Jewish engineers

Questionnaire I + II of the Austrian Heritage Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute; photocopies of various materials, such as education records, emigration papers, and photographs pertaining to Albert Aaron Feldmann.

The collection traces the history of the Kaiser family and the lives of its members over the course of the 20th century through correspondence, documents, writings, family history information, and photographs.

The Kallir Family Collection contains birth certificates, death notices, correspondence, and documents certifying the achievements of those in the Kallir Family.

The Marianne Steinberg Ostrand Collection documents the education, emigration, and early professional life of the physician Marianne Steinberg Ostrand as well as the lives of members of her family, especially her husband, engineer Arnold Ostrand, and her mother and siblings, with much documentation of the emigration or attempted emigration from Germany of her family members. About half the collection is correspondence. In addition it contains many educational certificates, official documents, diaries, notebooks, notes, and a friendship album, travel memorabilia, and newspaper clippings and articles.

The collection contains items pertaining to Max Stern's work in the iron and steel industries and documentation of the history of his company M. Stern AG. Included is a curriculum vitae by Max Stern describing his work in the industry from 1908 to the 1940s; list of patents held by Stern; business contracts; correspondence pertaining to the activities of Max Stern and M. Stern AG; and essays by Stern about the history of his company M. Stern AG.

The Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews of Russia, known by its Russian acronym, "ORT," was founded in St. Petersburg, in the Russian Empire, in 1880. Its aim was the promotion and development of skilled trades and agriculture among Jews, especially through support of vocational and agricultural training. At first operating only as a provisional committee, it received legal recognition in Russia in 1906, and subsequently established local divisions in various cities within Russia and, after the First World War, in Poland, Lithuania, and other countries. An ORT committee was formed in Vilna in February 1919; the ORT Society in Vilna helped found an international umbrella organization, the World ORT Union, in 1921, with headquarters in Berlin (until 1933) and, later, Paris. The collection comprises records of the ORT Society in Vilna that, despite their fragmentary nature, broadly reflect the society's activities from its beginnings until its dissolution by the authorities in Soviet-occupied Lithuania, in 1940. The collection contains administrative records, such as bylaws, minutes, reports, membership records, and financial records; outgoing and incoming correspondence, with correspondents including the ORT Central Committee in Poland, Warsaw (founded 1923); records pertaining to the administration of the society's vocational programs, including its Crafts School, which trained Jewish youth as artisans in the fields of carpentry and locksmithing, and various professional advancement courses for adults, in fields such as electrical installation and tailoring (cutting); records concerning activities related to agriculture in the period 1920 to 1923, apparently reflecting the work of an ORT regional committee based in Vilna (loan applications and questionnaires about Jewish families working on farms, in most cases pertaining to localities in the western part of present-day Belarus); and a few items documenting a credit cooperative society founded by the Vilna ORT Society. Also included is a small amount of ephemera, and two small groupings of ORT-related records with no apparent relationship to the society in Vilna: correspondence of the Arbeterheym (Workers' Home), Riga, Latvia, in 1923, including letters from the Jewish People's Relief Committee, New York, which became affiliated with the American ORT; and correspondence addressed to J. Capitanchik, London, in 1924, from the ORT Society in London, in part concerning his effort to organize an ORT committee in the city's East End.

The Jewish Vocational (Technical) School of ORT in Vilna, known as the Technicum, opened in Vilna (Wilno, Poland; today, Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1921 and remained in existence until 1940. It trained Jewish young people in the fields of mechanics and electrical engineering over a three-year course of study. The Technicum was subsidized by the ORT Central Committee (Warsaw), the Vilna Jewish Community Council, and the Vilna municipality. The school was equipped with laboratories and workshops, as well as a technical library, and published a series of its own Yiddish-language textbooks for use by students. The collection comprises administrative records, including budgets and general reports, school statistics, financial records, correspondence, and files pertaining to students and teachers, as well as materials documenting the curriculum, course scheduling, and examinations. Also included are letters and supporting documents from applicants for teaching positions; student papers; materials related to a graduates' association and a parents' committee; and copies of several of the textbooks published by the school.

This collection holds the papers of Stephen J. Fraenkel, a civil engineer. Much of the collection focuses on his experiences in Germany in the 1930s and his first years in the United States, as well as on his attempts to receive restitution from the German government. Papers in this collection include correspondence, photographs and postcards, certificates and diplomas, and articles written by Stephen J. Fraenkel or pertaining to his profession.