What a gift to Hermann Simon, the obstetrician to the Jewish history of East Berlin and from 1990 also for the whole of Berlin: The Humboldt University, his Alma Mater, dedicating him to 70. a lecture series – Jewish history of Berlin. That not everything is researched and known, the lecture title, including “The barn neighbourhood as a violent space? Anti-Jewish violence of the 1919 to 1923” and “After the liberation: Jews in Berlin and the organization of their community life”.

Simon accepted the gift enthusiastically and announced to appear once in the study, regularly, tells Michael Wildt, HU historian and organizer of the series, on the edge of the opening on Tuesday. Studied Simon from the late ‘ 60s history and Oriental studies. At HU, and in Prague, he completed his doctorate on Sasanian coins and was then until 1985, curator of the coin Cabinet of the National museums in Berlin.

His “Baby” was the Centrum Judaicum

a midwife for the Jewish history of Berlin has been Surviving Simon, the son of a Holocaust, 1988, in the Ephraim-Palais opened exhibition “And teaches you: memory”. In the same year, then the rescue of 1943 severely damaged a synagogue in the Oranienburger Straße. Director of the Foundation New synagogue – Centrum Judaicum is Hermann Simon. “My Baby,” he calls this place the Information of the exhibitions and of the lived Jewish life. 21. April is the proud father is 70 years – and is, of course, as a researcher and publicist, was not the rest.

So, Hermann Simon, was able to open his series of lectures for yourself – a workshop report on research to Annemarie Schierz, “Sorbian-Catholic Jew”. To show how yields of local Jewish history in the 21st century. It may not be, by asking questions that can only be today, would Simon do not have to travel to the Lausitz. However, the fate of the 1918 as the illegitimate daughter of a young Jewish in Dresden in the Sorbian Horka-born Annemarie accompanied him since 1990, as Simon reported.

Irritating write-up as a “Sorbian-Catholic Jew,”

at the Time, he wanted to investigate the relationship between the Sorbs and Jews, and came across the literary narrative of a local poet on those Annemarie Schierz. The Sorbian is the author of the book was untranslated and Simon lost his theme from the eyes. Until he was invited in the summer of last year by a Left-deputies in the Saxon Parliament to a memorial service for Annemarie Schierz.

Since then, Simon tries to reconstruct her life and to Die – in spite of and beyond what a home researcher, and a young scientists of the TU Dresden have developed. Because of the ever-present write-up as a “Sorbian-Catholic Jew” irritating, says Simon. The mother-in Horka abandoned girl adopted by a Sorbian peasant woman and grew up her and her brother, she regarded as a father.

A stumbling block in the village, and Resistances up to today

she speaks Sorbian, wearing costume, is baptized, and gefirmt. In 1934, however, she chooses the local, according to Tradition, Esther as Firmnamen. Hermann Simon is convinced that this was a commitment to their Jewish origin. But even without this it was in Horka well not only in national socialism, “the Jew” – no matter how good the girl integrated in the Sorbian community. But how can the NS-bureaucracy captured in the remote Village, as rescue attempts of their adoptive family failed – and what are the responsible persons? – trying to fathom Hermann Simon in archives and Visits in the village.
in 1942, lost track of her, apparently after she had to report to the Gestapo in Dresden. Although since 2014, in front of the HOMESTEAD of the family is a stumbling block for Annemarie, meets Simon on Resistors. Now he wished to ask the parish priest to ask from the pulpit to erhellendem Knowledge and Material. “Because the only appropriate souvenir is your destiny to educate,” says the historian in the Senate hall of the HU and outlines in order for the job to Jewish history as a whole.
The next date – Tuesday, 16. April, from 16 clock at the Hausvogteiplatz 5-7 – comes close to Simon’s Alma Mater. Annette Leo tries to clarify the question: “in 1969, anti – Semitic tones in the Humboldt University?”

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Centrum Judaicum “That’s my Baby”

Claudia Keller

the programme of the lecture series.