Fritz C. Neumann

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Fritz C. Neumann (born February 14, 1897 in Hamburg ; died April 14, 1976 in Libertyville (Illinois) ) was a German reform pedagogue , teacher at the Lichtwark School and an emigrant from Nazi Germany. After several positions in Western European countries, he was able to immigrate to the USA in 1937 and acquire American citizenship in 1944. One of his daughters was the poet and translator Lisel Mueller .

Between empire and fascism

Parental home and school

Fritz C. Neumann came from a medium-sized Hamburg family. The father ran a women's clothing store, the mother was no longer employed after Fritz was born.

Neumann describes his parents' house as conservative; his parents, and also his older brother Hans (* 1891 - died in March 1918 at Cambrai ), saw themselves as national-liberal in the spirit of Bismarck and Prussia . This included ignorance of the working class, whose members he himself only got to know during the First World War. In addition, the family was Protestant, but only because of sovereign respect and not out of religious conviction. “We never, almost never, went to church. My father called himself a free thinker ; he worshiped nature as an expression of divinity and used to say that a Sunday morning hike in the woods was a much better service than a pastor could ever afford. [...] Both of my parents insisted that no pastor should be present at their funeral, and no pastor was present. "

Neumann's father was very conscious of education and strived for an academic education for his children as a means of social advancement. Son Hans attended a humanistic grammar school, the Johanneum . Because of the difficulties he experienced there, Fritz was sent to a secondary school, where he found access to modern foreign languages, but also to contemporary literature. But in view of the very German-nationally oriented course content, the contradictions of which he noticed early on, and due to his enthusiasm for German-French relations ( Memoirs , p. 18), he developed his own pacifist position early on. ( Memoirs , p. 16) He had a circle of friends who rejected the prevailing ideas about religion and politics and in which people were interested in the “beautiful things in life”. "This distinguishes us from the majority of our comrades, for whom the uniform of an officer or reserve officer was a very high aim in life."

Despite their loosely attached to the church, the parents insisted in 1912 that Fritz had to be confirmed for social reasons. He took part in preparatory classes, but then came into contact with Ernst Haeckel's book Die Weltträtsel and distanced himself from the Christian religion under its influence. ( Memoirs , pp. 21–22) When he informed his parents that he no longer wanted to be confirmed, a serious conflict arose with them because they continued to insist on confirmation for social, not religious, reasons. Fritz finally bowed to parental dictates, but: “I have not only lost respect for my parents, but also respect for myself. It was the worst crisis of my young life and when I later - in the twenties - became one completely radical and worked for the destruction of the entire bourgeois world, I believe that this is where the real origin of this development lies. "

In this situation, reading Henrik Ibsen promised him salvation . His struggle against the cowardice and arrogance of the middle class gave Neumann back the self-respect he believed he had lost in the struggle to take part in religious education, and Ibsen remained for him “a guiding star for the rest of my life”. ( Memoirs , p. 24) Later came the enthusiasm for Gerhart Hauptmann , in whom he, together with Bernhard Shaw, saw "the heir to Ibsen's coat". ( Memoirs , p. 36) Neumann describes himself as a lifelong “Ibsenian” who read his work over and over again. "Ibsen as a prophet gave me moral support and supported me during the hard and dark years of Hitler's rule."

Neumann's approach to philosophy developed parallel to literature. He first found his way to Kant through Schopenhauer and Nietzsche . Later he was particularly impressed by Georg Simmel , Rudolf Eucken and especially Henri Bergson . ( Memoirs , pp. 26–27) Only from a critical distance did he deal with the youth movement in the period before the First World War and the entire life reform movement . He found Gustav Wyneken's writings “interesting and intelligent”, but did not feel attracted by the “male eros” and the romanticism of the youth movement. “I was never in the least interested in the people who are exclusively hikers and loyal to their homeland; we called them 'blonde triple droplets'. I was and always will be a product of the big city. "

Fritz Neumann spent the eve of the First World War with friends on a summer tour to Denmark. They broke off the trip when the consulates asked holidaymakers from their respective countries to return in July. He felt repulsed by the excessive nationalism that welcomed him in Hamburg, and when the SPD approved the war credits, "the lights of reason and hope" went out for him. ( Memoirs , p. 41)

First World War and studies

Because he, like many others, had signed up as a volunteer, Neumann was allowed to take his secondary school diploma at the upper secondary school on the Uhlenhorst in late summer 1914 . The report as a volunteer did not correspond to the general enthusiasm for the war: “My own feeling about the general situation in August 1914 is best expressed in a sentence that I wrote in my diary that I still have today:› The only solution for this whole mess (Europe) there would be a revolution in Germany, but unfortunately that is out of the question.

But the biggest event for him was initially not the outbreak of the First World War, but the acquaintance with Ilse Burmester (born October 22, 1899 in Hamburg - † June 1953 in Evanston (Illinois) ). She was the sister of a classmate he met around Christmas 1914, and that acquaintance later resulted in a decade-long marriage. He and Ilse, whose parents ran an import-export business, decided to become a couple at Easter 1916; the official engagement followed in 1920, the marriage on March 22, 1923. ( Memoirs , p. 46)

Neumann had been deferred from military service because of his bad eyesight and was able to start studying German, French and philosophy at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel at Easter 1915 . But he felt isolated in Kiel and little inspired by the teaching staff there. He was interested in Friedrich Gundolf and Karl Vossler , but their teachings were strictly rejected by Neumann's professors in Kiel. ( Memoirs , p. 55) He was not attracted to student life either, and he refused to try to win over him from student associations . "These brotherhoods always seemed to me to be the incarnation of everything that was disgusting and unworthy of the German middle class during the imperial era."

Mainly because of his enthusiasm for Rudolf Eucken's philosophy , Neumann moved to the University of Jena in the summer of 1916 . He also developed a close personal relationship with him, but beyond that he found Jena less academically attractive. However, he met a fellow student with whom he had a lifelong friendship: Oskar Jancke , the co-founder and first secretary of the German Academy for Language and Poetry . He also learned Swedish with him, and after the First World War they both studied together again in Hamburg.

After several deferrals, it was called up in 1916. Neumann was sent to Stralsund for training. “These days in Stralsund left a very bad and bitter taste in my memory, [...] which actually came from the black side of German-Prussian militarism. Nobody will ever convince me that it was not Prussian militarism that prepared the Germans for the shame and humiliation of the Third Reich! "

Another training camp followed on Stralsund near Warsaw , where he also got to know the ghetto and was appalled by the prevailing poverty. In Warsaw, however, he was again medically examined and found not to be suitable for the front. After Christmas he was allowed to return to Germany, but until then he had to spend the time as an officer's boy and cleaner in a hospital. In 1955 he saw the film 08–15 in Denmark and recognized in it all the disgusting things he had to experience himself at the time. But in retrospect, Neumann did not regret these terrible experiences either. “Everyone born into the ranks of the middle class should at least once in a lifetime experience the constant living of the humiliation of the proletariat; it will do him good and remove his prejudices. As for me, this experience undoubtedly paved the way for my conversion to Marxist socialism a year or two later. "

Neumann arrived again in Stralsund on January 1, 1917. He was again medically checked and this time classified as "suitable for garrison use in the field". He came to the front, but did not have to go into the trenches, but was used for office or cleaning services. "It was a very humiliating and uncomfortable situation" ("It was a most humiliating and akward situation.", Memoirs , p. 69), from which he was only freed by his brother. This, meanwhile promoted to lieutenant, could have him assigned to his regiment, where he had to serve as a regular soldier.

