New Digital Platform Celebrates Else Lasker-Schüler

Lasker-Schüler, one of Germany's greatest poets, fled to Jerusalem in the 1930s. "Poetic Textures: Else Lasker-Schüler Archives. An Online Platform" offers digital access to a large portion of her literary and artistic legacy.

Else Lasker-Schüler in 1919, the Abraham Schwadron Portrait Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

Else Lasker-Schüler (1869-1945) is considered to be one of the greats of German poetry, a bohemian artist who corresponded with many of the most prominent cultural figures of her time including Albert Einstein, Martin Buber and Thomas Mann. She fled Nazi Germany to British Mandatory Palestine, ultimately settling in Jerusalem, where she lived a life of obscurity and poverty.

Poetic Textures: Else Lasker-Schüler Archives. An Online Platform” is a collaboration between Jerusalem’s National Library of Israel (NLI), home to Lasker-Schüler’s personal archive, and the German Literature Archive (DLA), home to a significant collection of her works. The platform, available in English, provides a window into the life and work of Lasker-Schüler, offering digital access for the first time to a large portion of her physically scattered literary and artistic legacy, accompanied by explanatory and illuminating texts provided by leading experts.

Der zielende Blitz übt sich im Pfeil und Bogen vor, by Else Lasker-Schüler, 1940, the Else Lasker-Schüler Archive at the National Library of Israel

The materials on display reveal the deliberately hybrid forms of Lasker-Schuler’s work: manuscripts, letters, telegrams, fragments, collages and drawings, which reveal the dissolution of boundaries between life and art, writing and drawing, staged self and imaginary figures, even between German and Hebrew in tone, writing and illustration. The platform has been made possible with the generous support of Karl Albrecht.

An online event celebrating the launch of “Poetic Textures” will be held on Tuesday, July 14 at 19:00 Israel time / 18:00 German time.  The event is presented as a DLA – NLI collaboration, and as part of the “Gesher L’Europe” initiative to connect NLI with people, institutions and communities in Europe and beyond.

“Poetic Textures: Else Lasker-Schüler Archives. An Online Platform” is available at: www.laskerschuelerarchives.org.

 

 

The Else Lasker-Schüler Archive has been reviewed and described thanks to the generous support of The Leir Foundation.

 

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Feeling Israel: Helen Keller in the Holy Land

"I can't see you, but I feel you, and I know that you are happy, because you are in your homeland, which is being rebuilt."

Helen Keller carrying an infant, the village for the blind at Kfar Uriel, photo: Beno Rothenberg, the Meitar Collection

The name of Helen Keller is known today throughout the world for her personal struggle as a blind and deaf woman. She became a social activist, promoting awareness and working to integrate people with disabilities into society. In the early 1950s, she even visited the young State of Israel as part of a tour on behalf of the American Foundation for the Blind.

Helen Keller’s visit in Israel in May 1952 wasn’t only for the purpose of meeting politicians in the Knesset or Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in his home. Keller toured the country and met members of her community in Israel. “I can’t see you, but I feel you,” she conveyed through a hug to the children of Kibbutz Degania, who gathered around her car. “I know that you are happy, because you are in your homeland, which is being rebuilt.”

Helen Keller (left) in a meeting with Labor Minister Golda Meir, photo: David Eldan, GPO

While visiting Jerusalem, Keller was impressed by the work being done at the Brandeis Center, where she received explanations regarding new methods of teaching the blind. She also visited the Hadassah nursing school. Keller was so impressed that she stated: “Israel is more advanced than the United States in its efforts to ease the suffering of the unfortunate.”

At the city’s Jewish Institute for the Blind (Beit Hinuch Le’Ivrim) a touching moment was documented, when Helen Keller walked through the door. “At the entrance to the house, the students of the institute handed her dozens of letters written in Braille, and Ms. Keller received their welcome as she hugged and kissed the students excitedly.” At the party held in her honor, Helen Keller couldn’t hide her exhilaration: “The dedicated care and work done to help the blind and deaf in this country, encourage me greatly, in my work for these people.”

