Hans Werner Wollenberg passed his final school exam in 1910 and studied medicine at Munich from 1911. The collection includes Wollenberg's account of a journey to Italy, which he had undertaken with a few friends. Later he had to spend a few weeks in hospital in Copenhagen, unable to shake off an infection. In 1912 he apparently lived with his parents and studied at Königsberg. In 1913 he spent a semester at Berlin University, continuing his medical studies and becoming a member of a student corporation.
Lilli Segal, a German Jew, was born in Berlin in 1913. Segal fled to France after the Nazi seizure of power, where she engaged in illegal courier work to Germany and was finally arrested and deported to Auschwitz.
She managed to escape and fled to Switzerland. In the 1980s and 1990s she was involved in research into the history of Nazi medicine.
Publications: Die Hohenpriester der Vernichtung: Anthropologen, mediziner und Psychiater als Wegbereiter von Selektion und Mord im Dritten (Reich, Dietz Berlin, 1991) and Vom Widerspruch zum Widerstand: Errinerungen einer Tochter aus gutem Hause.
Frank Collins, a German Jew, was born in Mannheim on 8 January 1918. He was interned at Gurs concentration camp, France, from 25 Oct 1940 to 4 August 1941. According to his 'Soldier's Release Book' he was called up for military service with the British army on 24 November 1943, having been listed as a butcher by trade. He was released on 19 March 1948. He was a member of the 2nd Special Air Service Regiment.
After the war he was involved in an operation to bring to justice Nazi war criminals who committed acts of brutality against civilians and members of the SAS at Moussey, France.
Robert Philip Baker-Byrne was born in Berlin in 1910. His father was the owner of the company, Modellhaus Becker, Berlin. In 1936 he and his parents, under increasing pressure from life under the Nazis, came to Great Britain as refugees. Some time later he married and had a daughter. From 1939 until 1944 he was a member of the Pioneer Corps. In 1944 he began working for the British Secret Service and made two lone parachute drops into enemy territory. Whilst on the last mission into the Lübeck area he was apparently captured.
Having survived the war, he worked as an investigator in the investigation section of War Crimes Group, North West Europe. After he left the military he went to Australia (presumably with his family). After a few years he returned to Great Britain where he worked as a sales manager in the 1950s. Nothing further is known about his life nor that of his family.
During World War Two, Lingfield Race Course, Surrey, was converted into an internment camp.
During 1914-1919 there were two large camps on the Isle of Man at Douglas and Knockaloe near Peel. The first was a requisitioned holiday camp whilst the second was purpose built using prefabricated huts and even had its own railway link. Large numbers of internees were held for up to five years until the camps finally closed in 1919.
In World War Two, camps were located in the Douglas area, Peel, Port Erin/Port St Mary and Ramsey. These held much smaller numbers of people thought dangerous to national security, sometimes only for a few months until the individuals were assessed for potential risk. There were also some political detainees including those held under section 18B of the Defence (General) Regulations. This enabled the Government to imprison those citizens thought to be dangerous to national security without charge, trial or set term.
The Committee for War Foster Children (Commissie voor Oorlogspleegkinderen) was established by the Dutch government on 13 August 1945. The committee's objective was to ensure that the fate of the children orphaned as a result of the war and the Holocaust be secured in the children's best interest. The stance taken by the committee was controversial from the outset.
Jewish groups felt that they were under represented on the Committee given that 84% of the children were Jewish. They argued that Jewish children, instead of being allowed to go to Jewish foster parents, were encouraged to stay with their existing (non- Jewish) foster parents. The committee, determined to be non-denominational, argued that if the children were happy in their adopted, non-Jewish environment, and it could not be proven that they came from orthodox family backgrounds, it would be in their best interests to stay put.
Lehnitz was Jewish rest home, children's home, congressional centre and domestic science school and was located within the Berlin region.
Isabella Roth was born in Vienna in 1896, the daughter of Josef Roth a Jewish manufacturer from Gross Wardein, Hungary. She worked as a correspondent for Holz-Handels-Aktien-Gesellschaft, Vienna, where she worked in the Rumanian department as German-Hungarian correspondent. From 1925 until 1938 she worked as typist for the Neue Wiener Tageblatt for Steyrermühl, the newspaper publisher. She came to England in 1939, where, according to her naturalisation certificate, she worked as a typist. Nothing further is known of her life or that of her family.
Olga Benario was born into a family of Jewish intellectuals in Munich in 1911. At the age of 16 she was already a member of the Communist party. In 1926 she, along with others, stormed the Berlin-Moabit district gaol in order to free some comrades, later going into hiding. In 1928 she went to Moscow and in 1934 she accompanied the Brazilian revolutionary, Luiz Carlos Prestes (whom she later married), to Brazil where she took part in the resistance to the regime of President Vargas. However, such was the affinity between Hitler and Vargas that once captured, she was deported back to Nazi Germany where she was interned in the concentration camp Lichtenburg. She was gassed in the concentration camp at Bernburg an der Saale in 1943 at the age of 34.
Max Sander was a German Jew, born in 1890, who apparently came to Great Britain in 1939. During World War One he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class and the Ehrenkreuz für Frontkämpfer. He is described in various documents as a businessman and there is a photograph of a shop in Hamburg called Nebel und Sander. Sander died in London in 1979.
Else and Sigismund Kobylinski were German Jewish refugees, interned on the Isle of Man in Summer and Autumn 1940. Bothcame to Great Britain in 1939, their children having emigrated some years earlier.
This collection of copies of papers deals with the project of a group called the Langham Committee, whose object was to put to work several hundred German, Austrian and Czech Jewish refugees on the renovation of a dilapidated manor house and grounds, Tythrop House, Leicestershire.
