Walter Lewinnek papers

Collection documents the life and literary works of Walter Lewinnek (1911/1912–2000), a German-born Jewish physician and amateur writer who emigrated from Berlin to the United States in 1934 and practiced family medicine in Merrill, Wisconsin, for over five decades.

The memoir "Thinking It Over" (1972 or 1973), a typescript of 110 pages, forms the central item in the collection. In it, Lewinnek recounts his Berlin childhood, medical education in Heidelberg and Berlin, emigration from Nazi Germany, and medical training and early career in Chicago and Wisconsin. The memoir includes annotated maps inserted by the author marking significant locations in Germany and West Prussia. Also present is an English translation of Lewinnek's 1935 article "American Universities and Students," originally published in German in "Aufbau", a German-language Jewish newspaper published in New York; the original German-language text is not held by this repository but is available digitally through the Internet Archive. The translation was prepared by Leila Zenderland. The article offers practical guidance on American higher education to recent German Jewish immigrants and includes observations on antisemitism in American medical schools and hospitals. The collection additionally contains a self-published poetry collection, "Rhymes and Other Poems by Walter Lewinnek", and photographs of Walter Lewinnek and his wife Beryl Lewinnek (née Nelson). Also included is a copy of the ship manifest documenting Lewinnek's departure from Hamburg on June 14, 1934, aboard the S.S. New York; this copy was obtained from FamilySearch by Louise Sylvester Thompson, a Wisconsin neighbor of the Lewinneks who conducted genealogical research on the family.

Topics documented in the collection include Jewish life and middle-class domestic culture in Weimar-era Berlin, the effects of Nazi rule on Jewish professionals in Germany, immigration and refugee experience in the 1930s, medical education and hospital practice in Germany and the United States during the early twentieth century, antisemitism in American academic and professional institutions, and immigrant resettlement in the American Midwest. The memoir and article together offer a first-person account of the German Jewish refugee experience that spans both sides of the Atlantic.