Irmgard Litten

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Irmgard Litten (née Wüst; born August 30, 1879 in Halle (Saale) ; † June 30, 1953 in East Berlin ) was a German writer .

Life

She was born as the daughter of a Swabian family of scholars in Halle. Her father Albert Wüst taught there at the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg as a professor of agricultural engineering and land improvement . In Halle she also met her husband, Fritz Litten , who was six years her senior . Shortly after he had passed his exam as a lawyer, they both married in September 1900. Their three sons Hans , Heinz and Rainer were born within six years. Until 1933 she was not interested in politics, but rather in the study of historical art .

From 1928 to 1933, her eldest son, Hans Litten, made a big appearance in Berlin as a left-wing defense lawyer . In the well-known Berlin Edenpalast trial of 1931, he embarrassed Adolf Hitler as leader of the NSDAP in an examination of witnesses . Three years later he returned the favor. After the Reichstag fire on February 28, 1933, Hans Litten was arrested early in the morning and severely tortured and harassed in various concentration camps for over five years .

Hans Litten's political activities were also hotly debated in the family and their environment. In the course of the most varied of conversations, during which Irmgard Litten repeatedly stood up for her son, over the course of time she gathered experiences that later enabled her to work for his well-being. After his arrest, she waged a struggle for the release of her son from concentration camp imprisonment, which was recognized and widely recognized abroad. After Hans Litten's suicide in the Dachau concentration camp , she emigrated to Great Britain via Switzerland and Paris .

There she wrote her report on the fate of her son and the conditions in the German concentration camps. It was published for the first time in German in Paris in 1940, shortly before the defeat of France, under the title “ Hell looks at you ”. In the same year it appeared under the title " A mother fights Hitler " in England and shortly afterwards under the title " Beyond tears " in the United States of America . The following year it was published for the first time in Spanish as " Una madre contra Hitler ". In Germany her report has been published several times since 1947 under the title " A mother fights against Hitler ".

She earned her living mainly as an employee of the Ministry of Information and as a spokesperson for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). She became a member of the " PEN Club in London ". Since the summer of 1943 she was a member of the "Initiative Committee for the Unity of German Emigration" and the "Free German Movement" (FDB). At the beginning of 1944 she resigned from the FDB as a protest against the KPD's German policy . In 1943 she was involved in the publication “The way to a new Germany” (“Germany's road to democracy”). Towards the end of the war, she tried mainly to recruit prisoners of war . In 1945 her brochure “All the Germans - are they really guilty?” Was published by Victor Gollancz , where she spoke out against a thesis of collective guilt and advocated an anti-fascist rebuilding of Germany. In 1950 she returned to Germany. She lived temporarily in the so-called intelligence settlement in Berlin-Schönholz , which also includes Strasse 201 , and then lived in Berlin-Köpenick until her death .

Works (selection)

  • Hell looks at you . With an introduction by Rudolf Olden . Éditions Nouvelles Internationales, Paris 1940
  • A mother fights Hitler . With an introduction by William Ebor . Allen & Unwin, London 1940
  • Beyond tears . With an introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt . Alliance Book Corporation, New York 1940
  • Una madre contra Hitler . Ed. Minerva, Mexico 1940
  • with Victor Schiff , Wilhelm Koenen , August Weber , Arthur Liebert : Germany's Road to Democracy . Drummond, London 1943
  • A mother fights against Hitler. Greifenverlag, Rudolstadt 1947
  • A mother fights against Hitler . Deutscher Anwaltverlag, Bonn 2000. ISBN 3-8240-0435-6
  • A mother fights against Hitler . With an afterword by Heribert Prantl . Ars vivendi, Cadolzburg 2017. ISBN 978-3-86913-771-1

literature

  • Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): Biographisches Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration nach 1933 / International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945, Vol. 1: Politics, Economy, Public Life , Munich 1980, p. 449
  • Knut Bergbauer u. a .: monument figure. Biographical approach to Hans Litten 1903–1938. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2008. ISBN 383530268X
  • Benjamin Carter Hett : Crossing Hitler. The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008. ISBN 0195369882
  • Marian Malet: Beyond Dachau: Irmgard Litten in Dachau , in: No complaint about England? German and Austrian exile experiences in Great Britain 1933–1945, ed. by Charmian Brinson , Richard Dove, Anthony Grenville, Marian Malet and Jennifer Taylor. iudicium Verlag, Munich 1998 (Publications of the Institute of Germanic Studies, University of London School of Advanced Study, Vol. 72), pp. 124-136

documentary

  • Mark Hayhurst: Taken at midnight . German Hitler in court: The story of Hans Litten , 2011, 44 minutes

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information from Litten: Familiare Daten, Institute for the History of German Jews, Neheimer estate, taken from: Benjamin Carter Hett: Crossing Hitler, p. 16.
  2. ↑ Family data, Neheimer estate, Crossing Hitler, p. 16.
  3. ↑ http://www.max-lingner-stiftung.de/intellektivensiedlung
personal data
SURNAME Litten, Irmgard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wüst, Irmgard (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 30, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Halle (Saale)
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1953
Place of death East Berlin