Race, not religion | APRIL 25
In gloomy times like these, a letter promising a work opportunity in Canada constituted a much needed ray of hope. Although in possession of what Heinrich Heine famously referred to as “the admission ticket to European culture”—a certificate of baptism—Anton Felix Perl was dismissed on “racial” grounds from his position as a resident at the General Hospital in Vienna in 1938. Luckily for Dr. Perl, he had the support of a prominent advocate, the Archbishop of Winnipeg, who gave him valuable advice regarding emigration to Canada as well as promising practical help in this letter dated April 25, 1938.
One man can only do so much | APRIL 5
Thanks to a Rockefeller fellowship awarded to him in 1933, the distinguished Viennese economist Fritz Machlup had left Austria years before the “Anschluss.” In 1935, he was appointed Professor of Economics at the University of Buffalo. As was to be expected, after the Nazis established their hold in Austria, friends and colleagues pinned their hopes on him as a guarantor. In this April 5 missive to his friend Alfred Schütz, he expresses concern that his letters of support might lose credibility because he had written so many, but nevertheless includes a note in English offering to assist Schütz in establishing himself in the US.
Lost at home | MARCH 25
In another dramatic report from Vienna, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency describes panicked Jews flocking to the US Consulate hoping in vain to receive some kind of support. Especially prominent Jewish citizens faced harassment and arrest by the secret police. Austrian Jewish leaders were forced to inform the police about their activities, while their German counterparts were unable to come to their support due to border restrictions. The situation of thousands of Jewish actors had become so desperate that even the Nazi representative of the Austrian Theater Guild acknowledged it and permitted a campaign in their support.
Hitler’s Homecoming | MARCH 15
From March 12 to 14, Hitler visited Linz, which he had considered his home town since his adolescence there. In his address to the local populace he stylized himself as the enforcer of the people’s will and invoked the German soldiers’ “willingness to sacrifice” and the “greatness and glory” of the German people. While many reacted with enthusiasm, others were seized by fear. In his diary, Adolph Markus captures the anxious atmosphere at his workplace in Linz days after the “Anschluss.”
Homosexual Relations with a Jew | MARCH 5
The handsome, blond, and athletic scion of a noble family in Lower Saxony, Gottfried von Cramm had all the features sought by the Nazis for propaganda purposes. Nevertheless, the two-time winner of the French Open tennis tournament (1934 and 1936) explicitly refused to be used as a poster boy for Nazi ideology and never joined the NSDAP. After repeatedly spurning opportunities to ingratiate himself with the regime, it was another issue that got him into trouble. On March 5, 1938, von Cramm was arrested under Paragraph 175 of the German penal code, which prohibited homosexual conduct. He was alleged to have had a relationship with a Galician Jew, the actor Manasse Herbst. Reformers had nearly succeeded in overturning the statute during the Weimar republic, but the Nazis tightened it after their ascent to power.
Heartache | FEBRUARY 25
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.
A refuge under threat | FEBRUARY 15
Bertha Pappenheim (1859–1936), born and raised in Vienna, was a leading German-Jewish feminist. Better known as the patient Anna O. in Sigmund Freud’s “Studies on Hysteria,” she later moved to Frankfurt a.M., where she gradually shifted the emphasis of her activism from charitable work to women’s empowerment. In 1907, she established a home in Neu-Isenburg for young Jewish women in need of protection, a feat she considered her most important achievement. Under the Nazis, the home had to register all inhabitants with the police. In the letter displayed here, the secretary of the home asks Rabbi Dr. Merzbach at the District Rabbinate in Darmstadt to immediately send the papers of a resident of the home, Esther Kleinmann, who would otherwise face deportation.
Career change | FEBRUARY 5
In this short missive from Turin, written in a casual, sisterly tone to her sister Anneliese in Rome, Elsa Riess communicates her worries about their parents, who have remained in Berlin. Elsa is concerned about her father’s employment situation and declares her intention to find out about possible ways to help their parents, from whom she hasn’t heard for a while. Anneliese had come to Italy in 1933 to study archeology, earning her PhD in 1936. Because of her own uncertain material situation, she was not in a position to help her parents financially. Unemployable as a foreigner in Italy and hoping to increase her opportunities by adding a practical skill, she had decided to take a course as a baby and child nurse in Geneva in 1937.
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.
Suited up | JANUARY 15
Julius Ostberg was the owner of a uniform and coat factory in Essen. In January 1938, he visited his daughter Ilse in Palestine. Similar to other German Jews in Palestine, Ostberg did not think about giving up his outfit – associated among German Jews with correctness and good taste and often ridiculed by Jews of other nationalities. In this picture, taken on the beach, despite the casual environment, Mr. Ostberg presents himself in formal attire consisting of a suit and a tie.
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.”