Adler-Hamburger photograph collection

Selma Van Leer Hamburger Adler (1898-1991) was born in Baltimore to parents Jeannie Van Leer Hamburger (1868-1942) and Benjamin Hamburger (1864-1929), both born in Baltimore and married there in 1891. Jeannie was the daughter of Solomon Van Leer (1823-1898), born at Gorredijk in the Netherlands, and Hannah Hirsh Van Leer (1833-1912), born in Briedenbach, Germany. Both arrived in the United States via New York in 1854, and married in 1855 in Baltimore. Benjamin Hamburger was secretary/treasurer and later president of the H.J. McGrath Company, an oyster and canning concern, and president of the Clover Club from 1917-1926. The family lived at 1222 West North Avenue in 1900, moving to 2221 Linden Avenue by 1920. Selma Adler’s sister Florette Van Leer Hamburger was born in 1891.

Selma was educated at Western High School, then studied Romance Languages at Goucher College, being graduated and elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1920, and attended Columbia University in New York. After serving as Goucher’s assistant registrar in the 1920s, Selma was assistant to the director of the Maryland War Commission, researching, compiling, and editing the Commission’s 1933 publication Maryland in the World War 1917-1919: Military and Service Records. She was also an information desk supervisor at the Maryland Historical Society.

Selma Hamburger married Leon Adler (1885-1980) in Baltimore in 1927. Leon was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he studied and began to practice law. He served in the army in World Wars I and II, commissioned as an ordinance officer in World War II before being transferred to the Judge Advocate General Corps, and serving as Post Judge Advocate at Fort Meade. After World War II, he was a lawyer for the Veterans Administration. Leon was also an accomplished musician who played with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in the 1920s and 1930s while establishing his law practice in Baltimore. Selma and Leon lived in the Reservoir Hill neighborhood during the 1920s to 1940s, moved temporarily to Washington, D.C. during World War II, and lived on University Parkway by the 1960s.