Peter Lande papers

The Peter Lande papers include photograph albums, journal entries, and loose photographs documenting Peter Lande’s family in 1925-1926 and Lande himself as a baby in Berlin in 1932-1933. The first photograph album is titled “1926” and primarily includes photographs of Lande’s parents and grandparents in 1925 and 1926 in Braunlage, Münster, Hildesheim, Braunschweig, and Wolfenbüttel in Germany, and on vacation in La Grave and Malcesine. The second photograph album is titled “Wolfgang 1932-33” and includes baby photographs of Lande during his first year in Berlin interspersed with journal entries describing his daily activities and development. Loose album pages and photographs also depict Lande’s family and Lande as a baby. Peter Lande was born Wolfgang Landé in 1932 in Berlin to parents Walter and Gretha (nee Fedlmann) Landé. Walter was born in 1889 in Pleschen, where his father was a German judge. Walter studied law in Freiburg, Geneva, and Berlin and worked as a German Red Cross volunteer in Belgium during World War I. He then served in the Prussian Ministry of Education, ending up as Ministerialrat (Minister Counselor), and as a socialist member of the Reichsrat (upper house of German Parliament). Walter, Gretha, and Peter immigrated to the United States in the mid-1930s, when Peter was a young child. Peter was later employed by the Department of State for 32 years as a Foreign Service Officer, retiring in 1988 as Economic Minister in Cairo. He has worked as a volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for several decades, developing databases of historical and genealogical material, and indexing the captured World War II era German records held by the National Archives.