Max Flesch

In 2018, a book from Max Flesch's library was handed over to the Jewish Museum Berlin.

Max Flesch was born on December 20, 1907 in Neudamm/Brandenburg.  His parents Carl and Julie Flesch, née Bauchwitz, moved with him and his younger brother Heinz Walter to Berlin in 1918. Here Max Flesch attended the Werner-Siemens-Realgymnasium. After graduating from high school in 1926, he studied law at the universities of Hamburg and Berlin, completed his studies in Berlin, began his legal clerkship at the Berlin Court of Appeal ("Kammergericht") at the end of 1930, and at the same time worked as a faculty assistant at the Faculty of Law of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University under the labour lawyer Prof. Dersch.

He was dismissed in 1933 for his Jewish background on the basis of the law to restore the civil service, went to Switzerland and received his doctorate in law from the University of Basel in 1934. After completing his doctorate, he worked in Berlin and worked in Hamburg as secretary of the Zionist Association. In May 1936 he married Gerda Königsberger in Hamburg, with whom he initially lived in Hamburg and moved to Mannheim in 1937. In November 1938 he was arrested and interned in Dachau concentration camp. After his release, he and his wife emigrated to Palestine in early 1939. His parents, with whom he lived during his stays in Berlin (Berlin W30, Bamberger Straße 18, last Berlin W50, Prager Str. 11) and in whose apartment his library was located, were deported to Riga on January 25, 1942 and murdered.

His brother Heinz Walter died 1944 unmarried and without descendants in Tel Aviv/Israel. In 1945 Max Flesch entered into a second marriage with Therese Eisenschmidt. This marriage also remained childless. He died on August 23, 1998. Before her death, his widow donated her husband's estate to the Jewish Museum Berlin in 2004. Since no further heirs could be identified, the book with the label of Max Flesch for the Eisenschmidt / Flesch family collection was handed over to the Jewish Museum Berlin for the purpose of finding a just and fair solution.

The book was acquired by the Berlin City Library in 1943 as part of the purchase of ~40,000 books looted from the Jews of Berlin.