From July 1917 to July 1918 Fritz Neumann was on the front lines in Belgium and France and spent Christmas 1917 in the trenches. Nevertheless, he still found time and opportunity to work on his dissertation. ( Memoirs , p. 75) In February 1918 he came to a hospital in Brussels for the first time because of a skin disease acquired in the trenches . This was where his last meeting took place with his brother Hans, who died on a reconnaissance tour after March 21 and was buried in Cambrai . After his release from the hospital, Fritz Neumann was allowed to dig up his brother's body and bring him to Hamburg, where he was buried in the family grave.

In July 1918 Fritz Neumann was assigned to an officers' course in Jüterbog near Berlin. After that he had to go to a hospital again because of his skin disease, this time in Hamburg. "Here I experienced the revolution of November 1918 and took part in it - to a very modest extent." He was elected to the hospital soldiers' council, which for him meant more of a learning field than a platform for political actionism.

“The only measure I remember was the abolition of preferential treatment for officers in medical treatment, bathing and food. Now the broken former masters of creation had to stand in line and wait like everyone else for their turn. I really enjoyed that. [..] The most important result of my participation in the Hospital Soviet and the 'Movement' in general was that I could show my working class companions great respect. Here I met the elite of the German proletariat who had gone through the school of the trade unions and the socialist parties. They were much better educated and informed about social, economic and political issues than we young people from the middle class, whom we had so much - and wrongly - boasted of our 'higher education'. "

In January 1919 Fritz C. Neumann was officially discharged from military service, and in the same month he resumed his studies at the newly founded University of Hamburg . At the same time he wrote his first journalistic work for a Hamburg daily newspaper. In his articles he tried to convince the Hamburg middle class of the need to nationalize key industries if civil war was to be avoided, and for the first time he participated in elections “as a citizen of the new republic”. ( Memoirs , p. 88) Neumann voted for the SPD .

For his years of study in Hamburg, Neumann lists a number of university professors who were important to him and to whom he was in part on friendly terms. These included above all Ernst Cassirer and the Anglicist Emil Wolff , Max Lenz and his later doctoral supervisor Robert Petsch . He made friends with the liberal Heinrich Meyer-Benfey and, under the influence of Walter A. Berendsohn , became a member of a Masonic lodge for a few years. ( Memoirs , p. 91–98) Albert Malte Wagner helped him to get a job as a part-time journalist for the Hamburger Fremdblatt , where he published lecture and book reviews and occasionally also theater reviews. One of his articles here was a sharp criticism of a lecture by William Stern to the Hamburg Kant Society in which he attested the personalism represented by Stern to be “not a philosophy, but a little philosophy”. ( Memoirs , p. 104) Neumann was not sure for a long time (but later no longer believed it) that this article had led to brief disagreements with Cassirer during his teacher’s examination. Ultimately, he received his doctorate “summa cum laude” in spring 1921 and then passed the first state examination for teaching at grammar schools in the subjects of German, French and history.

In December 1921 Neumann was hired as a student trainee at a secondary school in Hamburg-Rothenburgsort . A year later, in autumn 1922, he was transferred to the Lichtwark School at his own request . Here he passed the 2nd state examination in the spring of 1923 and remained a teacher at this school for the next few years.

On March 22, 1923, Fritz C. Neumann and the teacher Ilse Burmester married. “Our marriage, despite the ups and downs of any marriage, was the greatest and most blessed event of my life. It lasted thirty years. ”The marriage resulted in two daughters: Lisel, born on February 8, 1924, and Inge (Ingeborg), born on June 12, 1927. Lisel later characterized her parents as people who were completely equal (“Gender-blind”), and “her mother as' feminine in the sense that she was warm-hearted, sociable and impulsive, but the 'feminine characteristics', such as the control of and respect for men, were completely alien to her '. ”In her 1992 poem Curriculum Vitae , she remembers her home:“ At home, the bookshelves connected heaven and earth. ”

Reform pedagogue and communist

After the marriage, Neumann applied for a job in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia . ( Memoirs , p. 61) He and his wife thought it was a romantic idea, but nothing came of it and Neumann stayed with the Lichtwark School. However, he attests to himself that he did not become a teacher out of a special inclination for this profession, but because he associated it with the hope of finding enough time in it to continue his scientific interests. He saw his real calling in an academic career. But other motives soon followed: As a pacifist he wanted to help educate a generation that rejected German militarism, and under the influence of the writings of Wilhelm Lamszus he found access to reform education. ( Memoirs , p. 108)

During his internship, Neumann and two other interns tried to revitalize the concept of the Lichtwark School, which they perceived as frozen, in order to develop a new model for the school from spring 1924. This met with the approval of the college until they began to bring more and more socialist ideas into the guidelines. Heinrich Landahl became the opponent of Neumann and his friends. The socialist experiment was ended, the adoption of a binding model for the school was not carried out, but there were still curricular developments that he welcomed: the subject of cultural studies as a combination of history, German, geography and philosophy was introduced; from then on, annual study trips were held to supplement cultural studies; English was established as the first foreign language; daily gymnastics lessons were compulsory; Co-education was implemented step by step; for the upper school, the first volume of the capital became part of the curriculum. ( Memoirs , p. 114 ff.) Another innovation at the school was the introduction of courses for workers , a second educational path that was supposed to enable young workers to gain access to higher education. ( Memoirs , p. 116)

From 1923 on, Neumann's rapprochement with the communists took place in parallel with his educational commitment. He cites his dissatisfaction with the policies of the SPD in the early 1920s as the reason for this. In this situation, the communists seemed to him to be the only defenders of democracy in Germany and the real fighters against reaction and fascism. “I became a 'sympathizer' for about a decade. [..] Prepared by the trend of political events, I was open to the influence of Marxism. He hit me with full force. ”He did not become a member of the KPD, but he worked in two sympathetic organizations: Neumann became Hamburg chairman of the League against Imperialism and for National Independence and in 1932 chairman of the Marxist Workers' School (MASCH).

Neumann's political commitment did not go unnoticed. At the end of 1930 he was transferred to the Oberrealschule am Kaiser Friedrich Ufer - to clear the Lichtwarkschule of communist elements, as he suspected. ( Memoirs , p. 131) This transfer came at the same time as an order from the Senate: All employees were forbidden to work for the NSDAP or the KPD. Out of consideration for his family, Neumann refrained from any political activities in the period that followed and only organized a few private discussions in his apartment. ( Memoirs , pp. 128–129) But he gave up this reluctance again after the Senate had removed membership of the NSDAP and the KPD from its rulings in 1932 and instead prohibited any activity aimed at destroying the constitutional order. Neumann, not a KPD member, saw this at the end of 1932 as a license to work for the MASCH now, since, in his view, it did not pursue any subversive goals and therefore could not be unconstitutional. ( Memoirs , p. 128) A course he held for MASCH, albeit under a pseudonym, was his undoing in early December 1932. During a break from class, a participant in the course revealed himself to be a police officer. The arrested him and forced him to reveal his true identity. The officer escorted him home, inspected his bookcase, and then suspended the arrest.

