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A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details University of Sussex School of History, Art History and Philosophy Inter-generational diachronic study of the German-Jewish Fein family from Leipzig Rico Langeheine SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History May 2013 2 Contents Declaration ................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................ 4 Summary ...................................................................................................................... 5 Illustrations and Tables ................................................................................................. 6 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 7 1.1 Description of the Study ...................................................................................... 7 1.2 State of the research........................................................................................... 13 1.3 Sources of the Study.......................................................................................... 15 2. A short history of the fur trade................................................................................. 17 3. The beginnings and the origins of the family: 1800 – 1848...................................... 21 3.1 The family and the tide of Jewish history in Poland ........................................... 21 3.2 Brody and the Fein Family ................................................................................ 25 3.2.1 Brody – the trade and cultural centre of European Jewry................................. 25 3.2.2 Nachman Fein’s youth and early adulthood..................................................... 29 4. Leipzig 1842 – 1871 Times of Assimilation............................................................. 35 4.1 Jews in Leipzig.................................................................................................. 35 4.2 Nachman Fein between Dessau, Leipzig and Brody........................................... 38 4.3 The naturalization of the Fein family in Leipzig................................................. 44 4.4 Nachman Fein in the fur trade............................................................................ 46 5. Leipzig 1871 – 1905 Getting established................................................................. 51 5.1 Leipzig from the Foundation of the Reich to the End of the Century.................. 51 5.2 Alexander’s legal career 1897-1905................................................................... 60 5.3 Fein & Co. - growth and getting established ...................................................... 67 5.4 Alexander Fein und Elisabeth Klein................................................................... 69 6. 1918 -1933 Security and Crises............................................................................... 71 6.1 An ambivalent era.............................................................................................. 71 6.2 Fein & Co. – Growth and change in the Weimar Republic ................................. 72 6.3 I want my life to be an experience, not a game - Gerhard Fein’s youth in the Weimar period......................................................................................................... 79 6.4 Times in Italy..................................................................................................... 86 6.5 Alice Lustig – the development of a liberal Jewess in the Weimar Period........... 92 6.6 Alice Lustig und Gerhard Fein – Love and Politics ............................................ 99 7. 1933-1945 Emigration and Starting Over .............................................................. 105 7.1 Leipzig – London ............................................................................................ 105 7.2 Beginnings in London...................................................................................... 109 7.3 Fein & Co. Leipzig – Reconstruction of an engineered downfall...................... 112 7.4 Elisabeth Fein – a well-considered emigration ................................................. 114 7.5 The years of decision....................................................................................... 118 7.6 Outlook: War and post-war experiences........................................................... 127 8. Summary .............................................................................................................. 135 Bibliography............................................................................................................. 138 Appendix .................................................................................................................. 146 3 Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be, submitted in whole or in part to another University for the award of any other degree. Rico Langeheine May 2013 4 Acknowledgments The story of the Fein family could be told thanks to the efforts of many persons. First of all I want to express my gratitude to Mister Stephen Fein in London who has not only supported financially in a very generous way the research done for reconstructing the history of his family. He also has contributed in several interviews and talks in his house in London where he explained important details about the history of his predecessors and where he had also shown an impressive understanding of the last two centuries of European history. Without the help of his sister Kathleen Fein the study could never had been completed. Her remarks on the text, her re-lecture of the English version and her fructuous comments on all stages of the study has supported me immensely. Our common journey to Brody and the old Galicia has also helped a lot to concretise the historic importance of those interesting places. I also thank my academic teachers Prof. Paul Betts, Prof. Wiese and Dr. Gerhard Wolf whose suggestions and commentaries accompanied the process of the creation of the present work. 5 Summary The aim of this study was first of all to describe, analyse and reconstruct the experiences of the German-Jewish merchant family Fein. This micro-historical intergenerational diachronic survey begins in the first half of the 19th century in order to gain an insight into how, during the course of around 120 years, the political, economical, social and cultural conditions of Jewish life in Leipzig were perceived by and affected the family from within. Finally an outlook shall examine successive stages of the family’s integration into English society after its expulsion from Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1938. As well as comparing patterns of how the family assimilated and adapted both in Germany and England, the thesis also highlights how their perception of Germany changed. As a Jewish fur-trading family originating from Brody in Galicia, the Fein family started to settle in Leipzig in the 1840s and one can perceive all further developments as a representative example of an assimilated Jewish bourgeois family. However, the coming to power of the National Socialists forced the 3rd and 4th generations to migrate again, under drastic conditions which were very different from those of the family members first officially registered in Leipzig in 1862. As early as 1933, some family members were obliged to leave Germany in order to earn their living elsewhere. In 1938 this current culminates in the enforced confiscation of the family business Fein & Co. During this wave of emigration, most of the family members went to London, some to New York, but whatever the destination, they saw themselves once more confronted with the need to integrate successfully into a new society. The stories of these two immigrations – from Poland to Germany, and from Germany to the England or the US – are set off against one another. Thanks to official archived material, private notes, family correspondence and a variety of other documents put at disposal by the family, as well as some oral-history interviews, it was attempted to carry out a group-biographical analysis of the family’s history. This analysis is then being embedded into the historical context and the issues the Jewish bourgeoisie was exposed to in Germany. To do this, the family members’ experiences of the regularly changing political regimes in Germany are considered: the Kingdom of Saxony, the German Reich from 1871, the era of the Wilhelmism, the Weimar Republic and the National Socialist 3rd Reich. 6 Illustrations and Tables List of Illustrations Figure 1: Map of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth………………………… 23 Figure 02: Brody Synagogue……………………………………………………..