparting valuable skills. The photo presented here shows graduates of the Jewish Professional School for Seamstresses on Heimhuderstraße.

TAGS: emigration, Great Depression, hakhsharah, Hamburg, June 24, Language skills, Palestine, photo, schools, Zionism

SOURCE

Institution:

Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden (IGdJ)

Original:

Picture database of the Institute for the History of the German Jews, Collection Ursula Randt, with kind permission of Rahel Calm ; 21-015/105

29

SUNDAY

29

The Jewish Hospital in Hamburg

Despite being undermined by the Nazis, the hospital keeps up its work

“As a friendly keepsake of our common years at the I.K.”

Hamburg

Depicted here is the facade of the Jewish Hospital in Hamburg. The photograph is part of an album preceded by the above inscription dated May 29, 1938. The hospital was endowed by merchant and banker Salomon Heine, also known as the “Rothschild of Hamburg,” in memory of his late wife Betty and inaugurated in 1843. The poet Heinrich Heine, Salomon’s nephew and beneficiary, honored the occasion with his poem Das neue israelitische Hospital zu Hamburg, in which he called it “A hospital for poor, sick Jews, for human beings who are thrice miserable, afflicted with three vicious ailments, with poverty, bodily pain, and Jewishness!” Even though the Nazi regime had been undermining the hospital’s finances since 1933, it had withstood these measures and was still able to take care of its patients in May 1938.

TAGS: antisemitism, economic persecution, Hamburg, impoverishment, Jewish Community, May 29, photo, prominent people, public sphere, welfare organizations

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Israelitisches Krankenhaus, Hamburg, photograph album, AR 6812

9

MONDAY

9

Abortion and politics

German-Jewish Club organizes lecture with physician from Germany

New York

On May 9, the Ärztegruppe of the German-Jewish Club (an informal association of physicians within the city’s main German émigré organization) in New York offered a lecture on the topic of abortion. During the Weimar Republic, repeated efforts had been made to abolish or at least reform the anti-abortion paragraph (§218). Its opponents pointed out that it put the working class at a disadvantage, since poverty was the chief motivation for abortion. In 1926, a member of the Reichstag representing a coalition of three right-wing parties, including the NSDAP, proposed legalizing abortion for Jews only. Under the Nazi regime, which promoted the production of “racially valuable” offspring, abortion was illegal unless it prevented the birth of children considered “undesirable.” In the US, the depression had led to an increased demand for abortion, and by the beginning of the 1930s hundreds of birth control clinics had sprung up. Poverty and the lack of access to qualified practitioners often led to the injury or death of pregnant women through self-induced miscarriage. The lecturer, Dr. Walter M. Fürst, was a recent arrival from Hamburg.

TAGS: advertisement, antisemitism, cultural life, Great Depression, Hamburg, Journalism, May 9, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, New York, politics, segregation

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

„Ärztegruppe der German-Jewish Club“, Aufbau, Vol. 4, Nr. 6, S. 4.

3

TUESDAY

3

Segregation in Kindergarten

A Hamburg lawyer reports on his young daughter's education

“The times have become very serious. We are depressed and despondent, and therefore there is little leisure and inclination to write and take photographs as elaborately as before.”

Hamburg

Even though he professes to be in low spirits due to the serious situation and therefore hardly inclined to write and take photographs as regularly as before, Wilhelm Hesse, a lawyer in Hamburg, describes the development of his daughter Helen in some detail in his diary. He reports on her capacity to think logically and a desire to learn so strong that the parents feel they have to make her slow down a bit. Hesse also writes with satisfaction about Helen’s progress in a Jewish kindergarten, but he does not fail to mention that she must learn to get along better with her little sister, Evchen. Since the passing of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935—Helen was two years old at the time—Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend non-Jewish kindergartens, and Jewish kindergarten teachers were prohibited from taking care of non-Jewish children. The Hesse family was religiously observant and might have opted for a Jewish institution even under normal circumstances.