The next morning, while Neumann was at school, the apartment was searched. Disciplinary proceedings against him were opened the following day, and a few days later the attorney general informed him that he was being charged with high treason. “Those were scary weeks. It is quite glorious and enjoyable to be a martyr for your cause, but when it comes to the livelihood of a woman and two small children, it is much less. ”What that must have meant for family life, Lisel Mueller later has in hers Poem recorded.

“8) My father was busy evading the monsters. My mother
told me that the walls have ears. I got to know the burden of secrets. "

Neumann was lucky in the misfortune: Since the accession of the Schleicher cabinet on December 3, 1932 was accompanied by an amnesty for politically motivated crimes, the charges against Neumann were also dropped. However, the disciplinary proceedings continued. He was cut a month's salary, but that didn't matter, as a benefactor compensated him for the loss. "However, this was the end of my political activities in Germany."

The Cabinet Schleicher followed Chancellor Adolf Hitler , and on April 7, 1933, was Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service adopted. As a result, Fritz C. Neumann was dismissed from civil service without any entitlement to further payments.

emigration

The first threats to Fritz C. Neumann after the Nazis came to power appeared in mid-February 1933. On February 14th, he and his girls' class read Stefan Zweig's novella Burning Secret and a few days later he is called to a hearing by an official from the school inspectorate. The allegation against him is that he used this substance to engage in sexual education. The officer advised him not to give a history class for the upcoming school year, but took no further action. ( memoirs , p. 177) These followed after Easter 1933. After returning from the Easter vacation he was suspended from work for political reasons and dismissed in May. His remuneration was canceled.

Fritz C. Neumann immediately emigrated, while his family stayed in Germany.

“Six very difficult years began for us. It was until 1938 that I became an assistant professor at Evansville College, that I could look after my family, and it was until the summer of 1939 that we were all reunited in a decent family life in America. "

France

The first stop in exile was France. That was no coincidence, because Neumann has repeatedly mentioned his early enthusiasm for the French language and French literature, as well as his enthusiasm for Franco-German reconciliation, which he had already grown at school. ( Memoirs , p. 133 ff.) In addition, he stayed in France in the summer of 1926 on a scholarship from the Hamburg school authorities and made friends with numerous people. ( Memoirs , p. 164) He particularly mentions the Germanist Maurice Boucher (1885–1977) and Jean Baby and Thérèse Laberty, a communist from Toulouse. He and his wife visited both of them several times after this summer camp, and there were also return visits to Hamburg. ( Memoirs , p. 138)

Neumann's first stop in France was with Jean Baby, who meanwhile lived in Paris with his wife Ruta. Ilse Burmester lived with her husband in their apartment for a while, but returned to Hamburg in autumn 1933 because she had been offered a job as an assistant teacher at a Hamburg elementary school. ( Memoirs , p. 174/75) During this first summer in emigration, Neumann found a job in a school for emigrant children run by Willi Münzenberg , where he looked after German refugee children. Arthur Koestler , who soon became Neumann's successor, wrote about this home in the Villa La Pouponnière in his autobiographical writings:

“I had just finished writing the encyclopedia when Willy Munzenberg asked to see me on an urgent matter. One of his many businesses was a home for émigré children. Officially, it took children of needy German emigrants of all classes and political parties; In reality, with few exceptions, the inmates were children of Communist Parfe functionaries who had either been killed by the Nazis or sent on secret missions to Germany or used for other secret party work that made it impossible for them to look after their families . The home was in financial difficulties. It housed some thirty children between the ages of two and sixteen in a villa in Maisons-Laffitte near Paris, appropriately named ›La Pouponnière‹ and made available to the committee by a charitable French. "

It could only have been a few weeks that Neumann taught at this school, because he also went to England during the summer to explore the possibility of working at the Dartington Hall School . For the time being, however, there was no vacancy for him and he returned to Paris. In the meantime Ilse Neumann had returned to Hamburg and suffered a breakdown there because her hopes for a job threatened to be dashed and she felt overwhelmed by the whole situation. Fritz C. Neumann immediately traveled from Paris to Hamburg. His wife recovered, she actually got the hoped-for position as an assistant teacher at a Hamburg elementary school, but for financial reasons she had to move to a smaller apartment.

During his stay in Hamburg, Neumann received the news that he could get a job in France as an assistant teacher at a training facility for future elementary school teachers. So he traveled to Nancy in October 1933 , where he was able to teach at the École Normale , a boarding school, with free board and lodging. For the reform pedagogue Neumann, what he found there was at least irritating: “Nancy and the École Normale had never thought of any educational progress. And the idea of ​​'starting as a child' was completely unknown. ”Nevertheless, Neumann feels very comfortable in Nancy. He learned French very well, was studying history at the University of Nancy and was even thinking of bringing his family along and becoming a French citizen. "A benevolent fate saved me from this, otherwise I would have had to share the tragic fate of the German refugees who were handed over to the Gestapo in 1940 by the 'honorable' Marshal Pétain ."

Escape helper in Hamburg

Neumann spent Christmas 1933 at home with his family in Hamburg. The French consul there helped him obtain a visa that was valid for five years and promised him that in future his mail would be sent by diplomatic mail. ( Memoirs , p. 182) However, he was not proud of the support he had received, but of one that he was able to provide himself: “My Christmas visit to Hamburg in December 1933 gave me a wonderful opportunity to save the lives of two German communists who were students at the Lichtwark School. "

Late in the evening of August 27, 1931, four people tried to steal the service weapon from Police Master Perske, who was on his way to work, in Chateauneufstrasse in Hamburg-Hamm . The background to this act, which is very reminiscent of the murders carried out just a few weeks earlier on Bülowplatz in Berlin, was the “increasingly intense political battles between National Socialists on the one hand and Communists and Social Democrats on the other”. The attackers in this case were five young Hamburg communists: Rudi Lindau, Albert Malschowski, Kurt Pflugbeil, Fritz Winzer and Helmut Heine. They wanted to get hold of Perske's service weapon in order to increase their own arsenal, and when the latter struggled, one of them, presumably Rudolf Lindau, fired a shot that injured Perske so badly that he died in hospital on August 31, 1931.

Three of those involved were sentenced to death: Rudolf Lindau; he was executed on January 10, 1934. "Albert Malachowski and Friedrich Winzer were sentenced on December 30, 1933 by the Hanseatic Special Court for breach of the peace / jointly committed murder to four years in prison and five years of loss of honor." Albert Machowiak died on December 20, 1936 in the prison hospital of pneumonia that he had contracted in Fuhlsbüttel prison .

That left Heine and Pflugbeil. According to Fritz C. Neumann, the police led by the SPD did not catch the perpetrators or did not want to catch them, so that their persecution only started after the Nazis came to power. This is indirectly confirmed by Helmut Heine in his letter, already quoted, in which he wrote that he had been persecuted by the police and the public prosecutor's office since October 1933. How the connection with Neumann came about is something that is never learned from him or from Neumann. Heine reported: "Comrade Kurt Pflugbeil and I managed to flee to France." In 1935 he went to the Soviet Union and in 1937 as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. He was then interned in southern France and extradited to Germany in 1941. In Hamburg he was interrogated and charged with several political crimes, but: “The proceedings for the Perske murder case were discontinued because, in my more indirect way of participating in the clash, the so-called. ' Hindenburg amnesty ' could and was applied. ”In June 1942 he was released and drafted into the Wehrmacht. In January 1945 he defected to the Red Army in Poland and worked as the head of an anti-fascist group within the POW camps.

