Erwin Walter Palm

Vocation

Family

German-Jewish Latin American scholar, historian, and writer. Particularly receptive to the malicious developments taking place in Nazi Germany, he and his partner Hilde Löwenstein fled to Italy in 1932 to escape the growing anti-Semitism. They married in 1936, and lived first in Florence and then in Rome. Because of the rapprochement between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Hitler’s visit to Rome, and the acrimonious atmosphere of fascist Italy, the pair once again emigrated in 1939, this time to England. However, their fears of the Nazi menace did not wane, and the couple tried frenetically to emigrate across the Atlantic. None of their preferred choices—the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil—granted them a visa, while some charged them exorbitant sums of money which they didn't have. The only country to unconditionally welcome them was the Dominican Republic. There, they arrived in the port of San Pedro de Macorís in the summer of 1940. In Santo Domingo—where they lived for 14 years—Palm worked as a historian and lecturer at the University of Santo Domingo, while his wife Hilde became a photographer of architecture. The Palms returned to Germany in 1954, first settling in Frankfurt/Main, then in Heidelberg, where he was appointed lecturer of Spanish American Art and Culture at the University of Heidelberg in 1960. Erwin Walter Palm died on 7 July 1988 in Heidelberg, aged 77. Link to Wikipedia biography