Jewish country school home in Coburg

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The Jewish country school home in Coburg was built after 1933 at Hohen Strasse 30 in Coburg from a boarding school that the preacher Herrmann Hirsch founded after the First World War for Jewish boys who came from the country and attended a secondary school in the city. It is one of the three Jewish country school homes that existed in Germany in the 1930s .

Hermann and Berta Hirsch in the period up to 1933

After graduating from high school, Hermann Hirsch (born June 19, 1885 in Hanau - † January 29, 1942 in Pardess Chana ) attended the music institute in Koblenz from 1906 to 1910 and also trained as a religion teacher. He found his first job as a teacher in Andernach, before he became a preacher for the Israelite religious community in Coburg in 1914.

At that time Hermann Hirsch was already married to Berta Daniel (* May 16, 1891 in Bendorf - † 1972), who came from a wealthy Jewish merchant family. The marriage resulted in two daughters:

  • Leonore ("Lore", born August 24, 1915 in Bendorf ) attended high school in Coburg and in 1933 went to Holland. From here she emigrated to Palestine via Switzerland in 1934 . She was trained as a teacher in Jerusalem and was married to a man born in Palestine. For a short time she probably also worked as a "house daughter" in her father's boarding school.
  • Esther (* 1920 in Coburg) attended the Ecole Superieure de Commerce in Lausanne from 1937 to 1939 . In an advertisement in the Jüdische Rundschau , this school presented itself as follows: “State school with a commercial diploma and high school diploma. All modern subjects and languages. Daughters Department. Three-month courses with eighteen hours of French per week. Moderate school fees. The director Prof. Ad provides information. Weitzel. “
    When Esther Hirsch received her diploma here, her parents had already emigrated to Palestine, and in order to be able to follow them, she had to enter into a marriage of convenience with a man who had a Palestinian passport. This was achieved through her sister's mediation.
    Esther initially worked with her parents in the children's village "Meschek Jeladim" in Pardess Chana , founded by Clara Weimersheimer , before she went to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for some time. Due to the illness of her father and his subsequent death, she returned to "Meschek Jeladim" in 1942. Clara Weimersheimer closed the children's home in 1944, after which Berta and Esther Hirsch continued their work in the Neve Hayeled children's home in Naharija. Esther met her husband Gideon Hirschfeld here and founded a youth wind orchestra.

On January 26, 1915, Hermann Hirsch was called up for military service in World War I and deployed to France in the spring that followed. He initially served in the infantry and then became a field chaplain for the Jewish soldiers of the 9th Landwehr Division .

House Hohe Str. 30, Coburg

In 1917 Hermann Hirsch returned from the war and founded the boarding school Prediger Hirsch . It is unclear whether this boarding school was already located at Hohe Straße 30 (Coburg) . What is certain is that Hermann Hirsch became the owner of this representative villa in January 1919.

The boarding school was intended to provide a home for boys from the country who attended a secondary school in Coburg. Up until 1933, the boarding school's school operations seem to have been largely limited to the religious instruction given by Hirsch. This is also supported by the fact that Hirsch continued to teach as a Jewish religion teacher at Coburg schools. He was also active as a music critic for the Coburger Tageblatt until 1933 and was a member of the youth welfare committee and the main welfare committee of the city of Coburg. As a journalist as well as a local politician, Hirsch increasingly came into the crossfire of the National Socialists from the mid-1920s.

On March 26, 1926, the NSDAP 's city ​​council group demanded Hermann Hirsch's exclusion from his local political offices:

“We see the participation of a Jew in the youth welfare committee as a great danger for the development of our youth movement and a challenge and insult to all Germans. Quite apart from the fact that the number of Jews living in Koburg, many of whom only immigrated to Germany a few years ago and do not even have German citizenship, are not entitled to send a representative to the youth welfare committee. The same goes for the main welfare committee. It is almost a mockery of the German population when a representative of the Jewish race, who plunged the German people into this boundless social misery, belongs to the main welfare committee. "

The NSDAP's request was not granted, but the attacks continued. At the end of October 1926, Hermann Hirsch wrote a harsh criticism in the Coburger Tageblatt about the performance of the opera Der Evangelimann by Wilhelm Kienzl in the Coburg State Theater . This criticism led to another sharp attack by the NSDAP in the Coburg city council, presented by their parliamentary group chairman Franz Schwede , who later became mayor of the city:

“This criticism, which is not only a punch in the face of the German composer, but also a mockery of the greatest German artists who criticize the 'Evangelimann' extremely favorably, aroused great indignation and indignation in the broadest circles of the Coburg population. It is not unknown in the population that behind the critic of the Coburger Tageblatt, who signed an 'H', the Jew Hirsch is hiding. Especially the visitors to the theater, who were generally highly satisfied and extremely moved by the performance of the play in question, feel deeply offended and offended by the criticism of the Jew in their German feelings. This criticism is designed to despise everything that is sacred to the German people in their art and in their feelings. Above all, however, it means a degradation and thus also severe economic damage to our theater, which is struggling so hard with its existence. "

Hirsch can still fight off this hostility. He writes a further review of the second performance of the piece, in which he attests it a better success than at the premiere. Swede resents this in turn and ascribes “certain reasons” to him when writing his first criticism of the play. The city council, which condemned the first criticism as a "derailment" on the part of the critic, rejected further action against Hirsch, as requested by the NSDAP.

In July 1929, Schwede tried unsuccessfully to prevent Hirsch from being re-elected to the main welfare committee, but in March 1933 Hirsch was one of the first victims of the persecution of Jews in Coburg. He was able to evade arrest on the occasion of a house search by fleeing to Bayreuth , but he was tracked down, arrested and brought back to Coburg. He was imprisoned for a week, abused and in the end forced to make a declaration that the Jews in Coburg were not harmed.

The Jewish School between 1933 and 1938

After the National Socialist seizure of power, the house of the Hirsch family inevitably developed into the center of Jewish life in Coburg. After the Coburg city council had already terminated the use of the Nikolauskapelle as a synagogue at the insistence of the NSDAP in September 1932 , it was finally closed on March 16, 1933. Hirsch prepared the hall of his house as a prayer room, in which the religious celebrations of the remaining Jews took place until the November pogroms of 1938 .

