Source Description
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.
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Recommended Citation
Letter of Recommendation for Siegfried Landshut, New York, March 5, 1936 (translated by Insa Kummer), edited in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History,
<https://keydocuments.net/source/jgo:source-199> [December 21, 2024].