The West German Post Office placed on sale today a 20-pfennig postage stamp bearing the portrait of Albert Ballin, Jewish merchant marine tycoon who killed himself when his good friend, Kaiser Wilhelm, fled to Holland at the end of World Ward. The issuance marked the centenary of Ballin’s birth.
A pioneer in large-scale passenger traffic across the Atlantic, Ballin developed the Hamburg-American line. Spurning many suggestions from leading German sources that he become baptized, he remained a member of the Hamburg Jewish community until his death.
Another leading German Jew, Dr. Gottfried Fischer, head of the S.Fischer Publishing House, was honored on his 60th birthday with the award of the City of Frankfurt’s Goethe Plaque. A Berlin physician, Dr. Fischer went into publishing after marrying the daughter of noted Berlin publisher Samuel Fischer, whose family name he later adopted.
During the Nazi regime, he maintained his publishing activities, first in Vienna then in Stockholm and later in New York City. In 1950 he re-established the S. Fischer firm in Frankfurt and has since developed it again into one of the most respected institutions in German literary life.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
