Ernst Scheuer and Rosi Moses-Scheuer Collection

The collection consists of personal correspondence, diaries and other manuscripts written by Ernst Scheuer and Rosi Moses-Scheuer. It includes novels and short stories that often are of an autobiographical nature as well as documents regarding Ernst Scheuer’s and Rosi Moses-Scheuer’s life in Germany, France, and French detention centers. It also sheds a light on their struggle for American immigration papers and their subsequent life in New York.

Series 1 contains personal correspondence between Ernst Scheuer and Rosi Moses-Scheuer in France, especially during their detention in French camps in 1939-1940. There also are letters written during vacations and trips before and after 1945, including Ernst Scheuer’s trip to Europe in 1969. This series also includes letters from Ernst’s mother Emma Scheuer to Ernst in France and in New York.

Series 2 contains Ernst Scheuer’s handwritten and typed diaries. The first diary begins in 1921; then there is a gap until the beginning of World War II; from that point on until his death, Ernst Scheuer kept his diary quite continuously. It includes notes of his years in French detention centers, the Spanish prison and the emigration to the United States. It also gives information on the life of German Jews in the United States.

Series 3 consists of manuscripts written either by Ernst Scheuer or by Rosi Moses-Scheuer. Ernst Scheuer’s writings are mostly novels, some exist in several versions or are unfinished. There also are (non-fictional) essays and short stories written between the late 1920s to his death. Rosi Moses-Scheuer wrote primarily memoirs and texts about herself and her family; she wrote most of them after her husband’s death.

Series 4 contains various documents like Rosi Moses-Scheuer’s French working certifications, their French marriage certificate, telegrams, various letters, the visa attestations, newspaper articles, and dedications of Hilde Domin, a German poet.