The industrial magnate, my father and I

Lecture series on civil courage "Resistance and Solidarity".

With films, discussion evenings, and lectures that deal with forms of resistance against injustice and with acts of solidarity, the initiative "Eyes Open Against Antisemitism and Other Forms of Group-Based Hostility" of the Local Alliance for Family e.V. aims to encourage reflection on the issues of our time.

Cereals, oil, flight, and resistance – the history of a German-Jewish family.

Alexander Schumitz is a journalist. In his lecture, he tells the story of his family and simultaneously paints a panorama of German-Jewish economic and social history. It deals with taboos, courage, and resistance – and the question of why this history continues to resonate up to the present day.

His father, born in 1919, is the illegitimate son of the Jewish merchant Max Brandenstein. Before World War I, he takes over the grain trade with his brother in Halle. In the mid-1920s, he enters the international oil business. After the Nazis come to power, the family loses their fortune. Max Brandenstein and relatives succeed in fleeing to Israel, Chile, and the USA.

The son of Max Brandenstein is scarcely aware of all this: His mother cut off contact with the father in the early 1920s. At the end of 1939, he is drafted into military service. Secretly, he passes military secrets to the resistance and is arrested by the military police in 1943. Suddenly, death threatens him.

The admission is free!