Rosa Arnsberg

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Rosa Arnsberg , called Rosl Arnsberg , née Rosa Abramowitsch (born June 2, 1908 in Charlottenburg , † June 1, 2010 in Frankfurt am Main ), was a German promoter of understanding between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans. She was honored by the state of Hesse and the Federal Republic of Germany for her decades of commitment .

Life

Youth and education

Rosl Abramowitsch was born in the German Empire , the seventh of eight children in the then still independent city of Charlottenburg, west of Berlin , in the Kingdom of Prussia . She was very handicraft-oriented and decided to learn the trade of a milliner , because hats were very much in fashion at the time. In 1933 she worked in a hat atelier that was run by Russian-born Jews on Tauentzienstrasse in Berlin, near the Kaufhaus des Westens , not far from Kurfürstendamm . One evening, on her way home, she heard the SA sing: "... and when the Jewish blood splatters off the knife, it'll be fine again." This was a trigger for her to tell her parents that she intended to go after To emigrate to Palestine , where her older siblings already lived.

emigration

She traveled to southern France and booked a place on a passenger steamer for the Mediterranean passage in Marseille . On the ship, she got to know a number of Jewish Berliners, including many academics. In July 1933 she set foot on the soil of Palestine for the first time, in Jaffa , where she was expected by her older sister. She had lived in Tel Aviv with her family since 1929, and her husband Leo Schöner ran a paper goods factory with a branch in the Egyptian capital, Cairo . Rosl Abramowitsch was able to find a place to stay and work as a housekeeper with her sister's family. She had to get used to the predominantly spoken English and Hebrew there, at first she did not speak either.

Over time, everyday life came along and she learned firsthand how former doctors and lawyers had to switch to completely different sources of income, even to be a chicken farmer. At that time one met almost every immigrant in the still small town. On the occasion of a business meeting with an “Egyptian representative”, the whole family, including the children, met on Sabbath in a beach café. However, this representative was not an Egyptian, but the lawyer Paul Arnsberg , who had emigrated from Frankfurt am Main and was a Zionist who had worked as a journalist. She was happy to have the opportunity to speak German with him, who is nine years older than him. In Palestine, Arnsberg initially represented newspapers. About six months later both married, in December 1934 Rosl Arnsberg's first daughter was born, followed by two others and a son. In the 1930s, the couple and their two older children visited their German homeland and their families there several times. Rosl's parents later also emigrated to Palestine, the other siblings went to other countries. Her husband worked as a journalist for the Jewish Chronicle , German- and English-language Zionist newspapers, ultimately as editor-in-chief, sold books and writing materials in his own shops in all small towns and later became the largest newspaper and book publisher in Israel.

The entire family had survived the Shoah due to the early emigration, albeit separately. In 1948, the joy of the founding of the state of Israel was only tarnished by the fact that the office building of Rosl's husband was hit by gunfire from the Arab part in response to the partition of Palestine.

Return to Germany

In the weekly magazine Emeth (Hebrew: אמת, The Truth), the official organ of the Zionist movement, her husband spoke out in the November 3rd 1950 issue in favor of resuming relations with Germany. In 1958 - after 25 years - her husband decided to return to West Germany, to Frankfurt am Main. Business as a newspaper and book publisher in Israel became increasingly difficult. In West Germany he wanted to demand redress for the expulsion by the National Socialists . The three grown daughters stayed in Israel, only the thirteen-year-old son Gad came with them, for whom it was initially difficult to find his way around the completely strange environment and society without friends. But it was also difficult for Rosl Arnsberg, emotionally she was drawn to Israel.

When her husband was asked by his best friend to research and write the history of Frankfurt's Jews since the French Revolution, he asked for time to think - it was a huge undertaking. After some thought, he got down to work, always supported by his wife, who was the first to proofread. In 1978, however, Paul Arnsberg died of a heart attack before completing his work. The couple had dreamed of returning to Israel together after their husband's work was completed.

Rosl Arnsberg had her husband's coffin transferred to Israel, to the family grave there. During the Shiv'a or the Shiv'a (derived from the Hebrew word for seven), the seven-day mourning period, she was asked by her children about their future plans, they firmly assumed that the mother would now return to Israel.

