Koch, Alfred, 1893-1918

This collection contains material by and about the family of German-Jewish physician Richard Koch, collected by his daughter Naomi Laqueur. In the 1930s Richard and Maria Koch and their five children left Germany for the Soviet Union, Israel, England, and the United States. The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence sent to Laqueur from her parents and her siblings. Spanning the 1930s to the 1970s, the letters paint a rich portrait of the differences in mid 20th-century life in the Soviet Union, Israel, England, and the United States. Additional correspondence includes letters from Laqueur’s friends and extended family, and correspondence between other family members. The collection also documents Richard Koch’s professional activities as a physician, and additionally contains some of his poems and portions of a memoir. It also has materials about friends and relatives, a collection of Alfred Koch’s love poems from the 1910s, and photographs.