Ruth Weiss (1924 – 2025) – In memoriam

Photo: Alexander Paul Englert

Journalist, author and civil rights activist Ruth Weiss passed away on 5 September 2025 aged 101. Born in Fürth in 1924, she emigrated to South Africa with her Jewish family in 1936, where she developed a keen political awareness and spoke out against apartheid, racism and colonialism.

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Dr. Vincent C. Frank Steiner (1930–2025) – In memoriam

Photo: Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933-1945 der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

Dr. Vincent C. Frank-Steiner, who spent his life campaigning for remembrance of the Holocaust and those forced into exile, died in Basel on 6 February 2025. Vincent Frank-Steiner had close ties with the German Exile Archive spanning several decades. He procured numerous collections for the Exile Archive and bequeathed his own archive to the Exile Archive's collection while he was still alive.

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Hans Günter Flieg (1923–2024) – in memoriam

Photo: Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933-1945 der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

Photographer Hans Günter Flieg died in São Paulo, Brazil, on 4 September 2024 aged 101.

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Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer (1928–2024) – in memoriam

Foto: DNB/Sylvia Asmus

We are mourning the loss of Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer. The famous US-American sex therapist died on 12 July 2024 in New York City. She was 96 years old.

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Guy Stern (1922–2023) – in memoriam

Foto: Moondog Studio/Anja Jahn

We are mourning the loss of Guy Stern. Professor Guy Stern died in Michigan USA on 7 December 2023.

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Trude Simonsohn (1921-2022) – in memoriam

On 6 January 2022, Trude Simonsohn died at the age of 100. The German Exile Archive 1933-1945 enjoyed close, long-standing ties with Trude Simonsohn. As a survivor of the Theresienstadt and Auschwitz concentration camps, she worked with great commitment for reconciliation and against forgetting.

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“Child Emigration from Frankfurt am Main. Stories of rescue, loss and remembrance”

The catalogue has been published to accompany the exhibition “Child emigration from Frankfurt” by the German Exile Archive 1933-1945 and the inauguration of the monument “The Orphan Carousel” by artist Yael Bartana near Frankfurt Central Station.

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Questionnaires as a source for researching German-speaking exile – using Alfred Kantorowicz as an example

“Never again will I fill out a questionnaire, no matter which institution it comes from – there comes a time when enough is enough,” wrote jurist, writer and literary scholar Alfred Kantorowicz to librarian and exile researcher Ernst Loewy in November 1975.

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Professor Dr. John M. Spalek (1928-2021) in memoriam

Photo: Dr. Sylvia Asmus

Professor Dr. John M. Spalek died in Philadelphia on 5 June 2021.
John M. Spalek was a leading light in exile research. In his case this description is no exaggeration. For many decades, he dedicated himself to researching the German exile in the USA. He did this in a variety of ways: by editing publications that have since become standard works in exile research, but also through indefatigable collecting of original documents that are invaluable to the researching of exile.

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Lieselotte Maas (1937-2020) – In memoriam

The exile researcher and author Lieselotte Maas passed away on 7 November 2020 at the age of 83. Lieselotte Maas had close ties to the German Exile Archive 1933-1945 as a former employee and researcher in this field.

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Ruth Klüger (1931-2020) – in memoriam

Ruth Klüger passed away in the night from 5 to 6 October 2020. With her multi-award-winning publications “weiter leben” (“living on”) and “unterwegs verloren” (“lost in transit”) in particular, Ruth Klüger created a special form of remembrance.

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"What should I cook?" Recipes from the German Exile Archive 1933-1945

For those in exile, this everyday question often assumed a fundamental importance that had to do with much more than merely preparing delicious food to eat. Cooking is an element of culture.

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Hellmut Stern (1928-2020) - In memoriam

On 21 March, violinist Hellmut Stern died in Berlin at the age of 91. Hellmut Stern was one of the contemporary witnesses interviewed by the German Exile Archive and the broadcast journalist Jochanan Shelliem between April 2013 and August 2014 regarding their flight from National Socialist Germany and their experience of exile.

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Thomas Mann: German listeners! – listening station on the topic of exile outside our Frankfurt building

On the forecourt of the German National Library in Frankfurt, the German Exile Archive 1933-1945 of the German National Library inaugurated a listening station on the topic of exile on 17 December 2019.

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Publication of exhibition catalogue “Exile. Experience and Testimony”

The richly illustrated catalogue of the permanent exhibition “Exile. Experience and Testimony” organised by the German Exile Archive has now been published by Göttinger Wallstein Verlag.

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Focusing on the topic of exile – the history magazine "Damals" ("Yesteryear") is published in collaboration with the German Exile Archive 1933–1945

The issue 02/2019 of the history magazine "Damals" is dedicated to the topic of exile. It was created in collaboration with the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 at the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main.