The boarding school, however, remained and was to be expanded into a higher educational establishment, as is evident from an advertisement by Hirsch in the Jüdische Rundschau of November 7, 1933.

“Taking into account multiple requests from all parts of the empire, we have decided not to move our institute. Rather, it will be expanded into a higher educational institution on a non-profit basis. The boarding school prices are staggered so that as many people as possible should be able to have their children - boys and girls are accepted - attend this school. Subjects include French, English, New Hebrew, religious studies, economics, cultural history, natural science, regional studies, sport, manual skills (crafts in practical exercises, horticulture, for girls also housekeeping). The youth live here in a wonderful home, completely undisturbed and free in a happy community. "

He describes the external requirements of his school in detail in the institute's statutes of May 7, 1935. There is talk of a stately home in a 7,000 m² park, which is provided with “all modern health facilities. Game u. Gymnasiums give the students the opportunity to exercise. In the kitchen garden they should be instructed in gardening. "

In April 1934, Hirsch and two other teachers taught 15 students privately, and from the school year 1934/35 the actually unofficial school was the only school for the Jewish children of Coburg who were excluded from attending state schools. However, the city of Coburg opposed his application in April 1934 for permission to convert his boarding school into a private school because it feared the influx of Jewish children from abroad, particularly through a higher school. The government of Upper Franconia partially disregarded these concerns. It approved the establishment of a private elementary school, but prohibited the establishment of a higher school. Just as the Jüdisches Landschulheim Herrlingen was officially never allowed to be a Jewish school, the Hirschs was not allowed to become a higher school. It "remained - contrary to his intention and possibly even the actual practice - officially only a private Jewish elementary school until the end , to which two 'advanced training classes' were attached."

Educational goals and tasks of education

Even in 1936, Hirsch advertised his school exclusively with the term “boarding school” and refers to its existence since 1917. Its classification as a “country school home” seems to go back mainly to Hildegard Feidel-Mertz , who thus also turned the school in Coburg into a reformed pedagogy classified lineage tried: "that - best - part of the educational reform traditions, was incompatible with National socialism, could except in, schools in exile ', paradoxically, most likely still unadulterated continued in the now only be establishing itself Jewish country residential schools and with the requirements a specifically Jewish upbringing. [..] The new kind of Jewish education required by the circumstances provided - according to Joseph Walk - in addition to Herrlingen, above all the country school homes in Caputh and Coburg. "The" Jewish reform pedagogy "to which Feidel-Mertz draws the connection is the Jacobson School in Seesen and the Samson School in Wolfenbüttel . Hirsch also referred to these two institutions, which no longer exist, in his 1936 contribution to the Jüdische Rundschau . Unlike in his advertisements, he also uses the term school home in this article and thus refers at least indirectly to a relationship with the rural education homes .

Hirsch claims that he had already taken up the "idea of ​​a Jewish school home", which was orphaned by the closure of the Jacobsohn School and the Samson School , when he founded his boarding school.

“At that time, the main reason for this was the fact that at the end of the war and in the post-war period (inflation!) The possibility of bringing up children and the ability to raise children had become very problematic. There was a loosening of family life, a shattering of terms, of relationships with fellow human beings, religion, and Judaism, so that one was rightly concerned about the future of the growing youth. The urban youth in particular seemed at risk. The economic abnormalities created conditions which were extremely unhealthy for the youth.
Conscientious and concerned parents therefore tried to transplant their children into a healthy environment and were happy to seize the opportunity of this new type of school in Koburg, where the lifestyle could not be influenced by any external economic situation and where, above all, the educational and personal influence is the starting point for all successes could be a long view. "

This founding idea, understood as the answer to the difficult conditions after the First World War, is now complemented by a completely different task: The education of young people who want to “achieve something as Jews”. It is no longer the endangered young people of earlier times who need to be educated, but young people with a “straightforward, Jewish attitude and an incessant Jewish will”, “who, despite all internal and external freedom, practice disciplined self-discipline”.

Hirsch's description of the new type of student he claims to have dealt with in 1936 presupposes that these children and young people had already fully grasped and internalized the political and social situation that had changed since 1933. How far this actually corresponded to reality has to be left open, but at least Fromm also quotes a former student from 1937, who stated about behavior in public and any incidents connected with it: “I do not remember any incidents, but as a 12-year-old and after four and a half years of Hitler's regime we knew how to 'make yourself thin'. "

Hirsch saw in his students "children who used to shy away from work, which they now love and put into their lives as an ethical principle". He wants to offer them the best “opportunities for mental and physical training” and thereby overcome “the differentiation between physical and mental training that used to stand out”. Hirsch does not say it explicitly in this context, but his emphasis on work and physical training can also be understood as a commitment to prepare children and young people for emigration, although - or precisely because - the topic of emigration at the time was within the Jewish community Associations were still very controversial. A year earlier, in his “institutional statutes”, he was much clearer: “The students should one day start their professional careers with a hardened will and unbroken enthusiasm. The later relocation to Palestine, which is now often envisaged, should be given special consideration in teaching and upbringing. "This is primarily served by the handicraft lessons, in which carpentry and painting courses are offered.

What for Hirsch, whom Fromm characterizes as a preacher influenced by liberal Judaism with a tolerant conception of faith, but was indispensable in his educational concept, was his Jewish foundation:

“The highest principle, however, is and remains that in this community there is a Jewish life, a Jewish celebration, Judaism is researched and is conquered spiritually and spiritually. Here, strong, Jewish consciousness becomes a matter of course. "

For Hirsch, however, this does not mean compulsively imparting religious values. In an interview for the CV newspaper on January 30, 1936, he stated:

“I only know positive Jewish work, in which every group formation has to stop; the youth should first be able to form a judgment about each of the existing directions before making a decision. That does not rule out that the students belong to the most varied of associations: the lively participation in every great idea brings with it forces that have a forming effect in the community and promote a happy synthesis. And in a purely religious sense? I would never force a child to attend worship, which is an established part of daily life; but I have never seen a student want to exclude themselves - on the contrary: the reverence for religion and its laws and customs is extraordinarily great in my youth community. Judaism - religion, spirit, worldview - are closely intertwined, for example in the press hours that I give weekly and in which I discuss the entire Jewish press with my students. "

