Rolf A. Weil

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Rolf A. Weil (born October 29, 1921 in Pforzheim ; † September 17, 2017 in Lincolnwood ), whose full name is actually Rolf Alfred Weil, had to leave Germany with his parents in 1936 due to his Jewish religion. He studied economics in America and taught from 1946 at Roosevelt University in Chicago , with which he remained connected for 42 years. From 1965 as executive president and from 1967 to 1988 as elected president, he was the third and longest-serving president of Roosevelt University .

Rolf A. Weil (left) and Otto Wirth, also from Germany, at Roosevelt University in the 1950s (source: Roosevelt University archive)

Childhood and Adolescence in Germany

Rolf A. Weil came from a Jewish family that had been living in southwest Germany for a long time. He was the only child of Heinrich (later Henry) Weil (* 1886 in Freiburg - † 1959 in the USA) and his wife Lina, née Landauer (* 1890 in Nürtingen). Heinrich Weil worked as a deputy store manager in the Stuttgart branch of the Singer Comany .

Rolf A. Weil was born in Pforzheim, but a year after his birth his parents moved with him to Stuttgart. Here he attended a traditional humanistic grammar school even after the seizure of power . He reports about his life back then: “As you can see, the 1930s, which were the defining time of my life, had a great influence on me, because here I grew up in pre-Nazi Germany with mostly non-Jewish children. All of my friends were non-Jewish. My parents weren't very religious. Suddenly you are called a Jew; suddenly terrible things happen to you. ”Weil describes the marginalization that he had to suffer, but he also reports on the fascination that the Hitler Youth activities had on him and in which he would have liked to have taken part. About the refusal to participate in a four-week country school home, he writes: “It was a wonderful idea! Of course, it was used for political indoctrination. It didn't matter to a child, the idea of ​​going away for four weeks and getting an education sounded wonderful. I had already packed the day before she left. I received a message that Jews are not allowed to go, and so I was transferred to another school. In the other school, the children didn't know me. I was seen as one of those filthy Jews who were brought here. It was very, very difficult. ”Weil ascribes the fact that he was still able to continue attending grammar school to his father's front-line combatant privilege , which offered him and his family relative protection due to his active participation in the First World War.

In 1935, his parents, who at the time still assumed they would stay in Germany, sent Rolf A. Weil to a boarding school in Lausanne , which was eventually to be followed by a college visit. But the changed political framework conditions did not remain without effects on the life of the Weil family, especially due to Heinrich Weil's professional position. “The real problem was that we were Jews, and the combination of a Jew working for what they considered a foreign company created some very big problems. That was the reason for our departure in 1936. “After allusions to Heinrich Weil's position in the company appeared in a NS newspaper in Stuttgart, he was summoned to the Singer headquarters in Berlin. He was told that he could no longer work for Singer in Germany and was offered a position first in Budapest and then in Ankara. When Weil refused, the third offer was Jaffa, which was still independent of Tel Aviv at the time .

In the spring of 1936, Heinrich Weil accepted Singer's offer and traveled to Jaffa to investigate. He got caught in the middle of the Arab uprising and was of the opinion that there could be no future for him and his family here. Due to family connections in the USA it turned out that they could get visas for the USA and relatives would issue the affidavits . Heinrich Weil traveled to the United States in August 1936 and was followed by his wife and son in December.

School and study in Chicago

After a short stopover in New York, the family met in Chicago, where they moved into an apartment in the Hyde Park district . At that time, many refugees lived in this quarter, Jewish and non-Jewish, and in some streets according to Weil between 1936 and 1940 it was the case that “you could speak German as well as English”. In an article for the Chicago Jewish Historical Society under the title HISTORY OF HYDE PARK JEWRY FROM THE 1930’S , he later dealt in detail with the refugee history of the Hyde Park district, in particular with the history of the Jewish refugees living here.

