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USHMM Finding http://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Interview with Gerhart Riegner April 28, 1992 and May 11, 1992 RG-50.030*0189 This is a verbatim transcript of spoken word. It is not the primary source, and it has not been checked for spelling or accuracy. http://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection PREFACE The following oral history testimony is the result of a taped interview with Gerhart Riegner, conducted on April 28, 1992 and May 11, 1992 on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The interview is part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's collection of oral testimonies. Rights to the interview are held by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The reader should bear in mind that this is a verbatim transcript of spoken, rather than written prose. This transcript has been neither checked for spelling nor verified for accuracy, and therefore, it is possible that there are errors. As a result, nothing should be quoted or used from this transcript without first checking it against the taped interview. This is a verbatim transcript of spoken word. It is not the primary source, and it has not been checked for spelling or accuracy. http://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection GERHART RIEGNER April 28, 1992 Q. Dr. Riegner, would you tell us your full name, and where and when you were born? A. My name is Gerhart Riegner. Second name is Moritz. I was named after my grandfather. I am born in Berlin. I am a real Berliner, as Kennedy would have said. And I am born on the 12th of September, 1911. Q. And could you tell us a little bit about what your life was like when you were growing up in Berlin with your family, friends, the climate, so forth?\ A. Well, I come from a typical German Jewish family. And I would say that we belonged already -- as Kurt Blumenfeld would have said -- to the post-assimilationist era. It is typical that I am born in Berlin and that my two parents were also already born in Berlin. My grandparents came from very typical German middle-sized cities. One grandfather was born in Magdeburg. The other -- my grandmother was born in Halle. The second grandmother was born in Neubrandenburg. And the other grandfather -- here we come already to the frontier towards Poland -- in Niederschlesien, which is Silesia, the more German part of it. So I am coming from a long stock German family. We had in the family two traditions. On the one hand, a very Jewish tradition. My grandmother, my mother's side, was a Lewandovsky. She was a niece of Louis Lewandovsky, who was the creator of the modern synagogue music, and some of the most beautiful modern melodies originate from him. His son-in-law was the famous philosopher, Hermann Cohen, the founder of the Marburgerschule of the school of Neo-Kantianism. He was This is a verbatim transcript of spoken word. It is not the primary source, and it has not been checked for spelling or accuracy. http://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.030*0189 2 one of the few full professors under the Kaiserreich in the old style. He came from very Jewish origins. He studied the Talmud. He went to the Jewish theological seminary in Breslau before he became a philosopher. And he is the author not only of great works and the reinterpretation of Kant, but also of religious philosophy, of work in religious philosophy, based on the sources of Judaism, "die Religion der Vernunft." This is a great man in my family, whom I knew as a child. And where -- every Sunday we went for lunch to my grandparents' andfor coffee or tea to Cohen's. And in Cohen's house, which was very near that of my grandparents', every Sunday there was a great party, sixty, fifty, sixty persons. And the old man was nearly blind, was in the rocking chair, like Kennedy, with white, wonderful white hair, and the blue dark glasses, was presiding over -- what should I call it? Holding court, if you want. He was really nice to us children. He played with us, and -- but before all, I knew that he was an important man. I see him still in the synagogue on -- Simchas Torah. 01:10 In 1917, I was six years old, when he walked directly behind the rabbi with the little Torah, very light because he was not so very strong any more. And he looked like an old Jewish prophet, with his fantastic great face, his white locks, and he gave the impression of a real leader of a religious movement. Q. But you knew he was also an important man in the country in terms of his academic standing? A. He was fighting anti-Semitism. And he spoke out from 1879, when the famous attacks by Treitschke, the historian, and Stoecke, the priest and the official Dompraediger of the empire, attacked the Jews. And he was himself, by the way, the victim of many anti-Semitic attacks, and was -- had never a call from another university -- this is also very interesting -- and was fighting This is a verbatim transcript of spoken word. It is not the primary source, and it has not been checked for spelling or accuracy. http://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.030*0189 3 for his pupils to get appointed as professors, and had one defeat after the other in this respect. Even a man like Ernst Gerschieler, as great as his name was in this country -- was his most important pupil probably -- couldn't get in Marburg, the Privatdozenten, and so on. Now, this is the one -- and here, the one source of my Jewish background which was perhaps in myself stronger than in the family itself. And this was due to the general climate in Germany. My first anti-Semitic experience was on the second day of school, when I went to school in 1917, and somebody called me "ein dreckiger Judenluemmel," dirty Jew boy -- something. And I -- this was my first anti-Semitic experience. And I reacted immediately, not very intelligently. But I couldn't not react. And I replied "dreckiger Christenbengel," which wasn't very intelligent. But I did not accept the attack. My second experience was an experience of social anti-Semitism, in school, when a good friend of mine, who was also a son of a lawyer, never succeeded in inviting me to his home. Q. You mean he tried, but his parents wouldn't allow it? A. Yes. It was a tragedy with which I fought three years, each time finding another excuse why they didn't invite me, until I finally understood why. Now, all this happened in a Germany in which there was a strong anti-Semitic movement. I come to it in a moment when I speak about the political background. Q. All right. This is a verbatim transcript of spoken word. It is not the primary source, and it has not been checked for spelling or accuracy. http://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.030*0189 4 A. But I remember, for instance, the day on which Rathenau was assassinated, in 1922. I was not yet eleven years old. And I remember the day my mother was in the clinic and we visited her. She had some operation -- I don't remember what it was -- and it shook us to the foundations. This was the great German Jewish patriot, who, in 1918, at the end of the war, was the only one to suggest that the war was lost "Levee en masse" – the popular resistance movement -- a Jew who had the courage to do this -- was the organizer of the whole economic administration of raw materials during the four years of the first World War, for Germany. A really great German patriot, no doubt about it, who had immense merit, from the German point of view – Q. He was a very able man. A. -- to have organized it. And he was, as a minister of foreign affairs, killed by "voelkische," racist people. I will never forget this. This -- and in this whole -- this whole movement, there were at least three, four, five others -- I am not speaking even of Hitler -- the first revolt in 1924. But in every election we had it, and you felt it, and you saw it, and we were very noisy. Now I come to the other side. My family was very interested in politics. My father was associated since 1910 with a member -- the socialist member, a prominent socialist who became a member of the Reichstag, who was during the revolution in 1918 a member of the provisional Prussian government, minister of justice, and who became one of the great fighters against the death penalty in Germany. Q. Kurt Rosenfeld? This is a verbatim transcript of spoken word. It is not the primary source, and it has not been checked for spelling or accuracy. http://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.030*0189 5 A. Kurt Rosenfeld, yes. My father was not a socialist. My father was a very socially minded democrat.
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