קהילת יהודי ברלין

יהודה ווהל (1904-1988), מלחין. נולד בברלין, גרמניה. בשנים 1933-1927 עבד כמנהל מחלקה בחנותו של נתן ישראל. באותן שנים כתב מוסיקה להפקות הקולנוע של UFA. ב-1933 עלה לארץ-ישראל ועד 1938 עבד כמעצב רהיטים. למד אצל פאול בן-חיים. בשנים 1947-1919 שימש פסנתרן בבתי-ספר שונים למחול, בשנים 1969-1948 פעל כמורה למוסיקה ובשנים 1965-1955 היה נגן עוגב בקהילה ליהדות מתקדמת.
רשימת יצירותיו כוללת שלוש סימפוניות (1944, 1952, 1955), רונדו פאתטיקו לתזמורת כלי-קשת (1950), שיחות לתזמורת (1956), פאטה מורגנה לתזמורת (1960), חמישיית כלי-נשיפה (1961), קאנטו קפריצ'וזו לתזמורת (1967) ואירועים לתזמורת קאמרית (1977). הלחין גם מוסיקה קלה (בשם העט יהודה בנטוב) ושתי אופרות לרדיו (1947, 1975). נפטר בישראל.

מנצח ומלחין. נולד בברלין, גרמניה, ולמד בקונסרבטוריון שטרן בברלין. בשנים 1894-1893 היה עוזר מנצח באופרה של קלן. שנה אחר כך הועסק על ידי גוסטב מאהלר כעוזר מנצח בתיאטרון העירוני (Stadttheater) של המבורג. עבודתו עם מאהלר התבררה כמכריעה ביחס לקריירה שלו. הוא הפך לחסיד נלהב של המוסיקה של מאהלר ואחרי מות מאהלר ניצח על הבכורות של יצירותיו, סימפוניה מס' 9 והשיר על הארץ. ב1900- חתם על חוזה לחמש שנים כמנצח באופרה של ברלין. בכל זאת, עזב ב1901- והצטרף אל מאהלר כעוזר מנצח באופרה של וינה, ונשאר עמה גם אחרי מותו של מאהלר. ב1914- עבד עם האופרה של מינכן, ועמה הגיע לכמה מן הביצועים הטובים ביותר של המוסיקה של מוצרט. ב1922- עזב כדי להעצים את חרותו האמנותית, וניצח על תזמורות שונות באירופה. היה מנצח אורח בפסטיבל מוצרט בזלצבורג, והופיע במסגרת זאת גם כפסנתרן סולן ביצירות קאמריות מאת מוצרט. ב-1925 הופיע לראשונה באמריקה עם התזמורת הסימפונית של ניו-יורק. ב-1929 היה מנצח תזמורת הגוונדהאוס (Gewandhaus) של לייפציג. ב-1932 היה מנצח אורח של התזמורת הפילהרמונית של ניו-יורק והופיע כסולן בקונצ'רטי לפסנתר של מוצרט. הועסק במשך שלוש עונות כעוזר מנצח לטוסקניני. ב-1936 היה מנהל מוסיקלי של האופרה של וינה, אך ב-1938, עם סיפוחה של אוסטריה לגרמניה, עבר לצרפת. עם פרוץ מלחמת העולם השנייה הפליג לארה"ב והתיישב בקליפורניה. המשיך לעבוד כמנצח וכיועץ מוסיקלי לתזמורות רבות. נודע כקלסיקן שבין מנצחי זמנו וכמנצח הטוב ביותר של יצירות מאהלר. יצירותיו שלו כוללות שתי סימפוניות, רביעיית כלי-קשת, חמישיית פסנתר, שלישיית פסנתר ושירים רבים. בין ספריו "גוסטב מאהלר" (1936) והאוטוביוגרפיה "נושא וואריאציות" (1946). נפטר בבברלי הילס, קליפורניה (ארה"ב).