Franz Szell, an exiled Hungarian journalist apparently resident in Tilsit, Lithuania spent more than a year in the archives in Latvia and Estonia researching Alfred Rosenberg's family history with a view to publishing the open letter, 936/1.
Paul Dickopf was born in 1910 in Müschenbach in Oberwesterwaldkreis. After studying law and administration he joined the criminal police and later the security service. From September 1942 he went into hiding in Belgium (the circumstances of which are unknown) and later fled to Switzerland where he lived as a refugee until the end of the war. In 1947 he returned to Germany and joined the Federal German Police where he progressed to become head of the Bundeskriminalamt, Wiesbaden, and from 1968 was president of Interpol. Dickopf died in Bonn in 1973.
Hitahadut Olej Germania was founded at the beginning of 1932 with the objective of providing advice and support to would-be emigrés from Germany to Palestine. The character of the organisation changed with the huge increase of emigrants during the great 'Alijah' [1933] after which it became more involved with issues around settlement, and the economic and cultural life of the new immigrants.
The mother organisation, Mifleget ha-Avodah ha-Ziyyonit, was the Socialist Zionist party formed in 1920 by the union of Palestine Workers' Party, Ha-Po'el ha-Za'ir, with a majority of the Ze'irei Zion groups in the Diaspora. The latter groups had been formed in Russia at the beginning of the 20th Century by young Zionists who espoused the views of Ha-Po'el ha-Za'ir and intended to join the party upon their settlement in Erez Israel. The programme of Ze'irei Zion, announced at its second congress in Petrograd, in 1917, postulated the necessity to establish a Jewish labour commonwealth in the land of Israel and redirect the Jewish masses in the Diaspora to productive occupations.
Bruno Weil, was a scholar, lawyer and politician, who in 1926, was elected Vice-President of the Central Verein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens. In 1935 he was sent by the CV to the USA to develop links with American Jewish organisations. From there he made a trip to South America, the result of which was this series of articles which were later to be published in the CV newspaper. This particular edition was presumably written for the American market, since the reports are in English and are printed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which was, by then, based in New York.
Oskar Schindler's list documents the Jewish workers who were employed by Schindler at the concentration camp Gross Rosen and the work camp Brünnlitz. Inclusion on the list was a guarantee of safety. The list includes the names of 297 women and 800 men, the women's names being listed alphabetically. The list is thought to be a jumble of inaccuracies, false birth dates, and altered identities. Some of the mistakes are intentional; others apparently resulting from confusion or disinformation, or simply typos.
The Zentralvereinigung österreichische Emigranten was a non-political organisation with no party or religious affiliations, the objective of which was to help all Austrians in exile after the outbreak of war. It was based in Paris and the advisory council comprised Alfred Polgar, Frederike Zweig and Berthe Zückerkandl. Its principal activities were to provide assistance for immigrant internees; to assist their wives and children, many of whom ended up in homes; and to procure residency permits.
Paul Hollander was born in Cologne in 1908. After leaving school he decided to work abroad to improve his language skills. He spent time in London, Rotterdam and France where in 1938 he stumbled into a career in journalism.
At the outbreak of war he volunteered for the French forces but as a German he was immediately interned. His only alternative was to volunteer for the French Foreign Legion where he served for a little under a year as engagé volontaire pour la durée de la guerre. After which time he spent the next two and a half years in various camps including Kenadsa. In the Spring of 1943 he managed to bluff his way out of the camp and arrived in Algiers where he joined the British Alien Company.
Hampstead Garden Suburb Care Committee for Refugee Children has a connection with the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany (British Inter-Aid Committee). Nothing is known about the origin or background of the Hampstead Garden Suburb Care Committee for Refugee Children. The Inter-Aid Committee was founded in March 1936 by agreement between the Central British Fund, Save the Children Fund and the Society of Friends with the special object of looking after Christian Children of Jewish extraction. The Inter-Aid Committee sought out children whose anti-Nazi parents had been arrested or were in danger of incarceration. This committee re-formed under the title of the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany in 1939.
Wilhelm Freyhahn was an inmate at Buchenwald concentration camp, until July 1938. Freyhahn was a representative of the Jewish community in Breslau, and guest of Max Bollag.
Siegfried Kessler was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1879; he was married with two sons who all accompanied him to England in 1939; and when he left Czechoslovakia he was a retired senior civil servant.
He was a member of the Jewish Social Democratic Workers' Party Poale Zion for 30 years. He was also vice president of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde (Jewish cultural community), Brno for which organisation he managed the provision of assistance to prospective Jewish emigrants in the late 1930s. It was in this capacity that he was arrested by the Gestapo on the day that the Nazis marched into Czechoslovakia. After release and continual harassment he eventually managed to secure visas for himself and his family and arrived in England in June 1939.
Whilst in England he maintained contact with the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, Brno and applied himself to assisting with the expatriation of Czech Jews. He was involved with such organisations as the Czech Refugee Trust Fund, the Jewish Agency Group, the Self Aid Association and the Jewish Agency for Palestine.
Hans Woltär was born in Aussig an der Elbe in 1915 and deported to a work camp in Posen, Poland in 1942.
Julia Rahmer, a former member of the underground Leninist group Neu Beginnen, gives some insight into the activities of the group and the realities of life as a member. Julia Rahmer was recruited into the group in Berlin by a friend, Fritz Meyer, in April 1933. As a Jew, frustrated at no longer being able to continue her studies at university, she was attracted to the possibility of 'keeping socialist ideas alive' under the Nazi regime. By 1935 she had become disillusioned with the group and in 1936 emigrated to Prague and later London on account of the danger posed to members of subversive organisations.
