The three children of Herman Goldstein, a widower, were living with his sister in Vienna when he and Esther married and, Esther assured her children, would remain there. Instead, however, they followed their father and became part of Esther’s household. The remarriage alienated Esther’s two oldest sons, Isidore and Harry, who refused to accept money from her to attend college and went to work for silk-and-ribbon merchants. Impressed with Louis’s intelligence, they gave him spending money so that he could go to City College, which was entirely free.8 The trajectory of the Marks family went in one generation from small tradesmen to successful businessmen and, in the next generation, to a top administrator in the New York City school system–the apex of the family until Harry Julian ascended yet higher with a Harvard PhD.9
Louis Marks in the private sphere
Graduating from City College in 1896, Louis began his career as a public-school teacher and ten years later received his principal’s license. The year 1908 was momentous. He was appointed principal of Public School 43 in the Bronx, where he interviewed Sophie Levison for a position as a kindergarten teacher. After he hired her, he reportedly said: “She can hang her coat in my closet anytime.” She did. In July, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of the Free Synagogue officiated at their wedding and signed the gilt-edged Torah that commemorated the occasion.10 The choice of the Free Synagogue–founded only a year earlier as a “pewless and dueless” institution committed to social justice–was in keeping with the progressive outlook that marked Louis’s career.11 The couple’s honeymoon in Europe showed that in one generation Europe could become a foreign continent: a place to visit, not to come from. In keeping with custom, Sophie did not return to work after marrying. She gave birth to Harry the next year.12
The Marks and Levison families blended well, enjoying good times together and supporting one another in bad. Deborah and Alfred Hirschbach joined Sophie and Louis in celebrating the marriage of Leo Levison in 1912. For this occasion Deborah and Alfred composed (and had formally printed) doggerel songs, including a “beautiful quartet” in which “the other Schwiegermutter” (mother-in-law), Sarah Katz Levison, yearns: “If only with my Hannah some day I’ll also have this joy.” Her wish was fulfilled two years later, when Hannah married Louis’s brother Harry, a widower.13 For that event, the same forces presented a “Musical Photoplay” consisting of more doggerel set to popular tunes. When Hannah died after giving birth in 1915, Harry’s family joined Louis and Sophie’s household, his two daughters becoming Harry Julian’s quasi-siblings.
Through energetic cultivation of his talents and his stock portfolio, Louis Marks became sufficiently prosperous to see his son through private school and send him to Harvard for his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees (and, in between, to the University of Berlin). He also sent him on a high school trip to Europe in 1926, which Harry recorded in the first of his extant diaries. Louis and Sophie made at least four foreign trips after their honeymoon. Their travels in North Africa in 1932 yielded a somewhat surprising photograph of Sophie, grown pleasingly plump, smiling bravely atop a horse, en route to the oasis at Tozeur, Tunisia.
Louis Marks in the public sphere
When Louis attended City College, it occupied a grand ivy-covered building at Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street designed by James Renwick, Jr., one of the premier practitioners of the Gothic Revival. City College was–in the words of Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who graduated six years after Louis–a “great institution for the acquisition of disciplined habits of work.”14 The young men (there were no women) were the sons of “petty tradesmen, clerks, and professional people”; they were “‘new men,’ without name, wealth, or family tradition,” whose “moderate bourgeois circumstances” precluded their attending any other kind of college.15 Within a few years, thanks to the enormous immigration that populated the Lower East Side, the student body was 80-90% Jewish.16 At a time when the only other postsecondary institutions in New York City–Columbia University and the University of the City of New York (later renamed New York University)–were expensive and private, ambitious young men like Louis were drawn to “the people’s college,” alias “the people’s Harvard.”
Students at City followed either the “classical” or the “scientific” course, neither of which gave much room for choice. Enrolled in the scientific course, Louis studied chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology, English, philosophy, history, drawing, and modern languages (French and German). He steadily improved his performance, in his first year ranking 152 out of 303 (labeled “Good”) on the Merit Roll and in his last year ranking 29 out of 74 (“High”).17 In calculating student rank, “demerits” (awarded for such infractions as missing a class) were subtracted from grades. Someone wrote on the Registrar’s records for 1895-96: “What a humbug is this Merit Roll!” But Louis and his brothers would not have regarded his success as “humbug.”
City College resembled the Ivy League architecturally, but whereas the Ivy League aimed to reproduce the middle class, City had a transformative role in the lives of “proud sons of immigrant parents.”18 The solemnity of its purpose appears in Louis’s class photograph. Seated in the front row are the president and the ten professors, bewhiskered or bearded or both, gold watch chains glinting here and there.19 Seventy-two serious young men, nearly the entire class, stand on bleachers in six rows. Four of the graduates sport mustaches, and one has a beard that may hint at aspirations to join the faculty. Louis is in the center of the third row, his hair slicked down, his head tilted slightly to his right. The students’ attire indicates their claim to middle-class status; despite the tight grouping, an occasional watch chain is visible, and some (like Louis) have a white handkerchief in the jacket pocket. When the graduation ceremony of Louis’s class took place–at Carnegie Hall, no less–the students’ appearance disturbed Robert Maclay, who as President of the Board of Trustees had just signed their diplomas. In a newspaper interview, Maclay deplored the “exceedingly imperfect” physical condition of the “narrow-chested, round-shouldered, stooped” young men.20 He wanted City College to institute physical training. Louis’s later emphasis on the “whole child” implies that he came to agree with Maclay.
Engraved on vellum, the diplomas that Maclay signed in 1896 were magnificently large: two feet high and seventeen inches wide. Embellished with calligraphic decorations, each diploma was stamped in red with the City College seal–a tripartite female figure facing past, present, and future–and signed not only by Maclay but by President Alexander Webb and the ten professors. The graduate’s name and degree, as well as the date, were hand-lettered in big, bold Gothic script. At the top was engraved the City College coat of arms, an allegorical representation combining elements of the seals of the City and State of New York. Four figures represent the colonial heritage and ideals of City College: the male figures of an Indian and a colonial sailor on the left, and the female figures of Alma Mater and Discipline on the right. The Indian wears a feathered headdress and carries a bow and quiver, while the sailor holds a sextant and a shield depicting a Dutch windmill, two beavers, and two flour barrels. Alma Mater bears a Phrygian cap, symbolizing Liberty, and holds a spindle with the thread of life. Discipline, holding a sword in one hand and a scourge and balance in the other (the balance, like the sword, associated with Justice), is “waiting to accompany the Graduate and to prepare him for the Battle of Life with the Scourge for himself and the Sword for others.”21 Thus the male figures represent historical continuities while the female figures connote the fundamental American ideals of Liberty and Justice. Beneath the four figures the motto EXCELSIOR is writ large above a cornucopia, the abundance of fruits and vegetables signifying colonial diligence and the rewards of Liberty and Discipline. City College may have been free, say these symbols, but it was not cheap.
With his background in science, Louis dreamed of becoming a doctor and did indeed attend Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons for a year. The prospect of more years of study, which would have kept him financially dependent on his brothers, persuaded him to drop out and get a job. He worked initially as an eighth-grade teacher but quickly moved