רוברט לכמן (1892-1939) , מוסיקולוג. נולד בברלין, גרמניה, ושירת במלחמת העולם הראשונה כמתורגמן במחנה שהיו בו בין השאר גם שבויים ערבים והודים. שם התוודע לראשונה למוסיקה מזרחית. אחרי המלחמה עשה את מחקר השדה הראשון שלו בצפון אפריקה. אחרי 1918 למד מוסיקולוגיה אצל יוהאנס וולף וקרל שטומפף, ושפות שמיות אצל אויגן מיטווך. התעניינותו במוסיקה מזרחית זכתה לעידודם של המוסיקולוגים אריך פון הורנבוסטל וקורט זקס. קיבל תואר דוקטור ב-1922. ב-1929, באי ג'רבה שלחופי תוניס, הקליט מוסיקה של יהודי המקום. ב-1932 מונה למנהל משלחת ההקלטות בקונגרס הבינלאומי למוסיקה ערבית שנערך בקהיר. עד 1933 עבד בספריה הלאומית בברלין. ב-1935 הגיע לארץ-ישראל והקים ארכיון להקלטות של מוסיקה מזרחית באוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים. מאמרו "חזנות ושירה יהודית בג'רבה" פורסם לאחר מותו ב-1940.נפטר בירושלים.

Emil Moritz Rathenau (1838-1915), industrialist, born in Berlin, Germany, into a wealthy Jewish family which had made its fortune by producing textile machinery. 
After leaving school he was apprenticed as an engineer. Between 1862 and 1865 he worked in a number of companies in Germany and England where he began to recognize the potential of harnessing electricity for use in industrial and household products. In 1865 he acquired an engineering plant in Berlin and began to make simple electric powered products. The company grew and by 1881 he had acquired the rights to manufacture products based on the patents of Thomas Edison. In 1887 his company developed into the Allgemeine Elektricitaets-Gesellschaft (AEG). In 1903, Rathenau became general manager of AEG. Together with his competitor and business partner Werner von Siemens, he formed the Telefunken company. He was appointed to the boards of several companies in this fast growing industry.

In 1866 Rathenau was married Mathilde Nachmann, daughter of a Frankfurt banker. One of his sons was the famous Walter Rathenau, who took over the management of AEG in 1915 and who went on to be the Foreign Minister of Weimer Germany.

Walter Bendix Benjamin (1892–1940), literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator and essayist, who was born to a wealthy family of assimilated Jews in Berlin, Germany. His father, Emil Benjamin, was a banker in Paris who relocated from France to Germany, where he worked as an antiques trader in Berlin. He owned a number of properties in Berlin. In 1902, ten-year-old Walter was enrolled to the Kaiser Friedrich School in Charlottenburg. In 1912, at the age of twenty, he enrolled at the University of Freiburg in Breisgau, Germany, but then returned to Berlin to study philosophy. Elected president of the Freie Studentenschaft (Free Students Association), Benjamin wrote essays arguing for educational and general cultural change. When not re-elected as student association president, he returned to Freiburg University. In 1914 Benjamin began to translate the works of the 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867). The next year, 1915, he moved to Munich, and continued his schooling at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he wrote about the 18th-century Romantic German poet Friedrich Hölderlin.

In 1917 he transferred to the University of Bern, Switzerland, and in 1919 Benjamin earned a doctorate with “The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism”. Later, unable to support himself and family, Benjamin returned to Berlin to live with his parents; in 1921, he published the essay "Kritik der Gewalt" ("The Critique of Violence"). In 1923, when the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) was founded, and later became home to the Frankfurt School, he published his translation of Charles Baudelaire, "Tableaux Parisiens". In 1924 found Benjamin residing in the Italian island of Capri where he wrote "Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiel" ("The Origin of German Tragic Drama"), as a dissertation intended to qualify him for the position of a university professor in Germany; his work was however rejected. Working with Franz Hessel (1880–1941), he translated the first volumes of "À la Recherche du Temps Perdu" ("In Search of Lost Time"), by Marcel Proust. The next year, 1926, he began writing literary articles for the German newspapers "Frankfurter Zeitung" and "Die Literarische Welt" ("The Literary World"), which paid enough for him to reside in Paris for some months.