Pupils

The later teacher Rudolf Kaufmann (see below) draws attention to an early pupil from the time before the boarding school was converted into a Jewish school . On October 19, 1935, the day on which Adolf Hitler inaugurated a new Coburg war memorial , he attended a film screening in the school:

“This afternoon there will be a lot of excitement because a film will be shown in the house,› Die Elf Teufel ‹, a football film with Gustav Fröhlich , who I'm supposed to be like, and the blonde Evelin Holt , who is actually called Edith Sklarz and years ago in lived here at this boarding school. The picture of her as she was here as a little schoolgirl was wreathed and hung. Since it is a silent film, our house musicians will perform the accompaniment. Coburg itself also has its excitement today. Because ›the Führer‹ is here to inaugurate a monument. "

When and how long Edith Sklarz stayed in Coburg is not known; Their stay, which is passed down from Kaufmann, also contradicts the fact that the boarding school should actually be reserved for boys. This is stipulated again for the later years in the institutional statutes of May 7, 1935 for the Jewish school , in which the target group of the school is defined as follows:

“Boys are accepted from the 5th school year onwards. They must be physically healthy and mentally normal. Girls can be admitted to school, but not admitted to the student residence. Unprofitable girls or boys from the city of Coburg can have their school fees waived in whole or in part. "

It was therefore not a coeducational country school home, but at most a coeductive lesson, which, at least according to the statutes, excluded girls from outside Coburg from attending the school. It remains to be seen whether this was also the case in the Paraxis, or whether the statutes only formally reflect the requirements of the government of Upper Franconia.

Only a few names have come down to us from the students of the Jewish School :

  • Peter Forchheimer (born March 17, 1924 - † October 13, 2011 in Atlanta )
  • Franz Forchheimer (born January 25 or 26, 1926 - † August 30, 2000 in Columbus (Ohio) )
  • Anne Forchheimer (born November 28, 1927, married Rubin)

The history of these three can be reconstructed from documents in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). The parents of the three siblings are the married couple Emil (born July 24, 1890 in Gemünden am Main ) and Bertha Forchheimer (born May 28, 1897 in Gotha as Bertha Kaiser). They married in 1922. When the children were expelled from the public schools after the National Socialist seizure of power, Anne and Frank switched to Hermann Hirsch's Jewish school . Peter Forchheimer's development evidently deviated from that of his siblings - at least nothing is reported about his visit to the Jewish school. He celebrated his bar mitzvah in 1937 and was sent to relatives in Alpine, Texas by his parents for fear that he might be sent to a forced labor camp . Father Emil Forchheimer was arrested along with other Jewish men during the November pogroms in 1938 and sent to a concentration camp. After his release in late 1938 / early 1939, he went to England. He was followed in February 1939 by his son Franz (who later called himself Frank) with a Kindertransport; Anne followed in May 1939 with a Kindertransport. In July 1939 Bertha Forchheimer was the last to leave Germany. The entire family immigrated to the United States in April 1940 and reunited with son Peter. They settled in Columbus, Ohio, where Father Emil started a toy wholesaler. Peter Forchheimer later served in the US Army and interrogated German prisoners of war. Stumbling blocks in Coburg are reminiscent of the Forchheimer family .

The siblings

  • Ruth Forchheimer (born July 8, 1923 in Coburg) and
  • Robert Forchheimer (born January 6, 1925 in Coburg)

come from the marriage of Max Forchheimer (born October 13, 1884 in Adelsberg - † September 25, 1977 in Cleveland ( Ohio )) and his wife Helen (born February 21, 1899 in South Africa, née Krämer - † November 4, 1964 in Cleveland ). After the wedding in 1921, the couple lived in Coburg. Max Forchheimer ran a furniture factory nearby, which is why he was often abroad.

From 1936 onwards, the two children were no longer able to attend a public school, and so they attended Hermann Hirsch's Jewish school for two years . When this seemed too dangerous for their parents in 1938, the two children were sent temporarily to an American school in Berlin before they were able to flee to Holland in autumn 1938, where they found accommodation in a refugee camp. In December 1938, Mother Helen was also in this camp, while Max Forchheimer was in Sweden at the time. At the end of August 1939, Helen Forchheimer was able to travel to the United States with her two children. They settled in Cleveland, where Max Forchheimer could then follow.

Ruth Forchheimer married Herbert Kraus from Demmelsdorf on March 17, 1946 . Robert studied economics in Cleveland and then worked as a freelance accountant. He has been married to an American since August 14, 1952. Ruth Kraus took the ship with her mother and brother to Cleveland, Ohio, where she lived from late 1939. On March 17, 1946, she married Herbert Kraus from Demmelsdorf.

If one assumes that from 1935 at the latest all Jewish children had no other opportunity than to attend the Jewish school , then according to the list of stumbling blocks in Coburg there are at least two people who must have attended school:

  • Walter Lewy (born April 14, 1928) and
  • Lotte Sander (* 1924)

Little is known about their fate: Walter Lewy was deported to Riga on November 27, 1941, and murdered there; Lotte Sander managed to escape to the USA in 1939.

The little-known pupils contrast with the real development of the number of pupils.

“After the first half of the school year, the space in Hermann Hirsch's building turned out to be too tight. The neighboring building, which belongs to Margarethe Schütz, a woman from Coburg who emigrated to Switzerland out of disgust for the Nazis, is rented by Hirsch, and shortly afterwards he buys the house. In the second half of the school year, which begins in October 1935, it is already available as a school building. The number of pupils rose from 28 to 42 in October 1935. All classrooms are now housed in the new building. The house at Hohe Straße 30 is now only used as a school home for foreign students. "

On April 1, 1936, 17 8th grade students were dismissed. For the school year 1936/37, almost all Jewish pupils living in Coburg register for the Jewish elementary school . The number of pupils also increased in the following years:
May 1935:
October 28, 1935: 42
October 1936: 60, 16 of them from Coburg
October 1937: 54, of which 14 from Coburg
October 1938: no more numbers known.

The development of the number of pupils corresponds to constant attempts by the city to stop school operations. A tried and tested means for this are building authority requirements. In tough disputes, Hirsch can assert himself against it, often knowing that the government of Upper Franconia is on his side.