Helen Keller’s car arrives at Kfar Uriel, photo: Beno Rothenberg, the Meitar Collection

A particularly interesting meeting took place at Kfar Uriel, which was actually founded as an experimental project, with the goal of integrating blind immigrants into various workplaces in nearby Gedera. Helen Keller visited the workshop in the village where, among other things, immigrants from Yemen and their families also worked, and was extremely impressed by what she encountered. She enjoyed meeting and talking with the blind Yemeni immigrants and encouraged them. At the local kindergarten, children greeted her with traditional songs. A Maariv reporter described the touching scene in Hebrew: “The deaf woman’s hands move in rhythm with the melody and you almost believe that she can hear. She places her hand on a toddler’s throat and ‘listens’ to the song. The child does not panic. A toddler hands her a bunch of daisies, receives a kiss from the elderly lady, and shyly blushes.”

Helen Keller visits Kfar Uriel, photo: Beno Rothenberg, the Meitar Collection

Another important stop on Keller’s tour was the city of Netanya, where she made a special visit to what is today known as the Central Library for Blind and Reading Impaired People. After welcoming all those present, Keller turned to the books, running her fingers over the Braille script. She browsed through a work written by Stefan Zweig and when she felt the author’s name, she remarked, “A pity he ended his life so tragically.”

An interesting interaction occurred during Keller’s chat with the mayor of Netanya, Oved Ben Ami. Keller urged the mayor to employ the blind in industrial factories, to make use of their talent and precision: “In the United States there are 257 professions in which the blind are employed!”

Helen Keller receiving flowers from a little girl at Kfar Uriel, photo: Beno Rothenberg, the Meitar Collection

Helen Keller summarized her fifteen-day visit to the Holy Land with inspiring and hopeful words addressed to Israel’s citizens: “I leave Israel greatly impressed by everything that is being done here. The flourishing cities, villages, and kibbutzim that are being built, the industrial factories and the happy, healthy faces of the children and youth – they all fill my heart with faith in Israel’s prospects for future development.”

 

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Rare Pictures: When the Haganah Trained on the Beaches of Tel Aviv

The Haganah's Camp Yona was located in northern Tel Aviv, on a site occupied by a luxurious hotel today; this was the location for a string of historic events, from the murder of Arlosoroff, to the shelling of the Altalena

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Photo: Benno Rothenberg, the Meitar Collection, courtesy of the Israel State Archives

In the archives of Benno Rothenberg, one of the most prominent photographers active during the early years of the State of Israel, is a series of pictures showing members of the Haganah military organization training at Camp Yona. The photo archive was recently scanned and is now preserved at the National Library of Israel, courtesy of the Meitar Collection. These photos of the men and women of the Haganah running, jumping, crawling, undergoing briefings or simply posing – together and individually – can today be viewed on the National Library website. The training drills took place in the “Old North” area of Tel Aviv, close to where the Hilton Hotel and Independence Park (Gan Ha’atzmaut) stand today. I became curious about the story of this camp, which not only hosted the Haganah training sessions, but also witnessed several notable affairs in Zionist history.

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Photo: Benno Rothenberg, the Meitar Collection, courtesy of the Israel State Archives

It wasn’t always the Haganah doing its training at Camp Yona. The camp came under the organization’s control in late 1947, when the British army withdrew from the area in December of that year. The Haganah quickly seized the vacated former British bases in Tel Aviv, which of course included the Sarona compound (which serves as the IDF’s central headquarters today – the “Kirya” base), as well as Camp Yona. Three days after the withdrawal, Yona Rasin, a Haganah commander, was killed on his way to Jerusalem. His comrades promptly named the vacated military base after him.