Fritz C. Neumann confirms Heine's depiction of the escape: “Two of the people involved - one of them a very dear student from my class - accepted my help and we organized their escape across the border to Belgium and from there to France.” Another student from his Former class at the Lichtwark School was Friedrich Winzer, who was caught trying to escape to Denmark. “My two boys, one who fled to France and the other who spent the years of the Third Reich in prison, are now important officials in the GDR. All's well that ends well."

Bad luck in England

After this Christmas vacation in Hamburg, Neumann returned to Nancy. In May 1934 he again contacted the Dartington Hall School - "the very latest in educational modernity and radicalism" - this time with success. He was offered a position as a French teacher for the fall. On July 1, 1934, he traveled to England to clarify his future participation in the school, and from there he traveled to Hamburg, where he spent the summer with his family. When he received the final acceptance from Dartington Hall for the school year 1934/35, the family was already planning to live there together. The only thing missing was the necessary entry documents.

Without the necessary work permit, Neumann traveled to England via Paris in November 1934. He began teaching, but when the papers still failed to arrive, the school administration decided it would be more advisable for him to stay away from school for some time. So he spent a few uncomfortable days in Torquay . When he finally returned to school, his work permit was rejected. He tried to get a positive decision through a personal interview in London, but without success. The reasons remained in the dark. ( Memoirs , p. 188)

Because he had previously given up his job in Nancy, Neumann was forced to return to Hamburg in December 1934. Through the mediation of Luci Borchard , whose eldest daughter he had once taught at the Lichtwark School and whom he was only able to guide through the final exam with great effort, which earned him a lot of thanks from his mother, he found a position in the tax consultancy office of a Mr. Frenzel - in a " Emergency community of threatened existences ”, as Neumann felt the office. At first he was only supposed to make an impression on Frenzel's customers with his doctorate, but gradually he was entrusted with more demanding work and set up an information system to assess the creditworthiness of companies. ( Memoirs , p. 191)

Italy

After some time in the Frenzel tax consultancy, Neumann received a letter from Italy. A Mr Löwenberg , unknown to him, let him know that his sister, Alice Jacobi from Berlin, was planning to open a boarding school for Jewish children from Germany in Gardone Riviera , the school on Lake Garda (originally the daughter home on Lake Garda ). He, Fritz C. Neumann, had been suggested for a position there by Paul Geheeb , who now lives in Switzerland .

Neumann clarifies the identity of Mr. Löwenberg just as little as that of Alice Jacobi and also gives no clues as to what relationships with Paul Geheeb might have existed (which might have justified the term Landschulheim am Gardasee , which Feidel-Mertz brought into play ). But at least the identity of Mr. Löwenberg could be clarified: It was Alice Jacobi's brother, the theater director Karl Löwenberg , who had emigrated to Italy with his family in late 1934 or early 1935.

When Neumann accepted the position offered to him despite the low wages, he received a rejection from Alice Jacobi. They first need a Jew who can give Jewish religious instruction (Neumann was a Protestant). But she also asked him to help him find a suitable person, which Neumann agreed. Then "there was a very exciting and dramatic, if not at all pleasant incident". When looking for someone who could go to Italy instead of him, he remembered Hilde Marchwitza , then still Hilde Schottlaender, the daughter of the psychologist William Stern . What he didn't know: Hilde Marchwitza belonged to a resistance group around Hans Westermann and had made her apartment available as a meeting place. On the very day, presumably March 5, 1935, that Neumann wanted to visit her at home because she did not appear in the office that day, the Gestapo raided there and arrested all visitors - including Fritz C. Neumann . He was first taken to a police station for interrogation, and the next day to the Gestapo headquarters in the “town hall”. His wife and mother, who came to see him the day after he was arrested and inquired about him at a police station, were also temporarily arrested. ( Memoirs , p. 194)

Neumann was transferred from the Gestapo headquarters to the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp , but was repeatedly brought back to the town hall for interrogation. But he was lucky, despite all the inconvenience he had to endure. The officer questioning him believed Neumann's pledges of innocence after he found out that Ilse Neumann herself was employed by a Nazi agency. In the early afternoon of March 9th, a Saturday, he was released after four days in detention. ( Memoirs , p. 197)

Meanwhile, the hope of a job at Alice Jacobi's school had evaporated. “There were prejudices from another direction, the Jewish parents who had planned to entrust their children to Ms. Jacobi were shocked by the announcement that she would hire a non-Jewish teacher. They revoke the applications for their descendants. ”Neumann then submitted an alternative proposal to Jacobi. Instead of being a teacher, he would spend the summer holidays with her accompanying a group of Jewish children. He also saw this as a kind of promotional tour for the school, which he wanted to make better known in this way. To realize this plan, he worked with a friend Jacobis from Berlin and her cousin, and eventually he traveled to Gardone Riviera with 12 children, including his daughter Lisel. Lisel was, as her father ironically remarked, “the only Aryan among all these Semites”. ( Memoirs , p. 199)

This summer on Lake Garda was not only a success as a trip, but also helped Neumann to make many contacts with Hamburg's Jewish families. He was accepted and it was decided that he should now teach their children privately. He gave a group of eight children lessons in several subjects according to the grammar school curriculum, and he made additional income by occasionally working in Frenzel's tax office.

Through the parents of a boy who had made the summer trip to Lake Garda, contact was made with the rural school in Florence in the spring of 1936 . Despite poor pay, he accepted the offer to work there and went to Florence in June 1936. ( Memoirs , p. 204) He apparently did not feel very comfortable there from the beginning, mocked Werner Peiser's antiquated teaching methods and found Robert W. Kempner not very sympathetic either. “Basically he was a ruthless man and used the school as a backdrop for all kinds of business.” In addition to the poor pay, there was also the insufficient supply of food, which forced the teachers to raid the kitchen at night - until Kempner said one The bolt was pushed.

Despite all the inconvenience, Neumann praised the level of the school, met many capable teachers from Germany and had good contacts with his students. It was difficult, however, that they often only stayed at the school for a short time until their parents had found a safe place to emigrate for themselves and their children. In the summer of 1936 the school moved into its summer camp in Forte dei Marmi . Here he receives a visit from his wife Ilse, and she is also offered a job at the school. However, she declines the offer, presumably knowing that her husband would not stay there much longer, and after a few weeks traveled back to Hamburg.

In the late autumn of 1936, back in Florence, some teachers rebelled because of the bad pay and bad food. Against his will, Neumann became the leader of this rebellion because as a non-Jew he had more freedom because, unlike his Jewish colleagues, he could return to Germany at any time, they could not. The uprising brought improvements, but Neumann had had enough of this school and resigned. Obviously Peiser and Kempner were so happy that they paid him his salary for six months. ( Memoirs , p. 206)

After saying goodbye in Florence, Neumann visited Paul Oskar Kristeller in Pisa , whom he had met at the school home. From here he again contacted Alice Jacobi, whose school had developed well in the meantime, and was invited by her to work with her as a teacher. “So it came about that I spent my last year and a half in Europe (from June 1936 to August 1937) in Italy, the most beautiful of the countries I have ever seen. (Only Norway has a completely different, but comparable beauty.) "

At Christmas 1936 he visited Hamburg again, but returned very quickly to Italy when he found out that in Germany he was threatened with life and freedom. In summer Ilse Neumann visited her husband on Lake Garda. She is hit by a motorcycle and injured (“The Italians are really fast devils.”), But after her recovery it is enough for a trip to Venice together. ( Memoirs , p. 208) At the end of September Fritz C. Neumann embarked for America.

