Garden path 05

Ahlem, a multinational cosmos

Four Ahlem apprentices in front of Hanover Central Station in 1932. The second from right is probably Meir Bickel shortly before his departure for Palestine.

“Just see what Max Scheinuk has achieved in New Orleans”. Max Scheinuk’s flower business in the 1920s. He emigrated to the United States and opened a business for landscape gardening and pot plants in New Orleans in 1913.

Prior to World War I in particular, the in Ahlem came from a multinational background. Every second child originated from Austrian Galicia, Russia, Rumania or even Palestine.
Inversely, many Ahlem graduates emigrated to countries all over the globe. Even before the Nazis rose to power, more than half the graduates sought their professional future – in contradiction to the original intention of the school - beyond the borders of Germany, mainly in North and South America and in Palestine.

Photographed in 2011: Ramat Hanadiv Park (hill of the benefactor) south of the town of Zichron Yaakov (Israel) was designed by the Ahlem graduate Salomon Weinberg (later Shlomo Weinberg-Oren).