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Photo: Benno Rothenberg, the Meitar Collection, courtesy of the Israel State Archives

 

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Photo: Benno Rothenberg, the Meitar Collection, courtesy of the Israel State Archives

What happened before all that? In the early 20th century, the area served as a Muslim cemetery. The people of Jaffa, located further south on the coast, were suffering from a cholera epidemic and had to bury their dead far from the city (for the same reason, the Jewish cemetery on Trumpeldor Street was established at that time). In 1942, during World War II, the British set up a resort on the cliff for Royal Air Force pilots. Why here of all places? For the same reasons people wish to visit Tel Aviv today. The camp was located near the beach, in a town full of cafes, cultural events, festivities and of course – alcohol. British soldiers from all over the Middle East came to the stay at the resort for rest and recreation.

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Photo: Benno Rothenberg, the Meitar Collection, courtesy of the Israel State Archives

At the foot of the camp positioned on a kurkar cliff, lay the strip of sand known today as the Hilton Beach, named for the hotel which looms overhead. It was here that Sima and Haim Arlosoroff took a stroll along the water on the Friday night of June 16th, 1933, after leaving a café just to the south, where the Dan Hotel can be seen today. There, they spotted two strangers who had been following them for some time, when one of them pulled out a gun and shot Arlosoroff, then the head of the Jewish Agency’s political department, something akin to the Zionist movement’s foreign minister. The murder shook the Jewish community of Mandatory Palestine and fingers were pointed at members of the Revisionist movement.

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Photo: Benno Rothenberg, the Meitar Collection, courtesy of the Israel State Archives

Let’s fast forward a few years – 15 years, to be exact – to June, 1948. Off the coast of Tel Aviv, the ship known as Altalena ran aground after fleeing from Kfar Vitkin beach further north, where the confrontation with IDF forces had begun. In the ship’s hull was a load of weapons ordered by the Irgun for its soldiers. The IDF was ordered to stop the ship, using artillery fire. Where were the cannons that shelled the ship deployed? That’s right, at Camp Yona on the kurkar ridge. Another anecdote is that Abraham Stavsky, one of the Betar youth movement members accused of murdering Arlosoroff, was killed on the Altalena during the conflict.

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Photo: Benno Rothenberg, the Meitar Collection, courtesy of the Israel State Archives

 

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Photo: Benno Rothenberg, the Meitar Collection, courtesy of the Israel State Archives

By sheer coincidence, two key events in the bitter struggle between the Jewish community’s left-wing and right-wing camps occurred near the Haganah base which no longer exists. What else transpired at the historic location? New Haganah battalions were established at Camp Yona and it was here that numerous new recruits were first indoctrinated into the Haganah when the War of Independence broke out. Camp Yona was also used by the IDF’s medical corps in its early days. In addition, the Israeli army’s physical training and combat fitness training facilities, as well as the Physical Education School, were located at the camp until they were moved to the Wingate Institute in the 1950s.

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Photo: Benno Rothenberg, the Meitar Collection, courtesy of the Israel State Archives

During that decade and the next, a bitter dispute ensued between the Israeli government and the Tel Aviv municipality, which sought to evacuate the camp and build a large public park in its place. Ahead of Israel’s first Independence Day, half of Camp Yona was cleared away and in April 1949 the construction of Independence Park began. It was not until the early 1960s that the IDF cleared the entire area and the park was finally completed. The Hilton hotel was built on part of the land, where it stands to this day.

The photos in this article and other photos of the men and women of the Haganah at Camp Yona can be found here. If you recognize yourself or your relatives in these photos, please let us know in the comments below, or on Facebook or Twitter.

Many thanks to Peleg Levy and Modi Snir of the Toldot Yisrael project, for providing information that assisted in the writing of this article. Thank you as well to Dr. Nir Mann for his research.

 

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Book Diplomacy: Curt Wormann and the International Librarians

How the former director of the National Library of Israel played a key role in the "book diplomacy" of the 1950s and 60s...

Curt Wormann, former director of the Jewish National and University Library, is seen in the back row of this group photo (2nd from the right), along with directors of national libraries from such countries as Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey, among others. November, 1961, the Curt Wormann Archives at the National Library of Israel.