As an emigrant in the USA

While Fritz C. Neumann was in Italy, the elementary school teacher Eggert Meyer, who was little known to him and who was dismissed from school by the Nazis, tried to obtain a residence permit for Neumann in the USA. Meyer had received a scholarship for himself to study at the "Graduate Tachers College" in Winnetka (Illinois) and there successfully campaigned for Neumann to receive a one-year scholarship to study at this college. Such a scholarship also had the advantage that it was not subject to the strict conditions of the US immigration policy and allowed entry into the USA without an affidavit . However, family entry or family reunification was not permitted on this basis.

Neumann accepted Meyer's invitation and at the end of September 1937, after a last visit to the family in Hamburg, traveled from Antwerp to the USA. The shipowner Luci Borchard paid him the cost of the crossing. ( Memoirs , p. 189)

“I would not have voluntarily chosen the United States as my country of exile. Circumstances did so - there was no job during the Depression in Europe. My dream country would have been France. But a benign fate knew better. "

Despite his many prejudices about the USA, Neumann encountered a familiar field in Winnetka. His college was run by Carleton Washburne , the father of the Winnetka plan , who himself was a guest at the Lichtwark School . But his idea of reform pedagogy differed considerably from what Neumann had previously understood and practiced.

“His type of 'progressive education' was completely different from ours in Germany. We were committed to 'social awareness', he to individuality and 'free market economy'. His 'Winnetka Plan' enabled the gifted intelligent student to advance faster than the rest - and much of that talent was favored by the middle-class environment of these children. "

It may be that "Neuman [..] in Winnetka was forced to test his pedagogical convictions for the first time" (Füssl, p. 237), but for the time being he himself leaves open how far he was prepared to get involved in the American concept of reform pedagogy . He described the more practical side of the course, which was based on a dual principle: Gaining practical teaching experience was an integral part, and so he also taught European history and French at schools in Winnetka and Chicago in parallel to the college courses. The own lecturers also came from school practice. In addition, he moved in a largely left-wing liberal environment and took part in fundraising parties to support the republican side in the Spanish Civil War .

Since Neumann only had a one-year residence permit, he also had to take care of his personal and professional future for the time after the scholarship expired. Between Christmas and New Year's Eve 1937 he took part in a congress of the "Progressive Education Society" in New York. There seemed to be a chance for a position at a private high school in New Orleans , but out of consideration for his wife and her hoped-for opportunity to join him, he discarded the idea. "I would have liked to go to the old French town in the south, but it was good that this chance did not arise because Ilse could never have endured the hot and humid climate."

In May 1938, Neumann was offered a position in Evansville, Indiana . For the work permit , however , he needed a new entry visa , which, however, was not allowed to be issued in Germany. Neumann therefore had to leave for Mexico. However, since he did not have a visa to enter Mexico, he was dependent on the help of a German Jew who helped German refugees cross the border and who had “personal connections” to the Mexican border police. He received his visa for entry into the USA at the US consulate in Ciudad Juárez . American friends and an aid organization for emigrants based in Chicago's Hull House vouched for the additionally required affidavit . ( Memoirs , pp. 216–217) On the return trip Neumann once again attended an event of the “Progressive Education Society”, this time a summer camp in Denver .

From autumn 1938 to 1944, Neumann was Assistant Professor of French and German at Evansville College , now the University of Evansville . At the same time he taught from 1939 at Northwestern University in Evanston (Illinois) . Both activities together enabled him to bring his family to the USA in the summer of 1939. His daughter Lisel, who later studied at Evansville College herself , recalls this and the difficulties associated with it in her poem Curriculum Vitae .

10) Two parents, two daughters, we followed the sun
and the moon across the ocean. My grandparents
stayed behind in darkness.

11) In the new language everyone spoke too fast. Eventually
I caught up with them.

10) Two parents, two daughters, we followed the sun
and moon over the sea. My grandparents
were left in the dark.

11) Everyone spoke too quickly in the new language. Finally
I caught up with her.


Neumann himself put it more prosaically:

“We arrived in Evansville in mid-September in the sweltering, humid heat. The family was finally reunited and we had a decent income after six years of hardship. Our life in the USA began. "

From emigrant to immigrant

Fritz C. Neumann felt that he was in good hands in Evansville and had a large circle of friends “from Evansville's 'first families'.” He also attributes it to this fact that he was able to work here until 1944. However, in 1943, a new, less sympathetic college president and the decline in student numbers caused by the war meant that from then on he was only able to teach with half a position and thus with half the salary. Neumann was forced to take on an additional job as a store checker at the local Sears Roebuck branch. Because he made too many mistakes, he was soon fired.

A new perspective arose when he was offered in autumn 1943 to teach in Winnetka, at a school at which he had already worked during his training at the "Graduate Tachers College". He asked for a leave of absence from Evansville College . When he was denied this, he resigned. Ilse stayed a while and continued to teach German.

In autumn 1944, Fritz C. Neumann acquired the American citizenship - probably from calculus because of inner conviction as one two years later being transferred conflict with his showing and he as a process of Americanization ( Americanization ) described.

“Now - as far as Americanization is concerned - mine and Ilses took very different paths. It was easy for me in the beginning because I always kept the plan in mind to return to Germany after Hitler's collapse. Ilse was very homesick in the first few years, but then she adapted thoroughly. After getting the good job of teaching German at the Undergraduate Division (Navy Pier) of the University of Illinois in Chicago in 1946 , she strictly refused to return to her homeland, and it was mainly because of her decision that we chose to stay in America forever. She also appreciated the freer position of women here. "

Neumann meanwhile taught American history and French in Winnetka, and when his wife came to visit in the spring of 1944, the headmaster offered them to look after the boys' dormitory together in the school year 1944/1945. There was no remuneration, but free room and board.

Disenchantment with this apparently cheap offer soon followed. “Our new job turned out to be real hell. The boys, with a few exceptions, were the worst educated, indecent, vicious children I have ever met in my entire life. ”By the end of the school year, they got a grip on things, but they took over the running of the dormitory from. Neumann stayed another year as a teacher at the school.

The family was looking for a new apartment in Evanston and found it in the house of a German landlord from Trier. This apartment remained the family home for many years. Here he also began to write a book. Under the title Germany Between West and East , it was intended to be a political and cultural history of modern Germany with a focus on developments in the 19th and 20th centuries. He never finished it; the manuscript was lost. Neumann was also an admirer of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal . So it was a great shock to him when Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945 and Harry S. Truman became president. The next shock came when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki .

