Walter and Hedwig Grossmann Collection

The lives of Walter and Hedwig Grossmann are documented in this collection through both textual and visual records. Series I focuses on the former, specifically correspondence and educational records. Series II shows the life of the couple, their families, and friends through photographs, with a particular emphasis on the Grossmanns’ travels.

The most substantial correspondence is from members of the Grossmann and Kessler families, particularly Walter’s brother Franz and his wife Maya, Hedwig’s brother Fred and his wife Ada, her sister Rose (Shoshana), and Rose’s first husband Hans B. (Jochanan). Some topics are constant throughout the decades of correspondence, including holiday and birthday greetings, thank you notes and get well soon cards, family updates, exchanges of information on mutual friends, travel reports and dispatches, health updates and inquiries, and marriage, birth, and death announcements. In contrast, other themes are confined to specific time periods. Letters from the late 1930s include farewell letters from friends leaving Berlin as well as letters describing their new homes and countries and inquiring about the Grossmanns’ own immigration to the United States. Letters from this time also include discussion of the worsening situation in Germany, plans for the immigration of friends and family members, and worries about the internments and possible deportations of those left behind. Letters from the immediate post-war years from friends and family remaining in Germany, including Walter’s brother Franz, discuss the economic hardships and material deprivations of life there at that time.

Educational records, the second category found in Series I, document the medical schooling of both Walter and Hedwig Grossmann at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. Included are admission certificates, course records, internship certificates, diploma, and copy of Hedwig Grossmann’s dissertation entitled “Die Wirkung anorganischer Salze auf das vegetative Nervensystem.”

The photographs in Series II are focused on two main topics: the travels of Walter and Hedwig Grossmann and images of members of the Grossmann and Kessler families. Walter and Hedwig traveled extensively throughout Western Europe, visiting both major cities and mountainous regions. While some of the photographs include the Grossmanns and various friends, the focus of the photographs is the places themselves. The other significant category of photographs in this series is images of the Grossmann and Kessler families, with a particularly large quantity of photographs of Hedwig Grossmann née Kessler and her son Michael Grossmann. Additional members of the Grossmann and Kessler families shown in this series include Walter Grossmann, Walter’s parents Eugen and Gertrud Grossmann, his brother Franz and sister-in-law Maya, as well as their children, his brother Hans S. and sister-in-law Erika, Hedwig’s parents Theodor and Martha Kessler, her sister Adele and Adele’s daughter Hilde, brother Fred and his wife Ada, and sister Rose (Shoshana), her first husband Hans B. (Jochanan), and their daughter Lilith, as well as Hans’ second wife Ruth and their children.

Negatives in Series II cover the same topics as the photographs, particularly the Grossmann family and Walter and Hedwig’s travels, but include images not found as positives in the preceding series.