Heinrich Weil spoke very little English and the Singer Company was initially unable to offer him any work. She was generous enough, however, to send him a check for $ 25.00 every week for about a year, which was a lot of money for the time. Rolf A. Weil related the amount to the rent of their first five-room apartment, for which they had to pay $ 50.00 per month and of which they always had to sublet rooms in order to reduce costs. Weil wrote of this then common practice of subletting: “An interesting point about the German Jews of the 1930s is that they lived in a bourgeois neighborhood that they couldn't really afford, except by subletting a room; this allowed them to lead a bourgeois existence with an income of a lower class. "

Henry Weil was later able to work for the Singer Company again, but his health was very poor and he had great problems adapting to American business life. “My father wasn't made for American business. He fought very hard, he supported his family until his death. But my father was too ethical and too soft a salesman to be very successful. "

From the spring of 1937 onwards, Rolf A. Weil attended Hyde Park High School , where his lack of knowledge of the English language and his lack of knowledge of American history particularly troubled him due to his previous German education. However, mostly with the help of his history teacher Walter Hipple , a student of Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University , he was able to negotiate most of the cliffs and graduate. Hipple also encouraged him to apply for a scholarship to the University of Chicago at the end of his school days in February 1939 . After a first attempt failed, it was again Hipple who intervened in his favor and ensured that he could start his studies in the summer semester of 1939 with a semester scholarship.

Weil actually wanted to study history, but on advice decided to study economics at the University of Chicago . He mentions Paul Howard Douglas , Jacob Viner , Henry Calvert Simons and Oskar Lange as his most important teachers there . In 1942 he passed his bachelor's degree and was then offered by Simeon Elbridge Leland to work on a state-sponsored research project by the Cowles Commission on “Price Controls and Price Limits”.

Backed by a scholarship as part of the New Deal program of the National Youth Administration (NYA), Rolf A. Weil also wanted to continue his studies. However, American citizenship was a prerequisite for this scholarship. This was contrary to his classification as an enemy alien . Again, he had to rely on the intercession of a former teacher, this time by Paul Howard Douglas , who is with the support of from the Hull House emerged Immigrants Protective League that Weil's status as reaching enemy alien was lifted. “I became an American citizen in 1944. I received the NYA scholarship before I became a citizen, but without being an enemy alien. ”With the receipt of American citizenship, Weil would theoretically have been obliged to serve in the military; due to his poor eyesight, however, he was repeatedly patterned as unfit for war.

After two years with the Cowles Commission , during which he was also able to complete the preparatory work for his master’s degree, Weil found a position with the State of Illinois through the mediation of Simeon Elbridge Leland . For his tax authority (“Department of Revenue”) he worked in the property tax division and was involved in the statistical determination of tax assessment rates (“Tax Multiplier”). He describes himself as the first to have determined such rates for Illinois on the basis of a new law ("Butler Laws") in 1945.

In 1945, however, Rolf A. Weil decided to teach with part of his time. He was offered a position at the Calumet Center of Indiana University in East Chicago through the University of Chicago . On one of his train trips to this Indiana college, he came into contact with the cultural scientist Otto Wirth (1905–1991) and the philosopher Lionel Ruby (1899–1972) “We all lived in the Hyde Park area. Wirth told me that a new school was going to start work, a spin-off of the YMCA college, that he had committed to teaching there, and that he wanted to introduce a new concept, Culture Studies, because you shouldn't teach just one language but also a culture. Well, I kind of liked that idea and I said I think I would like to dig into it. He said, 'Well, if I ever hear that they need someone in your area, I'll let you know.'

The new school in which Wirth Rolf A. Weil interested was Roosevelt College ; but it would be a few more months before Weil joined the company. Before that was his master’s degree (1945) and in the same year, on November 3, 1945, he married a childhood friend, Leni Metzger (* 1922 in Stuttgart), whom he had accidentally met again three years earlier in Chicago. The two were married by Fritz Bamberger , who emigrated from Berlin and who, according to Weil, played a leading role in the Chicago Jewish community at the time.

Another coincidence, again in connection with a train ride, helped Weil get a job at Roosevelt College at Christmas 1945 . Like Wirth and Ruby before, Walter Albert Weisskopf approached him and in the course of their conversation inquired about his interest in working at the college. Then in February or March 1946 a call came from Weisskopf and shortly afterwards he was employed at Roosevelt College .

