The Wondrous Journey of Selma Lagerlöf and her Lover in Jerusalem

Author Selma Lagerlöf and her Jewish lover, the writer Sophie Elkan set off for Jerusalem. That trip would be the basis of her book that eventually led to her being awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Hadar Ben-Yehuda | 20.11.17

Sophie Elkan (right) and Selma Lagerlöf

“The month of August in Palestine was terribly hot. Every day the sun hung high above the heads of the people. Not a cloud could be seen in the sky and not a drop of rain had fallen since April. While it was not any worse than any other year, nevertheless it was nearly unbearable. It was impossible to know how to deal with the heat, other than to run away in order to escape it.”

(From part two of Jerusalem by Selma Lagerlöf)

Selma and Sophie

More than a century ago the Swedish authors Selma Lagerlöf and Sophie Elkan visited Jerusalem. Lagerlöf was then in her forties and Elkan just a few years older. Their visit was part of an extended tour through the Middle East during which they traveled across Egypt, but Jerusalem was indeed the highlight of their journey. They remained in the city for a long time and Lagerlöf drew upon her memories of her stay there for her novel Jerusalem, which she wrote upon her return to Sweden. This was one of the books for which Selma Lagerlöf was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature by the Swedish Academy in 1909.

Lagerlöf was born on the large family estate called Marbacka in the southwest of Sweden. At the age of three she came down with polio which affected her legs, and as a result she developed a limp. Thereafter, she remained at home with her grandmother and was educated by private tutors. The fairy tales she heard from her grandmother and from farmhands working on the estate along with the Nordic myths she heard and read were her main source of inspiration for her writing. In the speech she gave at the Nobel Prize ceremony she thanked them all, saying she owed them a great debt.

When Lagerlöf turned twenty her father died leaving the family impoverished and forced to sell the estate. Selma moved to Stockholm where she trained to be a teacher. She then taught for ten years and from time to time would publish her poetry in magazines. After winning a prize in a literary competition she decided to dedicate herself to writing full time. She became successful and her life was filled with writing and social engagements, but she was lonely.

Photo of Selma Lagerlöf with her signature, a “Thank-you” card sent in response to wishes received for her seventieth birthday.

Sophie Elkan (nee Solomon) was a Swedish-Jewish author and translator. She was born into a wealthy and intellectual family and had an energetic and spirited character. She married at a young age and gave birth to a daughter. On Christmas in 1879 her husband died tragically of an illness. The next day her daughter was also dead. A few days later her father died. It took her a long time to rebuild her life. Her pursuit of translation and writing helped her during her recovery.

Swedish-Jewish Author, Sohpie Elkan Picture taken from the Schwadron Portrait Collection

When Lagerlöf and Elkan met in 1894 they immediately developed a deep bond of friendship and love. The two women were brilliant, successful, curious, talented and independent. Elkan enjoyed traveling from a young age and had already traveled extensively through Europe. In 1895 the two set out for Italy. They were free and in love and wanted to travel the world and to write. After some time in Europe they set out for an adventure in the Middle East. This led to their extended visit in Palestine and Jerusalem at the turn of the twentieth century.

Jerusalem

During their visit to Jerusalem, Selma Lagerlöf became curious about the unique life of the Swedish community that had joined the American Colony in Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century.

The members of the colony were pioneers. They contributed to the development of the local agriculture, sowed wheat fields near the colony and grew potatoes, grapes and olives. They built chicken coops and a dairy barn and started a dairy industry. They established a weaving and embroidery factory and a bakery. They were also pioneers in the field of photography in the country.

They lived together in a kind of commune. Outsiders did not understand exactly how the community operated and they treated them with suspicion. Their communal lifestyle was considered immoral and instead of being seen as devout Christians, they were viewed as religious fanatics. For their own part, they were very friendly and succeeded in building good relations with the local population.

The more Lagerlöf got to know them the more she was impressed by them. That is why, despite all of the things she saw during her stay in Jerusalem, she chose them as the center of her novel. The story begins with the peaceful life of the farmers in Sweden and then goes on to tell about their lives once they reach Jerusalem. Like the Jewish pioneers, also Lagerlöf’s pioneers had to deal with the giant gap between the dream and the reality, between the sublime Jerusalem of gold and light and the real Jerusalem of dreary stone houses, poverty, beggars, thirst and disease. Her book was romantic and not entirely critical of their communal life. Perhaps because of her familiarity with them, she did not feel that she could tell the whole truth about them.

Jerusalem was a deeply influential book in its day. Scandinavian literature was very popular at the time and made its way into the Hebrew literature though intellectuals who read Scandinavian literature in Russian translation and then translated it into Hebrew. Jerusalem also had an impact on the Zionist movement, even though the novel described the realization of the dream of living in the Holy Land by Christians as seen through the eyes of a non-Jew. Because of the tremendous interest it held for Jews, Zionists and those who yearned for Jerusalem, the book was translated into Hebrew in 1922.

