Gerda Philipsborn, Jewish and a part of the 1920s Berlin arts scene, developed a close friendship with a trio of Muslim Indian students. A decade later, she would move to India to join her friends at Jamia Millia Islamia, a university in Aligarh that was established in 1920 to boycott the colonial government’s educational institutions. Margrit Pernau’s captivating biography shows how Philipsborn ended up in India just before Hitler came to power in Germany. However unlikely the story may seem, Pernau provides a comprehensive narrative of the political movements and openness of 1920s Berlin that explains just how Philipsborn came to spend her final years at Jamia Millia Islamia.
Philipsborn was born in the north German town of Kiel in 1895, trained in opera, and ended up in Berlin in her twenties. She attended salons with other arts aficionados and political activists, some interested in anarchy, some in communism, and some in Zionism. Philipsborn found she was most attracted to a type of Zionism espoused by Martin Buber, who felt that assimilated German Jews should learn from religious Eastern European Jews who still practiced traditions going back centuries.
When it came to looking toward the east, Buber wasn’t alone.
A new wave of Orientalism had swept over Germany after the war, seeking salvation from the East for a society many believed to be doomed in its modernity and materialism. Gandhi, and even more Tagore, were the rage among Germans, particularly among German women, who, saw them as a source of ancient wisdom, handed down unchanged over the generations.
While Pernau is careful to note that Philipsborn did not view India and Indians in this way, she does explain that Philipsborn’s attraction to a more traditional culture, as portrayed in Buber’s writings, led her away from Germany and Berlin, eventually to India.
Philipsborn got to know a number of Indian students in Berlin through Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, known as Chatto, a prominent leader of the Indian community there and the person Indian students would turn to when they arrived in the German capital. Chatto had a romantic relationship with Agnes Smedley, who eventually grew disillusioned by the housekeeping duties she was expected to carry out when Chatto entertained others. Smedley would find more professional satisfaction in China in the years to come.
Young academics Zakir Husain, Muhammad Mujeeb and Abid Husain left India to further their studies in Berlin. They hoped to learn the latest in western pedagogy and to bring new ideas back to India and the Jamia Millia Islamia. As Pernau writes, the three men were open to a friendship with Philipsborn because of the entrée into western culture that she provided.
She knew people from every walk of life. Trained as an opera singer and friends with the famous conductor Bruno Walter, she was at home in the music and art scene of Berlin. She knew about the latest performances at the Staatsoper and at the various other concert halls, and sometimes even had access to free tickets. She was familiar with the hotly-debated theatre productions, aware of the latest trends in painting and the arts, and could provide introductions to the directors and artists.
Zakir Husain, Muhammad Mujeeb, and Abid Husain spoke with Philipsborn about their work at the Jamia Millia Islamia and how they hoped to promote education to Muslim students in India outside of the British colonial system. Despite their friendship with Philipsborn, the three never imagined she would end up following them back to India. Neither had she. Still a committed Zionist, Philipsborn became interested in education, too, and moved to Mandatory Palestine to learn from Eastern European Jews just before Hitler came into power. But she didn’t last long in Palestine.
Pernau wonders if Philipsborn became disillusioned with Zionism, yet admits she couldn’t find any evidence in support of this theory. Instead of returning to Germany, Philipsborn wrote to her friends in India to announce that she would join them to work at Jamia Millia Islamia. They hardly had a choice in the matter since Philipsborn insisted on moving to Aligarh. Yet they welcomed her and she quickly became a supportive member of the university when she arrived in 1932. She earned the nickname, Aapa Jaan, the Urdu term that translates in English to older sister.
Like the other teachers from Jamia, she took a pledge of lifelong allegiance. Like them, she vowed to work for a minimal salary, barely sufficient for survival and certainly not for any of the comforts she had been accustomed to. What was seen as her sacrifice—not that she ever used the word or thought about her life in these terms, as far as we know—struck a responsive chord in the hearts of the people at Jamia, and she has not been forgotten.
Philipsborn set foot in India a German citizen and in light of Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, she applied to become a British citizen a few years later. Her application was rejected and Pernau suspects it was due to Gerda’s work at Jamia, established in opposition to the British colonial government. Philipsborn helped a small community of Jewish refugees in Delhi even after she was (as a German national) sent to a parole center in 1940—seen as less severe than an internment camp, but difficult nonetheless—and continued to advocate for Jewish refugees in India while she was at the camp. She would not survive the war and succumbed to cancer in 1943.
Philipsborn knew such famous personalities back in Germany as Franz Kafka and Leo Szilard (a colleague of Einstein’s), and educated leaders in India, yet her story is most important today for her ability to move between cultures with an open mind and an open heart.