Ralph Blumenau, history teacher dies aged 100

“A lot of boys gave the Hitler salute,” he told me. “They were very enthused about Hitler.” That was the day when Ralph found out who Hitler was. He remembered the antisemitic atmosphere: banners, caricatures of Jews with hooked noses. From then on, he was bullied at school.

His parents emigrated to Britain in 1936. They were lucky with their timing. His father was able to sell his firm, got “quite a bit of money out” and, crucially, managed to export the machinery from his factory so he could start up a new business in London, where most of his workers were also Jewish refugees. His father’s brother came later, just after Kristallnacht, at the end of 1938. His grandparents did not leave and all died before the Holocaust, so were spared the death camps.

Ralph and his brother were sent to school in Switzerland for a year, paid for by their mother’s parents. They had English lessons there and Ralph spoke good English by the time he came to England in spring 1937. The family settled in Hampstead and later in St. John’s Wood. His parents remained in north London.

Ralph had no difficulty in understanding English or in making himself understood. Perhaps surprisingly, he also remembered having “no difficulty in settling in” at his Hampstead prep school. He was at St Paul’s from 1939 to 1943 (his brother Tom, later a businessman and human rights campaigner, was there from 1941 to 1946). St Paul’s had already been evacuated because of the war to Berkshire, about 35 miles from south-west London. There, until 1945, masters and boys lived in the village, and lessons took place in a nearby country house and Wellington College lent the school its playing fields and laboratories. He wasn’t unhappy at the school, he said, but “I was not as much in my element at St Paul’s as I was later [as a teacher] at Malvern”. Was it difficult for a Jewish-German refugee to fit in? “The school was not at all antisemitic,” he said emphatically. “Quite the opposite.” Ralph remembered there were “a large number of Jewish boys then, including quite a few refugees.” Did they stand out? “Absolutely not.”

After St Paul’s Ralph spent two years teaching at a prep school and then went to Wadham College, Oxford, from 1945 to 1949, where he was awarded a first in history. By the time he left Oxford, he had been naturalised and was a British citizen. After Oxford he became a schoolmaster at The King’s School, Canterbury. This was a cathedral school, and the headmaster, who was a canon at the cathedral, told him that because he was Jewish, he couldn’t be a housemaster or a head of department. So, after four years he moved on to Malvern College, which proved a hugely happy and fulfilling experience. He became head of history (1959-1985) and wrote a history of the school for its centenary. He was much loved at Malvern. One former student wrote: “He was a brilliant and inspiring teacher, who taught me everything, not just history but art history, classical music appreciation, even French and Latin in history with foreign texts A-level.”

In 1985 Ralph retired, and then spent another 30 years lecturing on European history, the history of philosophy and the history of the Jews at the University of the Third Age and wrote his best-known book, Philosophy and Living (2002). He was awarded the British Empire Medal in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to adult education, in recognition of his 27-year contribution to the University of the Third Age in London, following his retirement from the college. His lectures on the history of the Jews led him to give talks on the subject to many Jewish groups; and his parents, he says, would have been surprised that he should have become so involved with Jewish history. Though all their friends in England were German Jews – “they weren’t in the slightest bit interested in Jewish history”.

Ralph did not feel an outsider. Educated at St Paul’s and Oxford, a public-school teacher for almost 40 years, he seemed untroubled by the traumas of displacement. “I feel very British,” he told me. “But not too British. I have felt the privilege of a different background, which has given me a perspective, a broad-mindedness, an interest in foreign affairs. British with a continental background, which I value. But British first.”

Ralph’s wife, Mary, predeceased him in 2019. He is survived by his nephews, Anthony and Colin, his niece, Anne and extended family.

Ralph Blumenau: born December 5, 1924. Died June 20, 2025