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Subject Guide: Labor History

Archival and library highlights found at the Center relating to labor history and the individuals and organizations that fought for equal rights in the workplace.

Reproduction of portrait of New School professor Frieda Wunderlich (AR 3230, LBI)

Archival Material

Frederick Mechner Barnard collection, 1932 - 1949 (AR 25748) [Digitzed]

This collection consists of notebooks, including photographs and ephemera, from Barnard’s years in the Labor Zionist youth movement Tchelet Lavan (1932-38), notes from his years at Manor House, Tingrith, Bedfordshire (1939-40), and a biographical sketch provided by the donors of the collection. This collection has been digitized in its entirety. 

Frieda Wunderlich Collection, 1919-1969. (AR 3230) [Digitzed]

The collection holds correspondence, including letters from Alvin Johnson and Thomas Mann, as well as manuscripts of lectures, speeches, articles on labor relations, trade union policies, and labor and economy in Nazi Germany. This collection has been digitized in its entirety.

William Graetz Collection (AR 4121) [Digitized]

Personal documents of William Graetz, including military papers, and membership and identity cards. Records of ORT committees, minutes of executive committee meetings, correspondence and reports of the activities of ORT branches during the years 1926-1970 in Argentina, Bessarabia, Bolivia, Brazil, France, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, South Africa, Switzerland, and the USSR, also including letters from Leo Baeck. Records of the Jewish community of Berlin, in 1929 and 1930, including correspondence on juvenile care, financial reports, and meeting minutes.

Library Materials

Austrian Labor Information / Published Monthly by the Austrian Labor Committee. (1942). Print.

German-American Trade Union Solidarity in the Struggle against Fascism 1933-1945 : How the American Trade Unions Helped Their Persecuted German Colleagues : A Report / Introductions by Ernst Breit and Lane Kirkland. 1985.

Labor under Fascism. Print. In Survey Graphic, February 1939, P. 65-68, 181.

The Alternative Culture; Socialist Labor in Imperial Germany / Vernon L. Lidtke. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. Print.