In 1981 Rolf A. Weil concluded the first part of the interview with him with the words: “So I was just overjoyed and can really tell you today that all my expectations at the time were met. I never wanted to do anything other than teach and I was absolutely thrilled. "

Roosevelt College and Roosevelt University

The early years

When Rolf A. Weil began as an assistant professor of economics at Roosevelt College in 1946 , he was younger than many of his students and he found himself in an interesting work environment under the direction of Walter Albert Weisskopf . This Economics Department was so stimulating for him “because on the one hand there was a man with a broad social science background like Walter Weis [s] head, and on the other hand there were some neoclassical, theoretically oriented economists from the University of Chicago like me, trained in analytical methods like they were taught at the University of Chicago ”. He believed “that the overwhelming majority of Roosevelt University faculty believed they were liberals, liberals in the sense that they voted for the Democratic Party and were New Dealers at heart. [...] These early Roosevelt University leaders were liberals on race, gender equality, and birth control issues. Many of them were, I think, very upset that in late 1940 in Chicago Roosevelt College, as it was then called, was being branded a "little red schoolhouse" or a communist institution. Nothing could have been further from the truth, of course, because the overwhelming majority of the faculty certainly led very conservative lives and, as I said, their radicalism was of a very mild sort. ”But Weil was also aware that the label The small red school house was not primarily a communist activity in and around the facility, but rather a code for publicly defaming the college's openness to black, Jewish and Japanese students or students with a refugee background.

Integrated into this scientific and political environment, Weil was appointed associate professor in 1949 and received his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1950 . And he approached those who wanted to get rid of the image of the little red schoolhouse . “I have to say, these were all people I disagreed with at this early stage and with whom I later found much more agreement. They were very capable people, but they were extremely sensitive to the fact that it was very difficult for Roosevelt University to get financial support from society, and that was based primarily on completely unfounded rumors and reports that were circulating. "

1955 Weil became a full professor for economics and finance and chairman of the department. He remained in the latter until 1964. At the same time, he served from 1957 to 1964 as dean of the College of Business Administration . In 1961 he was also an elected member of the university's board of trustees. Politically, he saw himself as an anti-communist, but found himself exposed to attacks from the right from time to time, assuming that his right-wing attackers - a frequently recurring motive in his interview - were former communists or Trotskyists who had drifted to the right. And he also accused the liberals of betraying the propagated ideals on several occasions.

“I have been very disappointed over the years in the group that is sometimes referred to as 'Liberals', the group I used to feel I belonged to. And I discovered that a lot of people stand up for civil liberties when it comes to an issue where they are in the minority who are discriminated against but take the exact opposite position when they are in the majority. Not only have I seen this in Roosevelt University and in educational institutions, and as you've probably seen it, you find it in unions too. There are many people who preach great liberalism when they stand on a soap box and deal with national issues. Let it be done in their own little organization and, by God, they will become absolute dictators and trample on minority rights whenever it suits them. I'm afraid - this is a kind of introduction to the time of the sixties, which produced probably the most traumatic experiences of my life. "

Big business, academic freedom, and student movement

Even if his appointment as managing president of Roosevelt University (1964) and his official election as president in 1966 was a hanging game shaped by different inner-university interests and hidden anti-Semitic prejudices, Weil's allusion to the most traumatic experiences of my life are not based on these occurrences, but - in addition to the dispute over the restoration of the auditorium theater in the Auditorium Building - above all the years of student unrest, which did not stop at the private Roosevelt University .

Weil openly admitted that his most important role as university president was to get financial support for the facility from the business community.

“Business people give to institutions because they believe that what you do will actually contribute to community stability. In fact, I became more and more convinced that if you turn to the self-interest of business people, you can achieve the goals of an institution like Roosevelt. [..] I think they could understand that an institution like Roosevelt was an anchor at the southern end of the loop , helping to alleviate the mounting racial conflict that was developing at the time. "

To achieve that goal, he had to convince people that Roosevelt University was not an institution “advocating the overthrow of the government,” “and I must say I took pride in the business community's attitude toward Roosevelt University to have changed. When I became president, the university had very little economic support. I think I managed to change attitudes without ever or in any way jeopardizing any of the principles I fundamentally believed in: non-discrimination, the role of upward mobility and the concept of academic freedom. "

During this phase, from 1967 to 1969, when Weil was working to consolidate the financial base of Roosevelt University , a movement emerged that threatened to thwart his efforts in his eyes: the 68 movement in the USA. The unrest at Roosevelt University was triggered by Weil's drafting policy in the wake of the Vietnam War , which obliged universities to rank students: students with poor grades should receive a draft order, while those with good grades were exempt. As a “non-negotiable requirement”, the students then demanded that the rankings be suspended. Because, although in his own words not a friend of the process, he resisted the students' request and had to experience that from now on sit-ins impaired everyday university life. Weil believed that the majority of the students had approved the ranking because they had hoped that it would not have to go to war, and he insinuated that even the most bitter opponents of the ranking had secretly registered for the ranking - true to his credo, that communists or Trotskyists have become the worst right-wing extremists, or liberals have become deniers of liberal freedoms. He insinuated the propagandists of the No-Ranking:

