Ilse and Eric Dean Collection

This collection documents fragments of the life of Ilse Glaser Dean and Eric Henry Dean as well as Wolfgang Schwerin who was the nephew of Ilse Glaser Dean. The majority of the correspondence will be found in Series I and is from Ilse Glaser Dean to Eric Henry Dean between 1952 and 1964. The collection further consists of correspondence and postcards from friends, official and personal documents as well as hundreds of photographs of Ilse Glaser Dean, Eric Henry Dean and other family members and friends.

Correspondence on the relationship between Ilse Glaser Dean and Eric Henry Dean will be found in the first subseries of Series I. The second subseries contains correspondence from Wolfgang Schwerin in Quito, Ecuador to Ilse and Eric Dean in New York. Most letters were written between 1983 and 1988. Wolfgang Schwerin was working in a pharmaceutical business in Quito. In his letters he writes about the economical and political situation in Ecuador in the 1980s but also addresses the Jewish Community in Quito. Wolfgang also mentions family and business matters.

Series II contains official and personal documents of Ilse and Eric as well as Olga Glaser. It comprises two American passports of Eric, an Ecuadorian passport of Ilse and several visas for Ecuador issued to Ilse and Eric. Furthermore it contains an official certificate dated 1912 declaring Erich Samuel Heinrich Dienstfertig as a citizen of Prussia. It also holds two cookbooks of Olga Glaser as well as two pharmaceutical recipe books.

Series III comprises a vast collection of photographs dating between the 1930s and the 1970s. Most of the photographs are portraits of the couple, family photos or travel photographs (1947-1978) taken mainly in Europe and South America. There are a number of photographs taken by the couple in Israel in May 1967, shortly before the Six-Day War.