Grete Mayer was born on 24 October 1901 in Frankfurt am Main, the daughter of the Jewish businessman Willy Mayer. She graduated from the Schiller-Schule, Frankfurt, then the Handelsschule, Frankfurt with a certificate. After jobs in an old people's home and as a book-keeper in a bank she began a career in social work as a volunteer in the Jewsh community and in 1928 graduated as a social worker with a special interest in children. She married Seefried Mayer in March 1929 and sometime between then and 1939 they came to Great Britain where she worked as a nurse and a voluntary social worker throughout the war years. Up to at least 1956 she worked in the field of psychiatric social work. Little more is known of her life beyond the fact that her husband died in 1969.
The Abraham family lived in Berlin. Leopold Abraham, the father, a plumber by trade, and his wife Frieda were deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp some time in 1943. Max Abraham, the son, came to England with his wife, Hanni, in 1939, where he worked as a technical teacher at the ORT school in Leeds. He had previously worked as a technical teacher in the ORT school in Berlin. Hanni's parents and brother and sister all perished in Auschwitz. Frank Russell, one of the correspondents in the later letters, was a former pupil of the ORT school in Leeds.
The bulk of the material in this collection was collected on the initiative of the Wiener Library in 1939. Former rabbis of synagogues in Germany who had managed to escape to Great Britain were asked to supply information on the fate of their synagogues. 985/1 consists of these responses, most of which are dated November or December 1939. In addition, there is a list of respondents. The project's results comprised a set of statistics on the fate of Germany's synagogues.
Club 1943, in Hampstead, was founded as a weekly rendezvous for refugees from Nazi oppression. Its membership was first confined to writers and scientists, but later opened up to all those interested in literature, politics and other intellectual subjects. Lectures were in German or English and were usually attended by between 40 and 75 people. They covered political theory, literature, music, art, science, history, medicine, psychology, ethics and religion. The first president was H J Rehfisch, one of the co-founders of the club with Karl Wolff, Monty Jacobs and others.
This collection consists of two unrelated items, both of which document the sympathetic attitudes of two ordinary German women to the Nazis and their Führer.
The Committee for Jewish Refugees in Holland was created out of the Committee for Special Jewish Affairs, an organisation established to represent the interests of all Jewish interest groups. Dr David Cohen, a leading member of the Dutch Jewish community and Professor of Ancient History at Amsterdam University, was founder of both organisations.
Created (or rather re-activated) in 1942 by the Comité international de la Croix-Rouge, the Commission des prisonniers, internés et civils (Commission PIC) was mandated to deal with all questions relating to the treatment of POWs and civilian internees (which included victims of racial persecution and political detainees). It was incumbent upon the PIC to pass on all necessary instructions to those around the world tasked by the CICR to deal with POWs and internees. The PIC acted in the name of the CICR with respect to the practical execution of the latter's directives. It also had to take initiatives in numerous cases where conventional arrangements either no longer existed or had become inooperatve. During the Second World War the PIC worked closely in collaboration with the Division d'assistance spéciale (DAS) to provide material and moral assistance to victims of racial persecution not protected by the Geneva Convention.
In effect up to 1942-1943, questions relating to the persecution of Europe's Jews as well as hostages and political detainees had been dealt with by a variety of different agencies. From 1942 the PIC was charged with the principal questions relating to victims of racial and political persecution. Its activities continued up to the immediate post war period where it became involved with repatriation of deportees.
In addition the Service des colis aux camps de concentration (Service CCC) was created in 1943 and integrated into the DAS in 1944. This organisation worked specifically towards providing assistance for Jews and other civilians in Nazi concentration camps.
The Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief was founded in the early months of 1933 by a group of Anglo-Jewish community leaders, in response to the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on a political platform of anti-Semitism. Among the founders were Anthony de Rothschild, Leonard G. Montefiore and Otto Schiff.
The fund has been through many name changes in its lifetime. It started out as the Central British Fund for German Jewry, then became part of the new Council for German Jewry in 1936 along with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the American United Palestine Appeal. On the outbreak of World War Two in 1939 the fund changed its name to the Central Council for Jewish Refugees, and in 1944 changed again to the Central British Fund for Jewish Relief and Rehabilitation. After many years as the Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief, the organisation is now known as World Jewish Relief.
The Fund's mission, according to its Memorandum of Association, was 'to relieve or assist Jewish Refugees in any part of the world in such manner and on such terms and conditions (if any) as may be thought fit'. In this work the fund was aided by various organisations, including the Jewish Refugees Committee (JRC) which was founded by Otto Schiff in 1933, the Children's Refugee Movement (established by the JRC and the Inter-Aid Committee), and the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad, which was established in 1943 and financed by the Central Council for Jewish Refugees (as the Central British Fund (CBF) was then known).
In the wake of its triumphal consolidation of power, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) decided to establish an archive to preserve for posterity its own records and those of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront. On Jan 15, 1934, at the suggestion of Reichsschulungsleiter (Reich Education Director) Otto Gohdes, headquarters for an archive and library under the name 'NSDAP Hauptarchiv' were established in Berlin. There was a forerunner to the archive established Aug 1926. A press archive for the party in Munich was founded by Mathilde von Scheubner-Richter, widow of Max von Scheubner-Richter at the behest of Hitler with the following functions: to collect material on hostile personalities; to scan and make cuttings from the Communist press and the Nazi press. Around 1928 the organisation was taken over by the Reichspropagandaleitung of the NSDAP, which also collected posters, leaflets, pamphlets and other propaganda and election material for the use of various Nazi organisations.
The NSDAP Hauptarchiv's first director was Dr Erich Uetrecht from the Reichsschulungsamt. The archive moved in October 1934 from the Maerkisches Ufer in Berlin to its permanent location in Munich, 15 Barerstrasse. The already existing records of the Reichspropagandaleitung were incorporated with it. In mid 1935 the entire organisation was made directly responsible to Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.
