Theodor Rothschild

The Theodor Rothschild House 2007

Theodor Rothschild (born January 4, 1879 or 1876 in Buttenhausen ; † July 10 or 11, 1944 in Theresienstadt concentration camp ) was a journalist and reform pedagogue and from 1901 to 1939 the director of the Israelite orphanage Wilhelmspflege in Esslingen am Neckar .

Life

Rothschild, the son of a Schochet , graduated from the teachers' seminar in Esslingen in 1892, first took up a teaching position in the Jewish community of Talheim (district of Heilbronn) in 1894 and became an assistant teacher in the Wilhelmspflege in 1896. In 1900 he became the main teacher and soon afterwards head of the facility after the long-time director Leopold Stern died unexpectedly in 1899 and his successor Max Eichberg was suspected of an offense against morality. In addition to his work in the Wilhelmspflege, he wrote educational writings and reading books for Jewish religious instruction. His former student Albert Dreifuss said of Rothschild: "I have seldom met someone of his sincerity and honest disposition".

Theodor Rothschild was married three times. His first wife was Anna Stern (1874–1925), a daughter of the pedagogue Leopold Stern, who ran the Israelite orphanage until his death. After Anna Rothschild died in 1925, Theodor Rothschild married his sister-in-law, the widowed Jette Kahn, nee in March 1927. Star. She died in January 1931. She was buried in Ulm . The third marriage took place in January 1938 with Ina Rothschild , b. Wilhelmine Herzfeld (1902–1991), who had started a job as a housekeeper in Wilhelmspflege in 1929.

The daughters Fanny and Berta came from the first marriage; Fanny later married Rabbi Emil Schorsch and became the mother of Ismar Schorsch .

The orphanage

The tombstone of Rothschild’s first wife

The orphanage went back to an initiative of the Association for the Care of Poor Israelite Orphans and Neglected Children , which was active in all Jewish communities in Württemberg. The first building, which was purchased in 1841, is at Entengrabenstrasse 10 in Esslingen. The orphanage was rebuilt in 1880/81, but in 1913 the new building at Mülbergerstraße 146 above Esslinger Burg , which was designed by the architects Oskar Bloch and , was moved into the new building at Mülbergerstraße 146 above Esslingen Castle , at that time under the direction of Rothschild, who was called Herr Vater by his pupils Ernst Guggenheimer ("Bloch & Guggenheimer") was designed. In 1938 the orphanage was devastated in the course of the November pogrom. Cult objects were burned, and the children and teachers were threatened and beaten. District manager Eugen Hund prevented further destruction and was therefore acquitted by the Stuttgart district court at the synagogue trial in 1951.

Rothschild himself continued to look after the Jewish children, who initially found accommodation with Jewish families. From February to August 1939 the Jewish orphanage was occupied again, then it was finally closed. Rothschild moved to Stuttgart in March 1940. There he directed the Jewish school . He helped numerous people to emigrate and thus also saved the lives of former pupils, but himself, as well as his wife and 1200 other Jews, was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp , where he died of malnutrition and pneumonia in 1944, while his wife was with them in February 1945 a transport of sick children to Switzerland. She later emigrated to the USA. There are contradicting statements about the time of the deportation. Most sources name the year 1942, one of them not until the summer of 1944, which is after the apparently well-known date of death. It is not exactly known how many Jewish children from the orphanage shared Rothschild’s fate, as numerous transfers took place after 1938.

The orphanage was used as a reserve hospital during the Second World War, and from 1947 to 1950 it was used again as a Jewish children's home, where recreational stays were offered. Since the number of Jewish children living in Germany fell sharply with the establishment of the State of Israel, the house was actively used as a state orphanage from 1953 and later as an institution of the Youth Welfare Foundation .

Honors

The former Jewish orphanage in Esslingen is now called Theodor-Rothschild-Haus.

A street in Scharnhauser Park was also named after Theodor Rothschild.

In the exhibition Lost and Un-Forget. Jewish curative education and welfare in Germany , which was shown in several European cities, is also documented by Rothschild's work in the Esslingen orphanage (panels 50 and 51).

On the site of the house where he was born in Buttenhausen, there has been a memorial for the Jewish victims of National Socialism from Buttenhausen since 1961.

In the former Bernheimer Realschule in Buttenhausen, the permanent exhibition Jews in Buttenhausen has been shown since 1994 , which also commemorates Theodor Rothschild.

Works

• Building blocks. For entertainment and instruction from Jewish history and life , 1913

Individual evidence

1. ^ Bauern, Bürger - Götterdämmerung ( Memento from December 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), warning against right, accessed on December 25, 2010
2. ↑ Jette Rothschild's tombstone
3. ↑ according to Andrea Gumpert-Zumpf, Wilhelmine (Ina) Rothschild - housemother in the Israelite orphanage , in: Stadt Esslingen am Neckar (ed.), FemaleES , pp. 161–170, here p. 169, she died in 1991.
4. ^ Theodor Rothschild and the Israelite orphanage "Wilhelmspflege" in Esslingen . On: freunde-juedischer-kultur-esslingen.de
5. ↑ Signs of Remembrance ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

literature

• Reinhold Riedel: Theodor Rothschild - The Swabian Korczak . In: Marvin Chlada (Ed.): Critical Theory in the Province. Heinz Maus (1911–1978) on his 90th birthday. Trikont Duisburg Publishing House, Duisburg 2001, ISBN 3-88974-105-3
• Theodor Rothschild. A Jewish educator between respect and ostracism . Herba Druck und Verlag, Plochingen 1998, ISBN 3-87330-109-1

Web links

• History of the orphanage
• Image and biographical notes
• Pictures and biographical information
• Literature by and about Theodor Rothschild in the catalog of the German National Library