Brigitte Gertrud Alexander

Alexander—Brigitte Gertrud Alexander, 96, on November 6, 2025, at Kendal-Crosslands Communities, a Quaker retirement community in Kennett Square, Pa. Brigitte, the youngest of four children, was born in Lübeck, Germany, on January 19, 1929, to Fritz and Karoline Solmitz.

Brigitte’s father was a Jewish newspaper editor and politically active social democrat serving on Lübeck’s legislative assembly. He wrote many editorials criticizing the Nazi regime and was the principal speaker at an anti-Nazi rally of 10,000 people in February 1933. Shortly thereafter, Fritz was arrested and imprisoned. In May 1933, Fritz was transferred as a political prisoner to Fuhlsbüttel prison near Hamburg, Germany, where he was tortured to death. He died in September 1933, after documenting his torture on cigarette papers that he hid inside a gold pocket watch. The pocket watch and the story of Fritz’s life and death are now part of a permanent museum exhibit at Fuhlsbüttel.

Brigitte was four years old when her father died. After his death, Brigitte lived quietly in Berlin with her mother, who sheltered Brigitte from the turmoil of the times. She would not be told of the pocket watch or how her father had died until she was almost 30. Brigitte had many fond memories of her father.

Knowing that Fritz had respected Quakers, Karoline and Brigitte began attending Quaker meeting in Berlin. American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) was instrumental in helping Karoline and Brigitte immigrate to the United States when Brigitte was nine. AFSC provided Karoline with a job running a boarding house for refugees in Bryn Mawr, Pa. Brigitte was able to attend summer camps and Quaker schools on scholarships, first Haverford Friends School and then Friends’ Central.

In 1951, Brigitte graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio with a bachelor’s degree in history. After a short-lived marriage, she went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study city planning, earning a master’s degree in 1958. She went to work for the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

In 1962, Brigitte married George Alexander, who was completing his residency in psychiatry at Harvard. In 1965, shortly after the birth of their first child, Rebecca, they moved to Pittsburgh, Pa. The next 15 years of Brigitte’s life were primarily devoted to raising their three children (Rebecca, John, and Caleb). She served a stint as clerk of Pittsburgh (Pa.) Meeting, which she attended regularly for almost 40 years and remained a member until her death.

Brigette was president of the board of the Pittsburgh Child Guidance Center, making grants for children’s mental health programs in the Pittsburgh area. In 1982, she became its executive director. Brigitte held that role for 15 years until her retirement in 1997.

George and Brigitte moved to Crosslands in 2003. Brigitte was active in Crosslands Meeting, and in Crossland’s Residents Association, culminating in her being president in 2009.

Brigitte authored “Living Near the End of Life: Queries for the Elderly,” which was published in the October 2009 issue of Friends Journal. She also gave presentations on Quakerism during the Nazi regime.

Brigitte traveled back to her childhood home in Germany to remember her father 17 times between 2000 and 2019, often taking members of her extended family so that the family history would not be forgotten.

Brigitte was predeceased by her husband, George Alexander, who died at Crosslands in 2014.

She is survived by three children, Rebecca, John, and Caleb, and their spouses; seven grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and 15 nieces and nephews.