Frieda Hirsch Collection

"Mein Weg von Karlsruhe ueber Heidelberg nach Haifa" is the memoir of Frieda Hirsch (née Goldberg) (1890- ). She describes the history of her parents, her upbringing in Karlsruhe as daughter of a well-to-do Jewish-orthodox family, her education at a humanistic high school (Gymnasium), her university studies (medicine) in Heidelberg, Karlsruhe and Breslau (1908-1913), and life during World War I in Karlsruhe and Heidelberg. She married Albert Hirsch (1887-1954) in 1915, a medical student and member of the Zionist student organization "Verein Juedischer Studenten" and settled in Heidelberg, where Albert worked as a pediatrician. Frieda Hirsch tells about life in Heidelberg, the births and upbringing of her children, various friendships (among others with Georg Hermann, Frieda Reichmann, Erich Fromm, and Eugen Taeubler), Zionist activities of her husband, and first anti-Semitic persecutions in Heidelberg in 1933. She gives detailed testimony of her emigration from Heidelberg via Salzburg and Triest to Haifa, where the family settled, of the difficult first years in Palestine with her husband opening a new medical office, and describes her experiences during World War II in Haifa, the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 and moving to Kiryat Ono after her husband's death in 1954.

The second text, an attachment of Hirsch's memoir, contains a genealogical table and a detailed history of Frieda Hirsch's (née Goldberg) and Albert Hirsch's families.