Teaching and other staff

As little information is available about the students at the Jewish school , there is also little direct information about the staff employed there. Fromm mentions a "caretaker farmer" as well as an unnamed English and French teacher and an equally unnamed study assessor for natural science subjects.

On a website that describes the fate of the Jewish people from the southern Thuringian state of Themar , there is a reference to Bella Wertheimer (* 1890 - † 1942), who worked in the kitchen of the country school home:

“So when the Second World War broke out, only Bella remained in Germany. Since 1935 she worked in the kitchen at 'Hohen Str. 30', Hermann Hirsch's boarding school for Jewish boys. We do not know whether she was hoping to move to Holland to join her husband Milton or perhaps to flee to America, supported by her brother Julius. On November 9, 1938, the Jewish school in which she lived and worked was destroyed, the school director arrested and sent to Buchenwald, and the school closed. Bella left Coburg on March 7, 1939, and we find her moving back and forth between the towns of Marisfeld / Themar and Meiningen. When the Nazis stopped emigration in October 1941, their fate was sealed. On May 10, 1942, Bella was picked up in Meiningen and taken to Weimar and on to the Bełżyce ghetto . It is considered 'lost' - 'disappeared'. Bella was 52 years old. "

Information about the following teachers of the Jewish school can be found on the website Forum Jewish School Coburg (see web links) and in the database of the Bavarian Teachers' Association .

  • Dietrich Edel, "Institute Hirsch until March 1937, then Lehmann School Berlin" The "Lehmann School Berlin" was the Joseph Lehmann School , which was housed in the building of the Central Orthodox Synagogue in Berlin .
  • Peter Martin Gottheimer (born October 15, 1919 in Breslau - † February 1, 2000 in Petaluma ): “The single sports teacher Peter Martin Gottheimer came from Breslau and was registered in Coburg from July 26, 1937 to October 9, 1937. He worked and lived at the Hirsch boarding school. Then he signed off again for Breslau. "
  • Ludwig (Louis) Kaufmann (born May 25, 1889 in Würzburg), senior teacher R. (grammar school teacher) "Probably from September 1935 on Ludwig Kaufmann was a teacher in the boys' boarding school of the preacher Hermann Hirsch in Coburg", but probably only until the middle of 1937. He still taught in several places before he took up on 3rd / 4th. April 1942 was deported to the Piaski ghetto and murdered in an unknown location.
    Ludwig Kaufmann was born in Würzburg as the son of the businessman Hayum Joseph Kaufmann (* 1851 in Fechenbach - † 1914 in Würzburg) and his wife Bella (née Schwab, * 1856 in Rimpar - 1939 Würzburg) and grew up here. He studied at the University of Würzburg and passed the examination for teaching at grammar schools. Kaufmann received his doctorate in Würzburg, but the topic of his dissertation is not known.
    On World War I he participated as an infantryman and was wounded three times. In 1919 he went to Regensburg as a teacher and was also involved in the Jewish community there. In December 1926 he ran for the municipal board elections on the conservative Jewish list Association of Jewish-Religious Middle Party and Right-wing Liberal Jews .
    From September 1, 1931 to March 31, 1934, Ludwig Kaufmann taught at the Bad Windsheim Progymnasium . Due to the Professional Civil Service Act (BBG) , he was no longer allowed to teach at a state school and was forced into retirement on November 1, 1934. Ludwig Kaufmann finally came to the     Jewish school in Coburg
    via Amberg and Frankfurt am Main . During this time he also became a member of the Jewish teachers' association in Bavaria. After his time in Coburg, Ludwig Kaufmann was a teacher from August 1937 to May 1938 at the "Israelite Preparatory School     Talmud Thora " (Preparatory and Citizens 'School / Commercial and Citizens' School) in Burgpreppach . In May 1938 he moved on to Munich, from where he was taken to the Dachau concentration camp from December 6, 1938 to November 14, 1939 after the November pogrom . After his release there, he apparently remained in Munich, from where he was then on 3rd / 4th. April 1942 was deported to the Piaski ghetto and murdered in an unknown location. The unmarried Ludwig Kaufmann had two sisters: Eva (born July 29, 1883 in Würzburg) and Meta (born December 27, 1884 in Würzburg). Both were deported from Würzburg to Riga on November 27, 1941 and then murdered. Neither in Würzburg nor in Munich are stumbling blocks reminiscent of the fate of the Kaufmann siblings.

