{"id":1135,"date":"2026-01-22T16:56:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T15:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jewishmitteberlin.de\/?post_type=people&#038;p=1135"},"modified":"2026-03-03T01:56:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T00:56:33","slug":"gertrud-weil-geb-welkanoz","status":"publish","type":"people","link":"https:\/\/jewishmitteberlin.de\/en\/people\/gertrud-weil-geb-welkanoz\/","title":{"rendered":"Gertrud Weil (geb. Welkanoz)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gertrud Weil, n\u00e9e Welkanoz (born 1888 in Berlin) belonged to the circle of young German Jews that formed around the medical student <a href=\"\/biographies\/#siegfried-lehmann\">Siegfried Lehmann<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Together they founded the J\u00fcdisches Volksheim (Jewish People&#8217;s Home) at Dragonerstra\u00dfe 22 (now Max-Beer-Stra\u00dfe 5) in the Scheunenviertel in the Spandauer Vorstadt in 1916. It was a kind of youth club for Eastern European Jewish children, but also much more than that. According to Gertrud, it was \u201ca place where Jewish life found physical expression, because Western and Eastern Jews, the educated and the ignorant, people of all ages met here\u201d. Through contact and cooperation on an equal footing, a \u201chappy mutual assimilation developed there, as much our precarious existence allowed it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Although Gertrud was the director of the Volksheim for the longest period of time and published several essays about its work in various publications, her contribution to the Volksheim is often only mentioned in passing or completely ignored. Yet contemporaries such as Gershom Scholem said of her that she was its \u201cundisputed central figure.\u201d According to Scholem: &#8220;She seemed to me to be the only trained social worker, but I was wrong, because she was an employee of a large bank by profession, and in fact there was not a single professional employee among the volunteers. But their combined knowledge was nothing compared to the tremendous influence, even magic, that [Gertrud] exerted on all the girls there.&#8221; Today, there is a memorial plaque at the former location of the Volksheim, which does not even mention Gertrud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Together with her husband Ernst Weil, she was able to flee from the National Socialists to England, where she spent the rest of her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sources\/Literature:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Gershom Scholem: Von Berlin nach Jerusalem. Jugenderinnerungen, J\u00fcdischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 85.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/jdischewohlfahrtzen\/page\/n152\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Gertrud Weil: Vom j\u00fcdischen Volksheim in Berlin, in: J\u00fcdische Wohlfahrtspflege und Sozialpolitik. Zeitschrift der Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der deutschen Juden und der Hauptstelle f\u00fcr j\u00fcdische Wanderf\u00fcrsorge und Arbeitsnachweise, 1 (1939), pp. 281\u2013284, URL: https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/jdischewohlfahrtzen\/page\/n152\/.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1136,"template":"","class_list":["post-1135","people","type-people","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jewishmitteberlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/people\/1135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jewishmitteberlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/people"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jewishmitteberlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/people"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jewishmitteberlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/people\/1135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jewishmitteberlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jewishmitteberlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}