Friedrich Brauer Collection

The collection consists primarily of printed materials, pamphlets, broadsides, postcards, flyers, newspapers and other ephemera, related to the study of Germany during World War I, of the post war political and economic conditions of the Weimar Republic, and of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Party. Part of the collection consists of German campaign materials from the late 1920s and early 1930s. Photographs include a few of the Brauer family and one of the grave site of Baron von Richthofen. Also included is a collection of notgeld, the currency issued by the German government and by German municipalities during the troubled economic times of the 1920s. A Child's Record--a scrapbook created by Ralph Brauer's grandparents--is a lovingly crafted book of scrap designed to celebrate the birth of and to entertain the young Ralph Werner Brauer, the donor of this collection. Brauer, who headed the program in marine biology at Wrightsville Beach and was a formative force in the founding of the marine biology program at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and his father, Dr. Friedrich Brauer left Germany in 1936, just as the Nazi's were solidifying their grasp upon the German political structure.