Hans Weil papers

Hans Weil (1898-1972) was a German educator born in Saarbrücken to Karl and Emma (Lehrberger) Weil. He was dismissed from teaching at Goethe University in Frankfurt in 1933 after the Nazis came to power. He tried unsuccessfully to establish a school for half-Jewish children in Germany and then fled to Italy with his non-Jewish wife, Senta (1898-1988) and their children Anselm (Kurt, b. 1928) and Constanze (b. 1933). He first worked at the Landschulheim in Florence before founding his own school, Schule am Mittelmeer, which opened in March 1934 at the Villa Palma in Recco. The Italian racial laws of 1938 forced the school to close. Weil’s wife and children immigrated to the United States in 1939, and he followed after a year in Great Britain.