קהילת יהודי הנובר

Nathan Marcus Adler (1803-1890), rabbi, born in Hanover, Germany, where his father was chief rabbi. He received a liberal as well as a Jewish education, attending several universities. In 1830 he was appointed chief rabbi of Oldenburg and a year later, of Hanover. In 1845 Adler was installed as chief rabbi of the British Empire. He introduced modern standards into the British ministry and may be considered the creator of the British Chief Rabbinate.. His first efforts were directed at improving Jewish education in England and in 1855 he established Jews' College, the British rabbinical seminary. He was largely responsible for the establishment of the United Synagogue in the London area and took great interest in the provincial synagogues. The keynote of his life was an unflinching Orthodoxy and he was an early supporter of Hibbat Zion. Adler wrote a standard commentary on Targum Onkelos. He was succeeded in the Chief Rabbinate by his son, Hermann.

Moses Eliezer Liefmann Calmer (1711-1784), first French Jewish nobleman, born in Aurich, Hanover, Germany. He eventually settled in Paris where he made a fortune in commerce and became official purveyor to the French king Louis XV. In 1769 he received French citizenship and in 1774 acquired the barony of Picquigny with feudal privileges including appointing priests. This brought the wrath of the church and the sale was canceled. Calmer was administrator of the 'German' Jews in Paris.

Herschel Grynszpan (1919-?), assassin of a German diplomat in Paris, born in Hanover, Germany. In 1936 Grynszpan fled to France and went to live with with his uncle and aunt in Paris. In 1938 he decided to assassinate the German ambassador in France, apparently as an act of revenge for the 1938 expulsion from Germany of around 15,000 Polish Jews, including his own family, who had been forced across the Silesian border at Zbaszyn. After waiting in vain outside the embassy for some time for the German ambassador, he shot instead Ernst von Rath, a minor official at the embassy. Rath died two days later. Rath was in fact an anti-Nazi and was under investigation by the Gestapo at the time.

As a result of the assassination the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) organized the Night Pogrom ("Kristallnacht") on the night of 9th-10th November, 1938. During the pogrom over 7,500 Jewish shops were destroyed and 400 synagogues were burnt down. Ninety-one Jews were killed and an estimated 20,000 were sent to concentration camps.

When the German Army invaded France in 1940, Grynszpan was handed over to the Gestapo. It is not known exactly what happened to him. One report said he was executed in 1940 while Fritz Dahms, an official in the German Foreign Office, claimed that he had died shortly before the end of the Second World War. In 1957, a German historian, Helmut Heimer wrote an article in which he claimed that Grynszpan was sent to Sachsenhausen Prison and survived the war. Another article by Egon Larsen published two years later argued that Grynszpan had changed his name and was living in Paris and working as a garage mechanic.

Hermann Adler (1839-1911), chief rabbi of British Empire, born in Hanover, Germany, but brought to England as a child when his father Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler was appointed Chief Rabbi of Britain. He was educated both in England and Germany. From 1852-4 he attended University College school in London and then went to university in Leipzig, Germany. He was ordained a rabbi in Prague, Czech Republic. In 1862 Adler became principal of Jews College in London and two years later the rabbi of Bayswater Synagogue in London. In 1879 his father fell ill and son Hermann deputized for him for some twelve years. When Rabbi Nathan Adler died in 1891, Hermann was formally appointed to the position of Chief Rabbi in his place. In 1911 the Encyclopedia Britannica wrote that he had “raised the position to one of much dignity and importance.”

Adler followed many of the traditions established by his father, combining traditional orthodoxy with English dignity. His organizing skills and personality enabled him to unite the different British Jewish communities under his leadership. As a result of his behaviour and eloquence he was largely instrumental in securing recognition of the Chief Rabbinate as the accepted representative of Anglo-Jewry on public occasions alongside the heads of other religious denominations. The Reform and Sephardi Jewish communities also accepted him as their spokesman. Adler, however, never won the full confidence of the Russian and Polish immigrants who came to settle in Britain during the late 19th century. For them Adler's dress and manners were simply “too English”.

Meyer Kayserling (1829-1905), rabbi and historian born in Hannover, Germany. He studied with Samson Raphael Hirsch in Nickolsburg in Moravia (now Mikulov, Czech Republic), in Prague, Wuerzburg and then in Halle near Berlin. Kayserling became an expert on the history of the Jews of Spain. From 1861 to 1870 he was appointed rabbi of the community of Endingen, Germany, where he earned a reputation as a campaigner for full civil rights for Jews. In 1870 he became rabbi in Budapest, Hungary.

Kayserling published many books on Jewish history, literature and religion. His most popular works were on the history of Spanish Jewry and crypto-Jews. His book on the history of crypto-Jews was a standard work. He wrote biographies of Menashe ben Israel, Christopher Columbus and the participation of the Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese Discoveries, (1894), which was reprinted in 1968 at the request of the Spanish government on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America. In 1890 he published a bibliography of Marrano literature. He wrote of the life and work of Moses Mendelssohn, published in 1862, Jewish women in history (1879) and a textbook for Jewish literature which was reprinted ten times.

Many of his works were translated into English and some into Hebrew. More than 100 of his articles on Jewish history and literature published before 1900 are listed in M. Schwab's Répertoire des articles relatifs à l'histoire et à la littérature juives …" (1914–23).

חנה ארנדט (1906-1975), תיאורטיקנית פוליטית, שנולדה למשפחה מהמעמד בינוני בהנובר, גרמניה, למדה באוניברסיטאות גרמניות ועם עליית הנאצים לשלטון נמלטה לפריז, שם ניהלה את עליית הנוער בשנים 1935-1938.

