Both parents were originally from East Prussia and had, like thousands of others during the closing decades of the nineteenth century, moved from the economically depressed countryside to the rapidly expanding German capital in pursuit of better financial security.
Fifteen years older than his wife, and 48 by the time his son was born, Hermann Großmann died following a heart attack in 1909, leaving Kurt and his elder sister Margaret to be bought up by their mother as a single parent.
He used to visit the Berlin carriage stands, which were the taxi ranks of the time, and distribute leaflets to the coachmen urging that they should treat their animals with consideration.
His commercial apprenticeship had included English language lessons, and in the prisoner of war camp in which he was held he was set to work as a simultaneous translator.
Kurt Großmann had emerged from the British PoW camp as a committed pacifist and, in the face of significant opposition from populist elements, he took a lead in the international honouring of war victims.
[2] One particularly high-profile case in which Großmann and the league involved themselves was that of the illiterate Polish (or Russian: sources differ) labourer, Josef Jakubowski who was found guilty of murder, sentenced and executed in 1925.
[5] Another case in which Großmann engaged prominently involved Walter Bullerjahn who was set-up by a commercial rival and then, in 1925, found guilty of treason and sentenced to a fifteen-year jail term.
Großmann was one of the organisers of Das Freie Wort, a large "antifascist protest meeting" held at Berlin's Kroll Opera House on 19 February 1933 (which was broken up by police after two hours).
Pausing only for long enough to destroy thousands of letters, notes and manuscripts that might have been of interest to the authorities, on 28 February 1933 Kurt Grossman took a trip to Prague.
The previous evening Kurt and Elsa Großmann had been guests at a party in Berlin held by the Social Democrats to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Karl Marx.
[8] In Prague he set up the Demokratische Flüchtlingsfürsorge ('Democratic refugees welfare organisation'), which involved tapping into his skill at dealing with the authorities and a talent for finding sources of funds to provide support for many German exiles in the Czech capital.
One of his best known works, appearing in 1957, was Die unbesungenen Helden: Menschen in Deutschlands dunklen Tagen (The Unsung Heroes: People in Germany's Dark Days) which describes individual acts of resistance in opposition to National Socialist persecution.
[15] This book provided the impetus for a 1960 initiative by the Berlin Senator Joachim Lipschitz to commemorate, for the first time, the "antifascist" activities undertaken by a wide number of citizens never individually identified.
[16] In 1972 Kurt Grossmann was nominated as a candidate for receipt of the Carl von Ossietzky Medal to be awarded by the Berlin branch of the International League for Human Rights.