The founders of the "Bund", Artur and Dore Jacobs, as a young couple. Like many other German groups in the 1920s, the "Bund" venerated its leader. Even late in his life in the post-war period, Artur Jacobs continued to exercise enormous fascination for his followers.

Tove Gerson, pictured here in the 1950s, braved a baying mob to visit a Jewish family after "Kristallnacht". Her gift of flowers seemed to her out of place when she saw their destroyed apartment, and her gesture solidarity was not enough to stop them committing suicide the following day.

Grete Stroeter, photographed here with her children during the war, while her husband was enlised on the eastern front, courageously visited a Jewish family temporarily interned by the Gestapo in Essen, before their deportation. By some code she managed to convey to them that their 20 year old daughter, who had run away from the Gestapo, was safe and being looked after by the Bund.

Roseman project explores anti-Nazi group

Professor Mark Roseman collected images of this "life-reform" and anti-Nazi group, the "League for Socialist Life", during his time as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in Germany Spring 2006.

The League for Socialist Life saved the lives of a number of Jews and so-called "half Jews" in Nazi Germany, hiding them with members of the group, most of whom lived in the Ruhr area, or in out-of-the-way guest houses run by Bund sympathizers. Remarkably, the League survived the war without losing any of its 100 or so active members to the Gestapo.

Roseman's project seeks to understand how and why the Bund successfully acted in this way, but also to make sense of the group's post-war experience that contrary to its expectations it was unable to capitalize on its record and win new members.

A particular focus of Roseman's project, which is being undertaken with Norbert Reichling working at the Humanistische Union in Essen, is to link the Bund's activities and aspirations in the 1920s—it was one of Weimar Germany's so-called "Life-Reform" groups—with its ability to respond to the changed environment of Nazi Germany.

One such thread is the Bund's close linkage with Dore Jacob's new school of physical movement. This created both an innocent-looking set of activities through which contacts could be maintained, but more importantly helped to create the mixture of discipline and liberating experience that gave the group its cohesion.