כשכבשו הנאצים את צרפת נכלאה ארנדט, אבל לבסוף הצליחה להימלט לארה"ב ב-1941. באמריקה ארנדט הייתה המנהלת האקדמית של הוועדה ליחסים עם היהודים (Conference on Jewish Relations) ועורכת ראשית של הוצאת שוקן. משנת 1948-1952 היא ניהלה את הארגון להצלת התרבות היהודית וטיפוחה. ארנדט לימדה באוניברסיטת שיקגו ובבית הספר החדש למחקר חברתי בניו יורק. הספרים שלה, במיוחד "מקורות טוטליטריים" (1951) זכו לשבחים מקיר לקיר.

ספרה "אייכמן בירושלים; דו"ח על הבנאליות של רוע" מ-1963 עורר מחלוקת רבה בעולם היהודי היות ותיאר את הרוע של אייכמן כבנאלי, ובנוסף ביקר את יהודי אירופה על כך שלא הפעילו התנגדות מספקת בתקופת השואה.

Theodor Lessing (1872-1933), philosopher, born in Hanover, Germany. He studied in Bonn and Munich and then in Freiburg im Breisgau, where he became a Protestant. In 1908 he began to teach at the Technical High School in Hanover but moved to the history of ideas, on which he wrote many books.

Influenced by Zionism, he returned to Judaism and wrote a classic study of 'Jewish self-hatred'. In 1925 he was the object of anti-Semitic attacks after opposing Hindenburg's election as president of Germany. He moved to Marienbad (now Marianske Lazne, in the Czech Republic), where he was assassinated by German Nazis sent there expressly to kill him.

Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968), art historian, born in Hanover, Germany. He studied the history of art at the university there and received his doctorate at Freiburg. From 1926 to 1933 he was professor at Hamburg. In 1934 he fled from the Nazis to the United States and in 1947 was appointed professor of poetry at Harvard. By this time Panofsky was the most prominent figure in the iconological school of art history. He was also an expert in Dutch painting. His Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (1967) synthesized his conception of the art history of the western world. He died in Princeton, NJ, USA.

Hans Goslar (1889-1945), journalist, economist and official of Prussian government during the Weimar Republic, born in Hanover, Germany, the son of businessman Gustav Goslar, who had lived in Hanover since 1870. In 1894 the family moved to Berlin, where he joined the Zionist Youth Movement. He studied at the Graduate School in Berlin and became an economist and business journalist. He wrote for several leading business newspapers including the "Norddeutsche" and the "Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung". He later became editor of the economic journal "Plutus". From 1915 Goslar served in the German army and was assigned to the headquarters press department. The following year he became involved in the German administration of Lithuania and became editor of the Lithuanian newspaper "Dabartis". His service in eastern Europe enabled him to meet the Jewish masses in these areas. It changed his religious outlook.

In November 1919 he was named director of the press section of the Prussian government. His responsibilities included the establishment of a press service. He held this position until the overthrow of the republic by the Nazis in 1932. Goslar spoke out against increasing discrimination against Jews in the the Socialist Party and was quick to recognize the dangers of antisemitism. He was one of the leading of the Jewish People's Party. Throughout the period he was active in general Jewish, Zionist and Mizrachi activities. 1925 he was elected to the Prussian State Association of Jewish communities. Between 1928 and 1933 he, as a religious Zionist, was a member of the assembly of representatives of the Jewish community of Berlin. Goslar with his family fled Germany in 1933 and moved to Amsterdam, Holland, where he initially received a pension from the Prussian State and worked with lawyer Franz Ledermann to aid other Jews to leave Nazi Germany. [Ledermann was the father of Anne Frank's girlfriend Susan].

In 1943 Goslar and his immediate family were arrested and sent to the Westerbork concentration camp. In 1944 they were transferred to Bergen Belsen concentration camp. He was died a few days before the liberation, but his daughters survived a death march. They moved first to Switzerland and later emigrated to Israel.

Goslar wrote a number of books on Jewish subjects. In 1919 he published "Die Sexualethik der juedischen Wiedergeburt" in which he urged a return to Jewish family ethics.

Israel Jacobson (1768-1828), philanthropist and reformer, born in Halberstadt, Germany, into a poor family and educated in the local Jewish school although he spent much of his leisure time teaching himself and then earning money by trading. By the age of 19 he had become affluent and moved to Brunswick where he rapidly increased his fortune. In 1801, having become enthusiastic about the idea of children of different religions learning together, he set up a school in Seesen in the Harz Mountains, in which forty Jewish and twenty Christian children studied and lived together free of charge. The Jacobson school became well known and attracted many pupils. During the century of its existence the school was an outstanding educational enterprise.

In 1810 he built a synagogue in the school grounds and and introduced a reformed service with an organ and the introduction of prayers in the vernacular (in addition to Hebrew). German language hymns were sung and some prayers were also in German. The following year he introduced a confirmation service. When Napoleon established the Kingdom of Westphalia, Jacobson moved to Kassel and became president of the Jewish consistory and opened a reform Temple. In this capacity he attempted to persuade the Jewish communities of the kingdom to reform their ritual and set up a seminary for the training of Jewish teachers.

After the fall of Napoleon in 1815, Jacobson moved to Berlin, Germany, where he attempted to introduce reforms in synagogue services, but the Prussian government prevented their implementation after receiving many complaints from Orthodox congregations and seeing in his activities an attempt to preserve French influence. Jacobson, however, succeeded in persuading the Prussian government to abolish the poll-tax. Jacobson was a pioneer of the development of Jewish-Christian relations. He died in Hanover.