A Conversation with Arnold Bernstein, in: Sonntagsblatt Staats-Zeitung und Herold, November 24, 1957

Source Description

This newspaper article titled “Gespräch mit Arnold Bernstein” [“A Conversation with Arnold Bernstein”] covers the life and work of the German-Jewish shipping company owner from Hamburg. The interview was conducted by an unknown author – who is only identified by his initials, A. S. – for the Sonntagsblatt Staats-Zeitung und Herold, a German-language newspaper based in New York City, NY. Published on November 24, 1957, the article is several columns long and includes a picture of Bernstein. It tells the life story of this Hamburg citizen who in the interwar years had risen to become one of the most successful shipping company owners in the Weimar Republic through his business, Arnold Bernstein Shipping Company, LLC  Arnold Bernstein Schiffahrtsgesellschaft m.b.H.. After the National Socialist takeover in Germany, he was robbed of his entire assets and imprisoned; after spending two and a half years in prison, he managed to emigrate from Germany to the United States in 1939 shortly before the beginning of the war. To the author of this article, Bernstein's efforts to found a U.S. shipping company named “American Banner Lines” symbolize his will to succeed and to live, as the article's subtitle demonstrates: “Former major Hamburg shipping company owner also makes it in New York.” Twelve years after the end of the Second World War an American-German newspaper made an attempt to use Bernstein's life story as an example to shed light on contemporary German, Jewish, and American history.
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Recommended Citation

A Conversation with Arnold Bernstein, in: Sonntagsblatt Staats-Zeitung und Herold, November 24, 1957 (translated by Insa Kummer), edited in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History, <https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:source-176.en.v1> [March 28, 2024].