Richard A. Hawkins - Progressive Politics in the Democratic Party: Samuel Untermyer and the Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott Campaign

Progressive Politics in the Democratic Party

Samuel Untermyer and the Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott Campaign

Richard A. Hawkins

Contents

This book began with an essay on Samuel Untermyer commissioned by the American National Biography in 1996.Untermyer II. He was frustrated that his brother, Frank, had not completed a biography of their grandfather, on which he had been working for many years. Samuel II asked a trusted family friend, James (Jim) Welsh, to contact me to enquire whether I would be interested in writing a biography of his grandfather. I agreed and the initial research was generously funded by Samuel II. Jim has been a constant advocate and supporter of the project. After some initial displeasure with his brothers decisive action, Frank selflessly shared his research and Untermyer family lore with me. Samuel Untermyers great-nephew, the lawyer and diplomat Peter Rosenblatt, has also shared information with me. Peters brother, the late Richard Rosenblatt, shared with me the Untermyer family photographs which had been inherited from their grandmother, Samuel Untermyers sister Addie. In addition, Rabbi Peter Schweitzer, a descendant of Untermyers great-aunt Adelheid, has also shared family papers with me.

Samuel Untermyer discouraged prospective biographers during his lifetime. However, he did agree to numerous biographical dictionary entries and newspaper and magazine biographical profiles. After Untermyers death his children also discouraged biographers the firms archive was destroyed. Frank Untermyer succeeded in saving a small part of this archive which he stored for many years at his familys Brant Lake estate in upstate New York. Some of those papers which survived the attention of the local mice were bequeathed by Frank to the AJA.

Numerous librarians, archivists, local historians and genealogists have assisted me during the last two decades. Among them are Kevin Profitt, senior AJA archivist (now retired), Camille Servizzi, AJA archivist (also now retired); Elisa Ho, the current AJA senior archivist and her colleagues Joe Weber, Julianna Witt and Aliza Spicehandler; historian Dr Moshe Mossek, a former director of the Israel State Archive; and Gnter Steiner, Archivberinspektor Staatsarchiv Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany. I acknowledge Dr Tracy Conrad, MD, proprietor of the Willows Inn , Untermyers former Palm Springs winter villa, for generously funding a research trip in 2001 to the Californian desert resort and hosting me during my stay. I would also like to acknowledge a British Academy Small Grant in 2006 which funded a visit to Columbia Universitys Rare Book and Manuscript Library to research the records of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League to Champion Human Rights. In addition, the Thyssen Foundation funded me to present a paper at the Boycott and Embargo The Political Uses of Economic Power in the Twentieth Century conference held at the Ruhr-Universitt Bochum, Germany, 1011 October 2008. Lastly, I would like to thank the German Historical Institute Washington for including my entry on Samuel Untermyer in their online resource Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present . An earlier version of Chapter 4 was published as an article in the Australian Journal of Jewish Studies . Chapter 5 includes revised content from articles published in American Jewish History and Management & Organizational History . I thank the editors of these journals for their permission to reuse content.