Rabbi Wilhelm Weinberg (1901–1976)

Family and Cultural Background
Wilhelm Weinberg, born April 3, 1901, in Dolina, Austro-Hungarian Galicia, to Samuel and Bina Weinberg, of a noted rabbinic lineage dated to the 1600s. His devout father sent him and his brother Benjamin to traditional Jewish as well as modern academic schooling in German style grammar schools (Gymnasium). Thus, Wilhelm grew up with both traditional Judaism and modern secular knowledge. The family escaped the battlefront to Vienna at the beginning of World War One. Here, the father reestablished himself financially in import-export and lending.¹

Weinberg grew up in a Viennese milieu influenced by the emergence of Zionism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis. He finished Gymnasium, in preparation for university studies, continued his Jewish studies and joined the socialist Zionist youth movement, HaShomer. His circle included Meir Yaari, later head of Israel’s socialist MaPaM (Mifleget haPōʿalīm haMeʾuchedet, leftist worker’s party), Manes Sperber, a future leader of the French Communist Party, and mentors to the group, such as philosopher Martin Buber and psychoanalyst Alfred Adler. He served as the Chairman of the Zionist Students in Austria. His activism led him to study political science at the University of Vienna and to his 1928 doctoral thesis, “Parliamentarism: System and Crisis,” which warned of the potential collapse of democracy in a prophetic fashion, as Hitler rose to power in Germany only five years later.²

Education and Career During the Rise of Nazi Germany
Weinberg felt called upon to serve the Jewish community and he decided to pursue formal Rabbinic studies to attain the authority and knowledge to do so. The dynamic Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin best matched his own Judaic outlook and was a weightier academic institution than the local Viennese Israelitisch-Theologische Lehranstalt. From 1932 to 1935, he was a student there and served as a preacher for the Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin. He also chaired the Union of Jewish Students Organizations in Germany and of the student organization of the Hochschule. He arranged for the last lecture by Albert Einstein as a fundraiser for the Jewish student organization.³

His studies were abruptly cut short in 1935, as the regime accused him of transporting funds over the border and imprisoned him in the Zuchthaus Brandeburg-Görden, a local prison, for two years.⁴

He was allowed to study independently and earned his ordination in absentia from the Hochschule despite his difficult situation in August 1938 with support of the faculty of the Hochschule. His rabbinical thesis “A Study of the Psychology of Jewish Heretics,” reflected his concern to bridge tradition with modernity. In 1937, he was given a private traditional ordination by Professor Chanoch Albeck, which authorized him to deliver rabbinical decisions that would be acceptable to both liberal and traditional communities.⁵ Upon release from prison in 1937, Weinberg was expelled to Austria, where he composed a series of essays for the Jewish newspaper of Zurich. Here, he criticized the dominant ideologies of the twentieth century, namely, Marxism, racism, and Freudianism, as well as the neoromantic concepts of power, and the “dark gods” of D. H. Lawrence from the perspective of a Jewish religious humanism. The theme of these essays, “Mut zum Geist,” the courage to live a life dedicated to the highest spiritual values, remained his core faith in the years to come.⁶

Flight from Germany and Nazism
By December 1937, as the Anschluss of Austria was imminent, he and his brother, Benjamin, an attorney, fled to Brno, Czechoslovakia, in advance of the Germans. They obtained Czechoslovakian passports, and taught themselves chemical engineering, as a means of self-support. They understood that their background in law, politics, and religion, and particularly Wilhelm’s profession as a rabbi, would need to be kept secret if they headed eastward into the Soviet Union. Their parents managed to flee to Switzerland after Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938.

After the German annexation of the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” in March 1939, Weinberg was imprisoned in Ṧpilberk Castle in Brno, with other political prisoners. At the outbreak of World War Two, Jewish refugees in the Protectorate were expelled in the first mass deportation organized by Adolf Eichmann, and Weinberg was among those forcibly taken to Soviet occupied eastern Poland.⁷

He met up with his brother, who had fled Brno earlier, in the city of Lwow, where they had relatives and made plans to flee further eastward. Upon the German onslaught into eastern Poland in 1941, they headed east as “Czech exiles,” under the protection of their Czech nationality and passports, to find work in a chemical plant, first in Stalingrad, and then, driven by the German advance by July of 1942, to Frunze (Bishkek) Kyrgyzstan, in central Asia, till 1945.⁸

After the Holocaust: Return to Central Europe and Service to a Community of Survivors
By spring 1945, with assistance of the Czechoslovakian Military Mission in Moscow, the Weinberg brothers escaped the Soviet Union and resettled in Vienna.⁹

Rabbi Weinberg re-assumed his rabbinical role and was soon engaged in speaking out and writing on behalf of the survivors of the Holocaust against die-hard Nazis and even Jews who denied the gravity of the Holocaust.¹⁰

