very noble and ideal movement, but it is not for me.
“Do you think that my cousin, Walter Rathenau, would not have been murdered if he was not a Jew?” he asked. “There is no man who can say that. Unfortunately, Erzberger, too, was murdered, and he was not a Jew.
“When I became President of the Academy I received an anonymous letter threatening that if I did not retire within three days I would be removed. I threw the letter into the waste paper basket.
“Jews should be told that they should not segregate themselves,” Professor Liebermann concluded. “A certain amount of self-consciousness, if one is something and can do something and has the right amount of tact to go with it, will not harm anyone.”
In a letter dealing with the question of anti-Semitism which was published some time ago, Professor Liebermann wrote that “anti-Semitism has become dangerous only since it has infected the so-called scholars, since it has invaded the universities. Honors appear to be given to individual Jews only so that the mass of Jews should be the more insulted. I consider it is the greatest insult to which I can be subjected when a Christian says to me: ‘If only all the Jews were like you!’ I always answer: If only all the Christians were like me!”
Professor Liebermann has presented a number of his works to the Museum of the Bezalel School of Art in Jerusalem, and recently he assured Mayer Dizengoff, the Mayor of Tel Aviv, of his interest in the new Jewish Museum in that town.
Professor Liebermann made a drawing in his 80th year, which he called the “Mother of Twelve Thousand,” to commemorate the 12,000 Jewish soldiers who fell in battle for Germany during the War, and presented it to the Federation of Jewish ex-Soldiers.
The official organ of the Berlin Jewish Community published an article by Dr. Karl Schwartz, recalling that in the old synagogue in the Heidereuter Street in Berlin there is a curtain hanging before the Ark of the Law, presented by Professor Liebermann’s grandfather, Joseph Liebermann.
Only recently, Dr. Schwartz wrote, Professor Liebermann told me, that he well remembers standing 75 years ago in this synagogue at the side of his father, who pointed out to him this beautifully embroidered curtain, with the name Liebermann on it, and he had felt very proud of it.
When he graduated in 1866 from the Friedrich-Werder High School, whose oldest living student he is, Dr. Schwartz mentions, Professor Liebermann wrote in the record there:
“I, Max Liebermann, was born on July 20th, 1847, in Berlin. My father, Louis Liebermann, brought me up loyal to the faith of my fathers, in the Jewish religion.”
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.