The purpose of the archive was no longer that of acting as a central clearing house of information for the various party organisations. In addition to collecting books, periodicals, newspapers and government publications, operating a reference service for party and government figures, and presenting occasional exhibits, the party archive was to be the main depository for documents relating to the party's history from its earliest days.
As a relatively new institution, the Hauptarchiv had great difficulties in finding original material. With the help of newspaper advertising, leaflets and questionnaires, the archivists appealed to old party members to donate their memorabilia of strife-torn days and to write down their personal reflections.
The old established state archives were unwilling to turn over their collections of party material. Only the Munich police and the Bavarian political police gave the Hauptarchiv their pre-1933 documentation on the NSDAP. In 1938, Dr Uetrect wrote an elaborate memorandum discussing the re-organisation of all German archives and assigning the Hauptarchiv a central place in the scheme. The eventual result of this memorandum was a circular signed by Rudolf Hess and sent in July 1939 to the various state agencies, directing them to collaborate fully with the Hauptarchiv. In response these agencies drew up lists which enabled the Hauptarchiv to ascertain the location of files pertinent to NSDAP history, although the documents themselves were not transferred.
In 1939 the Hauptarchiv was designated as depository for the Fuhrer's deputy, the Reich Chancery and the Reich Leadership of the NSDAP. It was also given jurisdiction over the various Gaue (districts) archives and of the NSDAP 'Gliederungen' (formations) (eg Stormtroopers, SS, Hitler Youth).
By 1943, it had become apparent that Munich was no longer safe from aerial attack and that the most precious holdings of the Hauptarchiv would have to be moved. Three Bavarian sites were chosen: Passau-Feste-Oberhaus, Neumarkt-St Veit, and Lenggries-Schloss Hohenburg. The material transferred consisted mainly of the archival section proper. The library under its new head, Dr Arnold Bruegmann, continued to operate in Munich until it was wiped out by bombing in January 1945. Records for material stored at Neumarkt-St go up to March 1945. At the end of the war the American army seized what archives it could find in Passau and Neumarkt-St Veit. (The fate of the Lenggries material is unknown). The confiscated documents were then reassembled at the Berlin Document Center in early 1946.
Established by law in 1933, the Reichskulturkammer (RKK) was created to enable the Reichsministerium fuer Volksaufklaerung und Propaganda (RMfVP)(Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda) to control virtually all aspects of organised cultural life in Germany. The RKK was closely linked to the RMfVP under Joseph Goebbels, who also served as president of the RKK. The card index relates to some 185,000 members and applicants of the RKK and its affiliated organisations, including staff members of the RMfVP. For those whose livelihood derived from the arts, membership was compulsory in the RKK and its subordinate chambers of literature, music, film, theatre, radio, graphic arts and the press. Those denied membership were effectively prevented from practising their profession.
Rose Henriques was born in London in 1889, the daughter of James Loewe, a well-known figure in Jewish communal life. Her brother achieved standing as Reader in Rabbinics at Cambridge University.
Rose Loewe came from a comfortable middle class background and had a love of music, performing regularly on the harmonium at her local synagogue in St John's Wood. She studied piano in Breslau. Returning at the outbreak of the First World War, she met Basil Henriques, who persuaded her to join him in a venture to establish a Jewish boys' club in the East End of London. The Oxford and St George's Club dominated the lives of the couple for decades. Rose initially took charge of the girls' section, eventually managing the boys' section as well when Basil went off to do his patriotic duty. The couple married in 1916.
They lived on the premises of their club from which base they undertook a wide range of welfare work involving not only youth work but mother and baby welfare, help for the aged and the promotion of education, participation in Jewish religious life and in the arts. Eventually Berner street, on which the home was situated, was renamed Henriques Street in her honour.
The Nazi persecution of Germany's and Europes's Jews roused the interest and compassion of Rose at an early stage. In 1943 she found the opportunity to become actively involved in planning for the end of the war by joining the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad (JCRA) which was formed by the Joint Foreign Committee of the Anglo Jewish Association and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. The JCRA had as one of its chief goals the establishment of the Jewish Relief Unit (JRU)- an active service unit carrying out welfare work among the surviving remnant of European Jewry in Germany. Rose Henriques served as head of the German department of the JCRA. She was part of the second team to arrive at Bergen Belsen after its liberation and based herself at the nearby town of Celle.
Rose Henriques remained preoccupied with welfare work in displaced persons' camps until 1950 when Bergen Belsen was closed and most Jewish DPs emigrated to Israel or to the USA.
In the post-war era Rose Henriques became actively involved in the British ORT organisation (ORT are the Russian initials of the Society for Spreading Artisan and Agricultural Work among Jews). She also served as chair of the British Society for the Protection of the Health of Jews; established work rooms for the elderly in East London; presided over the League of Jewish Women, the Association for the Welfare of the Physically Handicapped; the Whitechapel Art Gallery and the Jewish Research Unit.
When Basil Henriques was knighted in 1955, Rose became Lady Henriques. She died in 1972.
The Central-Verein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (CV) was founded by German Jewish intellectuals on 26 March 1893 in Berlin, with the intention of opposing the rise of Anti-Semitism in the German Empire. Shortly after its founding it had 1,420 members and in 1926 approximately 60,000 members.
The CV's aim was to unify German citizens of Jewish faith, to fight for the Jews' rights as citizens and to combat rising Anti-Semitism. Commitment to the German Nation was an important part of the CV's agenda, the members saw themselves primarily as German citizens with their own religion. Consequently, the CV repudiated Zionism.
