“Political Views: Jew”
Wolfgang Johannes Leppmann (1902–1943)
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
In the Weimar Republic, Berlin was the centre of East European Studies. Wolfgang Leppmann was a part of the up-and-coming generation of academics in those days. The Slavicist and historian, one of Otto Hoetzsch’s doctoral candidates, worked in the German Association for the Study of Eastern Europe and published on numerous occasions in Osteuropa. From 1931 until 1934, Leppmann supported Hoetzsch as academic assistant in editing and publishing the collection of sources Die internationalen Beziehungen im Zeitalter des Imperialismus (International relations in the age of imperialism). After the Nazis seized power, Leppmann – who did not think of himself as a Jew, but was considered one by the regime – found himself a target of Nazi racial policy. The greater part of Leppmann’s family and Jewish colleagues man-aged to flee. He could not bring himself to leave Germany. When he was called to report for deportation, he went into hiding, but was caught soon thereafter. Wolfgang Leppmann died in Auschwitz in 1943.
(Osteuropa 12/2005, pp. 87–100)