Else Levi-Labor

Else Levi-Labor

Else Levi-Mühsam (* May 8, 1910 in Görlitz ; † June 3, 2004 in Jerusalem ) was the long-time director of the Dr. Erich Bloch and Lebenheim Library (Judaica) of the Israelite Community of Konstanz. She was a daughter of Paul Mühsam , who was a cousin of Erich Mühsam .

Life

Else Levi-Mühsam already wanted to become a librarian in her youth . However, since there was no vacancy at the Görlitz public library, she went to the University of Geneva , where she studied literature, philosophy, French and international law. In 1931 she began her professional career with a business journalist in Berlin. “Rich Berlin time!” She wrote in her memoirs. “The large Mühsam family, respected doctors, lawyers, press people - only a few more years and they would be expelled or murdered in every country in the world.” She helped prepare, along with other Jewish employees of the NS works council of the Schocken department store group in Zwickau other young people in a small kibbutz in Lorraine set up by the organization “ Hechaluz ” (“The Pioneer”) on life in Palestine. 1934 "the most painful turning point in my life: the big farewell to Germany, from my homeland."

In Jerusalem she was in lively intellectual exchange with Martin Buber , Gershom Scholem , David Flusser , Else Lasker-Schüler and others. Here she typed the first manuscripts of the writer and religious philosopher Shalom Ben-Chorin in order to earn some money before she took up her first permanent job in 1937 with the founder of the “World Center for Jewish Music”, Salli Levi , whom she later married. She once described the encounters and correspondence with great composers and musicologists, the preparation of concerts, the work on the Musica Hebraica magazine and the participation in the choir as her happiest work. After the Second World War destroyed all of this, Else Levi-Mühsam worked in the highest judicial offices of the British military administration until the British withdrew and the state of Israel was proclaimed in 1948. In the following years, up to retirement, she worked at the Jewish Agency in the special department for the professional integration of academic elites from abroad.

Else Levi-Mühsam and Erich Bloch, around 1982

After the death of her father, the writer Paul Mühsam, in 1960, she saw her task in bringing his poetic work, which had been destroyed in 1933, back to the German-speaking area. So she returned to Germany, albeit hesitantly. First from Kettwig an der Ruhr, then from the Upper Bavarian market in Neubeu am Inn, and finally the “twenty-five years long enough” until 1995 from Konstanz, she traveled through Germany and Switzerland with readings from her father's works. She was responsible for the publication of twelve books, new editions and selected volumes as well as for the admission of his estate to the German Literature Archive in Marbach. She also dedicated lectures and books to the memory of forgotten poets such as Ernst Lissauer or Arthur Silbergleit, who was murdered in Auschwitz . Her work led to active membership in the Esslingen Artists' Guild , the Wangener Kreis, the International Bodensee Club, the Erich Mühsam Society in Lübeck and the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation Constance. In 1971 she was awarded the Walter Meckauer Medal , which had previously been the first to be awarded to Max Tau , and in 1992 she made her hometown of Görlitz an honorary citizen.

Her great love in Constance was the Dr.-Erich-Bloch-und-Lebenheim library of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, which she built up together with Erich Bloch and looked after until she moved to Jerusalem in 1995. The inclusion of the library in the Southwest German Library Network at the Library Service Center Baden-Württemberg (BSZ) with the inclusion of the library inventory in the electronic catalog as the first of a Jewish community in Germany was an appreciation of their long-term work.

Before moving to a parents' home in Jerusalem, the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde celebrated its 85th birthday in the community center in May 1995.

literature

• Else Levi-Mühsam: Stations in my life. Görlitz - Jerusalem - Konstanz, in: Silesia. Freiburg, Bergstadt Verl. Korn, Vol. 36, 1991, pp. 20-31
• Ingrid Wiltmann (Ed.): Else Levi-Mühsam. In: Life stories from Israel. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-518-39401-0 .
• Thomas Uhrmann: Else Levi-Mühsam for parting , in: Mühsam-Magazin, Lübeck, Erich-Mühsam-Gesellschaft, Vol. 11, 2006, pp. 14-17

Web links

• http://www.bsz-bw.de/eu/blochbib
• Literature by and about Else Levi-Mühsam in the catalog of the German National Library