4:40pm Wednesday 17th February 2010
Lewis Erlanger, a Jewish intellectual who escaped Nazi Germany just weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War, has died aged 87.
Born 1922 in Offenbach am Main and christened Paul Victor Karl Joseph Ludwig Erlanger, he settled in England and adopted the name Lewis – the name by which everyone knew him.
Mr Erlanger – who subsequently for Pressed Steel in Oxford, which later became British Leyland, and the Parker Knoll furniture factory in Chipping Norton – arrived in Britain in August 1939, on the first ever passenger flight from Frankfurt am Main to London.
He was 16 and it was just three weeks before the outbreak of Second World War. His uncle had put up a bond enabling him to enter the country.
He quickly found work as a barman but, along with more than 10,000 other German refugees, he was interned in a detention camp on the Isle of Man soon after the outbreak of war.
On his return to the British mainland, Mr Erlanger joined the war effort, by working on farms.
In 1945, he married Olwen Woolner and they settled in Kingham, near Chipping Norton.
His son Paul said it was his father’s “lost education” that led him to spend hours poring over reference books in Oxford University’s Bodleian Library.
He said: “Lewis arrived in England alone and, having lost his heritage to the war, made it his home.
“Although the son of high-born German Jewish parents, Lewis was proud to take on any work, however humble, and give it his all.
“His interrupted education gave him an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, which he satisfied by spending many hours at the Bodleian Library.
“His research was far-ranging and eclectic.
“He became a lay expert in many topics including law, politics, religion and history – and had his Bodleian Library ticket in his wallet when he died.”
Mr Erlanger had seven children with his wife, who died in 1985.
He leaves four children, Paul, Simon, Matthew and Victoria, seven grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
His funeral, for family members only, is being held at Redditch Crematorium, in Worcestershire, on Tuesday.
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