Annual Report - Center for Jewish History

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C E N T E R F O R J E W I S H H I S T O R YLeo Baeck InstituteLeo Baeck Institute is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2005, a milestone thatwas never intended by the founders. Their idea was to collect as much authentic,original documentation as possible on the remarkable, diverse, and longhistory of German-speaking Jewry before its destruction by the Nazis. The materialscould be used to write a definitive volume on the legacy that remained. When concluded,the Institute would have served its purpose.Named after the last leader of the Jewish community in Germanyunder the Nazis, Rabbi Leo Baeck represented the cultured, assimilatedcitizen, whose serious religious scholarship did not preclude secularinterests and communal involvement. Thus, the heritage of GermanspeakingJewry, reflected in the library and archives of the Leo BaeckInstitute, is as comprehensive as it is compelling. The entire spectrumof modernity in the 20th Century–from psychoanalysis to film making,photojournalism to Bauhaus architecture, Kafka to Einstein andmuch more–are all aspects of the culture that is catalogued here.In 2001, just after relocating from uptown Manhattan to theCenter for Jewish History downtown, the Leo Baeck Institute made aneven bigger move by opening a branch of its archives in the new JewishMuseum Berlin. This archive has become even more important thanwe imagined. The interest of young Germans (and Austrians and CentralEuropeans across the continent) in the Jewish part of their past isenormous. It is our shared history; until 1935 when the Nurembergracial laws turned Jews into a separate class, they were active members,participants and contributors to their societies.A few years ago the Leo Baeck Institute mounted an exhibit“Fighting for the Fatherland”, which depicted the proud and braveservice of Jewish soldiers in World War I. The German government(even at that time) sought to show that Jews were shirkingtheir duty by not enlisting and not serving at thefront, so a census was ordered to prove this allegation.When the census showed that Jews were, on the contrary,disproportionately serving their country and dying for it, the censusresults were suppressed. The record, therefore, shows there was anti-Semitism well before the Third Reich, but also great periods ofproductive activity.The history catalogued at Leo Baeck Institute in New York aswell as in Berlin is not focused on the Holocaust. The recent LBI exhibitin our gallery at the Center for Jewish History ties in with the specialCenter-wide focus on “350 years of Jews in America.” German Jewsserved in the American Civil War; they received land grants in the Midwestfor commercial development; they went to Broadway andHollywood and Washington. Most of them came to America to startover, to be free of the restrictions that prohibited Jews in Germanyfrom accessing many opportunities open to others. But for many whostayed in the old country, the restrictions were the motivation for findinginterstices and niches where they could earn a living in new ways,developing imaginative careers out of necessity.Fifty years after the Leo Baeck Institute was established, there14
A letter written byFlora Goldschmidt to herchildren from Sudan. Born inBreslau in 1853 and married toindustrialist SiegfriedGoldschmidt, Flora, unlikemost German-Jewish womenof her era, traveled extensivelyto India, the United States,China, Japan, and Egypt.Leo Baeck Institute.is more new material coming into our library and archives than everbefore. The last members of the survivor generation are just now passingon, and the treasured possessions of a lifetime are coming to theInstitute, to become part of the permanent record. In Germany, thehistorical connection between Germany and its Jews, which was upheldfor half a century almost exclusively by the LBI, is increasingly becominga point of interest and pride to Germans themselves. Next toarchitect Peter Eisenman’s breathtaking new “Memorial to the MurderedJews of Europe” in the heart of Berlin, it becomes even moreimportant to also recall the better aspects of our past, so many of whichare documented in the LBI collections.In the United States, the contributions of Germans and Austrianswho fled from Nazi persecution are evident in every field: science,medicine, art, culture, commerce, and industry. In academia, the fieldof Jewish studies has developed a separate subsection of German-Jewishstudies, thanks in no small part to the scholarly and intellectual initiativesof the LBI.LBI resources are available to students, genealogists, filmmakers,historians and all others whose research interests span thelast 200 years. For more serious scholars of “Wissenschaft desJudentums” or “Rabbinic Aggadah” or talmudic tracts, our rarebooks and unique documents go back much farther than that. Atthe Center for Jewish History, the collections are maintained inoptimal conditions both physically in terms of climate control andshelving, and professionally in terms of superb service and staffing.To complement the materials in the LBI collections, ourwide-ranging public lecture program is attracting impressive numbersof informed visitors. Authors, professors, and practitionersare invited to discourse on any subject related to our specializeduniverse, which is specialized but remarkably broad. (A look atLBI’s 2004 Overview will suggest the scope of these activities.)The state-of-the-art auditorium at the Center is no doubt part ofthe appeal for speakers and audience alike, and the Institute is alwaysproud to do an event in such fine quarters.The 50th anniversary of the Leo Baeck Institute is not a milestonethe founders anticipated, nor is the founding of LBI anythingthat any German-speaking Jew would have wished for. With normalcyprevailing, our history would have continued to experience ups anddowns; persecution and tolerance edicts; prohibitions and special dispensations,in Germany. But normalcy did not prevail.Today, the Leo Baeck Institute is the primary resource for theGerman-Jewish history that was, and that continues to develop. Therecould not be a better place from which to carry out our mission than theCenter for Jewish History, and for that we are enormously grateful.Ismar SchorschPRESIDENTCarol Kahn StraussEXECUTIVE DIRECTOR15
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Annual Report - Center for Jewish History

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