Ehrenberg family

The collection contains correspondence among members of the Ehrenberg and Rosenzweig families, including let-ters from Franz Rosenzweig, Adam Rosenzweig, Philipp and Richard Ehrenberg, as well as with other parties, including Rudolph von Jhering, Betty Mauthner, Claire von Gluemer, Jacob Freudenthal and, in copies only, Leopold and Adelheid Zunz and Heinrich Heine. Also included are engagement contracts, marriage banns, school curricula and certificates, character refer-ences, eulogies, family histories, and other documents concerning family members. This material also reflects much of the history of the Samsonschule in Wolfenbuettel of which members of the Ehrenberg family were principals.

Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), philosopher and theologian, belonged to the important personalities of the German Jewish intellectual life after the First World War. Franz Rosenzweig started the Freie Juedische Lehrhaus, where he tried to teach Jewish tradition and culture as part of real life experience and in this way bring it closer to assimilated German Jewry. He wrote several philosophical works and translated the Hebrew Bible with Martin Buber. The Franz Rosenzweig collection contains manuscripts of many of Franz Rosenzweig’s smaller works, some of his personal items, and correspondence with his parents and with more than fifty of his friends and colleagues. The collection contains other correspondence, and a great number of newspaper clippings, photographs, and some objects.

This collection comprises a huge amount of letters that the German-Jewish historian Isaak Markus Jost sent to his former teacher and good friend Samuel Meyer Ehrenberg and his son Philipp Ehrenberg. Prominent issues are education, politics and intellectual life in Berlin and Frankfurt am Main.

The Martin G. Goldner Collection holds materials amassed by this amateur historian in pursuit of his and his wife’s genealogy, thus interrelating five families: the Goldners, the Ehrenbergs, the Fischels, the Rosenzweigs, and the Baumanns. The most noteworthy materials belong to the Ehrenbergs and their Samsonschule in Wolfenbuettel, as well as to the Fischels and Rosenzweigs. Documents include correspondence, photographs, original manuscripts and other archival materials.

The Samuel Meyer Ehrenberg Collection contains correspondence in personal matters, a biographical manuscript and various documents concerning the family history.