Lagerlöf dedicated the book to her beloved Sophie “my friend in life and literature.”

Illustration by Einar Nerman from the Swedish version of the book Jerusalem published in 1932

In Color: Amazing Photos of Jews and Muslims in the Holy Land From 1900

The then-revolutionary photochrom method gave the world its first color pictures — based on the imagination of the employee working the printing plates.

Chen Malul | 12.11.17

An Ashkenazi Jew in a rainbow-colored striped gown, center

The National Library’s photo collections include several albums of pictures produced at the end of the 19th century using the process known as photochrom. What was this method and why do the photos resemble oil paintings more than the black-and-white originals?

The first color photo was taken in 1880 by Thomas Sutton, a student of the mathematician and inventor James Clerk Maxwell. It was a picture of a scarf.

The Western Wall at the end of the 19th century. Men and women are seen leaning on the wall.

Even though the technique for making color photos was developed within decades of the invention of photography, it would take more than 100 years for color photography to relegate black and white to the art world. The mass shift towards color happened in the 1970s. Until then, color photography involved expensive techniques used almost exclusively by professional photographers. In its first few decades, it was considered unreliable.

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Twenty years after the creation of the first photographic image, a Swiss printer named Orell Fussli developed photochrom. Unlike color photography that captures the object’s original colors, the photochrom technique involved coloring black-and-white photos. Fussli’s innovation was to use lithography, a printing method that had been around for centuries.

Within a few years, photochrom became widespread. Its main advantage was its low cost and relative ease of producing multiple copies that could be sold.

In 1888 the company Fussli worked for opened a subsidiary called Photochrom Zurich. From its inception to the 1920s the company used its patent to dominate the global market for color photos. Zurich was the place to go to for anyone wishing to splash color in a photograph.

The entrance plaza at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Foundation Stone in the Dome of the Rock.

The Swiss company’s monopoly led to an interesting twist. In the absence of specific instructions, company employees had no way of reconstructing the original colors in a black-and-white photo. So they simply had to rely on their imagination.

This brings us to those two albums in the National Library in Jerusalem.

The first album, produced in 1900, is a collection of photos from a pilgrimage by a group of Austrians to the Holy Land. But it wasn’t the tourist-pilgrims who took the photos. At that time there were several professional photographers in Ottoman Palestine. The pictures were taken by the professionals, and the coloring was done by Photochrom Zurich.

The pilgrims, like other clients who were interested in photos from the Holy Land, selected their favorite pictures, apparently of places they had visited on their tour.

An Ashkenazi Jew in a rainbow-colored striped gown, center.

Muslim worshipers. The picture was apparently taken at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Therefore it is no surprise that most of the photos in the first album show key locations in Jerusalem and nearby areas. The only other location shown in the photographs is the coastal town of Jaffa. In that photo, Jaffa longshoremen are seen rowing the boat of renowned tour guide Rolla Floyd.

Tour guide Rolla Floyd shows tourists around the Jaffa harbor

In this album, the entrance plaza to the Al-Aqsa Mosque was adorned with wonderful colors, while Jaffa Gate, the Lions’ Gate and the Foundation Stone in the Dome of the Rock also recieved the photochrom treatment. It’s possible that the way these photos were colored reflects the conceptions the Swiss employees had of the land’s inhabitants. In all the photos they are shown wearing heavy garments with loud color combinations.

The Dome of the Rock (from the second album).

We know very little about the history of the second album, which was produced earlier. We do know that on every cardboard page there is a stamp of ownership belonging to a Swiss evangelical school. It’s possible that the owners actually visited the Holy Land, but it is also possible that they simply purchased the album from another source.

The 36 photochrom prints in this album show landscapes in Ottoman Palestine and Syria. Several photos in the first album are found in the second one as well, and in some cases the photos show the same scenes at a slightly different moment.

In any case, this album illustrates several examples of the artistic freedom of the Swiss company’s employees. One example is a photo of an Ashkenazi Jew in a rainbow-colored striped gown – most likely not faithful to the original.

And this article cannot end without mentioning the beautiful photo of the Western Wall from the end of the 19th century. Men and women are seen leaning on the wall attired in a vivid array of black, white, red, green and brown.

The American Politician Who Would Not Remain Silent in the Face of the Holocaust

How Henry Morgenthau went from mild-mannered cabinet secretary to being one of the greatest advocates for Europe’s Jews during the Holocaust?