In 1927, he began "Das Passagen-Werk" ("The Arcades Project"), his incompleted magnum opus, a study of 19th-century Parisian life. This book combined elements of German idealism or Romanticism, Historical Materialism and Jewish mysticism. It made an influential contribution to aesthetic theory and Western Marxism, and has sometimes been associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. His turn to Marxism in the 1930s was partly due to the influence of Bertolt Brecht, whose critical aesthetics developed epic theatre and its "Verfremdungseffekt" (alienation). An earlier influence was friend Gershom Scholem, founder of the academic study of the Kabbalah and of Jewish mysticism. In 1931 he saw Gershom Scholem in Berlin for the last time, and considered emigrating to the Land of Israel. In the same year he published "Einbahnstraße" (One-Way Street).

In 1932, during the turmoil preceding Nazis' assumption of power, Walter Benjamin left Germany for the Spanish island of Ibiza; he then moved to Nice, France, where he considered killing himself. Perceiving the socio-political and cultural significance of the Reichstag fire of 1933 as the de facto Nazi assumption of full power in Germany, with the subsequent persecution of the Jews, he moved to Paris. Once again he ran out of money, but received funds from the Institute for Social Research before later going permanently into exile. In Paris, he met other German artists and intellectuals who had fled there from Germany; he befriended Hannah Arendt, novelist Hermann Hesse, and composer Kurt Weill. In 1937 Benjamin worked on "Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire" ("The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire"), and joined the College of Sociology. This work which was partially funded by the Frankfurt School shows the competing influences on Benjamin of Brecht’s Marxism, Adorno’s critical theory and Gerschom Scholem’s Jewish mysticism. Meanwhile, being stripped of German citizenship, he was arrested and imprisoned by the French government. Returning to Paris in January 1940, he wrote "Über den Begriff der Geschichte" ("Theses on the Philosophy of History"). When the Nazis overwhelmed France in 1940 he fled to Spain planning to continue to Portugal and then to the USA. The Franco government had cancelled all transit visas and ordered the Spanish police to return such persons to France, including the Jewish refugee group Benjamin had joined. Expecting to be handed over to to the Nazis, Walter Benjamin killed himself in September 1940.

As a literary critic, among his major works are essays on Goethe's novel Elective Affinities, the work of Franz Kafka and Karl Kraus, translation theory, the stories of Nikolai Leskov, the work of Marcel Proust and perhaps most significantly, the poetry of Charles Baudelaire Walter Benjamin’s writings identify him as a modernist for whom the philosophic merges with the literary: logical philosophic reasoning cannot account for all experience, especially not for self-representation via art. He presented his stylistic concerns in "The Task of the Translator", where he claimed that a literary translation, by definition, produces deformations and misunderstandings of the original text. Moreover in the new text, previously obscure aspects of the original text become clearer and previously obvious aspects become completely unreadable. When placed in a specific constellation of works and ideas, he argued, such translational deformations of the source text is productive. The final lines of "Theses on the Philosophy of History" discusses the Jewish quest for the Messiah and provides a harrowing final point to Benjamin's work, with its themes of culture, destruction, Jewish heritage and the fight between humanity and nihilism. He brings up the the fact that Judaism forbids people from trying to calculate the year when the Messiah would arrive, and points out that this did not make Jews indifferent to the future "for every second of time was the straight gate through which the Messiah might enter."

Max Liebermann (1847-1935), painter and printmaker best known for his etching and lithography, born in Berlin, Germany. Son of a businessman, Liebermann studied law and philosophy at the University of Berlin, but he preferred painting. In 1869 he studied painting and drawing in Weimar, Germany, in Paris, France, in 1872 and in Holland in 1876-1877, where he became acquainted with and influenced by the Hague School of Art. Enlisted in the Prussian army during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 he served as a medical orderly.

He used the money inherited from his father to assemble an impressive collection of French Impressionist paintings. In Berlin, he became a famous portrait painter; his work is especially close in spirit to that of Edouard Manet. From 1899 to 1911 he led the premier avant-garde group of German painters, known as the Berlin Secession. From 1920 he was president of the Prussian Academy of Arts, but in 1933 he resigned from the academy when it refused to exhibit works by Jewish painters.

On April 30, 2006, the Max Liebermann Society opened a permanent museum in the Liebermann family's villa in the Wannsee district of Berlin.

