Harry Bresslau

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Bresslau

Bresslau believed in the possibility of the complete assimilation of German Jewry through an open affirmation of the ideal of German Nationhood. Thus he was one of the examples whom Treitschke brought forward as evidence for the proposal that an assimilation of the Jews might be possible.

Strasbourg

In 1890 Bresslau followed a calling to Strasbourg in Alsace, where he held a regular professorship of History in the University until 1912. There he developed a thorough-going teaching and research programme and made himself a leading National-Liberal advocate for German identity. Shortly after the end of the First World War, on 1 December 1918, the French expelled Bresslau from Strasbourg as a 'militant pan-Germanist'.

When in 1904 the Academic-Historical Society in Berlin, to which Bresslau had belonged for 25 years, turned itself into an association ("Holsatia") wearing badges or liveries, and required other forms of co-operation from Bresslau, he bluntly refused. Holsatia had introduced a veto against admission for Jewish students.

Bresslau spent the final years of his life first in Hamburg, then in Heidelberg. His son was the zoologist Ernst Bresslau. His daughter Helene married Albert Schweitzer in 1912.

Professor Bresslau was Jewish, but had his children baptised as Christians. He was not baptised himself, perhaps because he didn’t want to be accused of doing it for expediency.

• Date/place of birth and death in Erich Woehlkens, Lisa Kuhlmann and Beate L Weiland, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Juden in Uelzen und in Nordostniedersachsen (1996), p. 134.
• Identified as son of Abraham and Marianne Bresslau (née Heynemann) in Woelkens et al., Beiträge, p. 134.
• Identified as husband of Caroline Bresslau (nee Isay) and father of Ernst Ludwig, Hermann and Helene in Woelkens et al., Beiträge', p. 134..
• Date of marriage in in Woelkens et al., Beiträge', p. 217.
• Studied in Göttingen around 1866. Doctorate 1869. Professor at the universities of Berlin und Straßburg. See Woelkens et al., Beiträge', p. 217.
• After Germanys defeat in WW I Harry Bresslau, was classified by the French as a "Panamanian militant" and expelled from Alsace (where he had lived and worked as a professor). Information taken from the Wikipedia article about his son Ernst. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Bresslau

See also: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Bresslau