Gerda Dittmann Collection
Scope and Content Note
The Gerda Dittmann Collection includes personal and business materials pertaining to the Dittmann and Ottensooser families and consists of correspondence, personal, business, and legal documents, clippings, poetry, and notebooks.
The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence. There is personal correspondence as well as business correspondence with partners and government authorities, and correspondence with lawyers and German officials regarding restitution and pension.
Business related materials include a large volume of financial documents, such as contracts, inventories, lists, account books, bank statements and transactions, bills, and tax returns.
Personal documents consist of financial, legal, vital, educational, and travel documents. Other personal materials include language exercise books and two books of poetry (most likely authored by Fritz Dittmann).
Dates
- 1889-1979
Language of Materials
The collection is in German and English with some French.
Access Restrictions
Open to researchers.
Access Information
Collection is digitized. Follow the links in the Container List to access the digitized materials.
Biographical Note
Fritz Dittmann was born in 1889. He lost his parents at a very young age and was raised by his relatives, Simon and Sophie Fleischmann in Aufseß, Germany. Simon Fleischmann had a tannery and leather business, which he handed over to Fritz Dittmann in 1910. In 1923 Fritz Dittmann opened a new business in Nürnberg.
In 1925, Fritz Dittmann married Gerda Ottensooser, a banker's daughter. They had two daughters, Sophie and Elsie.
The Dittmann family left Germany in 1934 and first settled in Dijon, France before moving to New York in 1938. In New York, Fritz Dittmann opened a new business, Pantex Clothing Corporation. Fritz Dittmann died in 1974, in New York.
Extent
2.5 Linear Feet
Abstract
The Gerda Dittmann Collection includes personal and business materials pertaining to the Dittmann and Ottensooser families and consists of correspondence, personal, business, and legal documents, clippings, poetry, and notebooks.
Arrangement
The collection is divided into two series:
- Clippings (information artifacts)
- Correspondence
- Dittmann family
- Dittmann, Fritz, 1889-1974
- Dittmann, Gerda, 1904-
- Emigration and immigration
- England
- Family histories
- Financial records
- Fleischmann, Sophie
- France
- Germany
- Jewish merchants
- Official documents
- Ottensooser family
- Pantex Clothing Corporation
- Printed materials
- Restitution -- Germany
- United States
- Title
- Guide to the Gerda Dittmann Collection 1889-1979 AR 10484
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Processed by Yakov Illich Sklar
- Date
- © 2012
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Language of description note
- Description is in English.
- Sponsor
- Made possible by the Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives Grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources through The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support "Illuminating Hidden Collections at the Center for Jewish History"
Revision Statements
- December 05, 2013 : Links to digital objects added in Container List.
Repository Details
Part of the Leo Baeck Institute Repository
