Dallas, TX June 29,2002
Dear members of the Dallas Goethe Center,
With great sadness I have to report to you that yesterday, June 28, 2002, Gershon Canaan, the Founding President of the Dallas Goethe Center, passed away in his sleep. A great life has ended.
Gerhard Kohn grew up in Friedenau, a small middle-class district in Berlin, between Steglitz and Schöneberg. Marlene Dietrich is from there, and I lived there shortly in the seventies. Promptly, with the "Machtergreifung" of the Nazis, the Kohn family had to go into hiding in the Bismarckstrasse in Charlottenburg. Gerhard's father was a banker with the Dresdner Bank, and therefore an immediate target for the SA. The Kohn family succeeded in fleeing to Palestine, where young Gerhard became Gershon Canaan, who attended the Technicon in Haifa to study architecture. Then came the war. Gershon volunteered for the "Jewish Brigade" of the British Armed Forces. He fought in both the African and European theaters. After the war, the Jewish Brigades were instrumental in secretly, and against British policy helping concentration camp survivors and Jews who had come out of hiding. These "displaced persons" were herded in camps mainly in Southern Germany. The Jewish Brigade helped these people break the British blockade of Palestine. Upon discharge from the military, Gershon went to the United States to further his studies in architecture. He became an apprentice with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West, a compound near Scottsdale, Arizona. But soon, military duty called again. Israel had to defend herself in the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948. Gershon now assumed the rank of captain and fought for the survival of Israel. Having that accomplished, he returned to the United States and ultimately settled in Texas, where he married Doris.
As his architecture practice thrived, Gershon found time to contemplate his religious roots as a Jew and his cultural roots as a German, and found them not mutually exclusive. Consequently, he set out to devote his life to promoting mutual understanding between Americans and Germans. He was a driving force behind the recreation of the "German Day in Texas", again celebrated on October 6, during the State Fair of Texas. He was the Founding President of the Dallas Goethe Center, an organization devoted to foster German language culture. He became the Honorary Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany, and for all his accomplishments the German President bestowed upon him the Bundesverdienstkreuz. I mention the latter as the epitome of the all too numerous honors that Gershon Canaan had received. He enjoyed each one of them, and the brief limelight that came along with them.
A victim of the darkest hours of German history, Gershon was an unlikely candidate to become a leader in the German community in Texas. But it may have been just that; Gershon Canaan saw that for peace to happen there needs to be understanding between the people. So, in overcoming the divide caused by recent history Gershon Canaan became a giant of a man. A victim, a military hero, he became an architect of human relations, of reconciliation and understanding. His wife shared with me that Gershon was excited about the prospect of a "Goethe-Haus" in Dallas, and would have loved to design it. It is too late for that now, but following the wishes of the Canaan family, the obituary will suggest memorial donations to the Dallas Goethe Center. Hopefully, sometime in the future, Gershon's dream may come true. One thing is true: the Dallas Goethe Center will honor the memory of Gershon Canaan as long as it will exist.
Tillmann Hein
President