  • Rudolf Kaufmann's life story is in
    presented in detail. Here are a few additions to his time at the Jewish School following Reinhard Kaiser's reconstruction of Kaufmann's life in the book Königskinder - Eine Echt Liebe.
    At the beginning of October 1935, Rudolf Kaufmann received two job offers in response to a newspaper advertisement: as an assistant to a professor in Berlin and as a gymnastics teacher at Hermann Hirsch's school. He does not say what was decisive for the latter position, but on October 15, 1935 he took up the position in Coburg. He, the doctor of geology, was formally qualified for this on the basis of a gymnastics teacher examination five years ago, made “just out of high spirits, never thought what it was good for”. Shortly after his arrival in Coburg on October 19, 1935, he describes his first impressions to his girlfriend Ingeborg Magnusson in Stockholm: “The house is beautifully situated in a large park. The leader is quite a nice person. In addition to gymnastics, I will teach geography, biology, physics and drawing. There are two other teachers teaching. Altogether there are 43 students, all nice, fresh boys and girls. In addition to free accommodation and food and laundry, I will also pay 65.00 Rmk. earn a month. It's better than nothing. The students were all equally happy to win me over. But I'm such a wild, brutal man !!!! ”
    Rudolf Kaufmann feels that he has arrived and accepted and shortly thereafter gives further insights into his everyday work. “I am on the move from morning to night. But it's also a job that I enjoy. There are so many good things that can be done for the little children of man. You have a real home here. They all have a lot of respect for me. Every evening when I go to bed I have to check 1.) whether the things are well laid out, 2.) whether the fingernails are clean, 3.) whether the feet are clean, 4.) whether the ears are clean. I introduced that. I am considered a model of order, of all people, who I was a model of disorder at home ... “
    Rudolf Kaufmann travels with the school's soccer team to a tournament in Nuremberg and makes trips to sights in Franconia on his own. He fools around with the students, but is repeatedly confronted with the harsh reality outside of the Jewish School biotope : “Almost all of the students' parents have to sell their businesses at bargain prices. It goes on and on. ”
    At Christmas 1935, Ingeborg Magnusson visits him, but he doesn't want to stay with her in Coburg,“ because Coburg is too big a small town. For certain reasons, I don't want to get into too much talk. ”At the beginning of January 1936, he said goodbye to his sister, who traveled to Palestine with her husband. He also saw this opportunity for himself, although “I feel like a German”. He began to learn Hebrew and saw for himself, the evangelically baptized Jew, "life possibilities only [...] in Judaism".
    Despite his recognition at school, he realized that he didn't want to be a teacher in the long run. In 1936 he registered as a jobless researcher with the Emergency Association of German Scientists Abroad in London and described his qualifications as follows: “KAUFMANN, Dr. Rudolf, Researcher; b [orn] [19] o9, single. (English, French, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish.) 1932/33: Researcher Geological-Palaeontological Institute, Greifswald University; 1933: Researcher Copenhagen University; 1934: Researcher Istituto di Geologia, Bologna University. SPEC [iality]: Palaeontology; Microtectonics; Ontogeny. Unpl [aced]. ”
    Offers that can be traced back to this have not been handed down, just as his attempts to become an employee of Sven Hedin were unsuccessful. However, Kaufmann turned down an offer to become a teacher at the rural school home in Florence and is more hoping for a job at the Kristinehov boarding school , as there he could have been closer to Ingeborg Magnusson.
    But for the time being, the work in Coburg continues. A new school year begins in April 1936. Kaufmann can teach a lot in the open air: gymnastics, drawing, natural history, enjoys the curiosity of his students, actively does sports himself and in the evenings goes cross-country runs in the surrounding area with his colleague Dietrich Edel. For the summer vacation, August 1936, he plans a longer trip to Ingeborg Magnusson in Stockholm. But he will no longer take this trip: He was arrested at the end of July for violating Paragraphs 2 and 5 of the Law for the Protection of Blood and German Honor . He was sent to a penal institution, was put into forced labor, and was then able to go to Lithuania. Here he was denounced as a Jew by a German soldier and shot.
  • Henry Mendel (born February 3, 1898 in Wunstorf - † October 22, 1968 in Leeds ), Dr., Study Assessor, Hirsch Institute 1938. There is more information about Henry Mendel based on a lengthy article that a former student of the Woodhouse Grove School , an independent, co-educational, day and boarding school near Leeds, wrote about him.
    Henry Mendel's grandfather owned a textile business where Henry would begin an apprenticeship after school. He did that too, but was then able to assert himself with his wish to study mathematics in Gottingen.
    The studies were interrupted by military service in the First World War. He then continued his studies with new or further subjects, probably in Hamburg, where his dissertation was written in 1929: The seismic ground unrest in Hamburg and its connection with the surf . After finishing his studies, Henry Mendel taught at a school in Cologne and married a colleague. This colleague, whose name Roger did not mention Davy, was Dr. Alice Mendel (born September 28, 1903 as Alice Weil in Dirmstein - † November 9, 1993 in Leeds).
    No further findings are available over the next few years. It has already been mentioned that he came to the Jewish school in Coburg in 1938 , but it is unclear whether he was caught by the November pogrom in 1938 there or at another location. Roger Davy testifies that Henry Mendel was arrested in the process, but was released four weeks later. His wife encouraged him to flee to England immediately, which he did. His mother-in-law, his wife and his daughter Rachel stayed behind, but were able to flee to Switzerland shortly before the outbreak of World War II, where they could stay with relatives until 1946. Then they came to England too.
    Henry Mendel went to Newcastle in 1938, where he was initially able to stay with a professor friend of his. He then moved to a dormitory with other refugees from the continent and from there was taken to an internment camp on the     Isle of Man on Whitsun 1940 as an enemy alien . He stayed in the camp until October 1941. After his release, Henry Mendel was able to teach in Yorkshire , where he came into contact with the then head of the Woodhouse Grove School . This hired him as a teacher for physics and chemistry. Roger Davy, who came to Woodhouse Grove School as a student in 1949 , describes Henry Mendel as a very committed teacher who also gave interesting lectures outside of class. He was also a gentle person, but this was not necessarily appreciated by his students: “Now in much more mature days, I regret that we no longer had more respect for a man who, if we had given him more opportunity, so much shared more with us. We weren't really bad, but in our unruly young days we didn't appreciate the knowledge he was giving us. "

Henry Mendel left Woodhouse Grove School in 1959 ; but he continued to teach at Leeds Polytechnic and mathematics for the girls of the high school at St Mary's College in Leeds.

