At the end of 2005 the IISH received substantial additions to the archives of Alexander Stein (pseudonym of A.N. Rubinstejn, 1881-1948) and his daughter Nina Rubinstein (1908-1996), leading us to address the impressive collections of this 'Grossfamilie' of German-speaking intellectual emigrants and their turbulent lives in exile.
Alexander Stein was born in Latvia, where he was active as a Menshevik. After the Russian Revolution of 1905 he escaped to Berlin, where he joined the SPD. He worked for Vorwärts until he was appointed secretary to the SPD Central Committee for Education. When Hitler seized power, Stein fled to Prague and worked for the SPD Vorstand im Exil. Via France, Stein managed to reach the United States at the end of 1940. He soon resumed his work as a journalist there and wrote articles for the Jewish Daily Forward and Neue Deutsche Volkszeitung. He also joined the Neu Beginnen group.
Nina Rubinstein
Nina Rubinstein was born in Berlin in 1908. She studied sociology under Professor Karl Mannheim at the famous School for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main. Shortly after Mannheim had accepted her doctoral thesis The French Emigration after 1789, he was dismissed and fled. Nina herself had to flee to Paris and to New York after the Nazis had occupied France in 1940. Her new life in New York revolved mainly around German and Russian emigrants, primarily Mensheviks. Nina Rubinstein finally took her PhD in Frankfurt in 1989.
See also: Elly und Alexander. Revolution, Rotes Berlin, Flucht, Exil - eine sozialistische Familiengeschichte by Hanna Papanek. Vorwärts Buch, ISBN 978-3-86602-600-1
Text was taken from On the Waterfront - newsletter of the Friends of the IISH Issue 12 (pdf, 2,7 Mb).