Adolf Moritz Steinschneider Archiv e.V.

Funeral oration for Musch Steinschneider

Dear Danielle and Hannah, dear Benny and Gerlinde, dear Miles and Maurice, dear mourners,

It is difficult for all of us to take leave of Musch Steinschneider in this hour. During these days of mourning one suddenly remembers a conversation with Musch that one would like to continue.

A question comes to mind that one would like to get answered. A recollection, a hint, an objection, or maybe Musch's ripe, sometimes ironic laughter, when she caught you in the midst of not being up to the mark...as the Berliners say, "nicht auf dem Damm..."

Yet, even if Musch is silent now, she will remain accessible, available, and reachable for those who were her friends. They will not only have pleasant memories of her, but Musch will somehow be communicative, ready to talk via the trail she leaves behind: the experiences she went through; her steadfastness, persistence and conscientiousness in collecting and preserving; her kindness; her humor; her knowledge; and also through the emotions we feel while mourning for her.

The house on the Altheimstrasse, where Musch lived, was an address for many people, numerous requests, and matters of interest. When I entered it for the first time some ten years ago, on behalf of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and became aware of the memories piled up in Musch's rooms, I could only stammer, "This all is really unique!" And Musch replied self-confidently, "Yes, you are right, it is indeed!"

At Altheimstrasse No. 10, the completely unexpected maternal line of the protestant pastor Hillmann came together with the paternal side's surprising linage from Berlin's intellectual Jewry. The Steinschneider family had been made famous by father Adolf's grandfather Moritz. One was always aware of the fact that both heritages lived on in Musch.

When, in 1938, it became increasingly dangerous for Musch to stay in Nazi-Germany because of her Jewish background, mother Eva fled with her ten-year-old daughter to join her husband Adolf Steinschneider, a leftist lawyer, who had already immigrated by necessity to Paris in 1933. But exile in France offered security for only a short time.

Mother and daughter returned to Frankfurt alone after the war. Father Adolf had been killed by the SS in 1944, and Musch had further lost the great love of her youth in France; the painter Peter Grumbacher, who was deported to an extermination camp in the summer of 1942.

When taking leave of Musch today, we also commemorate the two men she lost under terror; in the rage of extermination, during the Shoa.

In Musch's rooms at Altheimstrasse, memories piled up. And they did not arrive there on their own. Musch compiled them for many, many years; assembling the material from faraway places. It was also where she nurtured concerns for her children Danielle and Benny, while pursuing her professional life, as well as her political commitments. She saved her father's manuscripts, correspondences, and documents, as well as papers and letters of her uncle Gustav Steinschneider, who had immigrated to Palestine. In this way, an unusually complex archive came into being: a unique chronicle of exile, survival, and resistance in sinister times.

Musch spoke at schools to give accounts of her ordeal. She organized lectures reading from her father's letters and initiated an exhibition of her murdered friend Peter Grumbacher's drawings. But she also remained active in continuing her father's and uncle's work; to cultivate the proud tradition of the Steinschneiders. Together with Frau Dr. Heuer she published the correspondences of her great-grandfather Moritz and his fiancé Auguste Auerbach. It's a heavy tome, but it contains many wonderfully fresh letters of two young Jewish people during the period before 1850. By reading them we also meet Musch.

Musch grew up with the clear conscience of an enlightened Jewish family tradition over many a generation. She faithfully and proudly kept that tradition all of her life and did everything in her power to cultivate it. That is what one sensed when one was fortunate enough to see her in the Altheimstrasse. And I believe that we should think, especially today, of Musch's faithfulness to a life lived in order to save all that is good and truly human; to prevent these important things from being forgotten.

Let's take leave! Let's say adieu, Musch! Let's remember Musch in love, gratefulness, faithfulness to that which she had to say, what she leaves behind for us, and the things for which she fought. Let's remember that this fight for justice in the world for Musch started in the powerlessness and threat of flight and exile.

Let's reinforce the "solidarity of the shaken ones" as André Glucksmann calls us to do in the face of the murderous 20th century, whose evil tendencies subtly remain even in the present. He was, just as Musch Steinschneider, exposed to the terror of persecution in occupied France.

Adolf Moritz Steinschneider Archiv e.V.

residential subdivision Döberitz 1911/12

the house of the Steinschneider family 2008

Fr. 15.10.04