Jakob Loewenberg Collection 1880-1929 Bulk: 1890-1925

The collection contains documents and manuscripts written by and about Dr. Jakob Loewenberg, the director of a girls’ school in Hamburg from 1892 until his death in 1929. In addition to overseeing the school, Dr Loewenberg was a poet and friend of relatively well-known German poets and writers of the day. The collection includes correspondence with the latter as well as articles about these friendships by Dr. Loewenberg and his son, Ernst, published after his father's death. Dr. Loewenberg was proud of being German and Jewish and often wrote on the topic. There is also significant correspondence from the Loewenberg family around the time of the First World War, documents on family genealogy, a large photograph collection, poems written by Loewenberg and numerous official personal documents. It also includes correspondence, manuscripts and personal documents of Dr. Ernst Loewenberg, Jakob Loewenberg’s eldest son.Jakob Loewenberg was born on March 9th, 1856 in the village of Niederntudorf near Paderborn in North Rhine-Westphalia. He was inspired to teach at a young age and passed his first teaching examinations at 17 whereupon he taught for five years in the small town of Geseke. Determined to perfect his foreign languages, he then spent time in London and Paris. Upon returning from abroad he studied in Marburg and Heidelberg, where he received his doctorate. He moved to Hamburg in 1886 with a position teaching English and French at a high school. In 1892 he purchased a private girls school, the Realschule fuer Maedchen, and became its director. The school quickly rose to become one of the most prestigious schools in Hamburg. Loewenberg worked here until his death in 1929. In addition to running the school with great popularity and instituting numerous progressive educational reforms, he was also active as a writer and poet. Though he published regularly during his life, today he is most known for the work he carried out in the field of education. Loewenberg was friends with the poets/writers Detlev von Liliencron, Meier Spanier, Richard Dehmel and Gustav Falke, amongst other poets and writers of his time. He himself regularly published poems, song lyrics and articles (often on the topic of being a German Jew) and also edited the highly popular poetry anthology "Vom goldenen Ueberfluss." Loewenberg married Jenny Stern in 1895 and they had three children, Ernst, Richard and Annette. Loewenberg and his wife died in 1929 and 1930 respectively. All three children managed to escape during the 1930s and, using various routes, eventually ended up in the United States.digitize