  • Friedrich Scheer (born November 2, 1906 in Regensburg - † November 25, 1991), emigrated to New York. In the well-documented history of Regensburg's Jews from 1936 to 1938 , he is only mentioned briefly: “In 1937, 28-year-old Friedrich Scheer moved to New York. Although on February 14, 1938 Friedrich had politely only requested a harmless certificate from the Regensburg city council from America, an anonymous editor glossed the letter in the margin with two words: 'Jew' and 'Caution'. ”In the passenger lists of Ellis Island the arrival of Friedrich Scheer at the age of 30 is noted for 1937; he had used the Georgic ship and must therefore have traveled to the USA via Great Britain.
  • Dr. Alice Scheyer: “The single teacher Dr. Alice Scheyer (* December 10th, 1903 in Leipzig ) moved from Berlin to Coburg. From October 27, 1934 to December 19, 1938 she lived alternately in the boarding school and sublet near Plaut in Adolf-Hitler-Str. 27. She returned to Berlin in December 1938. “
    In the collections of the Jewish Museum Berlin there is a class photo of Alice Scheyer in 1921 in the upper secondary school of the I. Städtische Studienanstalt. The additional information on this photo shows that Alice Scheyer was a classmate of Käthe Manasse . The I. Städtische Studienanstalt , which they attended at the time, was located in Berlin-Friedrichshain . A dissertation from 1933 is listed in the catalog of the German National Library , which is very likely (in this case there is no additional personal data in the catalog) to be attributed to Alice Scheyer: Diderot as a universal thinker . There are many references to this publication in articles about Denis Diderot on the Internet.
  • Franz Schieren (born January 24, 1911 in Essen-Borbeck): “The unmarried study assessor Franz Schieren moved from Essen to Coburg on January 7, 1937. He lived and worked at the Hirsch boarding school until July 15, 1938. He then returned to Essen-Borbeck. ”“ Franz Schieren emigrated to Antwerp on January 12, 1938. Here he was a college teacher and worked as a language teacher. Apparently he was deported to death from here after the German attack on Belgium, because his name is on a list of the murdered Jews in Essen. ”On August 4, 1942, Franz Schieren was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where he was died on August 23, 1942.
  • Edwin Scottland (* December 18, 1908 in Rülzheim - † September 26, 1993 in Silver Spring / USA.): “Dr. Scotland was a graduate student and single when he moved from Frankenthal / Pfalz to Coburg on May 17, 1934 to work at Hermann Hirsch's boarding school. On April 9, 1935, he signed off and moved back to Frankenthal. ”
    Records in the University of Chicago Library suggest that Edwin Scottish studied with Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich in the early 1930s . His academic career is described on an American website as follows: Bachelor of Science, University Munich, 1931. Master of Science, University Munich, 1932. Doctor of Philosophy in Phil., University of Heidelberg, 1934. This dissertation is entitled On topological Structure of the 3-dimensional manifolds, especially the sphere .; he should go to Dr. rer. nat have been awarded a doctorate.
    The previously quoted American website, from which the following information is taken, claims that Scotland taught mathematics and physics in secondary schools until he left, but does not name any names. After the Scottish family emigrated in 1937, Edwin is said to have worked as an engineer in the USA until 1950, interrupted by his time in the US Army from 1942 to 1945. From 1950 to 1985 he worked as a physicist and research project manager at the Johns -Hopkins University in Baltimore . From 1986 he worked as a consultant.
    Edwin Scottland was a member of the Washington Academy of Sciences , the Philosophical Society Washington , the American Physical Society, and Sigma Xi .
    Edwin Scottland was married to Marianne Hess-Blumenthal on May 19, 1946. The couple had two sons.     6 stumbling blocks
    in Frankenthal remind of the Scotland family .

The end of school

The environment in which Hermann Hirsch had to assert himself with his school was extremely Nazi.

Nevertheless, the school grew (see the number of students above) and Hirsch needed another building. He rented a neighboring house from an owner who had emigrated to Switzerland, but found himself again exposed to the city administration, who tried to requisition the house for other purposes (supposedly for officers' apartments). Hirsch prevailed and was even able to buy the Schütz house , since Ms. Schütz had no sympathy for the Nazis.

In January 1938 the city of Coburg made one last attempt to force the school to close; she complains about missing air raid shelters. Hirsch can postpone immediate intervention by the city, but then came the November pogrom in 1938 , which marked the end of the Jewish community and the end of Hermann Hirsch's Jewish school .

“The pogrom of 1938 hit the community particularly hard. In the early morning hours of November 10, the SA took all Jewish men, women and children from their homes, including 50 students from the community school, and dragged them to a gym. There they were counted and the SA threatened to shoot every tenth person. Women and children as well as men over the age of 18 were let go, the rest were to be brought to Dachau. However, when it turned out that the concentration camp there was overcrowded, the transport was unloaded at the Regensburg train station, where there were already prisoners from the Jewish communities of Lichtenfels, Kulmbach and Bayreuth. After all the prisoners were turned face to the wall and threatened with shooting, they were taken to Hof in prison, from which they were only released weeks later. In the meantime, the apartments and shops of the Jews in C. had been demolished and looted. The furniture of the prayer room in the apartment of the preacher Hirsch was smashed, the Torah scrolls burned, books and documents stolen. The students of the Jewish school had to smash the windows of the house themselves. "

Hermann Hirsch was one of those arrested, and during his arrest the Ministry of Education issued an order on November 14, 1938 to take all Jewish pupils off from class; Berta Hirsch closes the Jewish school . At the beginning of December, the Ministry of Culture allowed Jewish students to attend school again, but Hermann Hirsch's school was no longer available.

New beginning in Palestine

Hermann Hirsch remains in custody for several months. Berta Hirsch is meanwhile in Berlin trying to get exit papers for Palestine for herself and her husband.

“When she finally has all the necessary exit documents, her husband will be released. The Hirsch couple have to abandon everything in order to at least save their lives. But insults and threats, house searches and arrests, stays in prison and forced action are not without traces on Hermann Hirsch. When he left Germany in 1939, he was physically and mentally a scarred man. "

The Hirsch couple travel to Pardess Chana, today part of Pardes Hanna-Karkur. ( Location ) He takes over the management of the “Meschek Jeladim” children's village founded by Clara Weimersheimer, in which around 110 children were cared for. The complex also had a large farm, a school and an orchard. But Hirsch's health is badly damaged. After a collapse, he had to go to a sanatorium in Haifa, returned to Pardess Chana, got pneumonia from which he could no longer recover and died in January 1942.

After the death of her husband, Berta Hirsch continued to work in the “Meschek Jeladim” children's home for another two years, supported by her daughter Esther (see above). Eventually she had to hand over the facility to the Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZO), which established a home for preschoolers. Berta Hirsch was not interested in this work and looked for a new sphere of activity.

“Since I did not want to go into a dependent position, I borrowed capital and started a new children's home on the beach in Nahariya . I leased [...] a newly built house and furnished it with the money I borrowed. You must know that we arrived here in 1939, only with what we were wearing, our things, furniture, etc. never arrived in Palestine. I've been here for three years now. At first we only had one house in the dunes, and now we have a blooming garden. Wherever water goes, it is God's blessing, it grows and blooms in the sand. Our 60 children, mostly refugee children, are cultivating their soil here again. "

The new children's home was named Neve Hayeled . One of the first refugee children to find refuge there was Henry Fenichel, born in the Netherlands in 1938. In 1944, Nazi Germany had agreed to exchange 120 Jewish Dutch prisoners from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp for German Templars interned by the British who had previously lived in Palestine. Henry Fenichel and his mother were among those lucky prisoners who were exchanged and allowed to enter Palestine. Another child who had formative experiences in Neve Hayeled was the future Israeli judge Dalia Dorner.