“What they wanted from us was that we become a political instrument to achieve their goals, and in doing so, as I see it, we would have destroyed the institution because we would have lost all the students who wanted a ranking. Ninety percent of all students were probably not politically active. All she cared about was avoiding the draft. And a small number with a political agenda of their own were hypocrites because they would have been among those who would have left Roosevelt University if we had suspended the ranking. Then they would have started agitation at another institution. That was just the beginning of attempts by people with the most varied of motivations (some of them may have been idealists, others, I believe, were just political functionaries) to use the university as a political instrument. "

In the interview, Weil presented himself as a lone fighter to save the university as an institution and experienced it as a severe psychological blow when he had to realize that parts of the teaching staff, and especially good friends among them, sympathized with the students. But he remained true to his course and also mastered all other conflicts according to the simple pattern: Here the institution to be protected - there the forces who willingly accept or even strive for its destruction. "I thought to myself: My God, these are people who have always talked about democracy and freedom, and if they don't agree with you here, they won't give you the right to disagree and threaten you instead." also the support he still received was suspect: "Of course I have received the unsolicited support from some of the right-wing politicians in this matter, and you know that it created a terrible dilemma because I was on the Looking one side for every support I could get, but at the same time it's an unfortunate situation when the people you think are your friends betray you and sometimes friends come along that you weren't really looking for. "

Conflicts over the appointment of left-wing lecturers, occupations, evictions, arrests, cooperation with the FBI - and, above all, the constant conviction that all protests were controlled from outside and were designed to undermine the freedom of the university. For Weil, 1968 was “the toughest intellectually for me”, but “69 was the most physically threatening”. The main opponent now: the Black Panthers and their desire for Black studies . Again, Weil believes that 90 percent of Black Roosevelt students are on the side of those who are not involved with the Black Panthers , but again what he sees as a small radical minority confronted him with "non-negotiable demands". He reports assaults and that he was on a "Panther's execution list". Nevertheless, the dispute ended with a compromise. Funds were made available for black studies , but the university knew how to use it in their interests: “Well, what we have done is that we have drawn up a very large budget as part of the compromise at that time. We insisted that it be spent on the curriculum, but it included an expense category for faculty. Fortunately, we managed to find people for the faculty who were relatively level-headed and it all came to an end. "

After all these disputes Weil saw himself wrongly labeled a reactionary, but defends his political credo of defending academic freedom against people with a certain ideology:

“We have to recognize that a university should be apolitical, except possibly in one situation, and that has always been my philosophy, namely that if the main mission of the university is threatened, such as if you had a Nazi government that did it would not allow the faculty to teach the truth as it sees it, I think at this point a university has to struggle. But at all other times the ideal university is one in which you have taken every point of view. There is no such thing as a completely objective teaching. And turning to his interviewer, he continues : Of course, as a historian, you will understand that different people see history differently, and that is what should be. "

The legacy of a presidency of over twenty years

In an obituary for Weil in 2017, Ali Malekzadeh, the incumbent president of Roosevelt University , paid tribute to Weil first and foremost as a strong fundraiser who always put the university's well-being first and ensured its financial stability as well as the advancement opportunities of its students. He recognizes Weil's responsibility for the planning and construction of the university's Herman Crown Center, which has since been replaced by the Wabash Building; he had founded the Heller College of Business, including its MBA program, and he had established the Roosevelt Dependence, the Albert A. Robin Campus, in Northwest Chicago, in Arlington Heights.

This obituary hardly deviates from Weil's self-image, which he revealed in his interview in 1981:

“I would say that if you asked me what the main accomplishments were during my time as President, I would say: number one, ensuring the financial integrity of this institution; Number two, we ensured academic freedom through credibility; Number three, we've made big changes to the curriculum, particularly with the move to adult education and the introduction of the Bachelor in the General Studies Program; and number four, we developed Roosevelt University in the northwest. "

In addition, he committed himself to a future concept for Roosevelt University that could provide a unique selling point: the idea of ​​an integrated, interdisciplinary, humanistic education. He was not referring to an additive concept that, for example, required history students to take courses in philosophy:

“An interdisciplinary program means that you develop courses that combine history, philosophy and literature. What I want is a liberal arts degree and maybe a social science degree, and it would be a differentiator, something I could use to say that we have a very different way of teaching a student. "

Interestingly, Weil dreamed of transferring this approach to business studies, which he can only imagine as courses integrating social sciences, behavioral sciences and advanced mathematics.

