A Hamburg Childhood: The Early Life of Herbert Bernstein

Abstract

When Herbert Bernstein had a massive heart attack and died in the Law School shortly before noon on April 20, 2001, the Dean asked me to write a short piece about him on behalf of the Law School for release to the press. What I wrote concentrated heavily on what he had told me about the experiences of his early life. My remarks at his memorial service several days later were even more directed at those experiences. In putting together this volume, Professor Deborah DeMott asked me to expand those remarks into a paper. This essay is the result. I have attempted to stitch together various stories that Herbert had told me over the course of our friendship and to put them into some sort of historical context. It is a narrative of his boyhood in Hamburg during the worst years in that city's history. It is a remarkable tale of survival, and of the struggle of one boy to be allowed to create his own identity.