GOSLAR, HANS

GOSLAR, HANS (1889–1945), a senior official of the Prussian government during the Weimar Republic and a leader of the *Mizrachi movement in Germany. Born in Hanover, Goslar wrote for periodicals, specializing in economic problems. He became an early adherent of Zionism and in 1911 published a book entitled Die Krisis der juedischen Jugend Deutschlands (1911). During World War i he served in Eastern Europe, where he came to know the Jewish masses and this profoundly revised his religious outlook. On his return to Germany in 1919, his activities in the German Social Democratic Party earned him the title of Ministerialrat and an appointment as director of the press section of the Prussian government, a post he retained until he resigned in 1932. In 1919 he published Die Sexualethik der juedischen Wiedergeburt, in which he urged a return to Jewish family ethics. He maintained his general Jewish, Zionist, and Mizrachi activities and published several books on Jewish as well as general themes. In 1933 Goslar immigrated to Amsterdam, where he continued his communal activities, especially on behalf of the rescue of Jews from Germany. He was a neighbor of Anne *Frank's family, and his daughter was Anne's friend, mentioned in Anne's diary on several occasions. In 1943 he was deported to the *Westerbork concentration camp and in 1944 was transferred to *Bergen-Belsen, where he died shortly before the liberation in 1945. He also wrote Juedische Weltherrschaft: Phantasiegebilde oder Wirklichkeit? (1919) and Hygiene und Judentum (1930).

bibliography:

Pick, in: mb (July 12, 1957); Y. Aviad, Deyokena'ot (1962), 235–7. add. bibliography: T. Maurer, "Auch ein Weg Als Deutsche und Jude – Hans Goslar 1889–1945," in: J.H. Schoeps, Juden als Traeger der buergerlichen Kultur in Deutschland (1989), 192–239.

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