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III. Buildings Integral to the Former Life and/or Persecution of Jews in Hamburg - Rotherbaum II/Harvestehude.No. 1 Edmund-Siemers-Allee, Hamburg University Main Building.
The University of Hamburg is one of Germany's more recently established universities. Its establishment was not documented in a sovereign foundation charter but in the plain "Amtsblatt" (Gazette) of the Free and Hansa Town Hamburg of 1st April 1919. However, the origins of the university go back to the beginning of the 17th century. In 1613, the "Akademische Gymnasium" was founded in Hamburg. This institution was seen as an intermediate stage between school and university: two terms, i.e. one year, of general education lectures were provided before the graduates went on to specialize. In 1883, the "Akademische Gymnasium" had to close due to an insufficient number of students; however, a reorganized "Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen" remained in 1895. The businessman Edmund Siemers donated the Vorlesungsgebäude (Lecture Building) for this purpose, which was opened in 1911, in the street that was later to carry his name: Edmund-Siemers-Allee. Dedicated to DER FORSCHUNG, DER LEHRE, DER BILDUNG (Research, Teaching, Education). Today, the building serves as the university main building. Beside lectures for the lay public there were in-service training courses for particular professions: for prospective members of the clergy, government officials, customs officials, general practitioners, businessmen, pharmacists and teachers. Certain figures show the popularity of this Vorlesungswesen (lectures): in the winter term of 1913/14, 207 lecturers held 300 courses, and 4,300 "Vorlesungsverzeichnisse" (lecture timetables) were sold. In the 19th century, beside the "Akademische Gymnasium" numerous scientific institutes had evolved, e.g. the Botanic Garden (1821), the Observatory (1833), the State Chemistry Laboratory (1878), the State Physics Laboratory (1885), the Laboratory for Warenkunde (1885), the Institute for Overseas and Tropical Illnesses (1900). Following the closure of the "Akademische Gymnasium" the directors of these "Wissenschaftlichen Anstalten" (scientific institutes) were committed to continue the public lectures. In 1892, these directors together with the lecturers appointed to the "Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen" formed a "Professorenkonvent" (convention of professors). The founding of the "Hamburgischen Wissenschaftlichen Stiftung" in 1907, and the Kolonialinstitut in 1908 were two sgnificant stages on the way to a university. The former concentrated on the recruitment of academic staff, the support of research expeditions and scientific publications. The Kolonialinstitut trained prospective colonial administrators for their work abroad. The "Zentralstelle" of the Kolonialinstitut functioned as a documentation and information centre for queries from the entire overseas world. The Hamburgische Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv is its successor. Although, at the beginning of the 20th century, Werner von Melle, as senator and later mayor of Hamburg, made the amalgamation of these institutes into a university his life's work, his plan was rejected by the Hamburg "Bürgerschaft" (parliament), which was elected under a class sytem of franchise. The majority voice was interested in restricting Hamburg to its dominant role of commercial metropolis, and shied away from both the cost and social status of its professors. It was due to individual initiatives immediately following the First World War that "Universitätskurse" (university courses) were established for the ex-soldiers. The democratically elected, newly constituted Hamburg Bürgerschaft (parliament) resolved in one of its first sessions to found a "Hamburgische Universität" (University of Hamburg). It was ceremonially opened on the 10th May 1919 in the Musikhalle (Concert Hall). In 1921, Werner von Melle was uniquely honoured as "rector magnificus honoris causa". Today, the main campus area is named after him: Von-Melle-Park. During the Weimar Republic the young university quickly acquired an international ranking in a number of disciplines due to its outstanding academic staff. Some of the eminent Jewish academics were the philosopher Ernst Cassirer, the psychologist William Stern, the jurist Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy, the Germanic philologist Agathe Lasch, and the art historian Erwin Panofsky.
