{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}} {{short description|German Wehrmacht soldier and politician (1919–2004)}} {{expand German|topic=bio|date=May 2022|Werner Goldberg}} {{Infobox military person | honorific_prefix= | name = Werner Goldberg | honorific_suffix= | image = WernerGoldberg.jpg | image_size= | caption = Goldberg's image as published in the ''Berliner Tagesblatt'' | birth_date = {{birth date|1919|10|3|df= y}} | death_date = {{Death date and age|2004|09|28|1919|10|03|df=y}} | birth_place = Berlin, Germany | death_place = Berlin, Germany | burial_place = Wilmersdorf, Berlin, Germany | burial_label= | nickname= | allegiance = {{flag|Nazi Germany}} | branch = Wehrmacht | service_years = December 1938–April 1940 | rank = Schütze (Rifleman) | commands= | battles = {{tree list}} * World War II ** Invasion of Poland {{tree list/end}} | awards= | spouse= | children = 3 | relations= | other_work= | signature= | alma_mater= }}
'''Werner Goldberg''' (3 October 1919 – 28 September 2004) was a German of half Jewish ancestry, or a {{lang|de|Mischling}} in Nazi terminology, who served as a Heer (land forces) soldier of the ''Wehrmacht'' for the first 1.5 years of World War II. After the war he became a West German politician. He is best known for a picture of him which appeared in the ''Berliner Tageblatt,'' as "The Ideal German Soldier".
==Biography== ===Pre-WWII=== Goldberg's father grew up in Königsberg as a member of the Jewish community but had himself underwent baptism in the local Lutheran church, as he wished to become assimilated and marry a Christian. Goldberg and his brother Martin (born 1920) had been baptized in the Grünewald Lutheran Church at their father's request. After Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the senior Goldberg lost his position under the Nazi law of April 1933, Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which expelled Jews from the German Civil Service under the Aryan Paragraph.
The 1935 Nuremberg Laws classed persons with at least three Jewish grandparents as Jewish; those with two Jewish grandparents would be considered Jewish only if they practised the faith or had a Jewish spouse.
As a child, he went to the Grunewald-Gymnasium in Berlin;<ref name="TagesSpiegel-22Oct04"/> he had no idea his father was Jewish until he was suddenly ostracised at school;<ref name=Haaretz/> Goldberg left the school in 1935 when it became Jew-free,<ref name="TagesSpiegel-22Oct04">{{cite news |url=https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/werner-goldberg-1164121.html |newspaper=Der Tagesspiegel |first1=Gregor |last1=Eisenhauer |date=22 October 2004 |language=de |title=Wirtschaft: Werner Goldberg |trans-title=Economics: Werner Goldberg}}</ref> and became an apprentice at ''Schneller und Schmeider'', a clothing company jointly owned by a Jew and a non-Jew, where many of his colleagues were Jews or {{lang|de|Mischlinge}}. Goldberg's maternal uncle joined the Nazi Party and refused to be seen with the Goldberg family, even avoiding Goldberg's mother.
In early 1938, Goldberg served a six-month term in the Reich Labour Service whose uniform, as Goldberg stated, "had a swastika on an armband".
===Wehrmacht service (December 1938- April 1940)=== On 1 December 1938, Goldberg joined the German Army. He took part in the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, serving alongside childhood friend Karl Wolf, whose father was now a high-ranking SS officer.
Goldberg's photograph appeared in the Sunday edition of the ''Berliner Tagesblatt'' newspaper with the caption "The ideal German soldier" ("''Der ideale deutsche Soldat''").
In 1940, following the Armistice with France, Goldberg was expelled from the army under Hitler's order of 8 April 1940, which stated that all first-degree {{lang|de|Mischlinge}} were to be discharged from the military.
===Remainder of the war=== Goldberg returned to his former workplace, which had now changed its name to ''Feodor Schmeider'', having been obliged to remove the Jewish name ''Schneller''. Goldberg played an increasingly responsible role within the company, obtaining contracts for uniforms from the army and the navy. He also attended the Reich Committee for Labour Studies school ({{lang|de|Reichsausschuss für Arbeitsstudien}}, RAFA), where he was one of the four out of 80 students who passed the test to become a RAFA teacher. He then became a Labour Studies Board lecturer on the clothing industry, and delivered lectures to organizations and company directors, even publishing an article in the weekly trade publication ''Textilwoche''.
