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).
Improvisation impinged | JANUARY 7
Werner Wilhelm Dambitsch was born on June 23, 1913 in Breslau (today Wroclaw, Poland). Werner was interested in music from an early age, but he had to purchase his first instrument, a saxophone, with money he had earned himself. He did this in 1932 at the age of 19 and founded with four friends the ‘Excentric [sic] Jazz Orchester’. In order to perform, the combo had to join the “Reichsverband der jüdischen Kulturbünde in Deutschland” (Reich Association of Jewish Cultural Federations) and was forced to change the name to “Erstes Jüdisches Jazz-Orchester” (First Jewish Jazz Orchestra). While the association did not guarantee steady income or employment, at least it allowed the artists to perform at events attended by Jewish audiences. This image shows Werner Dambitsch’s Kulturbund membership card.
“A quiet light in the dark night” | JANUARY 6
Sometimes the dark events were even reflected in the tone of birthday greetings. Fritz Schürmann, a Jewish teenager from Hildesheim, and Gerhard Loeffler, a Protestant from Dresden, had been good friends for years. On the occasion of Fritz’s 18th birthday, Gerhard wished him safety, solace, and strength. Untypically for people of so young an age, the friend tries to convince Fritz of the necessity of hard experiences in the life of every human being.
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.”
Unexpected allies | JANUARY 4
While the Methodists constituted a minority in Germany, they were a major denomination in the English-speaking world. The Nazis began wooing Methodist leaders in Germany as early as 1933, hoping to use them to propagandize fellow Methodists in the United States. German Methodist leaders became willing tools of the Nazis; not only did Methodist bishops avoid criticizing the regime, they explicitly praised what they saw as its successes. Against this background, it is all the more remarkable that the US National Methodist Students Conference adopted a resolution in which it condemned the antisemitic policies of Nazi Germany.
Excellence in exile | JANUARY 3
The people on both sides of the camera shared a fate that was common to many thousands of German Jews: shortly after the Nazis seized power in 1933, Albert Einstein decided to immigrate permanently to the United States. He took the position of professor of theoretical physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where this picture was taken five years later. In light of the increasing difficulties after the Nazi seizure of power, the photographer Lotte Jacobi also left Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1935. Jacobi was unpersuaded by the Nazis’ offer to grant her the status of “Honorary Aryan.” She left behind a studio in Berlin which she had run together with her sister, Ruth, also an accomplished photographer. Among the many prominent figures Jacobi photographed were Marc Chagall, Martin Buber, Eleanor Roosevelt, Thomas Mann, and Kurt Weill.
Correspondence across the ocean | JANUARY 2
This letter was written by Otto Neubauer, who had recently arrived in America from Mannheim, to his father Maximilian and his brother Ernst back home. Since the rest of the family was unable to emigrate despite years of trying, Otto wrote them regularly. The rich exchange of letters between the members of the Neubauer family reflects, as in the case of many other German Jewish emigrants in the 1930s, deep longing and attempts to describe every aspect of the new life in America.