Großhut, Friedrich Sally

Lawyer, Writer

Born: 16.07.1909 in Wiesbaden

Died: 10.10.1969 in North Bergen (New Jersey, USA)

Grosshut was the son of Ludwig Mantel (later Grosshut), an antiques dealer who immigrated from Krakow around 1900, and his wife Rosa. After graduating from a humanistic grammar school, he began studying law in Frankfurt am Main in 1925.

At the same time, he founded the Jewish sports club S. C. Hakoah in Wiesbaden, whose handball team quickly rose to the district league with him as striker. A handball team was also set up for girls. In 1932, Großhut received the Golden Badge of Honor from the German Sports Association. At the same time, his application for German citizenship - a prerequisite for a legal career - was rejected.

Although Großhut now had a doctorate in law, he was unable to pursue his profession; in addition, he was threatened with death by the National Socialists because of his dissertation, which spoke out in favor of the Weimar Republic. The father of his fiancée Sina Rosenstrauch was murdered in April 1933 during an attack by SA members in Wiesbaden. Großhut's own father was forced by the SA to drive an "Aryan" friend through Wagemannstraße in a wheelbarrow; in December 1934, he died as a result of abuse by the SA. In 1938, his widow and two sisters were "deported" to Poland, later sent to a ghetto and murdered in a concentration camp.

Großhut and Sina Rosenstrauch had already fled to Palestine in 1933. In Haifa, Großhut worked as a craftsman and waiter, among other things. In 1936, he and his wife opened a "German" antiquarian bookshop, which became a center for German-Jewish writers. Writers such as Arnold Zweig, Josef Kastein and Else Lasker-Schüler gave readings in their native language.

Großhut also published short stories in Jewish newspapers, e.g. in the German-language magazine "Orient", which continued the tradition of the "Weltbühne" in Palestine. In 1946/47, he published in the "Tribüne", a large German prisoner-of-war newspaper in Fanara, Egypt, and published several novels on "re-education".

At the end of the 1940s, Großhut and his wife emigrated to the USA. Großhut described the miserable working conditions in New Jersey in the novel manuscript "The Headlock". Compensation payments then enabled him to open a small store, which he ran for twelve years. In 1969, he had a fatal accident in the bathtub during an epilepsy attack.

In Germany, only his revised dissertation (Nuremberg 1962) and the story "Schiedsrichter Rissing" (Wiesbaden 1987, self-published) were published. He was the first Jew in Wiesbaden to be commemorated with a plaque (on the house where he was born).

Bembenek, Lothar (ed.): Sally Grosshut: Schiedsrichter Rissing leitet ein Spiel, Wiesbaden 1984 (with bibliography).

Grosshut, Sina: Mosaik eines Lebens, London 1987. Materials in the Bembenek Collection (including correspondence with Sina Grosshut and an interview with Debbie Lisle, Sina Grosshut's sister, in Israel in 1982).