Helmut Hirsch Collection

This collection documents the professional work and life of the historian Helmut Hirsch. The primary focus of the collection is on his professional activities and immigration experiences, although some documentation of his family life is also present. The collection consists largely of extensive correspondence but also includes unpublished manuscripts, and a small amount of research material and articles.

Correspondence, found in Series I: Correspondence and Series III: Addenda, primarily relates to Helmut Hirsch's professional life. Much of the correspondence is from Helmut Hirsch to publishers and colleagues. The correspondence exchanged with many publishing houses and related institutions discusses possibilities of publication or rejection of his work, payment schedules, editing of works and the status of his works accepted for publication. Correspondence with institutions where Hirsch worked as a professor, such as Roosevelt College and the University of Chicago, display his activities as professor, including classes he taught and his relationships to other professors and staff. Much of his correspondence additionally mentions his research on topics such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Saar region, and Rosa Luxemburg.

This collection also contains some personal correspondence, with indications of major events in Helmut Hirsch's life, such as his wartime and immigration experiences, the birth and development of his son Helmut Villard Hirsch, and his moves within the United States and return to postwar Germany. Information on such topics will largely be found among the folders of correspondence with his parents, Hedwig and Emil Hirsch; with his son; and among the extensive correspondence of Wuppertalers, especially with that of friends such as Klaus Goebel. Some information on his immigration, reasons for fleeing Germany in the 1930s, and experiences in France will be found among the restitution correspondence, which additionally includes a large amount of legal and financial correspondence concerning his and his family members' attempts to secure restitution.

Further documentation of Helmut Hirsch's professional work in the form of manuscripts and research material comprise Series II. This series includes drafts, often with Hirsch's handwritten notations, of some of his works. Especially prominent are his transcriptions of the letters Eduard Bernstein sent to Friedrich Engels in the late nineteenth century. Some lecture texts and a small amount of research relating to various subjects within Jewish history will also be found in Series II. In addition, this series includes copies of inventories of Helmut Hirsch's papers at other archival institutions.