“While many people cheered, I felt a deep sense of outrage and shame. I had become an American citizen last fall, and now I was ashamed of my adopted home as I used to be ashamed of being a German. I still believe today that this monstrous cruelty was unnecessary as the Japanese knew by then that they were defeated and had already asked Russia to negotiate peace. On Judgment Day, Harry Truman will have to answer for his fateful decision of 1945. I think he should be treated as a first class 'war criminal'. "

After the end of the war, thanks to the GI Bill , large numbers of students streamed back into the colleges, and so in the fall of 1946 Neumann found a new position at the Hampton Institute in Virginia , one of the historic African American colleges and universities . He owed the position to the acquaintance of a black union leader who was on the board of trustees of that college. Neumann taught social sciences and history here, while Ilse stayed in Evanston because of her job in Chicago.

For Neumann it was the first encounter with the southern states, and he still experienced all the effects of racial discrimination - an experience that other emigrants had to make in a similar way, for example Ernst Moritz and Marianne Manasse or Ernst Abrahamsohn , all of whom had already been on Landschulheim Florence had taught. When Ilse Neumann visited her husband and experienced the racist excesses of American society up close, an experience that she had apparently been spared in Evanston or Chicago, she turned down a position that was offered to her. "She said she had not left Germany, where the persecution of the Jews was being practiced, in order to live in a country where the same barbarism was being perpetrated against colored people." Unlike Manasseh, Neumann was not even the only white man at college. Only the students were black; two thirds of the staff were black and one third white. The latter also included two professors from Germany:

  • the agricultural scientist Margarethe Altmann (1900–1984) and
  • Karla Longré (also: Longree). According to Neumann, she came from the Rhineland, had a doctorate in biology, but taught home economics; she later moved to Syracuse University in New York. ( Memoirs , p. 239)

In the summer of 1947, Fritz C. Neumann left the Hampton Institute . He returned here for another visit in 1954 and found a completely different situation compared to the previous left-liberal mood. "When I returned to Hampton for a visit in 1954 - the days of McCarthism - an earlier course on the state of the world and the international community had been converted into a course on Americanism!"

Neumann returned north and took a position as a German and history teacher at Wabash College , a small private art school for men in Crawfordsville, Indiana . He stayed here until 1951, was able to spend the weekends with the family, but reports about his place of work only that it was a college with "fairly high academic standards". ( Memoirs , p. 240) At this time, in the late summer of 1948, the Neumann couple made their first trip to Europe. They traveled to Le Havre on a converted American naval ship and from there to Paris. Here they saw Wolfgang Staudte's film The Murderers Are Among Us , a kind of attunement to the bombed-out Hamburg, where they then traveled on. They visited Neumann's mother, who turned 80 in October, as well as old friends and colleagues, including Heinrich Landahl and Olga Essig . They were not granted a trip to the Soviet occupation zone , where Ilse Neumann's mother lived. Her father had died in 1946, and she never saw her mother, who died in 1952, either. ( Memoirs , pp. 244–247)

Arrived

Neumann first came into contact with Roosevelt College in 1950 . At that time, the idea of ​​working there seemed “like a utopia, because many well-known scientists wanted it too”. The contact was made through the historian Helmut Hirsch , who had taught at Roosevelt College since 1945 . Hirsch had invited Neumann to a summer school to teach a course on modern German history from 1870 to 1945. "This was in the summer of 1950 and resulted in a long and fruitful relationship with Roosevelt, where I held a full-time position until 1964."

In 1952 the Neumanns took another trip to Europe. After that, Ilse became very ill. She suffered from severe diabetes and was hospitalized after a heart attack in early June 1953. Here she died. Fritz C. Neumann closed his notes with the death of his wife. “That was the greatest misfortune of my life. And with her death I come to the end of my story. (Completed on board the beautiful ship 'Linzertor' in the middle of the Atlantic, July 8, 1965) “. Her eldest daughter, Lisel Mueller, began writing poetry after her mother's death. “Many years later, in her poem 'When I Am Asked', she explained why she began to write poetry: On a beautiful June day shortly after her mother's death, Müller discovered that they put their grief› into the mouth of language had to, the only thing that would mourn with me ‹.” In a nutshell, she put it in Curriculum Vitae : “13) The death of the mother drove the daughter into poetry. [..] "

Fritz C. Neumann ended his professional career at Roosevelt College, now called Roosevelt University , with the course he had once introduced there, the course on modern German history. “I never taught this course again before 1964 because it was not part of the regular program. However, I was allowed to teach him again in the spring of 1964, and then by surprising coincidence it became my last course at this university. "

After his retirement he moved to Hamburg for a few years, where he got married again. The marriage was unhappy and Neumann returned to the United States in 1971. He spent the last years of his life with his daughter Lisel, who took care of him until his death after a minor stroke , which resulted in more and more nursing needs. Lisel recorded this difficult time in a poem.

As in a Russian play, an old man
lives in our house, he is my father;
he lets go of life in such slow motion,
year after year, that the grief
is stuck inside me, a poisoned apple
that won't go up or down

As in a Russian play, an old
man lives in our house, he's my father;
he lets go of life in slow motion,
year after year, so that the sadness is
like a poisoned apple in me that
doesn't want to go up or down

NoteThe poem Another Version first appeared in 1977 in the Chap book Voices from Forest .

Fritz C. Neumann died on April 14, 1976.

“NEUMANN'S way from Hamburg via Western Europe to the USA is [..] at the same time a way from an extremely politicized pedagogy, as he found it around the KPD in Hamburg and z. Partly actively shaped, towards a pedagogy that consciously placed itself in a democratic society and also worked on social integration, but avoided the party-political orientation of the teachers as well as the politicization of the school and the students. NEUMANN'S path to emigration and his path from the Marxist Workers' School in Hamburg to the Graduate Teacher College in Winnetka therefore also includes a process of political change in which the previously radical elements of his pedagogy were rejected and the American understanding of reform, the interrelated relationship between Formation and optimization of democracy, understood and internalized relatively quickly. (Füssl, p. 242) "

