Call Number:

MC.950.071

Repository:

Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections

Extent:

1 folders

Preferred Citation:

Leonhard Friedrich papers (HC.MC.950.071), Quaker & Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, PA.

Date:

1942-1986 (inclusive)

Creator:

Friedrich, Leonhard

Abstract:

This collection includes photocopies and reproductions related to Leonhard Friedrich, a German Quaker.

Leonhard Friedrich (1889-1979) was a German Quaker. While working in England in 1914, he met an English Quaker named Mary. The two married at the Sheffield Friends' Meeting House in 1922. In 1923, they started a small Quaker Meeting in Nurnberg, Germany, which developed out of the post-World War I work being done there by British and American Friends. Due to his refusal to join the Nazi party, Friedrich lost his job in 1934, and was invited to Woodbrooke College for the fall term. A Quaker meetinghouse in Bad Pyrmont, Germany, was converted to a conference center; Friedrich and Mary became the centre's wardens to prevent it from being used by the Hitler Youth. During the years leading up to World War II, Friedrich and Mary helped local Jewish families leave Germany.

This collection includes photocopies and reproductions related to Leonhard Friedrich, and includes: an exhibition copy of an indictment notice from the Gestapo, in German, dated September 18, 1942, citing the reason for arrest as his "politically negative attitude to the National Socialist state, evidenced by his pacifist and pro-Jewish attitudes, particularly in the context of his prominent role in the Society of Friends (Quakers)"; a translation of that notice by Paul Oestreicher, June 11, 1986; "Notes of a talk given to an audience in Bad Pyrmont in the autumn of 1947, reprinted in "Der Quaker," July 1975, 50th Anniversary Edition," chronicling time spent as an inmate in the concentration camp Buchenwald from 1942 to 1945. Also included in the speech are the lyrics to a song written by a Jewish inmate.