Rosl Arnsberg, however, felt it was her duty to complete her husband's life's work. She wanted to go back to Frankfurt am Main and finally brought her husband's three-volume life's work to a conclusion, supported by the then cultural department head Hilmar Hoffmann , the city treasurer Ernst Gerhardt and the banker Walter Hesselbach together with the historian Hans-Otto Schembs , it was published in 1984.

During his work, Paul Arnsberg had come across countless Jewish foundations , so many of which had been established in Frankfurt am Main over the centuries that the founders no longer knew which names to give their foundations. He revived four of them - and Rosl Arnsberg continued to lead them all as chairwoman after his death.

For Rosl Arnsberg this was a complete change in her role, as she was always at her husband's side and never in the center of public interest. Now she had to speak for herself.

In an interview for the Hessischer Rundfunk radio , Rosl Arnsberg expressed satisfaction that she had asserted herself with her work and was recognized, that she continued life as if her husband were still next to her. Fill them out.

Nevertheless, she described the twenty-five years in Palestine or Israel as the most beautiful of her life. There she found a man from Frankfurt am Main with whom she was happy and had four children. At a young age she experienced the emergence or development of a new existence, an unforgettable time.

“ The word home has blurred. We Jews are so widely scattered around the world and I, I am at home where my husband was once. "

- Rosl Arnsberg, 2008

On the occasion of her 100th birthday, there was a reception at the Grandhotel Hessischer Hof in Frankfurt, where several generations of the Arnsberg family and Frankfurt's Lord Mayor Dr. Petra Roth , Frankfurt's head of cultural affairs, Prof. Dr. Hilmar Hoffmann and the chairman of the Frankfurt Jewish community and deputy chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dr. Salomon Korn , congratulated.

Rosl Arnsberg died the day before her 102nd birthday in the Henry and Emma Budge home in Frankfurt am Main. She was buried next to her husband in the old Nachlat Itzhak cemetery in Tel Aviv.

"She has carried and promoted the risk of Jewish and non-Jewish Germans of the Shoah generation living together."

- Henry and Emma Budge Foundation - obituary notice in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from June 6, 2010

Functions

Rosl Arnsberg was chairwoman of the Henry and Emma Budge Foundation , the Ludwig and Emma Doctorischen Foundation , the Eduard and Adelheid Kann Foundation , the Moses Jachiel Kirchheimschen Foundation and the Georgine Sara von Rothschild Foundation . She was a founding member of the Frankfurt Society of Friends and Supporters of the Fight against Cancer in Israel .

Honors

literature

  • Erika Albers et al .: Portraits of Frankfurt seniors . City of Frankfurt am Main, Department for Social Affairs and Youth 1999

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rosl Arnsberg - The life story of a Frankfurt Jewish woman ( Memento from August 1, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) on: hr-online.de
  2. ↑ Rosl Arnsberg - The life story of a Frankfurt Jewish woman on: hr-online.de (PDF file, 119 kB)
  3. ↑ "Rosl Arnsberg continues her husband's work ..." January 18, 2008 ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) on: region-odenwaldkreis.de
  4. ↑ Photo: Frankfurt's Mayor Petra Roth and Rosl Arnsberg on June 2, 2008 ( memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) on: fr-online.de
  5. ↑ "The Founder". In: Frankfurter Rundschau, June 4, 2008 at: fr-online.de
  6. ↑ "A great old lady". In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 1, 2010 on: faz.net
  7. ↑ Brief profile of Rosl Arnsberg at: juedische-pflegegeschichte.de
  8. ↑ "Gala of the hardworking collector". In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 2, 2003 at: faz.net
  9. ^ Rosl and Paul Arnsberg Prize at: sptg.de
  10. ↑ First award of the Rosl and Paul Arnsberg Prize on: Zentralratdjuden.de
personal data
SURNAME Arnsberg, Rosa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Arnsberg, Rosl; Abramowitsch, Rosa (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German promoter of understanding between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Charlottenburg
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 2010
Place of death Frankfurt am Main