Subsequently, the American Joint Distribution Committee invited him to establish Jewish Adult Education (Jüdische Volkshochschule) for the refugees in the DP camps near Salzburg, Austria, in 1947. He served as lecturer under the Jewish Central Committee, Austria, and was commissioned to document the hardships of Displaced Persons (DPs).¹¹

He married Irene Gottdenker, a native of Lwow and a distant relative who had survived the Holocaust in Lwow and Warsaw posing as “Aryan.” She fled Poland with the Bricha (the organization responsible for the smuggling of Jews to Palestine) and stopped in Vienna, where the Weinberg brothers found her among the refugees in the Rothschild Hospital.¹²

In 1948, Wilhelm Weinberg was called by the reorganized Jewish community of Frankfurt am Main, to serve as the first Landesrabbiner [state rabbi] of Hessen in Germany and as Chair of the Union of Rabbis of Germany. His biggest challenges were to  unite the German and East European Holocaust survivor organizations, despite their deep cultural and religious disparity; to supervise the rebuilding of Jewish institutions, such as the Westend Synagogue in Frankfurt am Main; to assist individuals in cases of need, such as legal support and oversee conversions; to coordinate efforts between the American occupation forces and the new German government to  protect  the Jewish community from continued antisemitism and enforce justice against old Nazis, who still played a role in public life.¹³

Emigration to the United States
In 1951, two years after the founding of the two sovereign German states, Rabbi Wilhelm Weinberg was still facing threats from former Nazis. At this point in his life, he saw no future for Jews in Germany and left his position in Frankfurt, a decision regretted by his community, who asked him to return 15 years later but Weinberg refused. He also did not want to raise his only son, Norbert, in a land without a stable Jewish environment.

In December 1951, the Weinberg family moved to the United States under sponsorship of the United Services for New Americans and first settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, the locus of Hebrew Union College and home for many recent German rabbis. He was assisted here by Rabbi James Heller, head of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and received collegial support from former US military chaplains, with whom he had worked, such as Rabbis Bernard Heller and Isaac Klein, and later, by former colleagues from Vienna, such as Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, Executive Director of the Rabbinical Assembly. After six months, Weinberg moved to New York City which he saw as the locus of American Jewry, and where he served the “American Jewish Congregation,” a community of German Jewish refugees.¹⁴

Employment and Public and Political Activities
Rabbi Weinberg felt it was his calling to serve as Seelsorger, or chaplain, to the Jewish community, and despite the offer of a research position with YIVO and a recommendation from his teacher, Rabbi Baeck, to expand on his dissertation topic on Jewish heretics, he focused on serving American Jewish congregations.He recognized that the community of Jewish exiles would eventually dwindle and therefore spent years to properly master English and learn about American culture, and he Americanized his first name to “William.” He determined that Conservative Judaism better matched his outlook and joined the Rabbinical Assembly and served several Conservative congregations: Bnai Jacob of East Liverpool, Ohio, Beth Torah of Mt. Rainier, Maryland, Tree of Life of Clarksburg, West Virginia, Oheb Zedek of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and the Carteret Jewish Community of Carteret, New Jersey.

Rabbi Wilhelm Weinberg systematically studied American culture, from popular culture to business culture. He sympathized with the struggle of African Americans and their fight for Civil Rights because of his recollection of signs in Nazi Germany that had announced “Jews not Welcome.”

Being a rabbi in America also meant adjusting to the independent member-based synagogue, the American congregation, rather than the Einheitsgemeinde, the centralized European communal structure, and dealing with the quite different expectations of the duties of a rabbi. Nevertheless, he continued to see himself as a spokesperson for Jews, Judaism, the newly founded state of Israel, and as a voice to commemorate the Holocaust and its victims. He wrote extensively in local newspapers, and national Jewish periodicals; he spoke on local radio, and before church and civic organization.

The Intellectual Legacy
The career of Rabbi Wilhelm Weinberg traversed world events from the era of Shtetl and empire, through both Nazism and Communism. He found a new home and re-launched his career in the aftermath of the Holocaust in security and freedom in the United States Throughout his life, he stayed true to his ideal, his commitment to “Mut zum Geist”, the courage to live a life dedicated to the highest spiritual values and a faith in the freedom of the human being, as God’s partner, to move beyond fatalism and despair.