TAGS: children, commentary, diary, family, Hamburg, May 3, Nazi laws, religion, segregation

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Helen and Eva Hesse Family Collection, AR 25327

Original:

Box 1, folder 3

22

FRIDAY

22

Brain drain

The physicians Brinitzer emigrate to India

Bangalore

Jenny Brinitzer was born in Riga, Latvia in 1884. After studies in Berne, Berlin and Kiel, she managed to establish herself as the first female physician in Hamburg Altona. There, the mother of three worked for 20 years in a joint practice with her husband, the dermatologist Dr. Eugen Brinitzer. In 1933, Jews constituted about one fourth of Hamburg’s physicians. Jewish physicians who worked directly for health insurance funds or for the public health service had been dismissed within the first two years of the Nazi regime. Starting in 1935, the Nazis began circulating a list of 150 Jewish doctors in Hamburg as part of their campaign to separate Jewish doctors from their “Aryan” patients. In April 1938, Dr. Jenny Brinitzer and her husband left Germany and emigrated to Bangalore, India.

TAGS: April 22, Bangalore, displacement, emigration, Hamburg, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, persecution of Jewish professionals, photo, refugees, segregation

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Photographs of the Brinitzer Residence in Bangalore, India, undated (1938–46), Trude Kersten Collection, AR 25403

Original:

Box 2, folder 8

Source available in English

6

WEDNESDAY

6

Ausdruckstanz

Jewish Cultural Association presents Elsa Caro

Hamburg

The April 6 event at the Jüdischer Kulturbund (Jewish Cultural Association) in Hamburg was dedicated to dance. Elsa Caro, also known by her stage name, Juana Manorska, used challenging music not originally intended for dance as the inspiration for her performance. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the fixed, formulaic repertoire of movements in classical ballet seemed limiting and outdated to some. German dancers, among them Elsa Caro and the “half-Jewish” Gret Palucca, were at the forefront of those experimenting with new forms, a movement that gave birth to Ausdruckstanz, also known as “Expressionist Dance” or “modern dance.”

TAGS: April 6, artists, cultural life, document, Hamburg, Kulturbund, musicians, prominent people

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Hamburg Jewish Community Collection, AR 193

Original:

Box 1, folder 4

27

SUNDAY

27

Parental Pride

Family life in the shadow of the Nazi regime

“Helen is growing fast, looks healthy and lively and is a pretty girl. She is mentally agile and is already beginning to count, write and read.”

Hamburg

Wilhelm Hesse was the son of an orthodox business man. He resided in Hamburg with his wife Ruth and his two little daughters, Helen and Eva, whose early years he recorded in diaries that he kept for the children. The entries are interspersed with references to Jewish holidays and photographs of the children. In this entry, he documents proudly and in detail the progress of his daughter Helen, who is not yet five years old at this time. A lawyer with a doctorate, Hesse had been laid off already in April 1933.

TAGS: children, diary, family, Hamburg, Jewish holidays, March 27, persecution of Jewish professionals, religion

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Helen and Eva Hesse Family Collection, AR 25327

Original:

Box 1, folder 3

25

FRIDAY

25

Heartache

Young lovers face separation

“I say it is a good thing not to see each other for a longer period, for only then can one see how much or how little people have changed.”

Hamburg/Merano

By 1938, the Hirsch family from Hamburg had emigrated to Italy. In light of the volatile situation in Europe, members of the family began to look into options for emigration to the United States or South America. Julius Hirsch had met Elisabeth Schiff on a visit to Belgium in 1935 and fallen in love with her. The Schiff family had no plans to leave Europe, and when visas for El Salvador were procured for Julius and other members of his family, he must have been pained at the prospect of being so distant from his beloved. This letter from a friend in Hamburg reassures him that a temporary separation is not such a bad thing. Forced to remain in Italy because the US denied him the necessary transit visa, Julius ultimately reunited with Elisabeth in England.

TAGS: bureaucracy, displacement, emigration, family separation, February 25, Hamburg, immigration procedures, letter, Merano, refugees, South America

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Julius and Elisabeth Hirsch Collection, AR 25585

Original:

Box 1, folder 14

9

SUNDAY

9

Where strength and joy flow

A new Jewish Community Center in Hamburg

“We are responsible for the spirits and souls of the people. We cannot let them be crushed by everyday worries and hardship, be beaten down by the running battle of life, or whither away in the close air and restless drudgery.” (p.3)

Hamburg

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.

TAGS: artists, cultural life, Hamburg, January 9, Jewish Community, Kulturbund, musicians, prominent people, public sphere, segregation, Speech

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Max M. Warburg Collection, AR 1211

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