{"id":1245,"date":"2017-08-31T13:16:46","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T13:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjhblog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2017\/08\/31\/to-tear-down-the-barbarous-colour-barrier-a\/"},"modified":"2017-08-31T13:16:46","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T13:16:46","slug":"to-tear-down-the-barbarous-colour-barrier-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2017\/08\/31\/to-tear-down-the-barbarous-colour-barrier-a\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018To tear down the barbarous colour barrier\u2019: a letter on anti-Semitism and racism"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sarah Glover, Archivist and Digitization Projects Liaison<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/figure>\n

Letter
\nfrom Kurt H.\u00a0Hohenemser to James F. Hornback,
\nleader of the Ethical Society of St. Louis, February 2, 1952<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cWe immigrated 4 \u00bd
\nyears ago from Germany into this country for the main reason to leave behind us
\nthe sorry scene of racial persecution which, during the Nazi regime, caused the
\ndeath of the greater part of my father\u2019s Jewish family including both my parents.
\nThough I was raised in the Lutheran faith I hesitated to report an interest in
\nthe Lutheran Church when the Religious Census was taken because I feel that the
\nLutheran Church in its majority has failed in Germany to defend the idea of the
\nequality of races against the brutal Nazi claim of the superiority of the \u201cAryan\u201d\u2026,
\nand because in this country the Lutheran communities certainly are not among
\nthe leading forces to eliminate the Negro segregation, as they should if they
\nwould take the Christian tradition seriously\u2026 <\/p>\n

\u201cMy special interest of course, would be directed toward the
\nefforts of the Ethical Society to tear down the barbarous colour barriers in
\nthis area which are such a disgrace to the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kurt Heinrich Hohenemser was born in Berlin, Germany, on
\nJanuary 3, 1906, to the musicologist Richard Heinrich
\nHohenemser\u00a0(1870-1942) and Alice Matilda Florence Hohenemser n\u00e9e Salt\u00a0(1879-1942).
\nWhile his father came from a German Jewish family, Kurt\u2019s mother was an English
\nProtestant, the daughter of a Baptist minister. In 1942, as Richard\u2019s
\ndeportation appeared imminent, Richard and Alice committed suicide in their
\nBerlin apartment. Despite the fact that he would have been considered Jewish
\naccording to Nazi laws, Kurt, who was an aerospace engineer and pioneer in the
\nfield of helicopter design, survived the war by working as a consultant for a
\ncompany that made helicopters for the German Air Force. After the war, Kurt
\nimmigrated to the United States and settled in St. Louis with his wife and two
\nyoung children. He worked as chief aerodynamics engineer of McDonnell\u2019s
\nhelicopter division for 18 years before joining the faculty of Washington
\nUniversity in St. Louis in 1966 as professor of aerospace engineering. Kurt
\nHeinrich Hohenemser died in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 7, 2001.<\/p>\n

From the Kurt
\nHohenemser Collection; AR 25643; Box 2; Folder 58; Leo Baeck Institute, New
\nYork, NY<\/b><\/p>\n

To see more of this collection, go to <\/p>\n

digital.cjh.org\/3451727<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sarah Glover, Archivist and Digitization Projects Liaison Letter from Kurt H.\u00a0Hohenemser to James F. Hornback, leader of the Ethical Society of St. Louis, February 2, 1952 \u201cWe immigrated 4 \u00bd years ago from Germany into this country for the main reason to leave behind us the sorry scene of racial persecution which, during the Nazi regime, caused the death of the greater part…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[59,90,9,42],"class_list":["post-1245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post","tag-anti-semitism","tag-german-history","tag-jewish-history","tag-leo-baeck-institute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}