Julius Carlebach (1922–2001)

Julius Carlebach was born to a prominent Jewish family in Hamburg, Germany. His parents were Charlotte (Preuss) and Chief Rabbi Dr. Josef Carlebach, and he had eight siblings. In 1938, at age 15, he and his sister Judith escaped the Nazis on the first Kindertransport to the UK, where they were taken in by British foster families. His parents and three sisters died in the Nazi concentration camp at Jungfernhof in Latvia. Carlebach attended school in London and during World War II, served in the Pioneer Corps and as a sailor in the Royal Navy. After the war, he managed an orphanage for Jewish children in Norwood, South London, where he met his future wife Myrna Landau, a teacher from South Africa. During this time, he also studied part-time at the University of London and completed a degree in sociology and criminology. The couple married in 1959 and went to Kenya, where Carlebach was appointed as rabbi of the Nairobi Hebrew Congregation and wrote several studies and related publications about the Jewish community in that country. Returning to the UK, in 1963 he became a research fellow at Emmanuel College of Cambridge University and received a master's degree. He earned a doctorate at the University of Sussex, Brighton, where he became associate professor of Sociology and initiated and taught in the Israeli Studies program. During his final years at the university, he was awarded the title of Emeritus Professor of German-Jewish Studies. After his retirement, Rabbi Carlebach was invited to become vice chancellor of the University of Jewish Studies (Hochschule fuer Judische Studien) in Heidelberg, where he helped spark a revival of scholarship in the field of Judaism and turn the school into the leading institution of its kind in Germany. His services were acknowledged with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1994. Rabbi Carlebach's research on the history of ideas led to the publication of several books, including Karl Marx and the Radical Critique of Judaism (1978). He became a board member of the Leo Baeck Institute in 1992 and was co-editor of the Institute's Yearbook, the leading publication in the field of German-Jewish Studies.