Jessie Nicholson: correspondence

This collection of a correspondence consists mostly of letters written by a school teacher, Hellmut Lange from Chemnitz, Saxony, to an English woman, Miss Jessie Nicholson in South London between 1933 and August 1939. Whilst precious little is known about the recipient of the letters, they provide a valuable insight into the mentality of an ordinary German whose nationalist and antisemitic leanings develop into full-blown Nazi sympathy by the outbreak of war.

It is evident from the first letter that they had communicated previously and that judging from the familiar tone of the correspondence they had probably known each other for some time. However, there are indications in the later correpondence of strains in the friendship based on an inability to reconcile the burgeoning gap in their political views. He writes on 6 June 1938: " Sie bekennen sich zum Liberalismus; ich bekenne mich zum Nationalsozialismus"
(-/25). And on 22 June 1938 Lange observes that whenever he mentions the suffering of the Sudetendeutsche at the hands of the Czechs, she retorts with comments on the suffering of the Jews in Nazi Germany (-/26).
Lange's preoccupation with the fate of the Sudetendeutsche is born of his close affinity and family links with the region. There are many references to trips he has made there and to the experiences of friends and family.
His antisemitism whilst evident throughout, reaches maturity in the later correspondence. In a letter dated 13 November 1938 (-/28) no mention is made of Kristallnacht which occurred 3 days previously. Instead, he launches into a diatribe against the Jews, mentioning, for no apparent reason that Jews have been almost wholly responsible for all the assassination attempts on German public figures in the last 60 years. He adds that no nation wants war apart from the Jews 'who preach hatred and enmity'.
It seems that their relationship was formed in part as the result of a mutual interest in the study of language. Lange often asks for newspaper cuttings from England both to satisfy his desire to improve his English and to keep abreast of English public opinion vis a vis events in Germany. Clearly this practice was reciprocal: in September 1935 he sends Miss Nicholson a number of newspaper cuttings mostly from the Chemnitzer Tagesblatt (-/6).
In addition to the letters from Lange there are two other letters from German friends, one from Tehran, the other from Berlin, 1938 (-/31-32). These contain mainly personal items of news. Nothing is known about the correspondents. Nor is it clear why these letters were included in the collection. Some of the letters are typescript but many are hand-written in a gothic script. Typescript transcripts of the latter have been provided. These have been given the same archival reference number as the original and kept together. There is a note dated 11 May 1982 by the transcriber, M.(?) R. (-/33).