We have had our battles at university
Studying law in the 1930s
Jacob Ewer enrolled at the Faculty of Law at Berlin University in 1930. Looking back, he describes the professors' aloofness. The students listened to the lectures, but there were hardly any longer exchanges of words or even an exchange of opinions between them. Many former students remember Prof Martin Wolff in particular for his witty lecture style. His lectures on commercial law were invariably well attended by several hundred students.
Violence at the university
Jacob Ewer was a member of the Social Democratic student organisation. It was not uncommon for left-wing and Jewish students on the one side and right-wing students on the other to come to blows on the university campus, in which Jacob Ewer was also involved. As a rule, these violent confrontations arose from the situation that the two factions gathered in front of the respective notice boards of the individual student organisations in the foyer during the breaks. Jacob Ewer remembers 2 May 1932 as the "worst day before Hitler" because he had to flee from the window of the foyer during a mass brawl when the Nazi students overpowered him.
Forced change of university
Jacob Ewer had already registered for the teacher training examination in 1932. After the National Socialist takeover, he was asked to complete a form to prove his grandparents' Aryan ancestry. As he was unable to provide this proof, he saw no possibility of continuing his studies.
Like many others, he transferred to the University of Basel. All the courses he had taken in Berlin were recognised, so that he was able to take his doctoral examination in 1933, after a total of three and a half years of study. The quality of the doctoral thesis was not so important to him and his friends: they wanted to finish as quickly as possible, even though they knew that they had no career prospects as lawyers.
Emigration to the USA and new career start
After completing his doctorate, Jacob Ewer was no longer allowed to stay in Switzerland, so he went to Paris for two years, where he was unable to obtain a work permit and experienced serious financial difficulties as a result. With the help of his brother, he was able to travel to Great Britain in 1936 and train as an X-ray technician. An uncle in the USA vouched for him, so he emigrated there in 1937.
He was now allowed to work and earn his own money. He was employed at Columbia University in New York as an expert in photomicrography and eventually opened his own import company for photographic equipment, which he ran until the ripe old age of 80.
Jacob Ewer not only witnessed the birth of five great-grandchildren, but also that of a great-great-grandchild. A few years after the death of his wife Ruth, he died in 2010 at the age of 99 in Lennox, Massachusetts.