Kurt Luis Hess

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Kurt Luis Hess (born October 3, 1908 in Erfurt ; † February 9, 2010 in Sosúa ), born as Kurt Ludwig Hess , was a Dominican farmer and headmaster of German origin.

Life

Kurt Ludwig Hess came from a Jewish factory owner family . His grandfather Louis Hess founded the second largest shoe factory in Germany before the Second World War , the Maier & Louis Hess shoe factory in Erfurt. Kurt Ludwig Hess devoted himself to language studies in Switzerland against the wishes of his family to work in the company . Hess learned French, English and Spanish. He also traveled to the United States and various European countries to perfect his skills .

After SA men enforced the nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses in Erfurt on April 1, 1933 , the 24-year-old fled to Ibiza . There Kurt Luis Hess opened a bar with a restaurant called Bar Puerto . After the outbreak of the Spanish civil war , Hess had to leave Ibiza; he moved to Paris , where he found a job as a pharmaceutical agent thanks to his good language skills.

After his residence permit for Paris had not been extended in 1939, he accepted an offer from the Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina , who allegedly wanted to take in 100,000 Jews who had fled the National Socialists for humanitarian reasons . In fact, Trujillo sought to mix the "white Jews with the dark-skinned population" of the country in order to "whiten" them.

Hess traveled by ship from Bordeaux to Puerto Plata , where he taught English to the Dominicans and Spanish to the Jewish refugees. In June 1940, Hess moved to Sosúa, where he initially worked as a contact for the Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA), which prepared the settlement of mostly single Jewish men. As a result, Hess helped build the Cristóbal Colón school , taught languages ​​and was later appointed headmaster. The private school has been named after him since 2001. As a part-time farmer, Hess also had 80 cows. Luis Hess married Ana Julia Silva from Puerto Plata in 1941. With her he had two sons, Franklin, who studied in Germany and later became a professor of economics, and Cecil, who studied in the United States and became an engineer. Kurt Luis Hess was the nephew of the art collector and art patron Alfred Hess .

On April 10, 2006, Kurt Luis Hess was awarded the First Class Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by the German Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Karl A. Koehler , primarily because of his commitment to improving relations between the Dominican Republic and Germany .

literature

  • Jewish Museum Berlin (1999-), House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany (ed.): Home and Exile: Emigration of German Jews after 1933. Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-633-54222-1 , page 172 .
  • Died: Luis Hess . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 2010, p. 146 ( Online - Feb. 13, 2010 ).
  • Ruth Menzel, Eberhard Menzel: Alfred Hess: shoe manufacturer, art collector and patron, Edition Tempus . Sutton , Erfurt 2008, ISBN 3-86680-288-9 , p. 84.
  • Hans-Ulrich Dillmann , Susanne Heim: Vanishing Point Caribbean. Jewish emigrants in the Dominican Republic . Ch.links Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86153-551-5 ( review by Theo Bruns in: Jewish Latin America )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Theo Bruns: Exile in the Dominican Republic . From: ila-web.de, accessed on April 23, 2017
  2. ↑ Luis Hess receives an award in the Sosúa-Nachrichten on April 16, 2006
personal data
SURNAME Hess, Kurt Luis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hess, Luis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dominican farmer and school principal, of German origin
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Erfurt
DATE OF DEATH February 9, 2010
Place of death Sosúa