Chen Malul | 09.11.17

The Holocaust United States

Official portrait of Henry Morgenthau, Jr., 1930s, Collection of the National Library

Despite his many virtues, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was in short supply of the virtue of religious tolerance. During a meeting with Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., he told the Jewish politician that the United States was a Protestant country and therefore, as President he would never openly petition for either the Catholic or the Jewish minority. He explained that in his choice of Morgenthau for the position of secretary of the treasury – a key cabinet post in the period of the Great Depression and World War II – he was looking for the best man for the job. However, his aides claimed, even when he was still alive, that he had asked them to find him “the most talented Jew for the position.”

Nevertheless, the Secretary of the Treasury still considered the President a very close friend. Roosevelt’s relationship with Morgenthau however, was no different than the relationships he had with his other subordinates – the President specialized in provoking a basic insecurity among those who worked under him. Due to his independent wealth, Morgenthau would have had no problem buying a fancy home for his family to live in while he was working in Washington, DC, but instead, he moved his family from one rented apartment to another because. “I never felt that my work could wait until morning,” Morgenthau remarked years after Roosevelt’s death. This fear made the Secretary of the Treasury (along with most of the President’s advisors), into a submissive employee who did his best to not provoke the President’s ire.

The Three Great Leaders at Yalta: Joseph Stalin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill

This all changed with a phone call to Morgenthau’s office toward the end of 1943. That fateful day, the Secretary of the Treasury picked up the phone in his office and was surprised to hear a familiar voice – it was none other than the Rabbi and close friend who had officiated at Morgenthau’s own wedding. The agitated Rabbi pressured Morgenthau to tell him everything he might know about what was happening in occupied Europe. The baffled Secretary of the Treasury asked his friend to explain the meaning of his request. Over many minutes, the Rabbi related in great detail the long list of atrocities the Nazis were perpetrating against the Jews, the emptying of the ghettos, the trains to the East and the concentration camps. “Henry, do you know that lampshades are being manufactured out of the skin of the slaughtered Jews?” his friend asked. Reeling from all he had heard, Morgenthau asked to end the conversation before he fainted.

The more he learned and heard from the many reports coming from survivors who had managed to escape the inferno, the more Morgenthau felt himself changing from a mild-mannered man into a man with a mission. He felt it his duty to save as many Jews as possible. Determined to force Roosevelt to act even at the price of his job, he met with the President in 1944 and presented him with a detailed report titled “Report on the Acquiescence of this Government in the Murder of Jews.” He then spread the facts before the President (which Roosevelt had known already since the start of 1942), and demanded that the American government take every action to stop the systematic and industrialized killing of the Jewish People. He did not stop with a moral demand, but appealed to the President’s base interest. He called upon Roosevelt to reveal publicly what was happening in Europe and to condemn the Nazi atrocities in no uncertain terms, lest the discovery lead to a scandal which would seriously damage Roosevelt’s chances of re-election to a fourth presidential term.

The chance Morgenthau took paid off: within weeks a refugee commission was formed, whose purpose was to unite the efforts to smuggle Jews out of Nazi occupied areas. An agreement was signed allowing for the unrestricted admission into the US of Jews from Europe, and considerable aid was sent to Raoul Wallenberg to help in his heroic rescue efforts. Less than two months after their encounter in the Oval Office, Roosevelt made his first speech acknowledging the Holocaust that was raging in Europe. Morgenthau did not stop there. He formulated a plan of action against Germany: the plan called for the destruction of all military and civil industry in Germany at the end of the war. “The Morgenthau Plan” was rejected by Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s successor to the presidency after the latter’s death in April 1945 (only weeks before Germany’s surrender). In the end, the efforts of Morgenthau and of other American activists led to the rescue of 200,000 Jewish refugees from the jaws of the Nazi killing machines.

After the war Henry Morgenthau was fired by President Truman. He became an enthusiastic and loyal supporter of the fledgling State of Israel, and was appointed chairman of the United Jewish Appeal in America.

The Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Archive — Letter from Morgenthau to Dr. Yehuda Leib Magnes, congratulating him on the achievements of the Hebrew University, and showing Morgenthau’s support (even during the war) for the “state in the making.” From the Yehuda Leib Magnes Archive, The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel

“If Judaism is a tragedy, let us live it” – Stefan Zweig’s Letters Revealed

26 letters and 6 postcards, previously unknown, all by Stefan Zweig, one of the greatest writers of the first half of the twentieth century, have been given to the National Library of Israel.

Stefan Litt | 09.11.17

Antisemitism Austrian Jewry Diaspora Jews Life Before The Holocaust Stefan Zweig The Holocaust Vienna

The author Stefan Zweig in a photograph from the 1920s

The letters shed new light on Zweig’s personality, his attitudes toward Judaism and Zionism, and his political prophecy, as he alludes to the rise of Nazism 12 years before Adolf Hitler seized power.

