Prussian Premier Defends Honor of Jewish State Official

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service)

The Prussian Premier, H?rr Braun, defended in the Reichstag today, the honor of a Jewish State Official, Dr. Badt, Ministerial-Director and Prussian Representative to the Reichsrat, against whom one of the Nationalist Deputies, Dr. Frick, launched an attack last week.

At the session of the Reichstag held on March 21, the Premier said, Dr. Frick sneered at Dr. Badt, alleging that during the war he had gone about peddling old clothes and begging in Galicia and now he is the man who has to decide the future of Germans who had fought at the front. Dr. Badt, the Premier declared, was in the service of the Prussian State since 1908. As soon as the war broke out he went to the front and in the first month of the war he was wounded and decorated with the Iron Cross for valor on the field. His colonel had written to him expressing his appreciation of his great bravery and fearlessness in face of the enemy fire, during the battle on August 22nd and 23rd, 1914.

If Deputy Frick came across a man in Galicia named Badt, the Premier added, who peddled old clothes, he had no right to confuse this person with Ministerial Director Badt. The Government of Prussia wants emphatically and indignantly to repudiate the absurd allegations made by Dr. Frick against its authorized representative, the Premier declared.

Deputy Frick himself, it was pointed out, did not go to the front during the war.

A plan for consolidation of Temple Emanu-El and Temple Beth-El, New York City, will be voted on by the trustees of both temples the latter part of April.

Under the plan the combined religious organization will be known as Temple Emanu-El. The name Beth-El will be perpetuated by the Chapel Beth-El, which will be erected in connection with the new Temple Emanu-El. The combined congregation will, under the proposals, occupy the present Temple Beth-El at Seventy-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue for two years. It will then move into the new Temple Emanu-El, which will be built at a cost of between $2,500,000 and $3,500,000 at Fifth Avenue and Sixty-fifth Street on the site of the Vincent Astor residence.

One article of agreement provides that “the consolidated corporation shall give due consideration to and make appropriate provision for the rabbis of the constitutent corporations, and shall in an equitable manner adjust any moral obligations incurred by them to their rabbis.”

The present rabbis of Temple Emanu-El are the Rev. Dr. Nathan Krass and the Rev. Dr. II. G. Enelow. The Rev. Dr. Joseph Silverman is Rabbi Emeritus. The rabbis of Temple Beth-El are the Rev. Dr. Samuel Schulman and the Rev. Dr. Simon Cohen.

A meeting of the congregation of Temple Beth-El has been called by Ben Altheimer for April 27 to vote on the proposed merger. Louis Marshall, president of Temple Emanu-El, has called a meeting for April 25 for the same purpose.