Joachim Prinz

Joachim Prinz (May 10, 1902 – September 30, 1988) was a German-American rabbi and activist. Prinz was an outspoken Zionist, opposed Nazism in Germany in the 1930s, and was a leader in the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s.

Prinz's family had been in Germany for 300 years and like most German Jews, were assimilated into German culture. However, Prinz felt that the German people did not perceive the Jews as German, and much to the chagrin of his father, became an ardent Zionist, joining the Blau-Weiss (Blue-White) Zionist youth movement in Germany.

Upon arrival to the United States, Prinz settled in New Jersey and became rabbi of Temple B'nai Abraham, then located in Newark.

Activism Zionist and pro-Jewish activism Prinz became a leader in American Jewish communal and advocacy organizations. From 1958 to 1966, he was president of the American Jewish Congress (AJC). Within a short period, Prinz's activism helped him rise to become one of a top leader within several Jewish organizations. He held top leadership positions in the World Jewish Congress, as president of the American Jewish Congress from 1958 to 1966, and as Chairman of the World Conference of Jewish Organizations. Later, he was a director of the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

Prinz's early involvement in the Zionist movement made him a close ally and friend of the founding leaders of the State of Israel. Prinz was essential to establishing what became the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Prinz was chairman from 1965 to 1967.

Involvement in the Civil Rights Movement

Because of his experience in Germany, Prinz identified with the cause of Black Americans, seeing parallels between their plight and that of German Jews under Hitler. Before his permanent settlement, Prinz visited America on an exploratory visit in 1937. Upon his return to Germany, he wrote of his impressions for the German-Jewish literary magazine Der Morgen:

From his early days in Newark, a city with a very large nonwhite community, he spoke from his pulpit opposing discrimination. He joined the picket lines across America protesting racial prejudice from unequal employment to segregated schools, housing and all other areas of life.

In 1955, Prinz sued American far-right publisher Conde McGinley for libel in the Superior Court of Newark, New Jersey. McGinley had published in his newspaper Common Sense that Prinz was "expelled in 1937 from Germany for revolutionary communistic activities". Prinz denied this. The jury awarded Prinz $30,000, agreeing that "the bi-weekly publication was lying when it characterized him as a 'Red Rabbi'".

As a rabbi, Prinz used his pulpit to involve his congregants in the civil rights movement. At the American Jewish Congress's May 1958 convention in Miami Beach, Florida where he was being installed as the group's president, Prinz invited King to deliver the convention's opening address, the first time that King had spoken in the Southern United States to a large mostly white group. King addressed the shared experience of oppression:

In October 1958, weeks after the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple bombing in Atlanta, Georgia, Prinz sent a letter to King requesting his support for an effort to persuade President Dwight D. Eisenhower to convene a conference on integration at the White House. In early 1963, Prinz invited King to give a lecture at his synagogue, which was attended by an overflow crowd, several months before the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He was one of ten speakers in the program.

In his address, Prinz contended that, based on his experience as a rabbi in Nazi Germany after the rise of Hitler, in the face of discrimination, "the most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence." After Prinz spoke, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Prinz attended King's funeral following his assassination in April 1968.

Personal life Prinz's first wife Lucie Horovitz died in childbirth in 1931. They had four children: Lucie and Michael (born in Berlin); Jonathan and Deborah (both born in the United States); and adopted another daughter, Jo Seelmann, who was Hilde's cousin and a Holocaust survivor.

A resident of the Brookside neighborhood of Mendham Township, New Jersey, Prinz died of a heart attack at St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston, New Jersey in 1988. He was buried in the B'nai Abraham Memorial Park.

Works ("On the concept of religious experience") - Breslau 1927 ("Biblical heroes and adventures") - Berlin-Charlottenburg: P. Baumann 1930 ("Jewish history") - Berlin: Verlag für Kulturpolitik 1931 (2. Auflage: Illustrierte jüdische Geschichte. Berlin: Brandus 1933) ("We Jews") Berlin: Reiss 1934 (Excerpts in: Christoph Schulte, ("Germanness and Jewishness. A dispute among Jews in Germany") - Stuttgart: Reclam 1993, Reclams Universal-Bibliothek; Nr. 8899, ) ("Bible stories") - Berlin: Reiss Verl. 1934 (7 editions to 1937, new edition: New York: Atheneum Jewish publisher in 1988) ("The Friday evening") - Berlin: Brandus ; Nachdruck: Zürich: Verl. Jüd. Buch-Gemeinde 1954 ("The kingdoms of Israel and Judah") - Berlin: Reiss 1936 ("Life in the ghetto") - Berlin: Löwe 1937 Prayers for the High Holidays, 1951. The Dilemma of the Modern Jew, Boston: Little, Brown, 1962. Popes from the ghetto: a view of medieval Christendom, New York: Horizon Press, 1966. The secret Jews, New York: Random House, 1973. Joachim Prinz, Rebellious Rabbi: An Autobiography: the German and early American years,(ed. Michael A. Meyer) Indiana University Press, 2008

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