"My own concept of education (I guess too many people don't know that.) Is that I would much rather have people who would apply the humanistic training they had, but that they would be realistic enough to say I received this training so that I could apply it to running companies. "

Non-university activities

Weil's list of publications is very straightforward and mainly includes essays and reviews. However, he seems to have been in demand as a consultant and expert. He was an expert on property tax disputes in several US states and he worked as a tax consultant for Gulf Oil and Mobile and Ohio Railroad, among others . He had television and radio appearances, was a member of many organizations, was a member of the foundation's board of trustees and was a spokesman for business associations.

Selfhelp and Selfhelp Home

Weil was a Jew, had been married by a Jewish scholar and in an interview discussed latent anti-Semitism, especially among Americans who understood themselves as liberal. There is hardly more to be found about his relationship to the Jewish religion - with one exception: According to the obituary of Roosevelt University , he was the founder and emeritus president of Self Help Home . There is no evidence that he was the founder of this Jewish self-help, but there is evidence of his active and long-term work there.

Selfhelp , initially self-help , was an aid organization for refugees from Europe founded by Paul Tillich in New York in 1936 . It was Tillich who advised Walter Friedländer to found an offshoot of Selfhelp in Chicago in 1938 , which he did and held the chair there until 1943. His deputy was James Franck . Weil took over the presidency in 1976 and was in office until 2009. He gave a description of the main focus of activities of the organization: “ Work aid that included career counseling as well as job counseling and placement; Neighborhood assistance , which included sickness assistance, child day care and English lessons; and closet , the exchange of clothing and rental information. "

As early as 1951 , the first Selfhelp Home for the Aged emerged from the Selfhelp , a Jewish retirement home into which 42 residents moved at the time. “This meant a real change in the self-help mission, which originally dealt with refugees in general and then focused on care for the elderly.” Today the organization presents itself on its homepage as follows: “Selfhelp Home is an active and committed non-profit senior community that cares is designed to meet the needs of older Jewish people throughout the Chicago area. "

Weil also made clear once again the close entanglement between Nazi rule in Europe and the history of Selfhelp Home ;

“Selfhelp feared that there could be serious financial problems for many older people. These problems were largely solved for the residents through a combination of restitution payments and payments from German social security. Since the Selfhelp Home and the associated Selfhelp Center were built for victims of National Socialist persecution, most of the residents were eligible for these services. Unfortunately, residents of Austria and Hungary were not treated as well by their governments. In conclusion, I would like to say that we can look back on the early years in Hyde Park with a certain nostalgia. As one moves away from a time of poverty and struggle, a later perspective makes that time look like 'the good old days'. They weren't quite as good, but we fondly remember them today because we have overcome that period of deprivation, and we know that this wave of immigration that Hitler would have liked to destroy has had a huge impact on American life and culture in general and the Jewish community in particular. "

In June 2012 the film Refuge: Stories of the Selfhelp Home by American documentary filmmaker Ethan Bensinger premiered . The one-hour film portrays some residents of the Selfhelp Home and lets them tell their story, enriched with historical material. Rolf A. Weil and his wife Leni also have their say in detail in the film. The filmmaker Ethan Bensinger, whose mother had previously worked as a volunteer in the home and who spent her retirement there herself, began in 2007 to set up an archive with the life stories of the residents. His documentary was based on that.

In May 2018 Leni Weil, member of the board of trustees and later treasurer of Selfhelp Home, was honored by the organization with the Lifetime Achievement Award (award for her life's work).

honors and awards

Rolf A. Weil was awarded an honorary doctorate in Hebrew literature in 1967 by the College of Jewish Studies (today: Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership ) .

In 1970 he received an honorary doctorate ( Doctor of Humane Letters / Litterarum humanarum doctor ; LHD) from Loyola University Chicago .

