Ernst Schlochauer papers
Extent and Medium
folders
10
Creator(s)
- Ernst Schlochauer
Biographical History
Ernst Schlochauer (1921-1961) was born in Berlin on 3 April 1921, and raised there until 1933, when his parents moved the family to France. Ernst studied at the Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris, but the family chose to return to Berlin in 1935, and Ernst completed his studies there in 1937, and left for Britain the same year, where he took the university entrance examination at Cambridge. As he and his brother were both in England, they set about trying to get their parents visas to immigrate, which they were ultimately successful in doing, and the Schlochauer family reunited in New York in 1941. Because of a congenital heart condition, Ernst was unable to serve in the U.S. Army during the war, but instead went to Queens College in Flushing, New York, where he earned a bachelor's degree in comparative literature in 1944, before moving on to graduate studies at Princeton University, where he earned his doctorate. After earning his graduate degrees, he taught at Queens College, specializing in Elizabethan drama. He met a classmate he had known from Berlin, Ursula (Kantorowicz) Smith, at a reunion in New York, and the two married in 1957. Ernst Schlochauer died of a heart ailment on 1 March 1961.
Archival History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Ursula Nelson
Ursula Nelson donated the Ernst Schlochauer papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2016.
Scope and Content
Certificates, correspondence, memoir, typescript texts, clippings, and ephemera, primarily related to the educational career of German emigre Ernst Schlochauer, after his immigration to the United States in 1941. Includes notes, syllabi, clippings, programs, and correspondence from his years a student at Queens College and Princeton University, and later material from when Schlochauer was a faculty members at Queens College. Extracurricular activities are documented in materials related to Jewish organizations he participated in during his student days, and programs and notes from plays he wrote, produced or directed, including a clipping about a performance of his play “The Father” at Queens College in 1946, and a program from a production of Friedrich Wolf’s “Das Trojanische Pferd,” from a German student group at Queens College in 1942. In addition to documents related Schlochauer’s educational career in the United States, the papers include a certificate from the secondary school he attended in France, 1934; and a letter of reference from an instructor in Berlin, 1939. Material related to Schlochauer's frail health includes documents showing his rejection for service in the United States armed forces, and a memoir, titled "Memoirs of a Blue Baby," which discusses the impact his congenital heart condition had on his childhood and adult life.
System of Arrangement
Files are arranged in alphabetical order by folder title.
People
- Schlochauer, Ernst, 1921-1961.
Subjects
- Jewish refugees--New York (State)--New York.
Genre
- Document
- Personal narratives.