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Josef A. Katzel

Died

March 10, 1930

Josef A. Katzel (Iosif Alexandrovich Katzel, 1890–1930) was the only son of Alexander Iosifovitch Katzel (Александр Iосифовичъ Кацель/Александр Иосифович Кацель, b. 1862), who tutored a teenage Lenin while both were enrolled in law school at Kazan Imperial University in 1887. Josef graduated with high marks from the Department of Economics at the prestigious Petrograd Peter the Great Polytechnic Institute in December 1916, with a specialization in political economy. Soon after the Bolsheviks came to power in the October 1917 Revolution, Katzel fled with his family to neighboring Lithuania, just as it was declaring its independence from Russia. There he authored his groundbreaking HISTORY OF LITHUANIA. Unfortunately for the author, his book Josef A. Katzel (Iosif Alexandrovich Katzel, 1890–1930) was the only son of Alexander Iosifovitch Katzel (Александр Iосифовичъ Кацель/Александр Иосифович Кацель, b. 1862), who tutored a teenage Lenin while both were enrolled in law school at Kazan Imperial University in 1887. Josef graduated with high marks from the Department of Economics at the prestigious Petrograd Peter the Great Polytechnic Institute in December 1916, with a specialization in political economy. Soon after the Bolsheviks came to power in the October 1917 Revolution, Katzel fled with his family to neighboring Lithuania, just as it was declaring its independence from Russia. There he authored his groundbreaking HISTORY OF LITHUANIA. Unfortunately for the author, his book was noticed promptly upon publication by Augustinas Voldemaras (1883–1942), a Lithuanian nationalist/fascist political figure who had briefly served in 1918 as the country’s first prime minister. A known Nazi sympathizer and confirmed antisemite, Voldemaras wrote a rambling, scathing and largely baseless condemnation of the book in a leading Lithuanian journal, resulting in the suppression of the publication of the second volume. After Voldemaras came to power as dictator following a successful coup in 1926, he expelled Katzel and his family from the country, on the pretext that they had been discovered to be Russian spies. Forfeiting his business holdings and property, Katzel crossed through Poland with his wife and two young daughters to Germany. Ever resilient, he promptly reestablished himself in Berlin, opening a British-style men’s haberdashery that he named Krawatten-Joe (Necktie Joe), just across from the legendary KaDeWe department store, in the bustling city center. Although the business thrived, he soon met with an adversary that no amount of effort or resourcefulness could overcome: kidney disease—at a time when there was no effective treatment for it—to which he succumbed on 10 March 1930. His remains are interred at the Old Weissensee Jewish Cemetery in Berlin. While in Kaunas, Lithuania, he founded a Russian-language university preparatory academy and a Russian-language academic journal «Экономическая жизнь Литвы» (The Economic Life of Lithuania). In addition to being a published writer and cartoonist in pre-Soviet Russia, he was a pianist and polyglot (English, French, German, Hebrew, Russian and Yiddish). He was also known as a devoted husband to his wife, Rose, and loving father to his two daughters, Shura and Ira. ...more