Beginning in 1922, the CV published a weekly newspaper, called C.V.-Zeitung (C.V.- Newspaper) and continued fighting the rising Anti-Semitic threat. Through publications and conversations with Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg and economic leaders the CV tried to call attention to the threat.
In 1928 the 'Büro Wilhelmstrasse' (Wilhelmstrasse Office) was created with the instrumental support of Alfred Wiener. It documented Nazi activities and issued anti-Nazi materials until 1933, when Hitler came to power.
During the Nazi era, the CV was forced to change its name several times. From 1936 onwards it was called 'Jüdischer Central Verein' (Jewish Central Association). After the Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass or November Pogrom) in 1938 the CV had to stop publishing its newspaper and the association was prohibited a short time later.
The World Jewish Congress (WJC), is an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations. Its headquarters are in New York City, USA; its research institute is located in Jerusalem. It maintains international offices in Paris, France, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Geneva, Switzerland and most recently, Miami, Florida.
The WJC includes Jewish organizations from across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Israel and the Pacific. It attempts to build consensus between different Jewish groups of varying political and religious orientations; it works to act as a diplomatic envoy for the worldwide Jewish community. It is a Zionist organization, strongly supporting the State of Israel.
In 1951, Nahum Goldmann, then president of the WJC, cofounded the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany -the Claims Conference, as a body to engage the German government in negotiations for material compensation for Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. The World Jewish Congress designate two members to the Board of Directors of the Conference.
In 1992 the WJC established the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) as an organization for the restitution of Jewish property in the rest of Europe (outside Germany). It has been active in the claims against Swiss banks.
In 2000 the World Jewish Congress shaped the policy debate about looted art by criticizing museums for waiting for artworks to be claimed by Holocaust victims instead of publicly announcing that they have suspect items.
The WJC is involved in inter-faith dialogue with Christian and Muslim groups. One of its major new programmes is concerned with the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab lands.
The roots of the London College of Printing (LCP) lie in the City of London Parochial Charities Act of 1883, which aimed to provide better management of these charitable funds, and inter alia, benefit the inhabitants of these parishes by improvement of education and employment prospects. The need for improved technical education of workforce was clearly felt against a background of changing technologies and foreign competition, and particularly so in the field of printing. The Act established the St Bride Foundation Institute Printing School, which opened in Nov 1894. In the same year the Guild and Technical School opened in Clerkenwell Road to improve the craft skills of apprentice and journeymen engravers and lithographers, and then moved the following year to Boult Court, where it became known as the Bolt Court Technical School. The School was subsequently renamed the London County Council School of Photoengraving and Lithography.
In 1921, the Westminster Day Continuation School (the forerunner of the College for the Distributive Trades) opened. In 1922 St Bride's School moved to larger premises at 61 Stamford Street and now under LCC control was renamed the London School of Printing and Kindred Trades (LSPKT). In 1949 the Bolt Court School of Photoengraving and Lithography merged with the LSPKT to form the London School of Printing and Graphic Arts (LSPGA). The LSPGA was renamed the London College of Printing in 1960. New premises at the Elephant and Castle were opened in 1964, and the North Western Polytechnic Department of Printing merged with LCP in 1969. On 1 Jan 1986, the LCP joined Camberwell School of Arts and crafts, the Central School of Art and Design, Chelsea School of Art, the College for the Distributive Trades (CDT), the London College of Fashion and St Martin's School of Art to form the London Institute.
The LCP and CDT subsequently merged in 1990, and the LCP was renamed the London College of Printing and Distributive Trades.
The papers include a printing correspondence course of Walter Rankin (1892-1965). He was apprenticed as a printer to C Joscelyne, Printers, of Braintree, Essex, in 1907. In 1913 he moved to J G Hammond and Co, of Birmingham, and after taking his printing correspondence course, sat the examinations of the City and Guilds London Institute in 1915 and 1916. He worked at Manifoldia of Birmingham, 1916-1924; Century Press, Fulham Rd, London, 1924-1927; Manager of South Western Press, Fulham Rd, London, 1927-1928. He was appointed Manager of Alfred Couldrey and Chas Pearson, Aldgate, London, in 1928, and worked later for McGlashen Greogry, Stanhope Press of Rochester, Vacher and Sons of Westminster, Baird and Tatlock, and McCann Erickson.
The Association for Moral and Social Hygiene was established in 1915 following the amalgamation of the Ladies' National Association and 'British Continental and General Federation for Abolition of Government Regulation of Prostitution' (which later became the International Abolitionist Federation). Josephine Butler founded the Ladies' National Association in the 1860s when she led her campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts in Great Britain. These Acts applied to certain garrison towns and seaports, and attempted to preserve the health of servicemen by arrest and compulsory medical examination of women found within these areas who were suspected of being there for immoral purposes. The Acts were repealed in 1886. Josephine Butler also made contact with abolitionists in Europe and established the International Abolitionist Federation in Mar 1875. The Association for Moral and Social Hygiene is a gender-equality pressure group independent of any political party, philosophical school or religious creed. Its aims were: To promote a high and equal standard of morality and sexual responsibility for men and women in public opinion, law and practice; To secure the abolition of state regulation of prostitution, whatever form it may take, and to secure the suppression and the punishment of third party profiteering from prostitution (eg brothel-keeping, procuring); To examine existing or proposed legislation dealing with health (eg treatment of venereal disease) and public order (solicitation laws) and to oppose any laws or administrative regulations which are aimed at or may be applied to some particular section of the community; To study and promote such legislative, administrative, social, educational and hygienic reforms as will tend to encourage the highest public and private morality; To keep these principles continually before Government departments. Its basic principles were: social justice; equality of all citizens before the law; a single moral standard for men and women. It produced its own journal The Shield. Sir Charles Tarring held the Chair at the first Executive Committee meeting on 5 Nov 1915. Helen Wilson was first honorary secretary and Alison Neilans, assistant secretary. Neilans later became General Secretary, a position she held until her death in 1942. Like its predecessors, the Association continued to oppose state regulation of prostitution. This was seen in its campaigns to repeal the provisions of the Defence of the Realm Acts in the First and Second World Wars (Sections 40D and 33B respectively), and against 'solicitation laws' by introducing Public Places (Order) Bills, Street Bills and Criminal Justice Bills between the 1920s and 1940s. It also made representations to the Wolfenden Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution 1954-1957 and was very critical of the Street Offences Act 1959, which was in part a product of the report emanating from that Committee. The Association became concerned with a wide range of issues relating to sexuality: for example, sex education, sex tourism, sexual offences and age of consent, traffic in women and children, and child prostitution. In 1962 the Association changed its name to the Josephine Butler Society.