The close liaison with institutions such as Aby Warburg's "Kulturwissenschaftlicher Bibliothek" (Study of Civilization Library), Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy's "Institut für Auswärtige Politik" (Institute for Foreign Policy), established new forms and content as well as collaboration between disciplines. The Nazi dictatorship terminated this short period of flowering, most brutally through the enforced dismissal of around 60 Jewish academics. There had always been a movement in the university directed against Jews fed by antisemitism and envy. In 1931, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund was the largest student group making up the self-governing student body. The enforced dismissal of Jewish academics was supported by a large number of university staff, who were only too ready to assume the vacated positions, or to merely passively accept the injustice. There were very few protests. Most victims went into exile, and the university degenerated into a provincial institution at which "Rassenkunde" ("racial science") was taught, and became an agency of propaganda which proffered a pseudo-scientific justification for the Nazi regime. Today, there are commemorative busts of the psychologist William Stern, the philosopher Ernst Cassirer, the physical chemist Otto Stern, and a plaque commemorating the student members of the Hamburg branch of the "Wießen Rose", the resistence members who lost their lives. Initially there were four faculties: Jurisprudence and Political Science, Medicine, Philosophy, and Natural Sciences. The requirements for the establishment of the faculty of medicine existed in the well equipped hospital in Eppendorf, that had acquired high repute beyond Hamburg during the Cholera epidemic at the end of the 19th century. As shameful as the conduct of the university staff between 1933 and 1945 was, the means in which this period was treated over the decades following the war was equally so. This dark chapter was practically never referred to in any of the commemorative volumes of the university or its institutes. Accademics who had compliantly served the Nazis further pursued their careers. It took until the beginning of the 1990s, following public protest, before the university set about revoking the dispossession of the Ph.D. titles of 59 Jewish academics. Many of the opportunists benefitted from substancial pensions, while the victims were forgotten. For the first time, after almost fifty years, there is an intensive effort being made to examine and portray this scandalous period in the history of the university. For the victims this has come too late, and the sympathizers and opportunists have been able to complete their careers as though nothing had ever occured.
Lecture halls have been named after Agathe Lasch and Ernst Cassirer:
Roads have been named after William Stern, Ernst Cassirer and Agathe Lasch: It is through the examination of the work and influence of such individuals as Ernst Cassirer that the liberal, democratic spirit of the University of Hamburg can be strengthened.
Ernst Cassirer (28th July 1874 Breslau, Lower Silesia, Germany - 13th April 1945, New York City,
USA):
Ernst Cassirer was born in Breslau on the 28th July 1874. Up until the Second World War, members of branches of the Cassirer family, throughout Germany, were renown businessmen, doctors and publishers. Ernst Cassirer was not brought up religiously, and although he later mastered many laguages, Hebrew was not one of them. He studied at the universities of Berlin, Leipzig and Heidelberg, and at Marburg where he was a follower of Herman Cohen's neo-Kantianism. He gained his Ph.D. in 1899. Returning to Berlin he met his cousin Toni Bond from Vienna, who he married in 1902. He unsuccessfully applied for academic positions. Following such an unsuccessful application in Straßburg he wrote to a friend: "H i e r hat man nun direkt gesagt, daß es der Jude ist, den man ablehnt." ("Here I was directly told that I had been rejected because I was a Jew"). The family, who now had three children, were dependent upon the financial support of wealthy relatives. The acceptance as private lecturer at the University of Berlin in 1906 was deemed a success considering the prevailing circumstances, but was anything but financially worthwhile. At least Cassirer had time for his own academic work, and to publish a ten volume edition of Immanuel Kant's work. During the First World War he worked as a civil servant. After the First World War there arose better opportunities for Jewish academics. In 1913 he was appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Hamburg. He was greeted by right-wing students calling for a boycott of Jewish professors, which however received a negligible response. Cassirer quickly became a popular teacher. An account of his lecturing states: "Cassirers Vorlesungen bewirkten nicht nur einen reichen Zuwachs an kenntnissen und Erkenntnissen bei seinen Hören .. jede seine Vorlesungen war zudem ein ästhetisches Erlebnis. Er sprach in der Regel gänzlich frei. Vor Beginn