Kurt Großmann

Kurt Großmann (21 May 1897 – 2 March 1972) began his career as a German journalist. He emigrated from Germany in the Hitler years, living his final decades in Queens, New York. Although sources sometimes describe him as an American journalist, his preferred working language remained German. West German newspapers for which he reported from New York during the 1950s and the 1960s included the Rheinischer Merkur and Vorwärts.

His experiences as a soldier during the First World War turned Großmann into a committed pacifist. He served as General Secretary of the German League for Human Rights between 1926 and 1933.

Biography

Provenance and early years

Kurt Richard Großmann was born in Berlin-Charlottenburg, the second child of the businessman Hermann Grossmann and his wife Rahel (born Rahel Freundlich). Both parents were originally from East Prussia and had, like thousands of others during the closing decades of the nineteenth century, moved from the economically depressed countryside to the rapidly expanding German capital in pursuit of better financial security. Fifteen years older than his wife, and 48 by the time his son was born, Hermann Großmann died following a heart attack in 1909, leaving Kurt and his elder sister Margaret to be bought up by their mother as a single parent. Margaret later recalled that as a boy Kurt Großmann became an enthusiastic junior member of the city's Animal Welfare Association.