Ludwig Levy writes in his memoirs: “I’ve been dead since the experience in July 1933”. What the Potsdam native once wrote down by hand, arranged chronologically from the rise to the position of respected lawyer and city councilor of the SPD, to disenfranchisement, expropriation and expulsion, was not intended for others to read. “My Destiny” is written above the 185-page unfinished manuscript. It was written during the exile in Palestine. It was not until many years after his death that the document was found in the estate of his late granddaughter Nina Lehmann in Sydney, Australia. Levy later lived there with his wife Antonie until he died in 1966 at the age of 83.
Dying can also be understood as the destruction of the cultural, ethical or psychological basis.
John Lighthistorian of the Lindenstrasse Memorial Foundation
In Potsdam, the Potsdam lawyer is currently being thought of twice. Since March 24, the foyer exhibition “Disenfranchised” in the Lindenstraße memorial has been tracing Levy’s fate. It was opened on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of March 23, 1933: At that time, the members of the Reichstag disempowered themselves as a parliament by passing the “Enabling Act”, thus paving the way to the Nazi dictatorship. Levy’s handwritten notes also served as a source for the book: “I live for the right. The Potsdam lawyer Ludwig Levy 1883-1966. Respected – Disenfranchised – Expelled”, which was published recently.
Former sense of justice
“Dying doesn’t just mean physical death,” says historian Johannes Leicht, who works as a research associate at the memorial site and published the biographical approach to Levy’s personality together with Sabine Hering. “Dying is also to be understood as the annihilation of the cultural, ethical or psychological basis on which a human being exists,” quotes Levy. The historian spent more than a year researching his life on behalf of the Lindenstrasse Memorial.
The autobiographical approach not only takes a look at a Jewish citizen of the city during the Nazi era, it also paints a picture of a totally assimilated German-Jewish family that had lived in Potsdam for three generations. The chapters on Levy’s childhood and youth are also revealing, as his sense of justice was evident early on. For example, when he got involved because a classmate at the Victoria Gymnasium, now the Helmholtz Gymnasium, was being unjustly punished.
A photograph like an omen
You also learn a lot about the family constellation, for example about the positive relationship between the two sons and their generous father and the rather depressed relationship with their constantly ailing mother. The descriptions are underlined by family photos, also from before the war. Levy as a child, as an officer in World War I with the Iron Cross 2nd Class in 1918, the corner house of the family on Brandenburger Straße/corner of Dortustraße (formerly Waisenstraße 17) or the sailing ship “Phoenix” on Lake Templin during a family excursion in 1932 the two daughters. A photograph from the same year shows supporters of the NSDAP, DNVP and SPD in front of a polling station in Potsdam. A poster with a swastika stands out in particular.
Just one year later, on March 23, 1933, the members of the Reichstag deprived themselves of their power by passing the “Enabling Act”. Unlike the majority of Potsdam’s Jewish population, the Levy family was a wealthy merchant family. Nevertheless, Ludwig owed his fortune to his own diligence. Not least because he hardly slept more than four hours over a long period of time. “Today you would say he was a total workaholic,” says Leicht.
demise of democracy
Irrespective of this, the systematic disenfranchisement of the Jews began only a few days after the National Socialists took office. Of the more than 600 Jews who lived in Potsdam at the time of the seizure of power, only a few survived the war. Levy, who sat on the Potsdam city council between 1928 and 1933 and who had to give up his job during the Nazi era, was imprisoned in a concentration camp twice. After his release from Oranienburg and Sachsenhausen, he was forced to flee abroad.
The book was financed by the Brandenburg State Center for Civic Education. Designer Mareike Walter came up with an innovative concept: The type area was placed on the outside to reflect the pressure that Levy was exposed to after the National Socialists took power. He was cornered. The layout illustrates Levy’s disorientation after 1933. The page numbers can only be found at second glance, in the middle of the book at the bottom left. Only half of Levy’s portrait can be seen on the cover, the other half is on the back. In this way, readers look inside his head, so to speak.
The book focuses primarily on Levy’s own description of how severe the break in civilization in 1933 was. “Overnight, a legal system was completely suspended and converted into a dictatorship within just six months,” says Leicht. Levy never got over this break. This example clearly shows how fragile democracy is, warns historian Johannes Leicht. The city administration is currently examining whether a previously unnamed public square should be named after Ludwig Levy. His name has been in the city’s street name pool for some time. A commemorative plaque in front of the plenary hall of the Potsdam City Hall already commemorates him.