seiner Vorlesungen legte er zwar ein Konzept vor sich auf das Rednerpult, hat es aber kaum jemals benutzt." (Cassirer's lectures were not only informative and stimulating ... in addition each lecture was an aesthetic experience. He usually spoke without notes. Before he began he placed his notes on the lectern, but then rarely referred to them). Cassirer found friendship and deserved recognition in the Jewish culture historian Aby Warburg who was stimulated by similar philosophical questions. In 1926, Cassirer gave the inaugural address for the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg. He spoke about "Freiheit und Notwendigkeit in der Philosophie der Renaissance (Freedom and Necessity in Renaissance Philosophy), a theme that Aby Warburg also saw as of central philosophical significance. When, in 1928, Cassirer was offered a chair at the University of Berlin, Aby Warburg did everything in his power to keep his friend in Hamburg. He was successful, and Cassirer remained in Hamburg and was elected rector of the university for the 1929/30 academic year. He was the first and only Jew to be elected rector of a German university before the Second World War. When on 18th January 1930 he initiated an academic celebration to commemorate the establishment of the Second Reich, the first such celebration at the university, as expected it was boycotted by a now powerful NS-Studentenbund. "Recht ist was dem Führer dient!" ("The law is that which serves the Führer!") resounded only a few days after the Nazis had come to power. The philosopher Ernst Cassirer warned: "Wenn morgen nicht alle Rechtsgelehrten Deutschlands sich wie ein Mann erheben und gegen diesen Paragarhen protestieren, ist Deutschland verloren." ("When, tomorrow, all German jurists do not rise as one man and protest against this paragraph, Germany is lost"). The only thing the majority of jurists did was to raise their arms in the Hitler salute. Ernst Cassirer knew before most others that it would not take a thousand years before the disaster struck. The family fled to Vienna on the 12th March 1933 and at the beginning of October 1933 to Oxford University, England, where he taught philosophy at All Souls College. In Autumn 1935 he undertook a lecture tour of Sweden from which he became professor at the University of Göteborg. The Cassirers learnt Swedish and soon Ernst Cassirer presented his lectures in Swedish, and became so respected that he was made member of the Royal Academy in Stockholm. However, despite all honours presented him Ernst Cassirer, and his wife Toni, far from home, were "nicht mehr der alte" ("no longer the same"). In October 1940, having in the meantime become a Swedish national, he had to cease teaching having reached retirement age. There then came the opportune offer from Yale University, in the USA, of a two-year guest professorship. At great risk Cassirer and his wife sailed to the USA.
Ernst Cassirer taught a third year at Yale University (1941-44), to the delight of the students,
but for him out of financial necessity, as having renounced German nationality he had relinqished
his pension rights. In 1944, Cassirer was 70 years old and the guest professorship could not be
further prolonged. Friends secured a one-year guest professorship for him at Columbia University, in
New York (1944-45). Following that it was planned for him to teach a year ar a university in Los
Angeles, but he died of heart failure on 13th April 1945.
Academic Work: In anothersignificant work: Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff, 1910 (Substance and Function, 1923), he treated the related topic of concept formation. Attacking the view that a concept is formed by abstracting from a number of particular instances, he argued that the concept, as an instrument in organizing human knowledge, is already pre-existent before any taske involving the classification of particulars can even be performed. After examining the various forms of man's cultural expression, he concluded that man is essentially characterized by his symbolizing activity. As an intellectual historian, he wrote Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance, 1927 (Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, 1964), and Philosophie der Aufklärung, 1932 (Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1951).
Literature: J. M. Krois/G. Lohse/R. Nocolaysen, Die Wissenschaftler Ernst Cassirer, Bruno Snell, Siegfried Landshut, Hamburgische Lebensbilder, Verein für Hamburgische Geschichte, Hamburg, 1994. E. Krause, Auch der unbequemen Wahrheit verpflichtet, Der lange Weg der Universität Hamburg zu ihrer Geschichte im "Dritten Reich", in P. Reichel (Hrsg.), Das Gedächtnis der Stadt, Dölling und Galitz Verlag, Hamburg, 1997. Ernst Loewenberg, Aus der Arbeit der Hamburger Jüdischen Gemeinde nach 1933, in Fremd in der eigenen Stadt. Erinnerungen j³discher Emigranten aus Hamburg. Hrs. Charlotte Ueckert-Hilbert, Junius, Hamburg, 1989. Cassirer, Toni: Mein Leben mit Ernst Cassirer, Hildesheim, Gerstenberg, 1981.
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