The pity of it all — demise of the cultured Lewi family
Germans of Mosaic faith
Among the five Lewi siblings were a composer, a painter and a mathematician—exemplars of a cultured German Jewry that stayed true to the bitter end
Act 1 - A culture of learning
Act II - The bitter end
The pity of it all — demise of the cultured Lewi family
Act 1–A culture of learning
Jewish culture in Danzig and Berlin –
The Great Synagogue in Danzig was dismantled by the Nazi government in 1939
The five Lewi siblings were the heirs of a grand German Jewish cultural tradition. Born into a Danzig merchant family in the 1870s, the Lewi children were drawn to education, science and the arts.
Three of them who followed their muse epitomized the heights of cultural achievement attained by this generation of acculturated German Jews.
The pity of it all, in the phrase of scholar Amos Elon, is that such shining achievements could be snuffed out so readily in the aberration of history that followed.
The pity of it all — demise of the cultured Lewi family
Act 1–A culture of learning
Heirs to a grand tradition –
The Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah, flourished in the Prussian city of Danzig, where a mostly modern Jewish community embraced German culture and society, while also retaining its individual identity
The five Lewi siblings were the children of a prosperous Danzig family, born to Hugo Lewi and Emilie Kleemann between 1871 and 1876.
Two of the female siblings married and they each had one child. The other siblings—a musician, a painter and a mathematician—never married and stayed true to their art, and their country, until the bitter end..
Of the five siblings, only Rosa Lewi Feidt survived the cataclysm that ended Jewish existence in Germany and Prussia.
The pity of it all — demise of the cultured Lewi family
Act 1–A culture of learning
Minna Lewi, painter and sculptor –
Paintings by Minna Lewi exhibited at the Israel Museum
Except for a brief 'robel tobel' on holiday, Minna resisted marriage lest it interfere with her professional life as an artist.
Minna had her studio in Berlin-Wilmersdorf at Achenbachstrasse 5. We still hve her painting of the snow-covered scene, the view from her window in winter.
Another view from a window, the one from the alcove in the Feidt residence above the Kaufhaus, is shown on the cover of the book.
Minna Lewi's work was shown in major exhibitions in Hamburg (1910) and Bermen (1912).
Her painting Houses in a rural setting at Lüneberg was sold to a collector in 1995. A sculpture Male Nude with Ball sold at auction in 2003.
Her portraits and scenes in which she specialized, as well as her sculpted bronzes, leave no doubt as to her talent.
The pity of it all — demise of the cultured Lewi family
Act 1–A culture of learning
Hedwig Lewi, mathematician –
Hedwig Lewi worked under physicist Max Planck at Friedrich Wilhelm's Universität
Long before the general emancipation of women, Hedwig distinguished hersef by gaining a doctorate and then working under the physicist Max Planck at the University of Berlin.
Planck taught in Berlin from 1889 to 1928; it was Planck who first evolved the quantum theory, which was further developed by Albert Einstein working with Planck.
We do not know the exact extent of Hedwig's involvement with quantum theory but she was certainly part of it and these must have been exciting times.
The pity of it all — demise of the cultured Lewi family
Act 1–A culture of learning
Gustav Lewi, composer and pianist –
Performance of songs Gustav Lewi, exil.arte Konzertreihe Echo des Unerhörten, Ethel Merhaut, soprano, Sándor Károlyi, piano
Gustav suffered terribly from asthma, the reason he never married.
He was apprenticed to his mother's brother, uncle Theodor Kleemann, to learn the tea and coffee import business.
But he would secretly write music under the lid of his desk until he was allowed to give up a business career to concentrate on music.
Gustav's career brought him considerable prosperity, evidenced by his residence on the elegant, tree-lined Kurfürstendamm.
In May 2018, a concert of his music was broadcast from Vienna and Berlin.
The pity of it all — demise of the cultured Lewi family
Act 1–A culture of learning
Rosa Feidt and Fränze Lewi –
Two other sisters followed more conventional paths
Two other sisters followed more conventional paths.
Rosa Lewi married Moritz Feidt, an entrepreneurial department store owner in the mold of Rosa's merchant family members. Their son Gerhard Feidt later took over the business.
Rosa escaped Germany in 1938 to live out her years as a emigre in London.
Franziska Lewi married her cousin Alfred Lewi, from a branch of the family that had converted as Protestants. Neither cousin marriages nor inter-religion marriages were outside the norms of the time.
Religious conversion and intermarriage were of little concern to the Nazis. Alfred, Fränze and their daughter Annie were equally subject to the racial laws.
Fränze and her husband were deported in 1942 and perished at Theresienstadt. Annie made it out and later married in the United States.
