Dr. Hugo Klein

Hugo Klein was born on 10 March 1890 in Berlin. He started his education at the Braunersche Höhere boys’ school in 1896, and later attended the Luisenstädtische Realgymnasium, a grammar school for boys, at Sebastian Strasse 26 in Berlin. After completing his Abitur school-leaving certificate in 1909, he studied at the Königliche Friedrich Wilhelm Universität in Berlin, lastly at its institute for Jewish studies in Artillerie Strasse. He completed his studies with a dissertation presented on 25 June 1913 at the Bayerische Julius Maximilian Universität in Würzburg, which he had attended since Easter 1913. The subject of his dissertation was “Palestine’s climate. On the basis of ancient Hebrew sources”.

Now Dr. phil. Hugo Klein, he began his career as a rabbi in Hirschberg in 1915. On 21 October 1918 he became a rabbi for the Jewish Community in Chemnitz. His subsequent service as a rabbi in the field ended due to illness in an army hospital.

Having recovered, Klein worked as a religion teacher in Breslau in 1922-1923. After the First World War, he had taken an apartment at Schloss Strasse 1 in Berlin-Hermsdorf. This is where the Jewish religious society for the northern suburbs was founded, led by David Heimann, a merchant, and spiritually advised by Dr Hugo Klein. From 1925, weekly three-hour religion lessons for Jewish pupils were held there.

Hugo Klein married Hertha Klein, née Wiesen, in 1921. On 12 April 1923 their only son Gerhard was born in Berlin-Reinickendorf. Gerhard was forced to leave his secondary school in Berlin-Hermsdorf in 1933 and attend the Jewish middle school in Grosse Hamburger Strasse in Berlin-Mitte. Before war broke out, Gerhard immigrated to England with a kindertransport. His parents were deported to Riga together with 900 others on the 18th “transport to the east” and murdered in the surrounding woods shortly after their arrival. Only one woman on the transport survived the war.