Overview of Records

        This collection was given to Brooklyn College upon the death of Professor Elmer Gustav Luchterhand, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College.  Throughout his years as professor, Elmer Luchterhand studied the effects of stress on man from a sociological perspective --stress in the classroom, stress in the community, stress in the city, and the massive stress perpetrated on individuals who survived in concentration camps during World War II.

        In the last twenty-five to thirty years of his life, Professor Luchterhand studied, researched, and interviewed survivors of World War II in order to better understand the lasting effects they experienced because of their incarceration.  He focused mainly on life in Hersbruck, a relatively little-known concentration camp in Germany, and interviewed not only the survivors but also the people involved in running Hersbruck during the war.

        This collection is composed primarily of transcripts of the interviews, some conducted in English, others in French or in German.  There is also quite a bit of research material, numerous maps and charts of that time period, and "theoretical abstracts" covering this topic.

        There is information as well on one very important respondent --Deacon Hans-Friedrich Lenz, an Evangelical minister from Hesse, Germany, before the war, and secretary to the commanders (at different times) at Hersbruck concentration camp during World War II.

        Professor Luchterhand wrote numerous articles in journals and wrote several books (some in collaboration with others) on how stress affected humans, but his most extensive and comprehensive work is his research of prisoners and other participants in the Hersbruck concentration camp during World War II.  There are numerous drafts of the proposed book covering this topic, titled Doggerwerk.

        Professor Luchterhand left a voluminous amount of work regarding an important subject with the hope that this study and his interpretation will be used by others to gain a "better perspective on the genocidal processes, and of the exceptional destructiveness of German fascism".
 
 

Quantity:  21 boxes, 9.75 cubic feet

Accession Number:  2001-005

Repository:  Brooklyn College Library Archives & Special Collection
                     2900 Bedford Avenue
                     Brooklyn NY  11210
                    (718.951.5346)

Access Restrictions:  The collection is open for research

Preferred Citation:  Item, folder title, box number, Elmer G. Luchterhand Papers, Brooklyn College Special Collections, Brooklyn College Library

Processing completed:  January 2002

Processed by:  Katherine Lorimer and Edythe Rosenblatt