The pity of it all — demise of the cultured Lewi family
Act II–The bitter end
The Nazi repressions hit home –
Within days of his election, Hitler set about dismantling all the constitutional safeguards of democracy in Germany. The repressions hit home on every Jewish family in ways large and small.
For the artistic Lewi siblings, their professional opportunities were severely restricted.
• We don't know about Hede's career at this point, but she would no longer have been able to hold a university position.
• Minna lost her representation by a Kurfurstendamm art gallery and later sold her paintings only through a Jewish dealer.
• Gustav could not perform or publish under his Lewi name, so he continued to work under an alias—Gustav Leonhardt—for several more years.
The pity of it all — demise of the cultured Lewi family
Act II–The bitter end
Rosa departs with her Feidt family –
The Lewi siblings were all in their sixties now. Except for Rosa, who followed her son to England, the others declined to seek a new life abroad.
They felt too old, too weak and simply not prepared to face the upheavals of emigration and the rigors of starting over.
Rosa said goodbye in 1938, months before the tragedy of Kristallnacht and the ensuing desperation for Jews still left behind in Berlin.
She lived out her days among other Jewish refugees in a district of London.
The pity of it all — demise of the cultured Lewi family
Act II–The bitter end
Deportations of the Jews of Berlin –
Platform 17 memorial in Berlin-Grünewald
The deportations of Jews from Berlin to ghettos and killing centers in eastern Europe began in October 1941. By the following year, elderly Jews from Berlin were included among those deported to Thereseinstadt and elsewhere.
Thousands of Jews remained in Berlin, mostly those who had gone into hiding and also part-Jews and Jews with a non-Jewish spouse, who were initially excluded from deportation.
Almost all of those deported were killed. Hundreds of Jews committed suicide rather than submit to the deportations.
By June 1942, Minna and Hede Lewi had already seen many of their friends sent away. Now they received an order themselves.
The pity of it all — demise of the cultured Lewi family
Act II–The bitter end
Seeking refuge during the last days in Berlin –
The building on Mommsenstrasse where Hede and Gustav Lewi took refuge
Alfred Lewi and Fränze owned a flat at Berlin-Charlottenburg 4, Mommsenstrasse 31, around the corner from the Wilmersdorferstrasee where they lived for most of their married life. They were recorded on Mommsenstrasse in the 1939 census.
Sometime after that, seeking security, Gustav and Hede moved in with them there. But it was only to be a temporary respite. In May 1941, Alfred and Fränze moved on to Bambergerstrasse 41, the address from which they would be deported the following year.
Minna had given up her longtime studio on Achenbachstrasse and retreated to an address at Berlin-Schöneberg, Courbierestrasse 1 with a family by the name of Polke. First Hede and then Gustav moved in with her there.
But Gustav fell ill and was cared for over a period of months in the Jewish Hospital in Berlin. He passed away of natural causes on September 30, 1941. Rosa received the news three months later In London, relayed from Annie in America.
The pity of it all — demise of the cultured Lewi family
Act II–The bitter end
Taking charge of their own destiny –
Official record of the Berlin Jewish Community of the deaths of Minna and Hedwig Lewi
Minna and Hede received notification at Courbierstrasse that they too were to be deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp.
On July 3, 1942, the birthday of their beloved sister Rosa, they both took an overdose of Veronal (atropine) sleeping tablets, a barbiturate that was given to them by a sympathetic pharmacist.
They were found dead on their beds, having poisoned themselves rather than obey the summons to get on the cattle cars.
Fränze and Alfred were among 1000 other elderly Berliners on the August 17 transport to Theresienstadt. They survived there a few months, perishing the following January and March, respectively.
Rosa did not receive the news of her siblings' deaths until 1948 when a survivor tracing service turned up the truth of their fate.
The pity of it all — demise of the cultured Lewi family
Act II–The bitter end
Community burial at Weissensee –
Gravesite of Minna and Hedwig Lewi in Weissensee cemetery in Berlin
The Jewish community of Berlin, still functional in July 1942, took responsibility for the burial of the Lewi sisters.
They are interred in a double grave in a section of Weissensee cemetery used during the deportation years, 1941-1943.
As many as one-third of the burials during this period were for suicide victims.
The pity of it all — demise of the cultured Lewi family
Act II–The bitter end
The pity of it all –
The Pity of It All, by Amos Elon, was published in 2002
Minna, Hede and Gustav Lewi are representative of the intellectual and artistic culture that took root and flourished in Germany over several centuries, reaching its height in the pre-Nazi Weimar period.
Assimilated German Jews embraced the highest values of German culture and made immeasurable contributions in every area of the arts, science, and intellectual life.
The pity of it all is not just what was lost but also what might have been.
The end
The extended Lewi family in Dahlem, Berlin in December 1937
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