In November of 1961, at the peak of the Cold War, librarians from all over the world came to New York to take their seats in the United Nations Plenary Hall. It was as if the international body’s diplomats had been supplanted by an assortment of bookish types from the four corners of the Earth. Among those gathered was Curt Wormann, the longtime director of the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem. His archives allow an insight into the role played by a handful of leading international Librarians in the cultural politics of the 1950s and 1960s. But they also reveal another story: the internationalization and professionalization of Israeli librarianship against the backdrop of Cold War politics.

Essays and Studies in Librarianship: Presented to Curt David Wormann on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, edited by M. Nadav, J. Rothschild, Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1975

But why did Curt Wormann and his colleagues from around the world travel to the United Nations in 1961? Among the hundreds of folders which can be found in the Wormann archives, there is one that contains documents and letters relating to the event at UN Headquarters in 1961. Let’s take a closer look at one of these letters, a typewritten carbon copy: At first glance, the document seems like a polite everyday exchange between colleagues: On December 19th, 1961, Curt Wormann wrote a letter to his colleague Josef Stummvoll, the director of the United Nations Library in New York.

As Wormann was formulating his letter, a year of heightened tensions between East and West  was coming to a close: The Berlin Wall was erected in August, and by October, American and Soviet tanks sat facing each other in the center of the divided city. Not far away from the place that would later become the borderline dividing East and West, in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg, a young Curt Wormann had begun his career as a librarian in the 1920s. By 1926, he was already director of the district library. Born into a German-Jewish Family in 1900, Curt Wormann devoted his professional life to the development of public libraries and higher education during the years of the Weimar Republic. But when the Nazis came to power, he was forced into retirement, losing his position as a result of the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service”. Shortly after, he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, together with his wife, the physician Dr. Carola Gottheil, and worked as a librarian at the Shaar Zion Public Library in Tel Aviv. Although his career had been violently interrupted by the Nazi regime, he soon gained a reputation within German-Jewish intellectual and cultural circles. In 1947, he was appointed director of the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem (today’s National Library of Israel). In this position, he would not only play a major role in gathering Jewish cultural treasures in Israel as part of “The Politics of Restitution”, he would also travel the world as Israel’s leading book diplomat.

Wormann’s letter to Dr. Josef Stummvoll, director of the UN Library, written on December 19th, 1961; the Curt Wormann Archive at the National Library of Israel, click to enlarge

In December 1961, Curt Wormann had just returned to his office in Jerusalem from New York, where he had taken part in an international librarians’ symposium on the occasion of the opening of the newly constructed United Nations Library building. With his letter to the UN Library director Josef Stummvoll, Wormann wanted to express his gratitude and appreciation “for the hospitality I enjoyed during my stay in New York as a guest of the United Nations” and “the possibility of taking part in the Symposium”. Indeed, thirty leading librarians from all over the world had been invited personally by the UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld to attend the Librarians’ Symposium dealing with librarianship and the UN Library’s role in international relations. When Curt Wormann received the invitation in Jerusalem, he immediately and happily accepted, replying with a telegram. Tragically, a few weeks before the library’s opening ceremony, Secretary-General Hammarskjöld, in office since 1953, died in a plane crash in Africa. The international librarians were deeply saddened, but decided to proceed as planned. They dedicated the new building to Dag Hammarskjöld, who had closely followed the construction of the new library building and who was also known as an ardent book collector. Thus, Curt Wormann addressed his letter of December 19th to Dr. Josef Stummvoll, the director of the “Dag Hammarskjöld Library of the United Nations”.

Curt Wormann (center) enjoying a meeting with international colleagues, November, 1961; the Curt Wormann Archive at the National Library of Israel

