Fritz Loewenthal (librarian)

Fritz Loewenthal (born May 12, 1886 in Königsberg ; † September 28, 1941 ) was a German librarian.

Life

Loewenthal was born the son of the medical councilor Alexander Loewenthal and his wife Rosa. He attended the old town high school in Königsberg and graduated from high school in 1906. He then studied German philology, history and philosophy in Königsberg and Munich and received his doctorate in Königsberg in 1913. During the First World War, Loewenthal was initially a nurse for the Red Cross before he was drafted into army service from August 1915 to early 1917. He then worked as a substitute teacher at the Hufengymnasium in Königsberg. In 1918 Loewenthal married Frieda Hand, with whom he had four children: Georg, Heinz-Ulrich, Agnes (married Ebstein) and Alwin. At the end of 1918 he went to the University Library in Königsberg , moved to the Göttingen University Library in 1920 and to the Kiel University Library in 1922 , before returning to Göttingen in 1925. In July 1933, the one year retired former director of the Göttingen University Library, Richard Fick , campaigned for Loewenthal to avert his impending dismissal. Nevertheless, Loewenthal was forced into retirement in mid-September 1933. The basis was the discriminatory “ Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service ” of April 1933. Loewenthal stayed in Göttingen and died there in 1941 of natural causes. The two sons Georg and Heinz-Ulrich emigrated to England in 1939, although their mother's “non-Jewish” origins meant that they were only half-Jews in the National Socialist sense .

Fonts (selection)

• Studies on the Germanic riddle , Heidelberg: Winter, 1914 (Germanist work; 1) (Partly also: Königsberg, Univ., Diss., 1914).
• An expert opinion by Jakob Grimm from 1833. In: Contributions to the Göttingen Library and Scholar History, 1928, pp. 135ff.
• Bibliographical Handbook on German Philology, Halle a. S .: Niemeyer, 1932.

literature

• Alexandra Habermann et al: Lexicon of German Scientific Librarians 1925–1980 , Frankfurt a. M .: Klostermann 1985, ISBN 3-465-01664-5 , p. 202.
• Uta Schäfer-Richter / Jörg Klein: The Jewish Citizens in the Göttingen District, 1933–1945: Göttingen, Hann. Münden, Duderstadt; Ein Gedenkbuch , Göttingen: Wallstein 1992, ISBN 3-89244-048-4 , pp. 148-149.