He was a long-time member of the Board of Trustees of Beth Emet - The Free Synagogue in Evanston

Works

swell

  • Memoirs of Rolf Weil (as of 1981) , President of Roosevelt University, 1964-1987. As part of the History Project in Labor History (see: Elizabeth Balanoff Labor Oral History Collection ), Rolf A. Weil was interviewed three times by Elizabeth Balanoff from August to September 1981. The four-hour recording was completely transcribed and can be accessed via the Memoirs of Rolf Weil website (as of 1981) or requested by email. The first 30 pages are mainly used to reconstruct Weil's life story up to the beginning of his work at Roosevelt College in 1946. The rest then focus on his work at the college, which later became Roosevelt University .
  • Fred Bilenkis and Hannah Caplan (eds.): Biographical handbook of German-speaking emigration after 1933 , part 2: The arts, sciences, and literature, Pt. 2., L - Z, ISBN 978-3-598-10089-5 , p. 1219: Weil, Rolf Alfred.

literature

  • Laura Mills and Lynn Y. Weiner: Roosevelt University , Arcadia Publishing, Charleston (South Carolina), 2014, ISBN 978-1-4671-1247-5 . The richly illustrated book can be viewed in large parts via Google Books .
  • Karl-Heinz Füssl: German-American cultural exchange in the 20th century. Education - Science - Politics , Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2004, ISBN 3-593-37499-4 .

