The Autobiography of Willy Katzenstein. Part One, 1874–1932

Abstract

Late in 2020, while sorting through a cupboard at the home of her mother, Eva Roberts (née Katzenstein), Susan Hamlyn—the abridger of this piece—discovered two fat folders. Each contained carefully typed documents in German. One was the 292-page diary kept by Eva’s father, the lawyer Dr Willy Katzenstein (1874–1951) (see Figure 1), during his four years of service in the Landsturm (German reserve army) (see Figure 2) during the First World War. The other was the 212-page autobiography he wrote shortly after arriving in England as a refugee in June 1939. The autobiography, the first part of which is published here, is primarily concerned with Katzenstein’s increasing—and ultimately crucial—involvement with the Jewish community of Bielefeld in north-western Germany, and various Jewish organizations at local and national level. Although he was semi-detached from Jewish interests and affairs in his youth, by the mid-1930s the facilitation of Jewish emigration from Germany absorbed every aspect of life for him and his wife Selma (née Zehden). Katzenstein was a classicist, poet, essayist, traveller, a lover of music and art, and a devoted husband and father. He died in London in 1951.