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Samuel Freund (Born September 24, 1868 in Gleiwitz, Germany; Died June 28, 1939 in Hannover, Germany) was the senior rabbi of Hannover and the Landrabbiner for the German state of Lower Saxony.

Life
Samuel was the son of businessman Isidor Freund and his wife Caecilia. In 1887-1890, Freund studied philosophy at the University of Breslau while also completing his rabbinical training at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau. Freund continued his studies in philosophy at Heidelberg University, where he received his doctorate in 1892. Freund was appointed rabbi in smaller congregations in Czarnikau, and then Ostrowo. It was during this time, around 1900, that he married Minna Feilchenfeld.

In 1907, Samuel Freund was appointed as the junior rabbi of Hannover, where he ran the religious schools. The focal point of the city's Jewish community was the Romanesque synagogue in the center of Hannover (16 Bergstrasse). The building, completed in 1870, was designed by Edwin Oppler of the Hanover school of architecture, and was the first large, free-standing synagogue in Germany.

During World War I, Freund enlisted in the army and served as clergy in German combat units. Upon returning from the war, Samuel Freund assumed the position of senior rabbi of Hanover in 1918.

In 1921, Samuel Freund was a leading participant in the German Jewish community's response to the anti-Semitic charges of Dietrich Eckart, editor of Auf Gut Deutsch. Eckart, looking to spread the calumny that Jews had not contributed to the German war effort during World War I, offered a prize of 1,000 marks for proof that even a single Jewish family had sent three sons into the army to fight for more than three weeks. "Rabbi Freund of Hannover immediately gave him a list of twenty families in his own community who sent three sons into the trenches for three weeks and more. Dr. Freund also presented a list of 50 families from various communities, some of which sent seven and eight sons to the trenches and had lost three sons in the service of their country."

Landrabbiner
In 1924, while continuing as local rabbi of Hannover, Samuel Freund was elected Landrabbiner of Hannover. Landrabbiners were elected by the communities they represented, yet they could not be removed from office without the consent of the German government. They were officers of the state. Specifically, the Landrabbiner of Hannover was charged with supervising all publicly-funded staff employed in the Jewish community, and with general oversight of synagogues, Jewish schools, and Jewish charitable institutions throughout the German state of Lower Saxony. Samuel Freund was the last to ever hold the office of Hannover Landrabbiner and remained Landrabbiner until his death.

Freund was not just an officer in the Landrabbinat but also a student of the institution. In 1937, Freund published Ein Vierteljahrtausend Hannoversches Landrabbinat, 1687-1937 : Zur 250 jährigen Wiederkehr seiner Begründung dargestellt, a 20-page pamphlet on the history of, and rational for, the office.

During Freund's time as rabbi and Landrabbiner, Hannover's Jewish population reached it's peak of 5,521 members (1925), making the Hannover Jewish community the tenth largest in the Germany.

Liberal Judaism, German Patriotism, and Zionism
Freund was a rabbi in the Liberal Jewish tradition. Liberal Judaism in Germany, comparable to modern Conservative Judaism, fashioned a middle path between German Neo-Orthodox Judaism (a strict and highly traditional form of Jewish observance) and the modernist and increasingly secular Reform movement.

By the end of the 19th Century, most German Jews were members of Liberal or Neo-Orthodox congregations. Both traditions emphasized the religious and cultural aspects of Judaism, while rejecting any claims about Jewish nationalism distinct from their identity as German citizens. Many leaders in the Liberal Jewish community fought for Germany in the first World War, and they emphasized the compatibility of Judaism with German patriotism.

Samuel Freund, as a patriotic German, was a vocal opponent of the Zionist movement gaining strength in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Zionists saw Judaism as a national identity first and foremost, albeit one with no physical country to call home. According to Zionist leaders, it was not possible logically, and psychologically, to be a Jew and true member of any other nation, so emigration to Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish state there, was the only long-term solution to anti-Semitism, and the only way for Jews to truly belong to a nation.

Opinions differed within the Freund family as well. Two of Samuel Freund's three adult children, moved to Palestine in the mid-1930s. Samuel Freund visited his children in Palestine on two occasions, the last time in 1937. Each time, Freund chose to return to his congregation in Germany.

Kristallnacht and the destruction of the Hannover Jewish community
The Hannover synagogue was destroyed on November 9, 1938, Kristallnacht, by Nazi paramilitary forces who first torched, then dynamited, the building. The junior rabbi of Hannover, Emil Schorsch, was arrested on Kristallnacht and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp.

Samuel Freund spent the last six months of his life tending to his congregation and trying to secure passage out of Germany for his wife and himself. Freund's health was poor, and in late June 1939 he died of heart failure, and was buried in the Jewish cemetery on the Strangriede in Hannover.

In December 1941, the Nazis began in earnest the mass deportation of Hannover's Jews to concentration camps. Samuel Freund's wife, Minna, was sent to Theresienstadt on July 22, 1942, where she died.

The 'Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Hannover,' constructed in 1994, lists the names of the 1,935 Hannoverian Jews known to have perished in the Holocaust. The street Freundallee in Hannover was named in Samuel Freund's honor.