Hans Goslar

Stolperstein , Paul-Löbe-Allee, in Berlin-Tiergarten

Hans Goslar (born November 4, 1889 in Hanover , † February 25, 1945 in Bergen-Belsen ) was a German journalist , author and economist . He was also a Zionist and was committed to Jewish community life. During the Weimar Republic he was press chief of the Prussian State Ministry . He was the father of Hannah Pick-Goslar , a friend of Anne Frank's in exile in Amsterdam .

Career

Hans Goslar was the son of the businessman Gustav Goslar, who had lived in Hanover since 1870. In 1894 the family moved to Berlin , where Hans Goslar joined the Zionist youth movement. He studied at the commercial college in Berlin and became a national economist and business journalist.

He wrote e.g. B. for the Norddeutsche and for the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung . He was also editor of the Kuxen newspaper at the yellow news agency and editor of the economic journal Plutus . From December 1914, Goslar worked for the trade department of the Vossische Zeitung .

From April 1915 Goslar did military service as a Landsturmmann. Since February 1916 he was assigned to the press department in the headquarters of the Commander in Chief East . From August 1916 he worked in the German administration of Lithuania . In this context, Goslar edited in Kovno , the Lithuanian newspaper Dabartis .

During this time he was in contact with Hermann Struck , Herbert Eulenberg , Arnold Zweig , Sammy Gronemann and Richard Dehmel .

Goslar has been working for the Upper East administration since February 1917. In Białystok he worked for the Białystok newspaper. From May 1917 he worked for the military administration of Lithuania.

Goslar was released from military service because the Norddeutsche Zeitung publisher requested him. From April 1918 to September 1919 he was editor of the paper.

Then Goslar switched to civil service. First he worked for the Prussian State Commissioner for Public Order Monitoring. From November 1, 1919, he was the head of the press office of the Prussian State Ministry . His tasks also included setting up a press service. Initially an employee, he soon became a civil servant. In March 1920 he was in the rank of a government councilor , in 1923 he was appointed senior government councilor and in 1926 ministerial councilor.

In 1932, in the wake of the Prussian strike , he was initially "on leave" and officially retired in October. Before that, he had also worked as a lecturer in banking, stock exchange and banking policy. His press office had already lost its independence in the summer.

Goslar confessed to the SPD in defiance of the discrimination against Jews in the Wilhelmine era and recognized the dangers of anti-Semitism early on . He was one of the leading representatives of the Jewish People's Party . In 1925 he was elected for this in a Westphalian constituency in the Association Day of the Prussian State Association of Jewish Communities. From 1928 to 1933 he was a religiously minded Zionist in the Assembly of Representatives of the Berlin Jewish Community.

Family, emigration and the end

Goslar and his family emigrated to Amsterdam in 1933 , where he initially received a pension from the Prussian state and later, together with the lawyer Franz Ledermann, opened an advisory office that set out to rescue Jews from Germany. Ledermann was the father of Anne Frank's friend Susanne ("Sanne"). In 1938 Hans Goslar was expatriated.

In May 1940 the Germans invaded the Netherlands ( western campaign ).

In 1926 Hans Goslar married Ruth Judith Klee (1901–1942). The first child, Hannah Elisabeth , who became one of Anne Frank's closest friends, was born on November 12, 1928. On October 25, 1940, the second daughter, Rachel Gabriele, called Gabi, was born. Two years later, on October 27, 1942, Goslar's wife died in childbed. The child did not survive either.

In 1943 Hans Goslar, his two daughters and his in-laws were picked up from their apartments by the Nazis - the Jewish maid Irma had already been arrested - and first transported to the Westerbork transit camp and then to Bergen-Belsen in February 1944 . While the father-in-law soon died, Goslar, his daughters and their grandmother initially survived the hardships of life in the camp. The fact that the family, which on the one hand had passports for an emigration to Paraguay , on the other hand was on the second Palestine list , was accommodated in a part of the camp reserved for "exchange Jews", where the conditions were not quite the same were catastrophic as in other camp departments. Hannah Goslar had the last contact with her childhood friend Anne Frank in Bergen-Belsen.

Hans Goslar died shortly before the planned removal of the family on the train of the lost on February 25, 1945; Even his mother-in-law did not survive camp life. His daughters survived the train's odyssey through the remnants of the German Empire and were liberated near Tröbitz . They first moved to Switzerland and later emigrated to Israel, where they still live today.

On June 9, 2015 , two stumbling blocks were laid for Goslar and his wife in Berlin-Tiergarten , near their defunct house In den Zelten 21a and right next to the Federal Chancellery .

Cinematic representation

Hans Goslar was portrayed in the 2001 film Anne Frank (2001) by Dominique Horwitz ; and in 2016 in The Diary of Anne Frank by Stephan Schad .

Fonts

• You and the state . Berlin undated
• The crisis of the Jewish youth in Germany . 1911
• The Sexual Ethics of the Jewish Rebirth . Berlin 1919
• Jewish world domination, fantasy or reality? Berlin 1919
• America 1922 (impressions from a study trip) . Berlin 1922
• Politics and parliament . Berlin 1928
• Hygiene and Judaism . Dresden 1930
• Weimar - in spite of it all! Wroclaw 1932
• Way out or wrong way? Berlin 1933

literature

• Wolfgang Benz , Arnold Paucker , Peter GJ Pulzer (ed.): Jewish life in the Weimar Republic. Jews in the Weimar Republic . Series of scientific papers by the Leo Baeck Institute 57, p. 55
• Matthias Lau: Press policy as an opportunity , Diss. Berlin 2002, pp. 104–115
• Files of the Prussian State Ministry vol. 11 / II p. 584 digitized (PDF; 2.0 MB)
• German Biographical Encyclopedia , Volume 4, p. 100
• Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography . With nearly 3000 life descriptions of well-known Jewish men and women from all times and countries. A reference work for the Jewish people and their friends , with the participation of numerous experts from all parts of the world, vol. 7, p. 29 f.
• Jewish Lexicon , Vol. 2, Column 1216
• Encyclopaedia Judaica , 1928, Vol. 7, Column 544
• Encyclopaedia Judaica , Vol. 7, 1971, column 817
• Jews in the German Cultural Sector , p. 586
• N / A : Hans Goslar. In: Life and Destiny. On the inauguration of the synagogue in Hanover , with photos by Hermann Friedrich et al., Publisher: Landeshauptstadt Hanover, press office, in cooperation with the Jewish Community of Hanover eV, Hanover: [Beeck in commission], [1963], p. 172
• Ernst G. Lowenthal: Probation in the downfall. A memorial book . Stuttgart 1965, p. 62f.
• Ernst G. Lowenthal: Jews in Prussia. Biographical directory. A representative cross section , ed. from the Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 1981, p. 77
• W. Röder, H. Strauss (Ed.): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933 . Munich 1980, p. 237
• Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 122 f.
• HE Pick-Goslar ("Lies Goosens") . In: W. Lindwer: Anne Frank . The last seven months. Eyewitnesses Report , 1990, pp. 23-55
• Peter Schulze : Goslar, Hans . In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 227.

Web links

Wikisource: Hans Goslar  - Sources and full texts

Commons : Hans Goslar  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Hans Goslar in the catalog of the German National Library
• Report on the Goslar family by Heide Kramer

Individual evidence

1. ^ Matthias Lau: Press policy as an opportunity. Franz Steiner Verlag, 2003, ISBN 978-3-515-08071-2 , p. 104. Restricted preview in the Google book search