The physician and educator Siegfried Lehmann was born on January 4, 1892, in Berlin. After several stops along the way, he began studying medicine at the Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1913. He continued his studies in Frankfurt an der Oder and Berlin, earning his doctorate in 1920 with a thesis entitled “On the Prognosis of Mental Development in Childhood Epilepsy.”
As a student, Siegfried Lehmann became increasingly interested in his Jewish identity and the ideas of Zionism, visiting Palestine for the first time in the summer of 1914. Two years later, he founded the “Jüdisches Volksheim” (Jewish People’s Home) in the Scheunenviertel district to support Jews from Eastern Europe with social services upon their arrival in Berlin. Here, young people could learn basic skills in crafts, for example.
Due to his special commitment to children and young people, the doctor received an offer from the Jewish National Council of Lithuania in 1921 to set up a children’s home in Kaunas. Here, based on his socio-educational approach and together with his first wife Annie Lehmann, he cared for around 200 Jewish orphans.
In the 1920s, he decided to pursue further education in pedagogy and eventually went to Palestine with a youth group from the children’s home and his second wife, the physician Rebecca Klawanska, to found the Ben Schemen youth kibbutz. Starting in 1932, around 500 children and young people came here in cooperation with Recha Freier.
Sources/Literature:
- Beate Lehmann: Siegfried Lehmann, Arbeitskreis Jüdische Wohlfahrt, URL: https://akjw.hypotheses.org/949.
- Leo Beack Institute Jerusalem Collection, Das Jüdische Volksheim Berlin. Erster Bericht, Mai Dezember 1916, URL: https://digipres.cjh.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE9922525.
- Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem Collection, Jüdisches Volksheim Berlin. 50th Anniversary 1966–1974, Bl. 43, URL: https://digipres.cjh.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE11017317.