In 1921 a 16 year old fan of Stefan Zweig, Hans Rosenkranz, sent him a letter, seeking advice on becoming a writer. Zweig wrote back to Resenkranz beginning the long correspondence between the two that blossomed into a mentorship. Zweig offered professional, moral, and even financial support for years – right through 1933, when the Nazis rose to power.

A letter the author Stefan Zweig sent to Hans Rosenkranz. Donated by Hannah Jacobson

The letters have been given to the National Library of Israel by Hannah Jacobcon, Rosenkranz’s step daughter, a resident of Bat Yam in Israel, are remarkable. It was unusual for authors to write back to their fans in such a way, but Zweig even referred a number of his writer friends. Zweig also went so far as to give Rosenkranz the right to print and market the German version of Anatole France’s “Joan of Arc”, which had been translated by his first wife, Friderike Zweig. This was certainly great help to the young publisher.

Throughout their longstanding correspondence, and contrary to his usual practice, Zweig discussed Jewish topics, writing in his first letter, for example, “There is nothing I hate more than the self-worship of nations and their refusal to recognize a variety of forms of peoples and the types of human beings and to experience them as the beauty of being. In terms of history, it is simply clear to me that certainly Judaism is now thriving culturally and flourishing as it has not flourished for hundreds of years. Perhaps this is the flare up before extinguishment. Perhaps this is nothing other than a brief burst in the eruption of the world’s hatred…” Zweig continues, “The Jew must be proud of his Judaism and glorify in it – yet it is not appropriate to brag about accomplishments you have achieved with your own hands, not to mention the accomplishments of a mass and homogenous body to which you belong… anti-Semitism, hatred, internal strife are all ancient elements of our historical destiny – always problematic… we must therefore look for a way out; we must be brave to remain within our destiny. If Judaism is a tragedy, let us live it.”

The author Stefan Zweig in a photograph from the 1920s

In another letter the young Rosenkranz wished to know Zweig’s opinion regarding the possibility of moving to the Land of Israel. Zweig, who was well travelled, but never to Israel, did not support the idea, citing the death of the son of a friend who had moved there, leaving the father “a broken vessel”.

Despite the fact that Zweig had reservations about the Zionist enterprise, Zweig admired Theodore Herzl, and wrote, “In recent days I have read Herzl’s diaries: so great was the idea, so pure, so long as it was just a dream, clean of politics and sociology… we, who were close to him, were hesitant to hand all of our lives over to him… I told him that I cannot do anything which is not complete … art and the world as a whole were too important for me to devote myself to the nation and nothing else… go there only if you believe, not out of disgust from this German world nor due to bitterness seeking an outlet through escape.”

Dr. Stefan Litt, who is responsible for handling Zweig’s archival materials at the National Library, explains that these letters provide important new information about Zweig as a writer and an individual with a critical eye. The letters contain fascinating insights into the beliefs and mindset of the renowned author, who offered many pieces of advice for aspiring writers throughout the decade-long correspondence. Zweig notes that it is important to study in university, as a broad education is essential for anyone wanting to be a writer and that it is important to get to know other countries and cultures, and especially to learn additional languages. In Zweig’s words, “Learn languages now! That’s the key to freedom. Who knows, maybe Germany and Europe will become so stifling that the free spirit will not be able to breathe within them”.

Despite Zweig’s advice, literary support and financial assistance, Rosenkranz was unable to fulfill his literary ambitions. In the early 1930s, he married Lily Hyman, a divorcee and mother of a very young daughter. The family immigrated to Palestine in December 1933 and several years later Rosenkranz joined the Jewish Brigade of the British Army as an officer in a unit that fought in Italy during World War II. During the war, he contracted lung disease from which he never fully recovered.

After the war, he divorced, changed his name to Chai Ataron and began writing for the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz. On October 25, 1956, Rosenkranz committed suicide, as Stefan Zweig had 14 years earlier. His stepdaughter Hannah Jacobsohn kept in touch with him over the years, even after he separated from her mother. Jacobsohn, who served as an officer in the Israel Police, told National Library archivists that her stepfather had a very broad education and vast knowledge of literature and art. Findings in archives across Europe indicate that Rosenkranz also corresponded with other writers, including Thomas Mann, Klaus Mann, Franz Goldstein and others, though it is not known what happened to these letters.

“Jacobsohn’s contribution to the National Library is exciting and significant, as it helps us to become more familiar with the work, personality and writings of Stefan Zweig, whose archive is in the National Library of Israel. For the research community and the general public interested in Zweig, these letters open another window into the tempestuous and fascinating life of one of the world’s most important and well-known writers,” said David Blumberg, Chairman of the National Library of Israel Board of Directors.