Ministerial Councillor Fans Goslar, the head of the Press Department of the Prussian Government, is going on long leave for a period of many months, the J.T.A. is informed.
Ministerial Councillor Goslar’s decision has not come as a surprise in political circles, the J.T.A. is told. He was a close friend and political associate of the Prussian Prime Minister, Herr Otto Braun, during the entire period of his Premiership, and now that Herr Braun has gone on leave while awaiting political developments, with the Vice-Premier acting meanwhile as head of the Government, he is taking the same course.
Ministerial Councillor Goslar before he entered the State service, was a journalist, who enjoyed a big reputation as a writer on commercial and economic questions. He was associated with Dr. Georg Bernhard, former editor-in-chief of the “Vossische Zeitung”. In 1919 he was appointed to the Prussian State Ministry, for the purpose of creating an impartial informative Press Department, and he has since held the post of head of the Department. He was the confidential man of the Premier, Herr Braun.
Ministerial Councillor Goslar is a religious Jew and he has always taken part in Jewish activities. He is one of the leaders in Germany of the orthodox religious wing in Zionism, the Mizrachi, and he is a member of the Zionist Jewish Reople’s Party in the Berlin Jewish Community, and a Deputy to the Assembly of Jewish Communities in Prussia.
Soon after the big Hitlerist victory in the elections in April, Ministerial Councillor Hans Schaeffer, the State Secretary to the Federal Ministry of Finance, the only Jewish high official in the Federal Government, resigned, and it was stated that his decision was prompted by the Hitlerist success, which had made intolerable the position of Jewish Government officials, and that the Jewish high officials in the Prussian Government, Dr. Hans Goslar and Dr. Herman Badt, would shortly have to follow suit.
In Jewish quarters, it was stated at the time, Herr Schaeffer had been urged not to yield to the antisemitic pressure and leave his post, because it was feared that it would create a precedent encouraging the antisemites to squeeze out all Jews in high places in Germany.
This attitude was expressed by Dr. Weiss, the Berlin Police Vice-President a few days ago, when he wrote that the people who were withdrawing from the fight were actually furnishing weapons for the arsenal of the antisemites. It would mean that Jews must give up all the positions won by the fight for Jewish emancipation and would result in the end in establishing a political ghetto. If the Jews accept the position that no Jew may hold any State position the antisemites would be perfectly entitled to demand that every other post should be closed to Jews. The more we are attacked, he wrote, the more strongly we German citizens of Jewish faith must resist and stand at our posts and do our duty as German citizens till we fall.
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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.