In December 1942, Goldberg's father was admitted to hospital. The Gestapo, however, raided the hospital and sent him to a Jewish one which had been requisitioned by the Gestapo for use as a prison, from which Jews were taken and sent to Auschwitz. On Christmas Eve, gambling that the guards would be drunk or absent, Goldberg took his father out of the hospital. The elder Goldberg was soon back in the hands of the Gestapo, and in April 1943 was summoned for deportation; Werner told him not to show up, and he was again saved. The father and son were the only members of their immediate family to survive the war.
===Post-war=== Werner Goldberg later joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and served twenty years between 1959 and 1979 as a politician of the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin in West Berlin. He died in Berlin on 28 September 2004, aged 84; he was survived by his wife Gertrud Goldberg, and three children.
==In popular culture==
Goldberg's story formed part of the 2006 documentary ''Hitler's Jewish Soldiers – Nazi-Jews in Hitler's Army'', a 58-minute film produced by Larry Price in association with the Israel Broadcasting Authority.<ref>{{cite web |title=Hitler's Jewish Soldiers [synopsis] |work=DocCo.NexenServices.com |publisher=Doc & Co. (Doc & Film International) |date=2006 |url= http://docco.nexenservices.com/doc_co_uk/a_synopsis.php?ID_titre=923 |access-date=10 May 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070821182657/http://docco.nexenservices.com/doc_co_uk/a_synopsis.php?ID_titre=923 |archive-date=21 August 2007 }}</ref><ref name=Haaretz>{{cite news |url=https://www.haaretz.com/2006-04-21/ty-article/caught-in-the-middle-part-jewish-germans-served-in-nazi-army/0000017f-e678-dea7-adff-f7fbd7e70000 |title=Caught in the Middle, Part-Jewish Germans Served in Nazi Army |last=Moskowitz |first=Ira |date=21 April 2006 |work=Haaretz |access-date=24 June 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220625024213/https://www.haaretz.com/2006-04-21/ty-article/caught-in-the-middle-part-jewish-germans-served-in-nazi-army/0000017f-e678-dea7-adff-f7fbd7e70000 |archive-date=25 June 2022 |url-status=live }}</ref> Price's film was inspired by the 2002 book ''Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military'' by Bryan Mark Rigg.<ref name=Haaretz /><ref>{{cite book |last=Rigg |first=Bryan Mark |author-link=Bryan Mark Rigg |title=Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military |url= http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/righit.html |access-date=24 June 2013 |date=2002 |publisher=University Press of Kansas |isbn=978-0-7006-1178-2 |url-status=dead|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20140826084054/http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/righit.html |archive-date=26 August 2014}}</ref>
Goldberg featured in the episode "The Jews Who Fought for Hitler" of the Yesterday TV series ''Nazi Collaborators'', first screened in the UK in December 2010.
In 2015, the photograph was used for the monument to "Protectors of Motherland" in Tobolsk, Russia, as a surrogate for an image of a Red Army soldier, reportedly by mistake. The image on the monument was promptly fixed.{{clarify |"To fix a photo" is Putinspeak for removed, retouched (removal if Nazi insignia), digitally alteted to wear Soviet uniform... what? And can such a bluder ever be a mistake, rather than either a crude joke, or an attempt at denigrating the Red Army or showing opposition to the Russian gov't who ordered the monument? |date= May 2026}}<ref>{{cite news|title=В Тобольске по ошибке установили памятник нацистскому солдату|lang=ru|trans-title=|agency=NTV ({{lang|ru|НТВ}})|url=http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/1431959/|access-date=1 July 2015|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20230408223616/https://www.ntv.ru/novosti/1431959/|archive-date= April 8, 2023}}</ref>
==See also== * Erhard Milch – Nazi-era Luftwaffe general with partial Jewish ancestry * Hessy Levinsons Taft – Jewish infant girl also used in Nazi propaganda
==Notes== {{reflist}} {{refbegin}} *{{cite book |last1=Stoltzfus |first1=Nathan |author-link=Nathan Stoltzfus |first2=Walter |last2=Lacqueur |title=Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany |publisher=Rutgers University Press |date=2001 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=EdGtnp24BhwC |via=Google Books |isbn=0-8135-2909-3}} *{{cite book |last=Rigg |first=Mark |author-link=Bryan Mark Rigg |title=Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military |publisher=University Press of Kansas |date=2004 |isbn=0-7006-1358-7}} {{refend}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Goldberg, Werner}} Category:1919 births Category:2004 deaths Category:Military personnel from Königsberg Category:German Jewish military personnel of World War II Category:German people of Jewish descent Category:People notable for being the subject of a specific photograph Category:Reich Labour Service members Category:Politicians from Königsberg Category:German Army soldiers of World War II Category:Christian Democratic Union of Germany politicians