The Josephine Butler Society (1962-fl.2008) was formed in 1962 when the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene was renamed. Its objectives were: To promote a high and equal standard of morality and sexual responsibility for men and women in public opinion, law and practice; To promote the principles of the International Abolitionist Federation in order to secure the abolition of state regulation of prostitution, to combat the traffic in persons and to expose and prevent any form of exploitation of prostitution by third parties; To examine any existing or proposed legislation on matters associated with prostitution or related aspects of public order and to promote social, legal and administrative reforms in furtherance of the above objectives. Its basic principles were: social justice; equality of all citizens before the law; a single moral standard for men and women. (Taken from membership and donation form 1990.) The Josephine Butler Society was a pressure group not a rescue organisation. It wished to prevent the exploitation of prostitutes and marginalisation of those who could be forced into this activity by poverty and abuse, and it believed these problems should be addressed by changes in the law. It believed that more should be done to prevent young people from drifting into prostitution, to help those who wished to leave it, and to rehabilitate its victims. Its work in the early 21st century took two main forms: to make representation to various departments of the UK Government on prostitution and related issues an; to liaise and network with other agencies both statutory and voluntary who worked in related areas. As at 2008 it was still active.
Josephine Elizabeth Butler [née Grey] (1828-1906) was born on 13 Apr 1828 (7th of 10 children of John Grey and Hannah née Annett). In 1835 the Grey family moved to Dilston near Corbridge, Northumberland after her father's appointment in 1833 as agent for the Greenwich Estates in the north. On 8 Jan 1852 Josephine married George Butler at Corbridge, Northumberland. He had been a tutor at Durham University, and then a Public Examiner at Oxford University. In 1857 they moved to Cheltenham following husband's appointment as Vice-Principal of Cheltenham College. In 1866 they moved to Liverpool following husband's appointment as Head of Liverpool College. Josephine took up plight of girls in the Brownlow Hill workhouse and established a Home of Rest for girls in need. In 1868 Josephine became President of North England Council for Promoting Higher Education of Women, and in the following year she was Secretary of Ladies' National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts (extended by legislation in 1866 and 1869). In 1875 she established the International Abolitionist Federation in Liverpool. In 1883 the Contagious Diseases Acts were suspended. In 1885 the age of consent was raised to 16 which Josephine fought for. The Contagious Diseases Acts were repealed in 1886. From 1888 until Oct 1896, Josephine edited Dawn a quarterly journal. From 1882-1890 Josephine lived in Winchester where Rev George Butler was appointed canon. In 1890 George Butler died. Josephine moved to London and continued campaigning against state regulation abroad. In 1894 she moved to her son's home in Galewood within Ewart Park near Milfield. In 1898-1900 Josephine edited and wrote Storm Bell. In 1906 Josephine moved to Wooler where she died on 30 Dec and was buried at Kirknewton.
The Bankside Gallery Charitable Limited Company was formed in 1980 by the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS) and the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers (RE). These two societies had a close association and had shared premises since 1888, and also had members in common. In 1980, the lease on their current premises - 26 Conduit St, London, expired, and the Societies transferred to the Bankside site.
Edward Bawden was born in Braintree, Essex in 1903. He was educated at Braintree High School, the Friends' School in Saffron Walden, Cambridge School of Art. From 1922-1925, he studied under Paul Nash at the Royal College of Art (RCA), and was a contemporary student and friend of Eric Ravilious and Douglas Percy Bliss. Bawden continued to study at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, and worked as tutor in the School of Graphic Design at the RCA, as well as teaching at the RA Schools and Goldsmiths' College. He exhibited watercolours at the St George's Gallery, 1927, and held his first on-artist show at the Zwemmer Gallery in 1934. In 1925 he was commissioned by Harold Curwen to illustrate a booklet, Pottery making in Poole, and together with Ravilious was designing patterned paper, borders and fleurons for Curwen Press. From 1928-50, he illustrated a number of other publications. Curwen became his friend, sponsor and teacher, and encouraged him to draw directly on the stone. In 1947, he illustrated The Arabs, for the Puffin Picture Book series, published by Penguin.
As an official war artist from 1940-1945, he was sent on a number of expeditions to the Middle East and other sectors, finally visiting Italy. He considered this period as the time when he "really learned to draw". During 1949 and 1950 he visited Canada as a guest instructor at Banff School of Fine Arts, Alberta.
He was a most skilful artist in black and white and colour, using several techniques in his work, including woodcuts, line drawing, linocutting and auto-lithography. As well as illustrating many books and book jackets, he painted in watercolour and gouache, painted a number of successful murals, designed wallpaper and ceramic wall tiles, produced linocut prints and did commercial work, including poster designs.