“I am not a Holocaust survivor myself, although the situation of the Jews in Turkey, where I was born, was not very good at the beginning of the Second World War, when the Germans were victorious. My father was in a labor camp. He got cancer and we went to the Land of Israel. In 1944 we arrived by train and bus. My father died a few days later and was buried on the Mount of Olives. My mother […] was a woman who was like a child, an orphan girl who didn't know what to do with herself. Me and my little brother, I was 10 at the time, were placed in an institution called Neve Hayeled in Nahariya. It has influenced my life, raised us to be Zionists and to respect human dignity, and I have maintained these values ​​all my life. By the way, my counselor there was 23 when I was 10 and she attended my Supreme Court retirement ceremony when I was 70. "

The liberal-Jewish upbringing begun by the Hirschs in Coburg seems to have been continued through the work of his wife Berta and their daughter Esther in Nahariya.

swell

literature

  • Hildegard Feidel-Mertz : Jewish country school homes in National Socialist Germany. A repressed chapter of German school history. Version updated by Hermann Schnorbach in: Inge Hansen-Schaberg : Landerziehungsheim-Pädagogik. (= Reform pedagogical school concepts. Volume 2). Schneider Verlag Hohengehren, Baltmannsweiler 2012, ISBN 978-3-8340-0962-3 , pp. 159-182.
  • Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Afterword. In: Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance: The Jewish Landschulheim Herrlingen 1933–1939. dipa-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-7638-0509-5 , pp. 222-232.
  • Klaus Kreppel: Nahariyya and the German immigration to Eretz Israel. The history of its inhabitants from 1935 to 1941. Dedicated to Nahariyya for the 75th year of its foundation. The Open Museum, Tefen Industrial Park (Israel), 2010, ISBN 978-965-7301-26-5 .
  • Baruch Z. Ophir, Falk Wiesemann (ed.): The Jewish communities in Bavaria 1918–1945. History and destruction. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1979, ISBN 3-486-48631-4 .
  • Hubert Fromm: The Coburg Jews. History and fate. Evangelisches Bildungswerk Coburg e. V. and initiative Stadtmuseum Coburg e. V., Coburg 2001, ISBN 3-9808006-1-X . There are three sections:
    • German art and Jewish criticism - Franz Schwede versus Hermann Hirsch. Pp. 31-33.
    • The Jewish school. Pp. 207-223.
    • The family of the preacher Hermann Hirsch. Pp. 238-250.
  • Reinhard Kaiser : Königskinder - A true love . Schöffling & Co., Frankfurt 1996, ISBN 3-89561-064-X . (The book deals with and reconstructs the relationship between Rudolf Kaufmann and his Swedish friend Ingeborg Magnusson on the basis of letters and also refers to Kaufmann's time as a teacher at the Jewish school )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Jewish country school homes in National Socialist Germany . In the article Jewish Schools in Bavaria (1918 / 19-1945) published by Rebecca Heinemann on May 13, 2014 on the website Historisches Lexikon Bayerns , the Jewish rural school home in Coburg is not mentioned under this name or under any other name.
  2. ↑ Short biography of Hermann Hirsch . On the Stolperstein laid in Coburg, 1883 is given as the year of birth. However, 1885 corresponds to a municipal certificate issued for Hirsch from 1939. (Hubert Fromm: Die Coburger Juden. 2001, p. 244)
  3. ↑ Chronicle of the Koblenz Music Institute
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j The family of the preacher Hermann Hirsch. In: Hubert Fromm: The Coburg Jews. 2001.
  5. ^ City history of Coburg: Berta and Hermann Hirsch . In the BLLV database, however, there is a different representation: “On December 24, 1913, he married Sophie Drach in Bendorf am Rhein. While Hermann Hirsch was 'in the field', his wife gave birth to their first daughter on August 24, 1915 in Bendorf: Leonore, called Lore. ”( Short biography Hermann Hirsch ) Nothing is said in this database about the time of the marriage with Berta Daniel.
  6. ↑ Short biography of Leonore Hirsch
  7. ↑ Jewish Review. Allgemeine Jewish Zeitung, issue 5 (January 17, 1936) . A detailed history of the Ecole Superieure de Commerce is available from the ARCHIVES CANTONALES VAUDOISES . For Adolphe Weitzel see: GYMNASIUM HELVETICUM: Journal for the Swiss Middle School , Volume 5, July 1951, No. 3, pp. 154–155.
  8. ↑ a b Klaus Kreppel: Nahariyya and the German immigration to Eretz Israel. The history of its inhabitants from 1935 to 1941. Dedicated to Nahariyya for the 75th year of its foundation. The Open Museum, Tefen Industrial Park (Israel), 2010, ISBN 978-965-7301-26-5 , pp. 386–387.
  9. ↑ Family picture of the Hirsch parents with their two daughters
  10. ↑ Brief portrait of Esther Hirschfeld
  11. ↑ This results from the archive information cited on the website Forum Jüdische Schule Coburg : “A written information from March 31, 2015 from the Coburg State Archives, about file 234 from the Coburg tax office says: 'The Coburg Land Register, Volume 4, Sheet 307 and the Corresponding land register files - sheet 1387f - prove that the ownership of the property [in year, JG] passed in 1919 from Lieutenant Jenö Egan-Krieger from Charlottenburg to Hermann Hirsch. It is noted in the land register files that Hermann Hirsch paid the due imperial stamp to the notary Hirsch in Coburg on January 23, 1919, according to the proof of a receipt presented. ' There are contradicting statements about the acquisition of this property, both with regard to the time of purchase and the buyer: it is often claimed that Berta Hirsch acquired the house. Since she is said to have come from a wealthy family, it is at least obvious that she or her family raised the purchase price. "
  12. ↑ a b Baruch Z. Ophir and Falk Wiesemann (eds.): The Jewish communities in Bavaria 1918–1945. Pp. 125-129.
  13. ↑ a b German art and Jewish criticism - Franz Schwede versus Hermann Hirsch. In: Hubert Fromm: The Coburg Jews. 2001.