The UN Library’s new building fulfilled all the requirements of a modern library, and was financed by the Ford Foundation. Thus, both the building and the symposium reflect the globalization of librarianship after World War II within the framework of international cultural politics under American auspices. Knowledge, information, education, and thus libraries, as key infrastructure, were understood to represent a competitive advantage during the Cold War. Curt Wormann’s correspondence with Josef Stummvoll and other international colleagues, mainly from Europe and the United States, allow deep insight into their thought processes and roles as agents in the international cultural politics of the early Cold War era. In his letter to Josef Stummvoll, Curt Wormann described the New York UN Symposium as a “demonstration of world librarianship and a really important event in the development of international cooperation in our profession”. Indeed, this “world librarianship” – to use Wormann’s accurate description – was a network of leading international librarians who contributed to the internationalization and professionalization of librarianship through organizations like the United Nations or UNESCO. Founded in 1945, UNESCO defined its goal as – “contributing to the preservation of peace and security by promoting cooperation between peoples in education, science and culture […]”. Thus, Curt Wormann and his colleagues from the Jewish National and University Library and the Hebrew University perceived the membership of the young state of Israel in UNESCO since 1949 as a means of diplomacy in both external and internal politics. This included establishing and maintaining communication with other countries through UNESCO, developing librarianship in Israel through international cooperation, and defending the JNUL’s interests, mainly concerning the book collections which remained on Mount Scopus (an Israeli controlled enclave which was surrounded by Jordanian territory until the Six Day War of 1967).

However, UNESCO’s stated aim of overcoming cultural boundaries revealed its limitations during preparations for yet another important meeting of librarians, in 1958. As part of the UNESCO program, an international symposium on the role of national libraries was to take place in Vienna, where Josef Stummvoll served as director of the Austrian National Library (before his appointment as director of the UN Library). However, the UNESCO symposium in Vienna in 1958 was intended exclusively for librarians from European countries. Israel was excluded for geographical reasons and this made Curt Wormann’s participation impossible. However, Josef Stummvoll insisted on Wormann’s participation in a letter written to Luther Evans, the director-general of UNESCO, who also knew Wormann personally. In his letter, Stummvoll did not only describe Curt Wormann’s expertise in questions of librarianship, but he also underlined the truly European background of the German émigré who had started his career as the head of the public library in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Stummvoll’s intervention was a success and the UNESCO officials were convinced: Wormann was invited to the conference as an external expert. His conference report, National Libraries in our Time, which was published in Libri, the scholarly journal edited by the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), contributed much to Wormann’s international reputation.

The Dag Hammarskjöld Library of the United Nations in 2010, image credit: Gryffindor

While the meeting of European librarians in Vienna strengthened the ties between Curt Wormann and Josef Stummvoll, their first contact goes back to the early 1950s. As director of the Austrian National Library, Stummvoll was in contact with the JNUL and responsible for issues of cultural restitution, on which he collaborated mainly with Shlomo Shunami from the JNUL. Last but not least, Josef Stummvoll of Vienna and Berlin-born Curt Wormann shared the same mother tongue. Thus, Wormann could have easily written his grateful letter in German, as he had done with previous letters to Stummvoll. This time, Worman chose to write in English, thus expressing the international character of the United Nations Librarians’ Symposium, as well as that of their own professional and friendly relationship.

Indeed, while the history of librarianship in Mandatory Palestine and Israel is often presented as a history of knowledge transfer by German speaking émigrés, the archives of Curt Wormann depict him as one of the agents of the internationalization, professionalization, and institutionalization of Israeli librarianship during the first twenty years of statehood. In 1968, Wormann’s term as director of the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem came to an end, a role in which he had served as an agent of “cultural internationalism” (see the work of Akira Iriye). Even afterwards, he continued to be involved in international librarian associations and to further the cause of Israeli librarianship. He died in 1991. His personal archives are preserved in the library to which he dedicated his life’s work, waiting to be explored.

This article is part of a series of guest articles written by participants in the archival project “Traces and Treasures of German-Jewish History in Israel”. The project, which was initiated in 2012, is a collaboration between The Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach and the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow (Leipzig). It is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.

This project promotes the arrangement and description of archives of German-Jewish scholars, writers, and artists and encourages archive-based research in the fields of Cultural Transfer, the History of Science, the Migration of Knowledge, and the History of Ideas. It offers junior scholars and students the opportunity to combine academic research with archival practice and provide an essential foundation for new cultural and scholarly discussions, by making previously inaccessible personal archives, literary estates, and historical collections available to international research.

 

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