His work is represented in the Tate Gallery, London, and by water-colour drawings in several London, Dominion and provincial galleries; exhibitions at: Leicester Galleries, 1938, 1949, 1952; Zwemmer Gallery, 1934, 1963; Fine Art Society, 1968, 1975, 1978, 1979, 1987, 1989; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1978; Imperial War Museum, 1983; V&A, 1988, 1989; retrospective touring exhibition, 1988-1989.
As printmaker and graphic designer, he designed and cut blocks for a series of wallpapers printed by Messrs Cole & Son, and painted mural decorations for the SS Orcades and SS Oronsay, also for Lion and Unicorn Pavilion on South Bank site of Festival of Britain.
In 1932 he married Charlotte Epton of Lincoln (died 1970). Bawden died on 21 November 1989.
He held the positions of Trustee of Tate Gallery, 1951-1958, Honorary Dr RCA; DUniv Essex; Honorary RE, RWS. He was awarded CBE 1946; RA 1956 (ARA 1947); RDI 1949.
Books written and illustrated: Hold fast by your teeth, Routledge, 1963; A book of cuts, Scolar Press, 1979.
Illustrated books include: The Histories of Herodotus, Salammbô, Tales of Troy and Greece, The Arabs, Life in an English Village, and many others.
The Society of Painter-Etchers was a voluntary society formed in 1880 by Seymour Haden and James J Tissot, Alphonse Legros and Hubert Herkomer, Robert Walker Macbeth, Heywood Hardy, who sought recognition of etching as a painter's art, rather than merely a craftsman's means of reproducing an artist's painting in multiples. It was also a protest against the Royal Academy's unwillingness to accept artists' etchings as original works of art and their refusal to elect artist-etchers as Academicians, though is elected craftsmen-engravers to membership and showed their copies of Academicians' paintings in the annual exhibitions.
It gained immediate support from fellow printmakers, and the following year an additional number were elected to the Society and the group prospered, so much so that in 1888 Queen Victoria granted a Royal title to the Society and in 1898 allowed its name to be enlarged to include Engravers, and in 1911 King George V granted a Charter of Incorporation and Bye-laws.
In 1989, to accommodate advances in technology and fully represent current printmaking in all its forms, the RE, as the Society had become known, voted to include all kinds of artists' prints in its exhibitions and to elect as members outstanding artists working in any of the various printmaking media. The revision of the name to The Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, further reflects this change, and was approved by HM The Queen, The Privy Council, and the Home Office.
The Society has assembled a unique Diploma Collection of Prints, comprising a representative work from each new member upon election. This growing collection of more than a thousand prints, including works by such well reputed artists as Sickert, Poynter, Alma-Tadema, Griggs, Brockhurst, Knight, Sutherland, Hermes, Gross, Hayter, Bawden, and Rothenstein, is now held in trust by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. From the beginning the Society had members in common with the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS) and a long term partnership ensued, with the Society sharing premises with the RWS. In 1980, they jointly established the Bankside Gallery Charitable Limited Company, where their regular exhibitions now take place. The Society's major exhibition of Member's work generally in May each year.
: Frank Short was born on 19 June 1857, at Wollaston, Worcester, the only son of Job Till Short, engineer, and his wife, Emma Millward. Leaving school at the age of thirteen, Short trained as an engineer, and was an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers from 1883 until his resignation in 1904. For a short time he attended evening classes in the Stourbridge School of Art and then, after a period of engineering work in London, abandoned this profession and entered the National Art Training School (later the Royal College of Art), South Kensington, also attending a life class at the Westminster School of Art, under Frederick Brown.
While still a student at South Kensington in 1885 Short won high approval from John Ruskin for some of his mezzotints after Turner's Liber Studiorum'. With Ruskin's encouragement he devoted much of his life to the reproduction of Turner's paintings, and mezzotinted forty plates of theLiber', including thirty based on unpublished plates or unengraved drawings.
Short revived mezzotint and made it a new and living art in his translations not only of Turner, but of Reynolds, Constable, De Wint, Watts, and other painters. He showed new possibilities for the medium in using its qualities of tone and mass for his original landscapes, such as The Lifting Cloud' (1901), andWhen the Weary Moon was in the Wane' (1894). Entirely his own, too, was his work in aquatint, another method which he revived and developed. Using his engineering skills he made his own tools and invented new ones.
His early work as an etcher won praise from J A M Whistler who, from 1888 to 1900, frequently visited Short's studio for help with matters of technique or of printing. Short's etched work in bitten line, or dry-point, or soft-ground, was a direct interpretation of nature by means of straightforward, frequently outdoor, work upon the plate. Like Rembrandt and Whistler, he believed firmly in purity of line and clean printing, as may be seen in such plates as Sleeping till the Flood' (1887),Low Tide and the Evening Star and Rye's Long Pier Deserted' (1888), and `A Wintry Blast on the Stourbridge Canal' (1890).
Short's outstanding powers led to his appointment in 1891 as teacher of etching at South Kensington; he later became professor of engraving, and retired in 1924.
He was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI) in 1917, but although he was interested in painting, and produced scholarly and poetic water-colours throughout his life, his main work lay in etching and engraving. He had been elected a fellow of the (Royal) Society of Painter-Etchers in 1885, and he succeeded Sir F Seymour Haden as second president in 1910, retiring in 1938. He was elected A.R.A. in 1906, the R.A. (the first engraver to reach the higher rank) in 1911; and was treasurer of the Royal Academy from 1919 to 1932. He was awarded gold medals for engraving at Paris in 1889 and 1900; and was master of the Art-Workers' Guild in 1901. He was knighted in 1911.
Short married in 1889 Esther Rosamond Barker (died 1925), and had one son, who died on active service in 1916, and one daughter. He died at Ditchling, Sussex, 22 April 1945.