Web links

to Rolf A. Weil
to the selfhelp home

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Unless other sources are named in the following article, all information comes from the transcript of the Memoirs of Rolf Weil and the entry in the Biographical Manual of German-Speaking Emigration after 1933 .
  2. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 23. “Anyway you can see that the 1930s, which was the formative period of my life, had a great influence on me because here I grew up in pre-Nazi Germany with almost all non-Jewish children. All my friends were non-Jewish. My parents weren't very religious. All of a sudden you're being labeled a Jew; all of a sudden terrible things happen to you. "
  3. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 24. “It was a marvelous idea! Of course it was used for political indoctrination. To a kid that isn't what was meaningful, the idea of ​​going away for four weeks and being educated sounded wonderful. The day before they were going I was already packed. I was got a note saying Jews are not permitted to go along and so then I was transferred to another school. In the other school the kids didn't know me. I was looked at as one of those dirty Jews that's been brought in. It was very, very difficult. "
  4. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 2. “The real problem was that we were Jewish and the combination of a Jew working for what they considered a foreign concern posed some very major problems. That created the reason for our leaving in '36. "
  5. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 15
  6. ↑ HISTORY OF HYDE PARK JEWRY FROM THE 1930'S . “An interesting point about the German Jews of the 193O's is that they lived in a middle class neighborhood they couldn't really afford except by subletting a room; that allowed them to lead a middle class existence with a lower class income. "
  7. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 14. “My father was not made for American business. He struggled very hard, he supported his family till the day he died. But my father was too ethical and 'soft-sell' an individual to be very successful. "
  8. ^ University of Chicago Library: Guide to the Simeon E. Leland Papers 1930-1946
  9. ^ The Cowles Commission
  10. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 21. "... to do a study on price controls and rationing."
  11. ↑ The Living New Deal: National Youth Administration (NYA) (1935)
  12. ↑ See: Anne Schenderlein: GERMAN JEWISH “ENEMY ALIENS” IN THE UNITED STATES DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR , BULLETIN OF THE GERMAN HISTORICAL INSTITUTE (GHI), 60, SPRING 2017
  13. ^ Immigrants Protective League
  14. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 22. “I became an American citizen in '44. I got on NYA before I was a citizen but whithout being an enemy alien. "
  15. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 26
  16. ^ Indiana University: A storied history nearly two centuries in the making . East Chicago is not part of Chicago, but an independent city in Lake County (Indiana) . See also in the English WIKIPEDIA: en: East Chicago, Indiana
  17. ↑ There are many references on the Internet about Ruby's work on logic; however, there is a lack of usable biographical data.
  18. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 27. “All of us lived in Hyde Park. Wirth told me that there was a new school that was starting and was an outgrowth of the YMCA College, that he had signed up to teach there and that he was going to introduce an new concept, Culture Studies, because one shouldn't just teach a language one should teach a culture. Well, I sort of liked that idea and I said I think I'd like to get involved whith that. He said, ›Well, if I ever hear that they need somebody in your field, I'll let you know.‹ "
  19. ^ Rolf Alfred Weil, economist University president emeritus
  20. ↑ The marriage had two children: Susan Linda (* 1949) and Ronald Alan (* 1951).
  21. ↑ a b HISTORY OF HYDE PARK JEWRY FROM THE 1930’S
  22. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 30. “So I was just thrilled and I can really tell you, in conclusion today, that all my ambitions at that time were fulfilled. I never wanted to do anything but teach and I was just absolutely delighted. "
  23. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 32. “... because you had on the one hand a man with a broad social science background like Walter Weiskopf, some neo-classical, theoretically oriented economists such as myself out of the University of Chicago and trained analysis as it was taught at the University of Chicago ".
  24. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , pp. 34–35. “I know that the overwhelming majority of the faculty of Roosevelt University considered themselves liberals, liberals in the sense that they voted for the Democratic Party and were New Dealers at heart. [..] These early leaders of Roosevelt University were liberals on matters of race, matters of equality of the sexes, and on matters of population control. Many of them, I think, were very upset about the fact that in Chicago in the late 1940 Roosevelt College, as it was then called, was labeled as a "little red schoolhouse" or communist institution. Nothing could have been further from the truth, of course, because the overwhelming majority of the faculty certainly led very conservative lives and as I indicated before, their radicalism was of a very mild variety. "
  25. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 40. “I have to say these were all people who at that early time I disagreed with and later on found myself in considerably more agreement with. They were very able people but they were extremely sensitive to the fact that it was very difficult for Roosevelt University to get financial support in the community and that was based primarily on totally unfounded rumors and reports that went around. "
  26. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , pp. 55-56. "I have been very disillusioned over the years with the group that is sometimes described as" liberals ", the group that I used to consider myself a member of. And I discovered that many people will stand for civil liberties if it's on an issue where they are in the minority that's being discriminated against but will take the very opposite position when they are in the majoritye. I've seen this happen not only at Roosevelt University and in educational organizations, as you probably have observed, too, you find it in labor unions. There are many people who will preach great liberalism when they're on a soap box and deal with national issues. Let it be in their own little organization and, by golly, they're going to be absolute dictators and they will trample on the rights of the minority whenever it suits them. I'm afraid - this is sort of an introduction to the period of the sixties which produced probably the most traumatic experiences of my life. "
  27. ↑ The inauguration took place on April 16, 1967: 1967 Press Photo Dr. Rolf A. Weil Inaugurated President Roosevelt University
  28. ↑ Weil describes this very vividly using some experiences with people who saw themselves as New Deal liberals , and concludes from this: “For me this is only an indication of the deeply rooted prejudices that exist in our society, even among the great liberals. That was not Adlai Stevenson , I would like to let you know, but it could have fitted very well with this type of individual, ie with people who are very different in their personal thinking from their public statements. ”( Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p 78: "To me that is just an indication of the deeply ingrained prejudices that exists in our society even among those who are great liberals. This was not Adlai Stevenson, I want you to know, but it could have very well fitted that kind of individual, that is, people who in their own personal thinking are very different from the public pronouncements. ")
