Theodor Elchanan Lessing

In the upper-class apartment of the doctor Sigmund Lessing and his wife Adele, née Ahrweiler, in Hanover's noble center, Theodor Lessing was born on February 8, 1872. Adele's pregnancy was already not under good conditions for a happy childhood, because Sigmund Lessing had already confessed to his wife on the wedding night that he would have preferred to marry her sister, who was supposedly prettier and smarter. But since it was an arranged money marriage, Sigmund had resigned himself to the outcome of the negotiations, especially since Adele got the higher dowry. 

The parents avoided each other as much as possible. The father was choleric to violent, the mother resigned herself to her fate. Shortly after Theodor's birth, they conceived another child - Sophie was born in 1873. Theodor Lessing later wrote in his autobiography of the disgust he had for his mother and the fear he felt for his father. This description is particularly harrowing: "The exchange of affection was always repugnant to me on the part of both parents. Kisses, caresses, even kind words were always a torment to me."

Theodor Lessing avoided his parents and took refuge in the world of German literature and intellectual history. There he found role models and wrote remarkable texts and poems already at the age of ten. They are characterized above all by his deep-rooted grief. For in addition to the contempt he harbored for his parents - especially his father - he suffered from his Jewish origins. At school he was ridiculed by classmates and teachers, and at home he had no one to confide in. Instead, he wrote - which is quite unusual for a boy of his age - in detail diary. 
 
The parental home was not religious and did not offer him the possibility of a positive engagement with the Jewish faith. Theodor Lessing later wrote about these years: "A child gnawed itself! It could not cope with the realization that every rebellion against origin, parental home and homeland destroys the very soil from which alone nourishment is to be gained."

In 1888, the gifted but maladjusted student Theodor Lessing had to leave the renowned Ratsgymnasium in Hanover. He dropped out of the subsequent bank apprenticeship. He took his Abitur in 1892 at a boarding school in Hamelin.

After Theodor Lessing had passed the Abitur in 1892, his father, who was a doctor, insisted on studying medicine. Theodor began his studies without much enthusiasm at the greatest possible distance from his parents; in Freiburg im Breisgau. And to further distance himself, he resigned from the Jewish community. He made up for his lack of enthusiasm for studying medicine with great diligence and passed the 1st exam with distinction. He wanted to write the doctoral thesis in Munich, because his old school friend from the days at the Ratsgymnasium Hannover, Ludwig Klages, was studying there.

In Munich, Lessing quickly made friends from 1894 onwards - but it was not budding doctors with whom he made friends, but writers, actors, musicians and painters who turned the Munich district of Schwabing into an artists' quarter that quickly gained national importance. Theodor Lessing finally felt recognized and confirmed in his talent, which had already shown itself in his early youth in the field of literature. When his father died in 1896, Lessing abandoned his planned dissertation in medicine to devote himself entirely to literature, philosophy and psychology. 

In 1899, Theodor Lessing earned his doctorate in philosophy, and he fell in love with the young noblewoman Maria Stach von Goltzheim. They married in 1900, against the opposition of both families. Before that, Theodor Lessing had rejoined the Jewish community, which turned his future father-in-law against him even more. In an unpublished manuscript, Theodor Lessing reports on the hostilities: "The father wrote to me [...] that I should not dare to stretch out my hands to [his daughter Maria], that one did not wish to have any 'Jewish piglets' in the family, that I should look for a person of my standing and race; also, in the family letters, I was never called anything other than 'dirty Jew, Jewish lout, dirty Jew' and with similar words."

The couple had two children: Judith was born in 1901, and Miriam was born in 1902. The young family moved from Munich to Haubinda in Thuringia, where Lessing worked as a teacher at a reform-oriented school from 1901 - in 1904 Maria left him and the children. Theodor Lessing was now a single father. As always in times of crisis, Theodor Lessing found refuge in intellectual work: he planned a habilitation, gave lectures for a small fee and began to write theater reviews in Göttingen. 

Lessing's love of the theater had its roots in his childhood days: as a doctor, his father had treated almost the entire ensemble of the Hanover Court Theater, and an actress, Grete Ehrenbaum, had often taken care of him in a motherly way. In conservative Göttingen, Lessing's critiques caused plenty of excitement and indignation. Parallel to his journalistic work, Lessing attempted to habilitate with Göttingen philosophy professor Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) in order to obtain the title of "professor." 

Husserl, however, was skeptical of the gifted man's theses. Lessing was by now 34 years old, and perhaps Husserl even feared competition. As fate would have it, Theodor Lessing received a recommendation for the Technical University of Hanover on the recommendation of his Munich teacher Theodor Lipps (1851-1914)

"And so in 1908 I landed in the city where on every paving stone lay a tear and a sigh of my youth. More disappointed never a child has returned home. So then I became a philosopher in Hanover and remained so through eighteen years, without ever being promoted or paid, and without any prospect of help for my old age." 