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Dora Schindel (1915–2018) – In memoriam

On 11 January 2018, Dora Schindel died in Bonn aged 102. Born in Munich, Dora Schindel was closely associated with the German National Library’s German Exile Archive 1933–1945 for many years – as a contemporary witness, as a contributor, and not least as a highly esteemed friend.

After the Nazis came to power, Dora Schindel worked with scholar and politician Hermann M. Görgen to organise the emigration of 48 endangered persons to Brazil. The “Görgen group” included novelist Susanne Bach, writer Ulrich Becher, biologist Alfred Goldschmidt, publicist Walter Kreiser and musician Georg Wassermann. Dora Schindel remained in Brazil until 1955. After she returned to Germany, the promotion of intercultural dialogue between both countries became her life's work. Until her death, Dora Schindel was an honorary member of the executive committee of the Deutsch-Brasilianische Gesellschaft (German-Brazilian Association) and the Latin American centre.

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Werner Berthold (1921–2017) – In memoriam

Werner Berthold died on 29 March 2017 in Frankfurt am Main. From 1959 to 1984 Mr Berthold was head of what is now the German Exile Archive 1933-1945 of the German National Library. Through exhibitions and publications and through his work on various committees he prompted research into the study of German-speaking exile in Germany.

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Rolf Kralovitz (1925 - 2015) – In memoriam

On 21 June 2015, a few days after his 90th birthday, Rolf Kralovitz died in Cologne. At the end of last year, he donated further documents to the German Exile Archive at the German National Library to add to the existing collections focusing on Walter Meckauer, Brigitte Kralovitz-Meckauer and himself.

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Buddy Elias – In memoriam

On 16 March 2015, the Swiss actor Buddy Elias died in Basel aged 89. Well known from film and TV productions, the actor was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1925. He and his family emigrated to Switzerland in 1931.

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Arts in Exile – virtual exhibition and network

There are many reasons why people leave their native country, and not all of them are due to political persecution. The effects that exile has on art and artists are just as varied as the reasons for leaving. The virtual exhibition "Arts in Exile" explores these effects. Its mission is to show the many facets of exile for arti

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Brigitte Kralovitz-Meckauer (1925–2014) – in memoriam

“When I was 5, I lived with my parents in Germany; when I was 10, I lived in Italy; when I was 15, in France; when I was 20, in Switzerland: when I was 25, in the USA; and when I was 30, I was again living in Germany. After that, my husband – whom I married in New York – and I lived in Munich and have spent the last few decades in Cologne, where we have found a new home. No-one who didn’t know us intimately would ever guess at our turbulent past,” wrote Brigitte Kralovitz-Meckauer in the foreword to her memoirs “Summary of my life”. (Photo: © Photo-PINI-Optik, Munich)

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Ludwig Werner Kahn - 100th birthday

Ludwig Werner Kahn was born on 18 October 1910 in Berlin. After attending the Fichte Gymnasium in Berlin, Kahn studied German, English, Romance languages and philosophy in Berlin, London, Paris and Bern, where he was awarded a doctorate in 1934 for his thesis on Shakespeare’s sonnets in Germany.

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Goethe Medal and honorary membership of the Gesellschaft für Exilforschung e.V. awarded to Professor John M. Spalek

Prof. Dr. John M. Spalek has been a leading figure in the field of research into German-speaking exile in the USA for nearly forty years. He has been closely associated with the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 at the German National Library since the early 1970s. To date, Spalek has contributed 89 estates and partial estates from academics, publicists, authors and artists exiled in the USA to the German Exile Archive 1933–1945.

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"Nestor of German finance" - Fritz Neumark's 110th birthday

Fritz Neumark, who became known as the “Nestor of German finance” (FAZ, 13 March 1991) and the “most influential German financier of the postwar era” (FAZ, 19 July 1990), was born on 20 July 1990 in Hanover – 110 years ago. After studying national economics, which he had taken up at the University of Jena under the influence of economist and social policy expert Gerhard Kessler, Neumark was awarded a doctorate in Jena in 1921 for his thesis Begriff und Wesen der Inflation (The Concept and Nature of Inflation).

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Book donation for the German National Library

Private collector Rüdiger Harms, who lives in Bochum, has made a generous donation of books to the German National Library for its exile collections. In all, 40 different translations dating from before 1950 have been added to the collection. Many of the books still have their rare original wrappers and are a superb addition to the existing holdings in Frankfurt and Leipzig.

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"A prisoner of Stalin and Hitler" - 20 years since the death of Margarete Buber-Neumann

Margarete Buber-Neumann, née Margarete Thüring, was born in Potsdam on 21 October 1901. She came from a middle-class Protestant family. In 1919, after completing her schooling at the Lyceum, she began training as an early childhood teacher at the Pestalozzi-Fröbel-Haus in Berlin while completing an internship at “Der Lindenhof”, Karl Wilker's facility for juvenile delinquents. Margarete Buber-Neumann was later to state that this work was among the experiences that caused her to develop an interest in socialism and later in Communism.