  29. ↑ One of his main supporters was Lyle M. Spencer (1911–1968), an IBM affiliated businessman. ( Biography of Lyle M. Spencer )
  30. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , pp. 79-80. "Businessmen give to institutions because they believe that what you do will, in fact, contribute to the stability of the community. [..] In fact, I became increasingly convinced that if you appeal to businessmen's self-interest you can accomplish the objectives of an institution like Roosevelt. [..] I think they were able to understand that an institution like Roosevelt was an anchor at the south end of the Loop and helped in mitigating the increasing racial conflict that was developing at that very time. "
  31. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 80. “And I have to say that I took pride in having changed the attitude of the corporate world vis-a-vis Roosevelt University. When I became president of the university had very minimal support from the business community. I think I succeeded in turning attitudes around without at any time or in any way compromising any of the principles that I fundamentally believed in: non-discrimination, the upward mobility role and the academic freedom concept. "
  32. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , pp. 83-84. "What they wanted us to do was to become a political tool to accomplish the objectives and in the process we would have destroyed the institution, as I see it, betause we would have lost all the students who wanted to be ranked. Probably ninety percent of all the students were not politically involved. All they were interested in was staying out of the draft. And a small number that had a political agenda themselves were hypocrites, because they themselves would have been among those who would have left Roosevelt University if we had not ranked. Then they would have started the agitation at another instituion. This was just the beginning of the attempt on the part of people with various motivations (some of them may have been idealists others, I think, were simply political functionaries) to use the university as a political tool. "
  33. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 89. “I thought to myself, My Gd, these are people that always talked democracy and freedom and here if they don't agree with you, they will not give you the right to hold a different view and threaten you instead. "
  34. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 91. “Of course l got the unsolicited support from some of the people on the right wing politically in this thing and you know it created a terrible dilemma because on the one hand I was looking for whatever support I could get, but at the same time it's an unfortunate situation when the people you considered your friends betray you and sometimes you get friends that you hadn't really looked for. "
  35. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 95. “1969 was the last of the three sit-ins and the '69 one was the most threatening one physically. 1968 was probably the one that was hardest on me intellectually. "
  36. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 97
  37. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 98. “Well, what we did is we made up, as part of the compromise at that time, a very substantial budget. We insisted it be spent on curriculum, but it had a category in there for lecturers. Fortunately we succeeded in finding people on the faculty who were relatively level headed and it all died down. "
  38. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , pp. 99-100. “We must recognize that a university should be non — political, except possibly in one situation, and that's been always my philosophy, namely, that if the main mission of the university is threatened, such as if you had a Nazi type government that would not permit the faculty to teach the truth as they saw it, I think at that point a university has to fight. But at all other times the ideal university is one where you have every point of view represented. There is no such thing as totally objective teaching. Obviously, as a historian, you will understand history is viewed differently by different people and that's as it should be. "
  39. ↑ a b Obituary by Ali Malekzadeh of September 18, 2017
  40. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 102. “I would say, if you asked me what the major accomplishments have been in my period as president, I would say: number one, to establish the fiscal integrity of this institution; number two, we assured academic freedom with credibility; number three, we made major curriculum changes, especially in terms of moving into the adult area and the Bachelor of General Studies program was introduced; and number four, we developed Roosevelt University, Northwest. "
  41. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 117. “An inter-disciplinary program means that you develop courses that would combine history and philosophy and literature. What I want is a Humanities Degree and maybe a Social Science Degree, and it would be a distinguishing feature, something so that I could say we've got an entirely different way of teaching an undergraduate. "
  42. ↑ Memoirs of Rolf Weil , p. 119. “My own concept of education, (I guess too many people don't know that.) Is that I would much rather have people use the humanistic training that they've had but also to be realistic enough to say I've got to apply that to the management of business enterprise. "
  43. ^ Karl-Heinz Füssl: German-American cultural exchange in the 20th century , p. 164
  44. ↑ HISTORY OF HYDE PARK JEWRY FROM THE 1930'S . "The objectives were best summarized in an early piece of literature which indicated the functions that Selfhelp would provide: Arbeitsshilfe , which included vocational guidance and employment advice and referrals; Neighbor 's help, which included helping the sick, day care for children, and English lessons; and Kleiderkammer , the exchange of clothing and room rental information. "
  45. ↑ HISTORY OF HYDE PARK JEWRY FROM THE 1930'S . "This constituted a real change in the Selfhelp mission, which had originally been concerned with the refugee population in general and then shifted its emphasis to taking care of the aged."
  46. ↑ Selfhelp Home Homepage . "The Selfhelp Home is an active and engaging not-for-profit retirement community designed to accommodate the needs of older Jewish adults throughout the Chicago area."
  47. ↑ HISTORY OF HYDE PARK JEWRY FROM THE 1930'S . "Selfhelp had feared that there would be serious financial problems for many older people. But these problems were largely solved for the residents through the combination of restitution payments and German social security. As the Selfhelp Home and the adjacent Selfhelp Center Were built for victims of Nazi persecution, most of the residents became eligible for these benefits. Unfortunately, residents from Austria and Hungary were not as well treated by their governments. [..] "In conclusion, let me say that we can look back to those early years in Hyde Park with considerable nostalgia. When you move away from a period of poverty and struggle, a later perspective makes that time look like "the good old days." They weren't all that good, but we do remember them today fondly because we have overcome that period of deprivation, and we know that this wave of immigrants that Hitler would have liked to destroy has had a major and beneficial impact on American life and culture in general and particularly on the Jewish community. "
  48. ↑ Angelika Rieber: Ethan Bensinger: Refuge . See also: Sharon Cohen: Holocaust Victims in Chicago. The house of the survivors on SPIEGEL ONLINE.
  49. ^ Honoring Leni Weil with The Lifetime Achievement Award
  50. ^ Homepage of Beth Emet
personal data
SURNAME Weil, Rolf A.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Because, Rolf Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American economist and university president, emigrant
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Pforzheim
DATE OF DEATH 17th September 2017
Place of death Lincolnwood