School friends

SCHOOL FRIENDS

[187] We were a colorful mixture of people in school, no group a majority. Aside from the Jews there were german Balts, including barons and burghers, Russians, poles, Lithuanian, a few Scandinavian, and few Latvians. During the school years I was friends with a Russian colleague, Kolja Wlasjen. He was the son of a Russian artillery officer serving in the Libau fort. His parents were very cultured Russians, who like artillery officers everywhere, needed a broad and varied education, unlike those in the infantry and the cavalry. He was the youngest in the class, a few months younger than I was. We attended all the same classes, and usually sat next to each other. He was usually the best student, and was promoted from grade to grade without examinations, while I had to toil strenuously. He was of course perfect in Russian, good in all mathematical subjects, but not very talented in other areas - in spite of a seven year school plan he never learned german. We lliked each other a lot, which did not prevent us from thrashing each other every few days. He called me "hugz" (Jew) and I called him "Tatare" (tartar) because his small inheritance of nobility derived from the tartar yoke in Russia. But we made up just as quickly. The friendship ended after we finished school, he studied in Petersburg, and I went to Germany. Then the world war came, and I never heard from him again.

I did not stay in contact with any of my school mates, while I did retain contact with several from the humanistic Nikolai gymnasium. Actually, we never got together; also, the students in the Realschule and the Gymnasium belonged to different segments of the society. The Jews in the gymnasium came from the first and richest Jewish circles, mostly Lithuanian who had obtained residence rights in Kurland since they were merchants of the first guild; the Jews in the Realschule came from merchant families of the second guild, hand workers, people who were not at the peak of either Jewish or worldly culture. So neither the school nor the society provided contact. Due to the quotas there were only a few Jews in either school. Since the school operation placed a lot of value on religious education, but the small number of Jewish students did not justify paying the Jewish religion teacher twice, those from the Realschule were sent to the gymnasium for these lessons. The teacher was a Russian government officer, with uniform and decorations. His name was Rischmann. The religion class was the last class of the day. We Realschule students walked the rather long path to the gymnasium and arrived noisily halfway through the hour. In no other class was there so much mischief. No teacher got less respect from us than this one. He punished me occasionally but got no improvement. He did not have much Jewish knowledge; in spite of his uniform we esteemed him no more than a [Melamed] (elementary Hebrew teacher), which he really was. [191] The teaching was restricted to Jewish history - after all, each of us got religion and Hebrew teaching from a non-uniformed Melamed. So the teaching was worthless, but the acquaintance with the Jewish Gymnasium students was worthwhile. I made long lasting friendships with many of them. They were mainly the families Lurie, Eliasberg, and Chose.

Isidor Lurie was descended from the family of Jizchak Luria Aschkenasi called Ari, of the highest Jewish spiritual nobility. I met their two sons from the first marriage only later, becoming very friendly with the second Max Lurie, with whom I was together in Hamburg for many years. In the second marriage Isidor married a cousin Eliasberg, and had three sons: Jonny, Sascha (Samuel) and Leopold. The old Eliasberg was director of the Minsker Bank in Libau; his son is married to Fanny Halpern, and has two daughters about my age [192] Gina and Selly, then younger children Artur, Solja, and Georg.

Sascha and Leopold Lurie, Gina and Selly Eliasberg formed the core of a group of youths containing another 5 or 10 age mates. It was a nice companionship, especially in the summer vacation of 1904 when we had very good times together. More on that later. I fell in love with Selly Eliasberg, but she just laughed at me. Then, two years later, when this first fire had been extinguished, I fell in love with the older sister. This time it was very serious with me, and lasted until 1912. But just as I got my first job as scientific assistant in the Hamburg museum, and was ready to propose, she married the son of a Dr. Israel. I never fell in love again, and if I had not met Maminka in Libau during my European vacation in 1930, I probably would never have married. [193] I will say more about Choses later, but first I want to briefly describe the strange and tragic fate of the two Eliasberg sisters, my first flames.

Selly and Gina both studied in Brussels, where I looked them up during whitsun vacation when I was in Heidelberg. Selly studied medicine, Gina national economics. Both were talented though Selly the younger was much more brilliant and more pretty. The anatomy professor fell in love with her. When she got her doctorate in 1911, the professor (who I think was called Mazé, which is not relevant) divorced his wife. Since according to Belgian law they would have to wait three years before marrying, which they did not want to do, they moved to Turkey where they opened a joint practice. It succeeded beyond any expectations, since Selly, as a gynecologist, had access to the harems, while the professor treated the male patients. Things went very well for them - then came the world war, Turkey became allied with Germany, and as Belgians, they [194] were suddenly enemy aliens. They had to abandon Turkey, and moved to Serbia, where due to the lack of doctors, they were received with open arms as military doctors. They came to Nisch. Unfortunately the poor Serbs lacked not only doctors, but also every hygienic and sanitary preparation. The whole army, like all armies of the time, was infested with lice, and typhus raged epidemically. Mazé caught it also, and died of it, in spite of the care of his wife and student. Selly also caught it. Her mother, a refugee in Russia at the time, moved heaven and earth to get to Nisch, where she found only Selly's cooling corpse.

Gina became engaged with and married a Dr. Israelsohn. He was also a medical doctor, a slight, good looking fellow. I believe he was a neurologist, in any case he was interested in the occult sciences. [195] At the engagement he studied his fiance's palm lines and said to the assembled guests that the marriage would last only seven years. I remember this well, since Popka (Leopold) Lurie mentioned it as a sign of the shrillness [schrilligkeit] of the chosen one in the same letter in which he tried to console me. The wedding, which I attended, was celebrated with all splendor in the Berlin [Logenheim] (Masonic lodge?). The young couple moved to Petersburg, but the marriage was unhappy from the beginning. The young bridegroom neglected his wife and instead was interested in others. Gina became ill with tuberculosis and went to a sanatorium in Finland. The world war started, Dr. Israelsohn was drafted. In 1919 he was also slain by the typhus epidemic, and as he had predicted, the marriage lasted seven years. After the war Gina came to Hamburg with her parents; to cure her illness [196] she spent two years in Switzerland, and was indeed cured. When Hitler came to power she went to her sister Lolja in Palestine, where she broke her leg twice. She now lives in Tel-Aviv.

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