Liebermann's wife, Martha, was forced to sell the family villa in 1940. On March 5, 1943, at the age of 85 and bedridden from a stroke, she was notified by the police to get ready for deportation to Theresienstadt concentration camp. Instead, she committed suicide in the family home hours before police arrived to take her away. There is a Stolperstein ['Stumbling Stone', a memorial stone, in her memory in front of their former home near Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.

Kurt Eisner (1867–1919), revolutionary socialist leader and journalist who organized the short-lived Socialist Revolution which overthrew the Wittelsbach monarchy in Bavaria, Germany, in November 1918, born in Berlin, Germany. Eisner studied philosophy and became a journalist: from 1890 to 1895 he was editor of the "Frankfurter Zeitung". In that capacity he wrote an article which attacked Kaiser Wilhelm II. For that he was arrested and sentenced to 9 months imprisonment. In 1898 he joined the Social Democratic party and was an active fighter for political democracy as well as social-democracy.

In 1900 he was appointed political editor of "Vorwärts". Between 1907 and 1910 he was editor of Nuremberg based "Fränkische Tagespost" newspaper. In 1917 he joined the Independent Social Democratic Party and was convicted of treason in 1918 for having incited a strike of metal workers. After nine months he was released and proceeded to help organize the revolution that overthrew the monarchy in Bavaria. He declared Bavaria to be a free republic in November 1918, and he was named the first republican prime minister of the state. Shortly thereafter he leaked documents which seemed to indicate that World War I was provoked by a group of “mad Prussian military” men and capitalists. He attacked moderate socialists who refused to accept Germany's responsibility for the outbreak of the war; in return his enemies accused him of having taken bribes from the Allies to start the revolution in Bavaria. The result was that he was hated by large sections of the German people. He was assassinated in Munich by a half-Jewish nationalist.

Eduard Gans (1798-1839) jurist, historian and thinker, born in Berlin, Germany, of prosperous Jewish parents. He studied law first at the Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin, then at Göttingen, and finally at Heidelberg, Germay, where he attended lectures given by Hegel and became very much influenced by Hegel's philosophy. In 1820, after taking his doctor's degree, he returned to Berlin as a lecturer where he became celebrated for his inspiring lectures. Gans' inclination to assimilation, and the government's objection to the appointment of a Jew to a permanent academic position, led Gans to convert to Christianity at the end of 1825. In 1826 he was appointed associate professor at Berlin University, and in 1829 a full professor in the Faculty of Law. In 1830, and again in 1835, Gans visited Paris, and formed an intimate acquaintance with the leaders of literary culture and criticism there. His liberal political views angered the Prussian government who proceeded to ban his course of lectures on the history of the previous fifty years.

On history, he elaborated the concept of the Prussian state and its sovereignty, and the central role of the ruler as the incarnation of the concept of the state. He saw the French Revolution as a new and crucial factor in European history, and explained the historical concept of "Europe" as a synthesis of different peoples incorporating the best in the cultures of Israel, Greece, Roman, Christianity, and the West in its development; Gans was opposed to nationalism and the Romantic glorification of the Middle Ages and its Christian culture.

In contrast with Hegel and Kant, Gans argued that Judaism should be seen as one of the major sources of Western culture and the origin of its notion of religion and morals. He considered Rabbinic Judaism to be a vital development of prophetic Biblical Judaism and a dynamic response to the surrounding cultures of the time. Nevertheless, throughout the centuries and owing to Christian anti-Jewish pressure traditional Judaism had degenerated, he thought. Contemporary Judaism must adjust itself to the values and cultural level of the times in order to regain its vitality and to overcome its isolationist tendency. As an expression of this notion he founded in 1819, in conjunction with Leopold Zunz and Moses Moser, the "Verein fuer Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden" ("Society for Culture and Science of the Jews"), the objective of which was to establish a scientific modern study of Judaism, to bring general education to Jewish youth by expanding their cultural horizons, and the reform of traditional Jewish thinking.

