Änne Meier

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Änne Meier

Änne Meier (born January 3, 1896 in Baltersweiler ; † July 20, 1989 there ) was a Catholic elementary school teacher , welfare worker and a concentration camp prisoner .

Life

Änne Meier was born the fifth of seven children. Her father, Johann Meier, was a farmer and baker , her mother, Katharina geb. Small, also came from a farm. The family members experienced their moral and moral character through the Catholic faith , to which Änne Meier was also very close. Family tradition was a pronounced commitment in the area of ​​local politics. For example, Änne's father was temporarily mayor of Baltersweiler. Her grandfather was also mayor in the community and a member of the St. Wendel district council , and was also first alderman. Ännes great-grandfather was also mayor and elected alderman in Baltersweiler.

Training as a primary school teacher

As a girl, Änne Meier went through a very good school education for the time. She must have been the first in the village to successfully go through the secondary girls' school in St. Wendel . She then attended the State Teachers' Seminar in Saarburg from 1914 to 1917 during the First World War .

From 1917 to 1919 Änne Meier got her first job as a temporary teacher in Brücken (near Birkenfeld) . After the war ended, many teachers came back from the field and claimed their original positions in their schools. As a result, the number of teachers became too large, and Änne Meier had to retire from school as a young teacher.

Training and work as a carer

The state care for the army of the wounded returning home from the war and those in need of help led to the reinstallation of state welfare offices in the larger municipalities and districts. Änne Meier became interested in social aid and began studying social education , economics and hygiene at the Catholic Social Women's School in Heidelberg in 1919 . After successfully completing her studies, she worked in the Homburg district welfare office from 1921 and at the St. Ingbert office from 1925 .

During her time in Heidelberg, Änne Meier came into contact with Catholic youth organizations. She gained access to Catholic social teaching through closer contact with the Catholic priest Romano Guardini , the journalist Walter Dirks and other members of the Catholic liturgical renewal movement (time of National Socialism) . During so-called “work weeks” at Rothenfels Castle on the Main, comparable to today's closed conferences, she was able to further train her critical mind. In the time of the emerging National Socialist thought patterns, Änne Meier was involved in the Association of Catholic Scouts and there led the groups in the "Gau" Pfalz, Saarpfalz and Republic of Baden . Furthermore, she reproduced pastoral letters and sermons of the Münster bishop and Nazi opponent Clemens August Cardinal Graf von Galen (" Galen letters"), which was associated with considerable personal risk in times of the Nazi dictatorship .

Time of the Nazi dictatorship

Around 1930, Änne Meier devoted himself to the complex of diseases tuberculosis , an incurable disease at the time, whose epidemic potential was not yet medically controllable. She created hereditary family trees that could possibly have proven hereditary diseases. In accordance with the Nazi ideology , which branded physically and mentally damaged people as “unworthy life” and wanted to erase them, Änne Meier's material was interesting for the Nazi eugenicists . Despite significant restrictions from her superiors, she refused to publish her material.

The Gestapo arrested Änne Meier on January 21, 1942; she received ten weeks of solitary confinement in the Lerchesflur prison ( Saarbrücken ) , which the Gestapo had declared as “ protective custody ”. In their justification it said: "... because of fanatical commitment to the Catholic action, by duplicating and distributing inflammatory letters and thus undertaking to undermine the cohesion between the front and home." On April 11, 1942, Änne Meier was a political prisoner in the women's concentration camp Ravensbrück relocated and received prisoner number 10 397. After the liberation of the concentration camp on April 28, 1945, Änne Meier managed to get to her home town of Baltersweiler until mid-July 1945.

post war period

From October 1945 Meier worked again in her original profession as a “welfare worker” (today a social worker ) in the district office of the St. Wendel district . The experiences during their stay in the concentration camp led to post-traumatic stress disorder for most of the inmates , probably also for Änne Meier. So together with former inmates she founded the "Ravensbrück Camp Community", which tried to process the events and provide mutual support. She was also involved in the Saarland regional association of the Association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime (VVN) and as a founding member of the Adolf Bender Center and its supporting association, the Association for the Promotion of Democratic Traditions . She also worked in the Christian-Catholic area as a co-founder of the Pax-Christi movement of the Trier diocese .

In 1989 Änne Meier died at the age of 93. She found her final resting place in the cemetery in Baltersweiler.

Honors

Afterlife

Änne-Meier-Platz in Baltersweiler
  • In her home town of Baltersweiler, a school was named after her, the “Änne Meier School for Mentally Handicapped Children and Young People”.
  • The Adolf Bender Center has dedicated its own traveling exhibition to Änne Meier, which can be booked at the center.
  • In May 2014, a square in the center of her home village of Baltersweiler was named after Änne Meier. The square belongs to the series “Places against forgetting”; the places are supposed to remind of the history of Jewish citizens in the St. Wendeler Land.

literature

  • Änne Meier - an example of resistance and persecution during the Nazi era . Booklet accompanying the exhibition. Ed .: Adolf-Bender-Zentrum e. V. catalog ed .: Dieter Wirth u. a. St. Ingbert: Dengmerter Heimatverlag 1995, 57 p., Ill.
  • Klaus-Michael Mallmann , Gerhard Paul : The splintered no. Saarlanders against Hitler . Ed .: Hans-Walter Herrmann (=  resistance and refusal in Saarland 1935–1945 . Volume 1 ). Dietz , Bonn 1989, ISBN 3-8012-5010-5 , p. 176-181 .
  • Peter Lempert: Änne Meier was always there for the weak . In: Saarbrücker Zeitung, special page from 18./19. January 2014, p. E8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Änne Meier's life data on the homepage of the Änne-Meier-School for mentally disabled children and young people ( memento from December 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Office of the Federal President
  3. ↑ Daniel Ames: A Place to Remember the Resistance. In: Saarbrücker Zeitung (St. Wendel edition) of May 15, 2014, p. C3
personal data
SURNAME Meier, Änne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German elementary school teacher, welfare worker and a concentration camp prisoner
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Baltersweiler
DATE OF DEATH July 20, 1989
Place of death Baltersweiler