How a Jewish woman from Berlin became Jamia’s beloved ‘Aapa Jaan’

For someone who died far from home and family, Gerda Philipsborn’s resting place — open to the skies, in the private graveyard of Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia — is in good condition. The inscription carries Mirza Ghalib’s Urdu couplet, capturing Philipsborn’s zest for life: “My pleasure will not dim because of a desert of fatigue/ My footprint resembles the bubble of a wave of movement.”Born in 1895 in a wealthy German-Jewish family, opera singer, educator and social worker Gerda dedicated the last decade of her life to Jamia as a teacher in its primary school. By the time she died in 1943, she had endeared herself to the Jamia biradari, affectionately addressed as ‘Aapa Jaan’, a beloved elder sister.Nothing much, save a daycare centre and a girls’ hostel, today commemorates Gerda’s enduring bond with Jamia, its founders and the first generation of teachers and students. ‘One of Jamia’s first women’“Gerda was one of Jamia’s first women, who immensely contributed to building its base — its primary section, where she introduced innovative methodology in pedagogy she had learnt at a kindergarten in Berlin,” says former Planning Commission member Syeda Hameed, seated at her family home in Jamia Nagar, Delhi.Both Hameed and former foreign minister Salman Khurshid are linked to Gerda through family associations. Khurshid’s maternal grandfather Zakir Husain, Abid Husain, husband of Hameed’s father’s younger sister Saliha, and Mohammad Mujeeb, historian Irfan Habib’s uncle, were students in Berlin and were Philipsborn’s first links to the subcontinent.The three first met her around 1925 at a party hosted by Sarojini Naidu’s younger sister Suhasini Chattopadhyay, and her political activist husband ACN Nambiar. The friends saw German society mostly through Gerda’s eyes.Gerda’s father Jacob, an assimilated wealthy Jew cloth merchant, had a paying guest named Leo Slizard, who fell in love with her. At that time, Slizard, a gifted physicist, was working closely with Albert Einstein. Gerda spurned his marriage offer, but she had lost her heart to the stories of struggle that the three Indian friends narrated over food and coffee at Berlin’s eateries and cafes. The friendship, especially with Zakir Husain (who went on to become Jamia’s vice chancellor and President of India), resulted in a strong bond, bringing her into the Jamia biradari in its nascent years. From Berlin to Karol BaghFounded in 1920 in Aligarh, in response to Mahatma Gandhi’s call to boycott British-funded institutions during the Non-cooperation Movement, Jamia moved to Delhi’s Karol Bagh in 1925. Founders Mohammed Ali Jauhar, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Dr MA Ansari shifted its location to avoid conflict with Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College, later Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). Fearing a freezing of funds if it broke ties with the Raj, AMU’s trustees had ignored the Jamia leaders’ call to shake off British influence. A decade later, Jamia moved again, this time to Okhla village.Gerda and her three Indian friends were still in Berlin at this point, patronising its theatres and opera houses. “Together, the four friends attended cultural events and discussed what they had seen... their discussions must have moved to the topic of Jamia,” writes Berlin-based historian Margret Pernau in her 2024 biography Jamia’s Aapa Jaan: The Many Lifeworlds of Gerda Philipsborn. Pernau, whose first encounter with Gerda was in the Jamia magazine, spent months meeting individuals who had seen her or heard of her.Retired Urdu professor Sadique Rahman Kidwai, 91, remembers Aapa Jaan though he was not in her class. “I heard a lot about her from my father and others who worked with her. Aapa nursed Jamia like her own baby,” recalls Kidwai.A few houses away from Hameed’s bungalow lives Raza Mehdi, brother of Sughra Mehdi, prolific Urdu writer who wrote Bacchon Ki Aapa Jaan, a biography on Gerda’s role in mentoring children. “Sughra Aapa used oral history and diaries that many in the Jamia biradari kept. This biography helped Gerda receive recognition,” says Mehdi, a retired engineer and keeper of many Jamia stories. How Jamia overcame funds crunchThe end of the Khilafat movement, after Turkey’s revolutionary leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk abolished the Caliphate in 1924, had left Jamia facing a funds crunch, as it depended mainly on the movement for donations. Zakir Hussain, who was among the founders, was pursuing his doctoral studies in Germany back then. On receiving a telegram from the Jamia fraternity about its imminent closure, he urged the fraternity to hang in there till he was back. “Do not shut Jamia till we return,” he replied before setting sail for Colombo along with Abid Husain and Mohammad Mujeeb. When they arrived in Delhi, Zakir took over as Shaikhul Jamia or vice chancellor of Jamia, while Abid Hussain and Mohammad Mujeeb became his comrades-in-arms.Despite Zakir’s “advice, warnings and admonitions not to come” (Pernau’s words), Gerda followed them to India, joining Jamia’s primary school in 1933 and being assigned responsibility for the children in the hostel. She also taught English and German and contributed stories to Payaam-e-Taleem, Jamia’s Urdu magazine for children.Tongues may have wagged over Zakir’s “friendship” with Gerda, especially as he had borne her travel expenses and gone personally to receive her in Bombay. But the controversy settled after Mohammad Mujeeb, in his biography of Zakir Hussain, quoted his wife saying “Zakir Husain told her (his wife) how they had got acquainted and how this acquaintance developed into friendship... there was no more to it than that”.TOI met Zakir’s grandson Khurshid, currently president of India Islamic Cultural Centre on Lodhi Road, in his office. “At the dinner table, I remember my nana Zakir Sahab, whom we called Miyan, talking endlessly about Gerda and her commitment to Jamia. It never occurred to us that she was Jewish,” recalls Khurshid. It never became clear whether Gerda converted, but Zakir Hussain recited Quranic verses as her end neared, and she got a Muslim funeral.