Metadata: Max Gottschalk archives
Collection
- Country:
- Belgium
- Holding institution:
- Institute of Jewish Studies (Martin Buber Institute)
- Holding institution (official language):
- Institut d’Études du Judaïsme (Institut Martin Buber)
- Postal address:
- Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 17 / Franklin Rooseveltlaan 17, 1050 Bruxelles (Ixelles)
- Phone number:
- +32 (0)2 650 33 48
- Web address:
- http://www.ulb.ac.be/facs/philo/judaisme/
- Email:
- iej@ulb.ac.be
- Reference number:
- BuberIns-Brussels-Archives Max Gottschalk
- Title:
- Max Gottschalk archives
- Title (official language):
- Archives Max Gottschalk
- Creator/accumulator:
- Gottschalk, Max
- Date(s):
- 1892/1946
- Language:
- German
- French
- Hebrew
- Extent:
- 0.3 linear metres
- Scope and content:
-
This fonds is rich and varied. It can be subdivided into several sub-fonds.
Help to refugees from Germany: this sub-fonds firstly contains correspondence (ca. 1933-1940) between Belgian refugee organisations (such as the Comité d’assistance aux enfants juifs réfugiés d’Allemagne and the Comité d’Aide et d’Assistance aux Victimes de l’Antisémitisme en Allemagne) and other organisations/institutions (Red Cross, Movement for the Case of Children from Germany, etc.) related to various matters concerning the refugees. We find correspondence with families volunteering to shelter refugee children or with Jewish charities (such as the school colony Villa Johanna) as well. We also note individual files of children, documents concerning the Association pour la Rééducation Professionnelle des Réfugiés, subject files concerning aid to children and requests for aid by individuals, etc.
The second sub-fonds Ferme-école juive de La Ramée (ca. 1941-1942) contains letters of candidates and records on monitors for the La Ramée school, cards of students and candidate students, documents related to the École temporaire de préparation horticole et agricole de La Ramée in Bomal, established under the auspices of the Communauté israélite de Bruxelles (CIB)(1941-1942). We also find correspondence, documents related to the equipment of the students, convocations, fascicules, lists of candidates for agricultural training, questionnaires filled in by candidates, convocation letters and records with information on the candidates, circulars concerning the school, regulations, lists of members of the board, documents concerning the teaching staff and the students, forms of the tests taken at the school (of general intelligence, French, German, agriculture) and bookkeeping documents (1941-1942).
The third sub-fonds Communauté Israélite de Bruxelles (CIB) contains firstly archival material related to the organisation by the CIB of the artisans, workers and traders in the textile and confection sector (such as membership lists, subject files, various reports) in Brussel. We also find archival material produced by/concerning the CIB (dated ca. 1892-1942) and related to: its members (memberships lists, documents about certain members), donations and legacies to the CIB, meetings, circulars, documentation (i.a. about antisemitism), the celebration of religious holidays, activities organised for the Jewish youth and Jewish children, religious services (texts of chants and prayers, etc.), Jewish schools, the issues of shehitah and kashrut in Brussels (and relations with Orthodox communities in these matters), the KKL, charities run by the CIB, the agricultural school in Bomal, etc.
Lastly, the fourth sub-fonds titled Fonds "étrangers" et Archives Gottschalk contains archival material related to various Jewish charities (i.a. reports, statutes, minutes of meetings, membership lists, bulletins, regulations, etc.), personal correspondence by Gottschalk (ca. 1934-1939) but especially archival documents and documentation (ca. 1926-1964) related to the question of (Jewish) refugees in the 1930s, such as official reports and statistics concerning Belgian alien policy, minutes of meetings of the inter-ministerial refugee commission, subject files and documentation concerning the refugee centres in Merksplas and Eksaarde, the MS St. Louis, aid to refugees by Catholic organisations, the activities of the international refugee organisation HICEM and the American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee, etc. It is likely that some of these documents were collected by B. Garfinkels in the framework of her research on the Jewish refugees in Belgium.
- Archival history:
- Max Gottschalk bequeathed his archives to the IEJ.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Max Gottschalk was born in Liège in 1889. He obtained a degree in philosophy and letters as well as a PhD in law from the University of Liège, and also studied at Berlin University, at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France. In Paris he established links with the members of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, for which he would become active in the 1930s. He had a brilliant legal career, as a high ranking functionary at the national and international level (notably as Section Head of the Bureau International du Travail in Geneva). Having returned to Brussels, he participated in the scientific research of the Institut de Sociologie of the ULB, and led its Centre d’Économie régionale. He was active in the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme and was vice president of the Conseil supérieur du travail et de la Prévoyance sociale. He was appointed commissioner for Work by the Van Zeeland government in 1935 and took part in various councils and committees related to the question of unemployment. Gottschalk also taught at the École d’Ergologie of the Institut des Hautes Études, at the École de Service social and the École ouvrière supérieure. In exile in the United States during the Second World War, he held the function of rapporteur of the Commission belge pour l’Étude des Problèmes d’Après-Guerre (CEPAG) and was also a representative at the UNRRA. As well as his career as lecturer and functionary, he was heavily involved in Jewish associational life, notably in the Communauté Israélite de Bruxelles (CIB), the Consistory, the Œuvre centrale israélite de Secours (OCIS), the Foyer israélite (which he founded in 1937) and especially in various initiatives for relief of the German Jewish refugees in the years 1933-1940. He established and directed the Comité d’Aide et d’Assistance aux Victimes de l’Antisémitisme en Allemagne (CAAVAA), headed the Association belge pour l’Émigration des réfugiés and AREPROR (1937-1940). He was also the president of the Franz Philippson conferences, founded and led the Centrale d’Œuvres sociales juives in Brussels as well as the Centre National des Hautes Études Juives. He also played a key role in various international Jewish organisations, such as the Jewish Colonization Association, the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, the Jewish Agency, the Joint, HICEM, the American Jewish Committee and the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Gottschalk died in Ohain in 1976. (J.-P. Schreiber, "Max Gottschalk", in J.-P. Schreiber, Dictionnaire biographique des Juifs de Belgique. Figures du judaïsme belge, XIXe-XXe siècles, Bruxelles, De Boeck, 2002, pp. 139-141.)
- Access points: persons/families:
- Gottschalk, Max
- Subject terms:
- Agriculture
- Aid and relief
- Aid and relief--Philanthropy and charity
- American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
- Antisemitism
- Children
- Correspondence
- Education
- Education--Schools and universities
- Education--Students
- Holocaust
- Jewish community
- Jewish daily life and religious practices
- Jewish holidays
- Jewish-Christian relations
- Kashrut
- Orthodox Judaism
- Professions
- Professions--Crafts
- Professions--Scholars (secular), scientists, and academics
- Refugees
- Ritual slaughter
- Statistics
- Trade and commerce
- Trade and commerce--Clothing and textile trade
- Access, restrictions:
- Access requires the authorisation of the archivist of the IEJ.
- Finding aids:
- There is a handwritten list of the Gottschalk archives. The description above also serves as a preliminary finding aid. The archives of the CIB have been repacked and labelled by the researchers of this project.
- Yerusha Network member:
- State Archives of Belgium