Works

  • The Origin of Rosmersholm , Dissertation, Hamburg, 1921.
    After Catherine Epstein, no other book publications by Fritz C. Neumann are known; a manuscript with the title Germany Between West and East is considered lost.
  • Articles in the Hamburger Lehrerzeitung (HLZ), 4th year (around 1925):
    • To the German high school
    • Culture, politics and education
  • Memoirs of a contemporary , unpublished manuscript in English, edited by Lisel Mueller, Libertiville, 1965, 248 pages. A copy of the manuscript was kindly made available by the library of the German Historical Institute in Washington.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ At this point there should be a photo of Fritz C. Neumann that his granddaughter, Jenny Mueller, had made available for publication. This photo has been deleted from Wikimedia Commons for copyright reasons . As an alternative, reference is therefore made to an article in the taz of January 2, 2019 about Neumann's daughter Lisel, which contains a photo showing the father and daughter, probably from the early 1930s. ( Benno Schirrmeister: Poet who fled Nazi Germany. The poet of the second language , taz , January 2, 2019)
  2. ↑ The following article is based primarily on Fritz C. Neumann's manuscript Memoirs of a contemporary . This basic material is supplemented by the work of Karl-Heinz Füssl and Catherine Epstein. Epstein essentially lists Neumann's life in a table, while Füssl provides more detailed background information by referring directly to the Memoirs of a contemporary . However, his essay contains a serious error in at least one place: on page 238 ff. He claims that Neumann went to Black Mountain College as a teacher in the fall of 1946 . There are no indications whatsoever for this in Neumann's memoirs, which meticulously tracing all the stations of his career . On January 8, 2019, Jenny Mueller, the daughter of Lisl Mueller, said in an email: “I think there was a painter or gallerist with a similar name to my grandfather's who was at Black Mountain, and that may have been the source of his error. ”Many thanks to her for further helpful information on the revision of the article and for providing photos from her private collection.
  3. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 12. “We never, almost never, attended church. My father called himself a free-thinker; he worshiped nature as an expression of divinity and used to say that a Sunday morning hike in the woods was a much better service than any minister could ever provide. [..] Both my parents insisted vigorously that no minister should be present at their burial and no minister was. "
  4. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 19. "This set us apart from tho majority of our comrades to whom an officer's or reserve-officer's uniform was a very high goal in life."
  5. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 23. "I lost not only respect for my parents, I also lost respect for myself. It was the deepest crisis of my young life and when I later - during the twenties - became a complete radical and worked for the destruction of the whole middle-class world, here, I think, is the real origin of this development. "
  6. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 25. "Ibsen as a prophet gave me moral support and sustained me during the hard and dark year's of Hitler's rule." At the age of sixty, he translated the book by Bergliot Ibsen, Ibsen's daughter-in-law, into German: De tre: erindringer om Henrik Ibsen, Suzannah Ibsen, Sigurd Ibsen ; English title: The Three Ibsens: Memories of Henrik Ibsen, Suzannah Ibsen and Sigurd Ibsen . Contrary to his hopes, however, no German publisher seems to have been found.
  7. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 39. “For the people exclusively hikers and Heimatstreuen I never cared in the least; we called them 'blond hiking simpletons' (blonde Trippeltroepfe). I always was and remaind a product of the large city. "
  8. ^ History of the secondary school on the Uhlenhorst
  9. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 51. “My own feeling about the general situation in August 1914 are best expressed in one sentence which I wrote into my diary which I still have today:› The only solution of this whole mess (of Europe ) would be a revolution in Germany but that, unfortunately, is out of question.
  10. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 53. "These fraternities always seemed to me the very incarnation of everything disgusting and ignoble in the German middle class of the Kaiser's time."
  11. ↑ Memoirs , pp. 62-63. In 1951 Neumann visited Oskar Jancke in Darmstadt, where he lived and worked at the time as the secretary of the academy .
  12. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , pp. 65–66. "These days in Stralsund have left a very bad and bitter taste in my memory [...] what really only belongs to the black pages of German-Prussian militarism. Nobody will ever persuade me that it was not Prussian militarism that prepared the Germans for the shame and the humiliations of the Third Reich! "
  13. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 69. “Everybody born to the ranks of the middle class should experience, at least once in life, the constant life of humiliation of the proletariat; it will do him good and cure his prejudices. As for me, no doubt, this experience prepared the way for my conversion to Marxian Socialism one or two years later. "
  14. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 70. "Here I witnessed the revolution participated of November of 1918 and - to a very modest degree in it."
  15. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 82. “The one measure which I remember we adopted was to abolish the preferential treatment for officers for medical treatment, bath and meals. [..] Now even the crestfallen former lords of creation had to stand in line and wait for their turn like everybody else. This gave me great pleasure. [..] The main result of my participation in the hospital soviet and the 'movement' in general was to gain great respect for my fellow members from the working class. Here I met the elite of the German proleterlat who had gone through the school of trade unionism and of the Socialist parties. They were much better educated and informed about social, economic and political matters than were we youngsters from the middle class who had boasted so much - and so wrongly - about our "higher education". "
  16. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 107. “Our marriage was, in spite of ups and downs of every marriage, the greatest and most blessed event of my life. It lasted for thirty years. "
  17. ↑ Lisel Mueller Biography . "Mueller was blessed with a set of parents who were, according to Mueller, 'wholly and blessedly gender-blind'. Mueller characterizes her mother as ‹feminine in the sense that she was warm, outgoing, and impulsive, but she was totally ignorant of 'feminine wiles,' such as manipulation of, and deference to, men›. "
  18. ^ Lisel Mueller: Curriculum Vitae . "5) At home the bookshelves connected heaven and earth."
  19. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , pp. 120-121. "I became a 'fellow traveler' for about a decade. [..] Prepared by the trend of political events my mind was open for the influence of Marxism. It hit me with full force. "
  20. ↑ Neumann speaks of the Anti-Imperialist League (AIL) , which can only mean the league against imperialism and for national independence . (see: League against Imperialism and for National Independence )
  21. ^ Upper secondary school in Eimsbüttel (Kaiser-Friedrich-Ufer grammar school), 1888-2004 ; see also: Gymnasium Kaiser-Friedrich-Ufer .
  22. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 130. “These were anxious weeks. It is quite glorious and pleasant to become a martyr for your cause but when the livelihood of a wife and two little children is involved it becomes much less so. "
  23. ^ Lisel Mueller: Curriculum Vitae . "8) My father was busy eluding the monsters. My mother // told me the walls had ears. I learned the burden of secrets. "
  24. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 131. "This, however, was the end of my political activities in Germany."
  25. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 168. “Now began six very difficult years for us. It took till 1938 when I became Assistant Professor at Evansville College that I could take care of my family and till the summer of 1939 that we were all reunited in a decent family life in America. "
  26. ^ Bibliothèque nationale de France: Maurice Boucher
  27. ↑ Arthur Koestler: Early outrage. Autobiographical writings , first volume, Limes Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1993, ISBN 3-8090-2318-3 , p. 438. The quote is the first paragraph of the chapter Comrade Piepvogel , in which Koestler describes in detail the difficult conditions under which the home had to work. Fritz C. Neumann is not mentioned in it. Under the title “The Experiences of Comrade Piepvogel in Emigration”, written in 1934 and first published in German in 2012 (Europa-Verlag, Zurich, ISBN 978-3-905811-71-1 ), Koestler also deals with the history of the home made his first novel, which was long thought lost.
  28. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 179. “No minds of pedagogical progress had reached Nancy and the École Normale. And the idea "from the child" was entirely unknown. "
  29. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , pp. 180/81. "A kind fate saved me from this, otherwiese I might have shared the tragic fate of the German refugees handed over to the Gestapo by the 'honorable' Marshal Pétain in 1940."
  30. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 182. "My Christmas visit to Hamburg in December of 1933 offered me a wonderful opportunity to save the life of two German Communists who had been students at the Lichtwarkschule."
  31. ↑ a b Stolpersteine ​​in Hamburg: Albert Malachowski