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The founder of futurology – the 100th birthday of Ossip K. Flechtheim

The most important personal estates acquired by the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 at the German National Library over the last decade include that of politologist Ossip K. Flechtheim. Flechtheim, who coined the term “futurology”, is seen as the founder of a form of humanist democratic future research that he saw as a counterweight to technocratic development.

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On the death of lyricist Emma Kann

On 19 January 2009, lyricist Emma Kann died in Konstanz at the age of 94.

Born on 25 May 1914 in Frankfurt am Main, where she also grew up, Emma Kann emigrated to England after obtaining her university matriculation qualification in 1933; here she lived in Brighton and London. She left England in 1936 and first went to Antwerp, where she had found employment. “At Christmas 1936, on my way to visit my mother in Frankfurt, I was refused entry at the German-Belgian border despite having a valid passport. The official showed me my name on the list he had to follow. In 1937, my German passport was no longer renewed. [...] That meant I had to escape before the German army got to Antwerp.” (Emma Kann: Meine Erinnerungen an das Lager Gurs [My Memories of the Camp in Gurs]. In: Exil, XV (1995), 2, p. 25).

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Nestor of exile research 1933–1945 in the USA - the 80th birthday of Prof. Dr. John M. Spalek

Prof. Dr. John M. Spalek has been a leading figure in the field of research into German-speaking exile in the USA for nearly forty years. After completing his degree in German Studies at Stanford University, California, John M. Spalek worked at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and the State University of New York in Albany. As early as the beginning of the 1970s, he began locating and classifying materials from German-speaking emigrants in the USA.

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Pre-mortem legacy of politologist John G. Stoessinger in the German Exile Archive 1933-1945

The estates and archives that Professor John M. Spalek has had transferred to the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 during the last year include the pre-mortem legacy of politologist and UN official John G. Stoessinger. Small in volume but rich in content, this collection documents the most important milestones in Stoessinger’s life and his work as an academic and publicist.

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Lili Cassel Wronker: A London Diary, 1939-1940

The German Exile Archive 1933–1945 has received documents from Lili Cassel Wronker.

The bundle of documents left to the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 by Lili Cassel Wronker primarily contains interesting documents from her exile in England. Born on 5 May 1924 in Berlin, Lili Cassel, who attended the private Jewish school Waldschule Kaliski from 1936 to 1938, emigrated to England in 1938 with her sister Evi but without her parents.

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Chronicler of her century – 90th birthday of Anja Lundholm

On 28 April 2008, the writer Anja Lundholm, who died in Frankfurt am Main in August 2007, would have celebrated her 90th birthday. In her books, the author, who during the Nazi era was persecuted for being a resistance fighter and “half-Jew”, became a “witness to the horror and a chronicler of the biggest catastrophe of the 20th century” (Spiegel online).

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Reichsausbürgerungskartei

Card index of expatriated persons. - Berlin: Chiefs of the SS and the German Police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior.
Call number: 1938 A 8858

For a long time, they were thought to have been lost; now the 14 file boxes of the Ausbürgerungskartei are back in the German National Library’s collection. The Federal Archive in Berlin took over these boxes from the records of the GDR Ministry of the Interior; the Soviet military administration had presumably removed them from the Deutsche Bücherei’s holdings in 1945. As it could be proved that they were the property of the Deutsche Bücherei, the 14 file boxes were returned to the German National Library. They were restored in the Library's own workshops and are now available for use in the collection of exile literature 1933–1945 housed in Leipzig.

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Hans Gustav Güterbock

The German Exile Archive 1933–1945 has acquired the extensive estate of Hittite scholar Hans Gustav Güterbock (1908–2000). With the support of the Hertie Foundation, the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 has been able to add the estate of the leading Hittite scholar Hans Gustav Güterbock to its collection as part of its cooperation with John M. Spalek. After studying Assyriology in Berlin, Leipzig and Marburg, Güterbock, who came from Berlin, worked at the Museum of the Ancient Near East in Berlin from 1933 to 1935. During this time, he also took part in archaeological digs in Boghazköy, Anatolia, under the direction of Kurt Bittel.

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Geneviève Pitot: The Mauritian-Shekel

Even in the field of exile research, it is little known that the island nation of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean also became a refuge for Central European Jews persecuted by the Nazi regime who in 1940 had tried to cross the Danube and the Black Sea to get to Palestine. After they had passed through great danger to reach the port of Haifa, the British Mandate for Palestine stopped them from landing and sent them on to Mauritius on board two Dutch ships.

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