  14. ↑ a b c d e f g h i The Jewish school. In: Hubert Fromm: The Coburg Jews. 2001, pp. 207-223.
  15. ↑ Jewish Review. Allgemeine Jewish Zeitung, Issue 89 (November 7, 1933)
  16. ↑ a b c institutional statutes of May 7, 1935, printed in: The Jewish School. In: Hubert Fromm: The Coburg Jews. 2001, pp. 207-223.
  17. ↑ a b Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Afterword
  18. ↑ a b c d Hermann Hirsch: Education for community. The Koburg school home
  19. ↑ See the article “A 'Jewish Emigration School'”, in: Jüdische Rundschau. Allgemeine Jewish Zeitung, issue 6 (January 21, 1936)
  20. ↑ Hilde Marx : Happy learning - The Coburg boarding school introduces itself . A fully transcribed version of this article is printed at: Hubert Fromm: Die Coburger Juden. 2001, pp. 217-219.
  21. ↑ Reinhard Kaiser: Königskinder - A true love. P. 36.
  22. ^ Forum Jewish School Coburg . The life dates correspond to those published for the Forchheimer family.
  23. ↑ Materials on the Forchheimer family . Many photo documents of the family with further details are accessible via this page. The following illustration is based on this.
  24. ^ Coburg victims of the Nazi extermination policy
  25. ↑ Hubert Fromm: The Coburg Jews. 2001, p. 243.
  26. ^ The family of Nathan & Malwine (née Frankenberg) WERTHEIMER
  27. ↑ Short biography Dietrich Edel
  28. ↑ Short biography of Peter Martin Gottheimer
  29. ↑ Short biography of Ludwig Kaufmann
  30. ↑ About the teacher Dr. Ludwig Kaufmann
  31. ↑ The following explanations are based on the Jewish history of Bad Windsheim website (section: About the teacher Dr. Ludwig Kaufmann, 1931 to 1934 at the Progymnasium)
  32. ↑ Compare: Ludwig Wittmer: Juden in der Oberpfalz from 1919 to 1993
  33. ↑ From the Latin School to the Georg-Wilhelm-Steller-Gymnasium ( Memento of the original from December 28, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gwsg.net
  34. ↑ This membership is possibly a result of his stay in Frankfurt, because Julius Höxter , who worked there as a religion teacher, was one of the driving forces behind the "Association of Jewish Teachers' Associations in the German Empire".
  35. ↑ On the history of the Israelite preparatory school Talmud Torah in Burgpreppach
  36. ↑ Status: December 2017: Würzburg stumbling blocks and list of stumbling blocks in Munich
  37. ^ In addition: Short biography of Rudolf Kaufmann
  38. ↑ Reinhard Kaiser: Königskinder - A true love. P. 32.
  39. ↑ Reinhard Kaiser: Königskinder - A true love. P. 35.
  40. ↑ Reinhard Kaiser: Königskinder - A true love. P. 37.
  41. ↑ a b Reinhard Kaiser: Königskinder - A true love. P. 39.
  42. ↑ Reinhard Kaiser: Königskinder - A true love. Pp. 39-43.
  43. ↑ Quoted from: Reinhard Kaiser: Königskinder - A true love. P. 105.
  44. ↑ Reinhard Kaiser: Königskinder - A true love. P. 45.
  45. ↑ Reinhard Kaiser: Königskinder - A true love. Pp. 44-45.
  46. ↑ Reinhard Kaiser: Königskinder - A true love. Pp. 46-47.
  47. ^ Short biography of Henry Mendel
  48. ↑ Roger Davy: Dr. Henry Mendel. In: The Newsletter of the Old Grovian Association. Issue 25, Autumn 2014, p. 10. The following biographical information largely follows this presentation by Roger Davy.
  49. ^ Henry Mendel's Hamburg dissertation, Christian, Hamburg, 1929
  50. ↑ "Now in much more mature days I regret we did not have more respect for a man who could, if we had given him more opportunity, have shared so much more with us. We were not really bad but in our unruly young days we did not appreciate what knowledge he was oering us. "(Roger Davy: Dr. Henry Mendel. In: The Newsletter of the Old Grovian Association. Issue 25, Autumn 2014, p. 10.)
  51. ^ The St Mary's College, Leeds
  52. ↑ Birth and death dates of Friedrich (Frederick) Scheer
  53. ↑ Short biography of Friedrich Scheer
  54. ^ Siegfried Wittmer: History of the Regensburg Jews from 1936 to 1938
  55. ↑ Short biography Alice Scheyer
  56. ↑ Alice Scheyer on the class picture of the Obersekunda of the I. Städtische Studienanstalt
  57. ↑ From the I. Municipal College to the Handel School
  58. ↑ Alice Scheyer: Diderot as a universal thinker , Berlin Philosophical Dissertation from 1932, Ebering, Berlin, 1933
  59. ^ Short biography of Franz Schieren
  60. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​in Borbeck
  61. ↑ Stumbling block "Franz Schieren"
  62. ^ Short biography Erwin Scottland
  63. ↑ Guide to the Harvey B. Plotnick Collection of the History of Quantum Mechanics and the Theory of Relativity 1911–1995 ( Memento of the original from December 27, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : Box 2 Folder 4 Sommerfeld, Arnold and Edwin Scottland: 5-7 of 7 handwritten notebooks with notes and diagrams taken by Scottland during 3 of Sommerfeld's advanced physics courses (some loose pieces), 1930–1931. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lib.uchicago.edu
  64. ↑ a b Curriculum vitae Edwin Scotland (Edwin Shotland)
  65. ^ Edwin Scottland in the catalog of the DNB
  66. ^ Jewish people who lived in the city of Frankenthal (Palatinate) between January 1, 1933 and May 8, 1945 . Neither the entry in the catalog of the DNB nor the one in the catalog of the libraries of the University of Heidelberg on Edwin Scottish dissertation say anything about the doctoral degree. The dissertation is in Heidelberg in the area library. Mathematics + Computer Science kept, which is more for the Dr. rer. nat. than for the Dr. phil speaks, and the two reviewers also point in this direction: the geologist and mineralogist Otto Erdmannsdörffer and the mathematician Arthur Rosenthal .
  67. ^ Jews in Frankenthal: The Scottish family
  68. ↑ Berta Hirsch, quoted from Hubert Fromm: The family of the preacher Hermann Hirsch
  69. ↑ Guest Speaker: Henry Fenichel and Henry Fenichel Collection . Both links also contain photos of Neve Hayeled .
  70. ↑ Haaretz interview with Dalia Dorner on March 23, 2010