Loewenberg, Ernst

The Jewish educator and writer Meier Spanier was born in Wunstorf, Lower Saxony in 1864. 1900-1911 he was headmaster of the Jewish teachers seminary in Muenster, before moving to Berlin, where he was the director of a Jewish girls’ school. In 1942 he committed suicide to escape deportation. Meier Spanier had one son, the dentist Hans Lothar Spanier.

From the guide to the Meier Spanier Collection., (Leo Baeck Institute Archives)

Jakob Loewenberg was born on March 9th, 1856 in the village of Niederntudorf near Paderborn in North Rhine-Westphalia. He was inspired to teach at a young age and passed his first teaching examinations at 17 whereupon he taught for five years in the small town of Geseke. Determined to perfect his foreign languages, he then spent time in London and Paris. Upon returning from abroad he studied in Marburg and Heidelberg, where he received his doctorate.

He moved to Hamburg in 1886 with a position teaching English and French at a high school. In 1892 he purchased a private girls school, the Realschule fuer Maedchen, and became its director. The school quickly rose to become one of the most prestigious schools in Hamburg. Loewenberg worked here until his death in 1929. In addition to running the school with great popularity and instituting numerous progressive educational reforms, he was also active as a writer and poet. Though he published regularly during his life, today he is most known for the work he carried out in the field of education. Loewenberg was friends with the poets/writers Detlev von Liliencron, Meier Spanier, Richard Dehmel and Gustav Falke, amongst other poets and writers of his time. He himself regularly published poems, song lyrics and articles (often on the topic of being a German Jew) and also edited the highly popular poetry anthology Vom goldenen Ueberfluss .

Loewenberg married Jenny Stern in 1895 and they had three children, Ernst, Richard and Annette. Loewenberg and his wife died in 1929 and 1930 respectively. All three children managed to escape during the 1930s and, using various routes, eventually ended up in the United States.

From the guide to the Jakob Loewenberg Collection, 1880-1929, bulk 1890-1925, (Leo Baeck Institute)