2024-03-28T22:52:22Z
https://keydocuments.net/oai
oai:jgo:source-199.en
2019-07-29T00:00:00Z
en
Letter of Recommendation for Siegfried Landshut, New York, March 5, 1936
https://keydocuments.net/source/jgo:source-199
Eduard Heimann
Institute for the History of the German Jews
Online Ressource
Letters of recommendation combine the personal micro-level with the
macro-level of social habits and circumstances in a given time period.
This two-page letter of March 5, 1936 for the sociologist Siegfried
Landshut which his former supervisor Eduard Heimann sent from his New
York exile to [Hans] Kohn in order to help Landshut get a position at
the Hebrew University clearly illustrates this combination. The letter
opens with a short introduction and then turns to Siegfried
Landshut’s curriculum vitae. Landshut, born in 1897 in Strasbourg in
Alsace, began his studies after his voluntary service in the First
World War. After briefly describing Landshut’s life and studies,
Heimann proceeds to explain his relation with Landshut, who had been
Eduard Heimann's research assistant at the sociological faculty at
Hamburg University since 1927. The letter also describes how Landshut
lost his employment at Hamburg University and then embarked on an
international odyssey with his family that, according to Heimann,
ended in Cairo in disastrous circumstances. In Siegfried Landshut's
case, this letter helped significantly in getting him temporary
employment at the Hebrew University. In a very personal and immediate
way it reveals not only how National Socialism interrupted careers and
lives at German universities, but it also sheds light on the networks
within which letters of recommendation were written, which migration
paths Jews followed, how being Jewish was relevant in professional
contexts and the argumentative space friendship and a sense of
responsibility occupy in such letters.
2019-07-29