Alfred Wiener

Alfred Wiener ( born March 16, 1885 in Potsdam, † February 4, 1964 in London ) was a German Jew who has devoted much of his life to the documentation of anti-Semitism and racism in Germany and Europe as well as the elucidation of the crimes of the Nazi regime. He was, among other things, the founder of the Wiener Library and its longtime director.

Life

Wiener studied Arabic and spent the years 1909-1911 in the Middle East. During the First World War he was a soldier and was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class. From 1919 he was a senior representative of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith (CV) and identified the NSDAP in 1925 as the main threat to the Jews in Germany.

In 1928, he was a leading role in the establishment of the "Office Wilhelmstrasse " of the CV, which documented the activities of the Nazis and published until 1933 anti-Nazi material. After Hitler came to power in 1933 fled Vienna and his family moved to Amsterdam, where he co-founded with Dr. David Cohen Jewish Central Information Office ( JCIO ). 1939 fled Vienna with his collection to London. The majority of the war years were spent in Vienna in the USA, where he gathered material for the JCIO, but also worked for the British and American governments. He returned in 1945 returned to London, where he converted the JCIO into a library and a research center.

Wiener's first wife Margaret died in 1945, shortly after the liberation of Bergen- Belsen, on their way to Switzerland. In 1953 he married his second wife Lotte Philips.

Mid-50s reduced Viennese his work at the Wiener Library and regularly traveled to Germany to give lectures for young people and establish contacts with church organizations. 1955 Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany awarded him.

Quote

Already in 1925 Alfred Wiener had written: