Memories of Gustav Ichheiser by Amrei C. Joerchel & Gerhard Benetka

Author:Amrei C. Joerchel & Gerhard Benetka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Historical Background and Biographical Notes

Gustav Ichheiser was born in Krakow, Poland, on Christmas Day, December 25, 1897. His birth certificate2 indicates that his name was spelled Gustaw (in Polish, the letter w is pronounced like the English letter v). His father, Michał Ichheiser (born in Krakow on November 22, 1849), a lawyer, had married Helena Ringelheim (born on May 25, 1869), his junior of 20 years, in her native Tarnów on May 15, 1893. Gustaw was their third son. Gustaw’s oldest brother, Albert, was born on February 9, 1893, and the second child, Ludwik, was born on April 28, 1896.

Unlike the other Ichheisers living in Krakow at the time, Gustaw and his family did not reside in the city’s center of Jewish life, the neighborhood of Kazimierz. Instead, they lived in the heart of medieval Krakow, on the main market square. According to the 1900 census, they lived at Rynek Główny 25, the location of what is known as The House under the Ravens or The Ravens House (Kamienica pod Krukami), which took its current form in the nineteenth century, but whose history stretches back to the thirteenth century (Puchla, 2009). Given Ichheiser’s interest in interpersonal and intergroup relations, it is interesting to note that since 1990, the building has housed the International Cultural Center (Międzynarodowe Centrum Kultury), whose institutional mission is to facilitate international cultural dialogue.

The Ichheisers were both Jewish and Polish, and the family was most likely largely Polonized, something to which the family first names attest. As part of the geopolitical map of the day, Krakow fell within the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and thus was politically connected with the capital, Vienna, to where his family would eventually move in 1914 after the death of Gustaw’s father (Benetka & Woller, 2015). After Poland regained independence in 1918, Gustaw’s Polish roots would create natural connections with the Polish capital, Warsaw, which until 1918 had been under the occupation of Tsarist Russia.3 Thus, after completing his education, Gustaw would find employment in both capitals, Warsaw and Vienna, publishing in both Polish and German.

In the 1930s, Ichheiser worked at the Institute of Public Affairs (Instytut Spraw Społecznych, ISS) in Warsaw. The ISS was formed in 1931, with the goal of “carrying out scientific research, propaganda and educational work in a unified manner throughout the entire Polish Republic in the areas of workplace protection, social insurance, the employment market, unemployment, emigration and social services” (cited in Auleytner, 2002, p. 19). It came to examine a wide range of topics important to the further development of the newly independent nation. In general, the research of the ISS was intended to advance knowledge in the social sciences, while simultaneously improving the quality of life of the average Polish citizen. The ISS, like so many Polish institutions, was destroyed during WWII. Its director, Kazimierz Korniłowicz, was killed during the bombing of Lublin in 1939, and during the German occupation of Warsaw, the physical buildings of the institute, including its library, were destroyed. Before its destruction, the ISS building at ul.

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