In 1907 Lessing habilitated at the Technical University of Hanover and in October 1908 he was employed there as a private lecturer in philosophy. The fee was very small and so he continued to work freelance as a publicist. In 1907 his marriage was divorced and he met the love of his life in Hanover of all places: Ada Grothe-Abberthern (1883-1953); she also had a failed marriage behind her. 

"The settlement in the hometown, however, brought great happiness. First: my children could now come to me (they had been in a country home until then) to stay with me forever, for in the forester's house in the forest I found my life companion, my comrade; from now on in all life's hardships at my side."  

The relationship was soon put to the test: In April 1912, Lessing's daughter Miriam from his first marriage suffered a fatal accident. Ada stood by him and in July 1912 the two said yes. In 1913, their daughter Ruth was born. 

At the beginning of World War I, Theodor Lessing enlisted as a hospital doctor to avoid military service at the front. He also resumed his teaching activities. University activities were largely suspended. 

With his wife Ada, Theodor Lessing developed plans for an adult education center, aimed primarily at people with low incomes, to give them access to knowledge and education. In 1920, the time had come: Theodor and Ada Lessing opened the Freie Volkshochschule in the working-class district of Hanover-Linden. Educational work, creativity and social commitment were at the heart of the courses. Ada Lessing became the managing director. The office was located in the center of Hannover: Am Himmelreich. The place no longer exists today. Today's adult education center in Hanover preserves the memory of Ada and Theodor Lessing: since 2006 it has been called Ada-und Theodor-Lessing-Volkshochschule, and the address is Theodor-Lessing-Platz 1.

On the occasion of the annual celebration of the fifth anniversary, Theodor Lessing gave an address on the importance of the "Volkshochschule as a cultural value". There he summarized the principles of educational work: "Knowledge is power! - Knowledge makes free! - Education is beauty!"

After the end of the First World War, Theodor Lessing resumed his teaching activities at the Technical University of Hanover. He also worked as a journalist. His texts appeared in national newspapers such as the "Prager Tagblatt". In 1924, as a court reporter, he covered a spectacular murder trial at the Hanover Regional Court, which has gone down in history as the "Haarmann Trial." The defendant was a 45-year-old man, Fritz Haarmann, who had murdered at least 24 young men. The perceptive and socially critical trial observer Theodor Lessing wrote about society's complicity in the series of murders and was excluded from the rest of the trial on the eleventh day of the trial because of his critical reporting.

"Today, humanity is horrified by Haarmann. The same humanity that decorated its commanders with medals after the material battles with five hundred thousand deaths is horrified by a man who may have killed twenty, thirty people. [...] You see, this is what I mean by our guilt, which must be spoken of in this trial." Lessing was not intimidated and in 1925 published the book "Haarmann - The Story of a Werewolf." 

In 1925, Lessing attracted anti-Semitic agitation with another text. On April 25, 1925, he had published an essay in the "Prager Tagblatt" that was critical of the election of the aged Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934) as Reich President. An abridged version appeared in the "Hannoversche Kurier" on May 8, 1925 and triggered the smear campaign against Lessing: Students* boycotted his lectures and he was physically attacked in the open street. 

The unrest lasted for over a year. In early summer, 1500 students threatened to exmatriculate from Hanover Technical University if Lessing remained a professor. He was labeled a "scandalous professor," a "stain on the faculty," and a "Jew haggling with anti-German newspapers." Under this pressure, the Ministry of Culture withdrew Lessing's permanent position at the Technical University of Hanover.

In the late 1920s, Theodor Lessing sensed that his time in Germany was coming to an end. He traveled to Egypt, Palestine and Greece, he considered the possibility of going into exile with his family to Spain. On Albert Einstein's recommendation, he became involved in founding a refugee university in England. But he remained in Hanover - for the time being. At the end of February 1933, he decided to flee. Two days after the Reichstag fire, Lessing left Hanover accompanied by his daughter Ruth and traveled with her to the supposedly safe Czech city of Marienbad. Ada Lessing remained in the city to take care of organizational matters. She had found shelter in her daughter's apartment, because already on the night of departure the family home was vandalized by National Socialists. 

Ada Lessing left Hanover in July 1933 and traveled to her husband and daughter in Marienbad. They lived in the Villa Edelweiss, where they planned to open a country educational home for girls. On the evening of August 30, 1933, Theodor Lessing was shot through the closed window at his desk by Nazis and seriously injured. He succumbed to his injuries a few hours later.