His Hegelian tendencies led Gans to treat the law historically, and he applied the method to one partcular branch of law — the right of succession. His best known work, "Erbrecht in weltgeschichtlicher Entwicklung" (1824-1835) clearly shows how the general theory of succession slowly evolved through history. Other works are a treatise on the fundamental laws of property, "Über die Grundlage des Besitzes" (1829), a systematic work on part of Roman civil law ("System des römischen Zivilrechts", 1827). Gans also edited the "Philosophie der Geschichte" in Hegel's collected works.

פרנץ שליצר (1905-1979) מלחין.

נולד בברלין, גרמניה, ניגן בפסנתר מגיל שבע ולמד תיאוריה בבית הספר למוסיקה שרלוטנבורג בברלין בשנים 1927-1925. בשנים 1930-1928 עבד כמלווה זמרים וכמנצח מקהלה בתיאטרון נוסטרליץ. יצירותיו הראשונות הולחנו ב1916- אבל עד 1930, כשעבד כמהנדס חשמל, כתב רק טיוטות. ב1934- הגיע לארץ. יצירה מזדמנת לפסנתר וביצועו של מארש אופי לתזמורת (1939) דרבנו אותו להלחין באופן מקצועי. שליצר הלחין, בין היתר, סימפוניה מס' 1 (1941); לוכד העכברים מהמלין, מוסיקה לבלט, לתזמורת (1944); שתי סונטות לכינור ולפסנתר (1948); קונצ'רטו לפסנתר ותזמורת (1950); סוויטות לתזמורת כלי-קשת (מס' 1 – 1952, מס' 2 – 1968); רביעיות כלי-קשת (מס' 1 – 1954, מס' 2 – 1963); פנטסיות סימפוניות לתזמורת (מס' 1 – 1958, מס' 2 – 1959); פנטסיה לכינור ולתזמורת (1960); פנטסיה לצ'לו ולתזמורת (1962); קונצ'רטו לשני פסנתרים (1966); קונצ'רטו לוויולה ולתזמורת (1967); קונצ'רטו לחצוצרה ולתזמורת (1967); שלישיית פסנתר (1968) וסימפוניה מס' 2 (1970). נפטר בתל-אביב.

Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932), German social democratic theoretician politician, founder of evolutionary socialism which challenged orthodox Marxist doctrines, born in Berlin, Germany, the son of a Jewish train driver.

In 1872 he joined the "Eisenachers", a political party with Marxist tendencies. When in 1878 Bismarck's anti-socialist legislation was enacted by the Reichstag he was forced into exile. He went to live in Zurich, Switzerland. Ten years later he moved to London, England, where he met up with Friedrich Engels and other socialist leaders. Between 1880 and 1890 Bernstein was the editor of the socialist journal "Sozialdemokrat", he was one of the authors of the "Erfurt Programme" which foresaw the imminent collapse of capitalism and the need to substitute it by socialist ownership of the means of production. He and his friends, however, believed that this would come about by workers' participation in the political processes, not by revolution.

After the ban on his returning to Germany was lifted, Bernstein went back home in 1901 and was elected to the Reichstag in 1902. He was a member of the German parliament until 1918. He opposed World War I and in 1917 he was one of the founders of the USPD, which united anti-war socialists such as himself, and revolutionary Marxists. In 1919, however, Bernstein rejoined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and again sat in the Reichstag from 1920 to 1928.

His most important work was "Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus" ("The Premises of Socialism"), published in London in1899, in which he pointed that many of Marx's predictions regarding the death of capitalism were not coming true and that the ownership of capital, instead of becoming more and more centralised, was in fact becoming more diffuse. Bernstein was convinced that socialism would be achieved through capitalism as workers gained more and more rights and so the justification for revolution lessened. He also argued that trade protectionism did not help a country overcome its economic difficulties. Inevitably his views were considered heretical by orthodox communists, but many other socialists supported him.

He left the Jewish community because the party disapproved of any religious activity and affiliation. During World War I, however, he came under the influence of the leaders of Po'alei Zion, including Zalman Shazar, and began to understand the special situation of the Jews. In his "Die Aufgaben Der Juden im Weltkrieg" ("The Tasks of the Jews in the World War") he wrote that the Jews, because of their dispersion and universalist views, should become the pioneers of internationalism. In the late 1920s he came to support the idea of a Jewish national home in Palestine.