Nathaniel Sparks was born on 18 Jun 1880 in Bristol, the second son of Nathaniel Sparks Snr, a violin restorer. He was educated privately until the age of 10 when won a scholarship to The Bristol College of Art and Science, where he came under the tutelage of R Bush, ARE. Another scholarship brought him, aged 20, to the Royal College of Art (RCA), London, where Frank Short, President of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers (RE), was Head of the Engraving School.
Whilst studying he was commissioned by J McN Whistler to pull (print) his `Venice Set' and in 1905 he received a Diploma in Decorative Painting from the Royal Academy and was made an Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers (ARE).
1906 saw the first of a long line of annual exhibits at both the Royal Academy (RA) and the RE. In 1909, he was elected a Fellow of the RE and won a Gold Medal for Outstanding Artwork.
During the World War 1, he was employed making gauges for the munitions factories, engraving the fine calibration required for accurate machining. Following the end of the War, the rise of photography led to a decline in the demand for the engravers' skills. Sparks continued to produce prints and watercolours, but faded into old age and obscurity. His printing press was blown up by a German bomb in 1940.
He died in Somerton, Somerset in 29 August 1957.
Malcolm Osborne was born at Frome, Somerset, 1 August 1880, the fourth son of Alfred Osborne, Schoolmaster. He was educated at the Merchant Venturers' Technical College, Bristol, and the Royal Coll. of Art, South Kensington, 1901-1906, where he studied etching and engraving under Sir Frank Short, RA, PRE. Osborne served in Artists' Rifles and 60th Division in France, Salonika and Palestine during World War 1, and was later Professor of Engraving at the Royal College of Art, ARA 1918. He held the position of President Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, from 1938-1962, and was awarded CBE 1948; RA 1926; PPRE, ARCA. In 1927, he married Amy Margaret Stableford. He died on 22 September 1963. Publications: Etched Plates.
Alfred Bentley was born in 1879, the youngest son of Capt. W. E. Bentley, FRGS. He was educated at the Royal College of Art, South Kensington, London, where he studied etching and engraving under Sir Frank Short. He also became a lifelong friend of his fellow classmate, Malcolm Osborne (1880-1963), with whom he went on etching tours in France, frequently working together and sharing the same studio.
In April 1915, he joined the Artists' Rifles, April 1915, was gazetted to Norfolk Regiment and served in France (MC). Bentley was elected an Associate of the Royal Engravers in 1908 and became a full member in 1913. He was awarded and ARCA London.
Bentley was a recognised artist, exhibiting his etchings and drypoint engravings at both the Royal Academy, London, and the Royal Scottish Academy, as well as in all the principal galleries in England and abroad. Morlaix, Brittany was Bentley's last work of art. It was commissioned by the Print Collector's Club in 1923. This drypoint engraving was also selected for the publication, Fine Prints of the Year, 1923.
He died on 18 February 1923 of complications due to World War 1 related wounds.
The establishment of the Society of Painters in Water Colours grew out of discontent at the disadvantage suffered by watercolours being hung amidst oil painting at the exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Art in Somerset House.
At a meeting at the Stratford Coffee House, Oxford St, London, on the 20 Nov 1804, William Frederick Wells initiated the establishment of the Society Associated for the Purpose of Establishing an Annual Exhibition of Paintings in Water Colours, in conjunction with the artists William Sawrey Gilpin, Robert Hills, John Claude Nattes, John and Cornelius Varley, Francis Nicholson, Samuel Shelley, William Henry Pyne and Nicholas Pocock. By the time of their first exhibition in April 1805, it had become known as the Society of Painters in Water Colours, and had gained six more members. The success of this exhibition, which enjoyed 12,000 visitors, encouraged its development into an annual event.
As a cooperative society, the Society's profits were shared among exhibitors, and at its peak in 1809, when there were more than 22,000 visitors, a profit of over £626 was divided between the twenty full members and seven associates. However poor financial management, and the uncertainty caused by renewed war with France, seems to have contributed to a decline in visitors and profits, ending in the collapse and winding up of the Society in 1812.
The Society was re-formed as the Society of Painters in Oil and Watercolours, in Dec 1812, with largely the same membership and struggled along until 1820, when on the 30 November 1820 the Society of Painters in Water Colours was reborn, reverting to the exclusive exhibition or water colours.
1860 saw the beginning of Diploma Collection - artworks presented to the Society by members following their election. Under the Presidency of Sir John Gilbert, the Society obtained the designation of 'Royal' following the agreement of Queen Victoria to sign the Diploma, in 1881.
Annual exhibitions of water colours began in 1805, with the Winter exhibition introduced in 1862. They were held in a variety of galleries located at Brook Street, Pall Mall, Old Bond Street, Spring Gardens, and the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly. In 1823 the Society moved to number 6 Pall Mall East, where is stayed until 1938 when it moved to number 26 Conduit St. Following the expiration of the lease in Conduit St in 1980, the Bankside Gallery Charitable Limited Company was established by the Society in conjunction with the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers (previously the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers) who had shared the Society's premises since 1888, and with whom it had members in common.
John Joseph Jenkins, Secretary of the Society 1854-1864, collected the papers of the Society and compiled notes with the intention of writing its history. Though he did not achieve this, they were used extensively by John Lewis Roget in his two volume publication History of the 'Old Water-Colour Society', (Longmans, Green and Co, London, 1891).
The Society's Art Club was founded in 1884 to promote interest in watercolour painting by holding evening conversazioni, which were attended by professional and amateur artists. It was wound up after its centenary in 1984 and transformed into the Friends of the Bankside Gallery.
In 1923 the Old Watercolour Society Club (OWSC) was founded, and produced volumes of essays by artists and academics relating to watercolour artists from 1924-1994.