 “1st resume of Wilhelm Weinberg in the USA” and other documents and printed articles since 1951, Rabbi Weinberg Documents in America. Courage of the Spirit Blog. http://www.courageofspirit.com/2025/06/rabbi-weinberg-documents-in-america.html.
Arnsberg, Paul. Neunhundert Jahre Muttergemeinde in Israel. Frankfurt am Main: Knecht, 1974.
Bodemann Y. Michel. “Zur Abschiedsrede von Rabbiner Dr. Wilhelm Weinberg (1901–1976) in Frankfurt/Main, am 11. November 1951.” Menora: Jahrbuch für Deutsch-Jüdische Geschichte 6 (1995): 345–357.
Bodemann, Y. Michal. “Between Israel and Germany from the ‘Alien Asiatic People’ to the new German Jewry.” Jewish History 20 (2006): 91–109. DOI: 10.1007/s10835-005-5982-y. http://www.courageofspirit.com/2025/03/i-leave-this-country-with-bitterness.html.
Preliminary notes to essay “Die Sheerit Ha-pleitah in Ziffern (The Survivors in Numbers).” Collected Essays of Rabbi Dr Wilhelm Weinberg. Rabbi Wilhelm Weinberg Papers, RG-10.238, Series 5, File 1, USHMM. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn502232?rsc=207752&cv=104&x=1374&y=215&z=1.3e-3.
Weinberg Norbert. Courage of the Spirit, The Story of the Jewish People in Europe in the Twentieth Century as Seen through the Events and Documents of Rabbi Dr. William and Irene Weinberg. Orlando, FL: IndieGo Publishing LLC, 2014.
Weinberg, Irene. Oral History Testimony, January 28, 1994. You Tube. 57:33 min., https://youtu.be/wbAHZ-4OlkU.
Weinberg, Wilhelm. “Zur Probleme Juedischer Quislinge.” Translated by Norbert Weinberg, November 28, 2023. Courage of the Spirit. http://www.courageofspirit.com/2023/11/regarding-problem-of-jewish-quislings.html.
Weinberg, Wilhelm. “Gibojr oder Cadik- Hero or Saint.” Translated by Norbert Weinberg, February 28. 1947. Courage of the Spirit. http://www.courageofspirit.com/2016/03/gibojr-oder-cadik-hero-or-saint.html.
Weinberg, Wilhelm. “The Scroll of Esther.” July 10, 2017. Courage of the Spirit. http://www.courageofspirit.com/p/megillat-esther-story-of-esther.html.
Weinberg, Wilhelm. “Mut zum Geist.” Jüdische Pressezentrale Zürich, June 18, 1937, October 15, 1937, and October 22, 1937. Translated by Rabbi Norbert Weinberg. Courage of the Spirit. http://www.courageofspirit.com/2015/11/translation-of-full-text-of-three.html.
Weinberg, Wilhelm. Abschiedsrede, “Farewell Address, Commentary, translation, and transcript of German original.” Translated by Rabbi Norbert Weinberg. Courage of the Spirit. http://www.courageofspirit.com/2025/03/i-leave-this-country-with-bitterness.html.
Weinberg, Wilhelm. “Der Parlamentarismus. System und Krisis.” Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades des Staatswissenschaftlichen an der juridischen Fakultät der Universität zu Wien, 1928. Accessible through the Rabbi Wilhelm Weinberg Papers, RG-10.238 (Accession No. 1999.A.0163), Series 5, File 4, USHMM. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn502232?rsc=207716&cv=0&x=1796&y=1266&z=1.0e-4.

Weinberg’s writings can be accessed at these archival sites:
Rabbi Wilhelm Weinberg Collection, 1928-1986, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives- RG-10.238 (Acc. No. 1999.A.0163). https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn502232
Wilhelm Weinberg. Private Collection P 197. The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem.  https://www.nli.org.il/en/archives/NNL_CAHJP990043445560205171/NLI
Wilhelm Weinberg Collection, 1928–1938. AR 6544. Leo Baeck Institute. https://digipres.cjh.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE9150128
Weinberg, Wilhelm. “Der Parlamentarismus. System und Krisis.” Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades des Staatswissenschaftlichen an der juridischen Fakultät der Universität zu Wien, 1928. Accessible through the Rabbi Wilhelm Weinberg Papers, RG-10.238 (Accession No. 1999.A.0163), Series 5, File 4, USHMM. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn502232?rsc=207753&cv=0&x=1351&y=1726&z=1.4e-4
Weinberg, Wilhelm. “Mut Zum Geist.” Jüdische Pressezentrale Zürich, June 18, 1937, October 15, 1937, and October 22, 1937. Translated by Rabbi Norbert Weinberg. Courage of the Spirit Blog. http://www.courageofspirit.com/2015/11/translation-of-full-text-of-three.html
Weinberg, Wilhelm. Abschiedsrede, “Farewell Address, Commentary, translation, and transcript of German original.” Translated by Rabbi Norbert Weinberg. Courage of the Spirit Blog. http://www.courageofspirit.com/2025/03/i-leave-this-country-with-bitterness.html