  32. ↑ For the course of events, see Stolpersteine ​​in Hamburg: Albert Malachowski . There, however, only Rudolf Lindau, Friedrich Winzer and Albert Malachowski are named as perpetrators, while Fritz C. Neumann speaks of four people. Helmut Heine, however , confirmed his complicity as well as the names of the four other comrades in a letter dated November 21, 1945 in which he applied for membership in the Hamburg Committee for Former Political Prisoners . (Source: Association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime - Bund der Antifaschisten eV (VVN-BdA) , Landesvereinigung Hamburg: files of the Committee of Former Political Prisoners )
  33. ^ Association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime - Bund der Antifaschisten eV (VVN-BdA) , Landesvereinigung Hamburg: files of the committee of former political prisoners
  34. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 183. "Two of the people involved - one a very dear student from my class - accepted my help and we organized their flight acrossw the frontier into Belgium and from there into France." Neumann calls his friend Rudi Jancke escape, the younger brother of his former fellow student Oskar Jancke, who lived in Aachen directly on the German-Belgian border. There is no further information about Rudi Jancke. ( Memoirs , pp. 62–63)
  35. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 183. "Both my boys, the one who escaped to France and the other one who spent the years of the Third Reich in prison are now important officials in the DDR All is well that ends well."
  36. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 186. "... the latest thing in pedagogical modernism and radicalism."
  37. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 192. "Then there happened a very exciting and dramatic though in no way pleasant incident."
  38. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 198. “There had entered prejudice from the other direction, the Jewish parents who had planned to entrust their children to Mrs. Jacobi were shocked by the announcement that she would engage a non-Jewish teacher. They withdraw the applications for their offspring. "
  39. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 205. "He was, basically, a ruthless man and used the school as a screen for all kinds of business deals."
  40. ↑ Fritz C. Neumann's experiences largely coincide with the descriptions of Wolfgang Wasow , who had already come to the Landschulheim in February 1935.
  41. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 208. “So it came to pass that I spent my last one-and-a-half years in Europe (from June 1936 to August 1937) in Italy, the most beautiful country of those that I have seen. (Only Norway has a very different but comparable beauty.) "
  42. ↑ Memoirs , p. 208. There is little evidence of Eggert Meyer. He cannot be found in the Ellis Island database , and traces of his previous work in Germany are rare. It may have been he who was active in the mid-1920s with the Hamburger Kinderfreunde , a forerunner group of the Socialist Youth of Germany - Die Falken ( Falken ABC , section SJD-DIE FALKEN ). In Ingeborg Maschmann's (1921–2016) ( Ingeborg Maschmann celebrates her 95th birthday ) memories Hamburg - Jena - Lüneburg 1921 to 1950. My educational journey through life in the 'Age of Extreme' is mentioned on pages 53 ff. An Eggert Meyer, “the new Volksdorfer teachers and swarm of all children ", who should learn from him," to find our way around and to settle individually in a future open to all, in order to build the social house together, peacefully, 'pacifist' ". From the 1950s there are scattered references to English-language publications on topics from the field of kindergarten and elementary school education, the author of which was Eggert Meyer.
  43. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 209. “I would not voluntarily have chosen the United States as my land of exile. Circumstances made this so - there was no job available during the depression in Europe. My land of choice would have been France. But a benign fate knew better. "
  44. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 214. "His brand of" progressive education "was entirely different from ours in Germany. We worked for "social consiousness", he worked for individuaklism and "free enterprise". His "Winnetka Plan" made it possible for the gifted smart student to get ahead faster than the rest - and much of this giftedness was bestowed by the upper-class environment of these children. "
  45. ↑ There is hardly any freely accessible material about this organization, which is connected to the American variety of reform education and existed from 1919 to 1955. Sources for this are most likely to be found in the English WIKIPEDIA article ( Progressive Education Association ) or on the website A Brief Overview of Progressive Education .
  46. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 214. “I would have loved to go to the old French city in the south, but it was just as well that this chance did not materialize because Ilse would never have been able to stand the hot and humid climate. "
  47. ^ History of the University of Evansville . There is also a more detailed article in WIKIPEDIA: en: University of Evansville
  48. ↑ Karen DeBrulye Cruze: BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER , Chicago Tribune, Dec. 5, 1993
  49. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 214. “We arrived in Evansville by the middle of September in a sweltering, humid heat. Finally the family was reunited and we had decent income after six years of hardship. Our life in the USA was beginning. "
  50. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , pp. 225-226. "Now - as far as Amercanization was concerned - mine and Ilse's proceeded on entirely different lines. For me it was easy in the beginning for I kept in the back of my mind always the plan of returning to Germany after Hitler's fall. Ilse was utterly homesick during the first years but then she became thoroughly adapted. After she had received the good job as a German teacher at the University of Illinois Undergraduate Division (Navy Pier) in Chicago in 1946 she absolutely refused to return to the father's land and it was mainly due to her decision that we decided to remain for good in America. She also appreciated the freer position of women here. "
  51. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 227. "Our new job, turned out to be real hell. The boys - with a few exceptions - were the worst-educated and most illbehaved, nastiest children I ever met in my whole life."
  52. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 235. “While many people were jubilant I had a deep feeling of indignation and shame. I had become an American citizen in the preceding fall and now I felt ashamed of my adopted country as I had formerly felt ashamed of being German. I still believe today that this monstrous cruelty was unnecessary since the Japanese knew by this time that they were beaten and had already appealed to Russia for a peace negotiation. On the day of the last judgment Harry Truman will have to answer for his fateful decision of 1945. I think he should be treated as a 'war criminal' of the first order. "
  53. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 237. "She said she had not left Germany where the persecution of the Jews was being practiced in order to live in a country where the same barbarism was being executed against the colored people."
  54. ↑ MARGARET ALTMANN (1900-1984) , page 15, and Tiffany K. Wayne: American Women of Science Since 1900 , Volume 1, pp 189 et seq.
  55. ↑ There are many references to publications by Karla Longré on the Internet, but no biographical data.
  56. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 239. "When I came back to Hampton for a visit in 1954 - the days of McCarthism - a course formerly on world conditions and world citizenship had been changed to a course on Amercanism!"
  57. ↑ ABOUT WABASH HISTORY
  58. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 240. "... looked to me like a Utopia because many better-known scholars also wanted to do so."
  59. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 242. "This was in the summer of 1950 and led to a long and most fruitful association with Roosevelt, where I obtained a full-time position, till 1964." When exactly Neumann took his place at Roosevelt Has gone to college , he doesn't say. In a document available on the Faculty Directory List website, he is listed as a lecturer for the years 1954 to 1964 .
  60. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , p. 248. “This was the greatest misfortune of my life. And with her death I come to the end of my story. (Finished on board the good ship 'Linzertor' in the middle of the Atlantic, July 8th, 1965). "
  61. ↑ Lisel Mueller Biography . "Many years later she explained, in her poem 'When I Am Asked', why she began writing poetry: On a beautiful June day shortly after her mother died, Mueller discovered that she had to place her grief› in the mouth of language, the only thing that would grieve with me ‹."
  62. ^ Lisel Mueller: Curriculum Vitae . "13) The death of the mother hurt the daughter into poetry. [..] "
  63. ↑ Memoirs of a contemporary , pp. 242–243. "I never taught this course again before 1964 since it was not on the regular program. I was, however, allowed to teach it once more in the spring of 1964, and then by a surprising coincidence it became my last course at this university. "
  64. ^ Fritz C. Neumann: Memoirs of a Contemporary. Typescript, annotation on second cover sheet from LM, Hoover Institution Archives
  65. ↑ Ursel Hochmuth: Lichtwarkschule / Lichtwarkschüler: "Hitler leads to perdition - do not greet!" , P. 103
personal data
SURNAME Neumann, Fritz C.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American educator and university professor, emigrant
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH April 14, 1976
Place of death Libertyville, Illinois