Anne Spoerry

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Anne Marie Spoerry (born May 13, 1918 in Cannes , † February 2, 1999 in Nairobi ) was a Kenyan doctor and pilot of French descent. She was a Swiss citizen , entitled to live in Männedorf and Fischenthal . From 1950 until a few weeks before her death, she worked as an employee of various aid organizations as a "flying doctor" in northern Kenya, known by the nickname Mama Daktari .

As the daughter of an Alsatian industrialist and a Swiss woman, she visited a. a. A school in England for two years and from 1938 studied medicine in Paris . After the outbreak of war , she joined the Resistance together with her brother François , got into Gestapo custody in 1943 and was imprisoned in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp from 1944 , from where she was in April 1945 as part of the white rescue operation initiated by Folke Bernadotte Busses was released. After the end of the war, she was charged both in Switzerland and France and accused of complicity in crimes related to Kapo Carmen Mory , who was sentenced to death in 1947 as a multiple murderer . According to witness statements in the Ravensbrück trials , there was an intimate relationship between Spoerry and Mory. The trials against Spoerry were discontinued due to lack of evidence or because of contradicting statements. She did not accept a summons to witness the first Ravensbrück trial in Hamburg . The accusation that she was involved in the crimes of Carmen Mory, who was later convicted as a prisoner in the Ravensbrück concentration camp , remained unproven and unresolved.

She finished her medical studies in Basel in 1947 and followed a one-year training in tropical medicine there. She traveled to Aden in 1948 and worked there temporarily in a hospital and in the Ministry of Health. After further trips to Ethiopia and Kenya , she decided in 1950 to stay in Kenya and work as a “bush doctor” in the north of the country. According to her own statements, she was stimulated to emigrate to Africa by reading texts by the French writer Henri de Monfreid . In 1956 she completed her training as a pilot and from the early 1960s flew from Nairobi's Wilson Airport , initially as a freelancer, then as head of the Mobile Medical Unit for the aid organization AMREF . Their areas of application were both northern Kenya and especially the Maasailand and the island of Lamu . She also bought and ran a farm north of Lake Naivasha . She basically flew her four-seater Piper Cherokee herself; at the age of 77, she lost her pilot's license , but was given it back a few weeks before her death, although without having flown again. Some of her consultation hours took place immediately after landing on the airfield in the shadow of the wings of her aircraft. Based on her records, it was estimated that she treated nearly 100,000 patients.

Anne Spoerry died of a stroke (other sources state a heart attack ) and is buried in Lamu.

Works

  • Anne Spoerry: On m'appelle Mama Daktari. Lattès, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-7096-0947-9 (German: They call me Mama Daktari. As a flying doctor in Kenya. Translated from the French by Angelika Steiner. Quell, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-7918-1976-3 (autobiography )).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christian Baertschi: Spoerry, Anne. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . April 30, 2010 , accessed February 25, 2019 .
  2. ↑ https://www.lexpress.fr/informations/on-m-appelle-mama-daktari_599138.html , accessed on July 13, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Spoerry, Anne
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Spoerry, Anne Marie; Mama Daktari (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Kenyan-French doctor and pilot
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Cannes
DATE OF DEATH February 2, 1999
Place of death Nairobi