Clara Harnack

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Clara Harnack (born March 22, 1877 in Fulda ; † January 14, 1962 in Neckargemünd ) was a German painter, teacher and the mother of the resistance fighters Arvid and Falk Harnack .

Life and family

Clara Emilie Harnack, née Reichau, came from a family of academics in Pomerania . Her two brothers Werner and Rudolf Reichau were lawyers in the Weimar Republic and during the time of National Socialism, high officials in the Reich Ministry of Justice, and her brother-in-law Adolf von Harnack was a theologian .

1895 to 1933

The versatile artist , who later studied at the universities of Berlin , Florence , Jena , Darmstadt and the Stuttgart Art Academy and spoke fluent English, French and Italian, rebelled against the conservative family at an early age. She decided to pursue a career as a painter and went to Florence to study as a governess and German teacher . In 1897, in a pub near Villa Borghese in Rome , she met Otto Harnack , a literature professor who was 20 years her senior and whom she married on August 20, 1898 in Berlin. The couple lived in Berlin until Otto Harnack received a professorship for literary history and aesthetics in Darmstadt . Clara Harnack attended college there, and in 1901 the son Arvid and on March 27, 1904 the daughter Ingeborg ("Inge") Harnack were born.

Otto Harnack was with his brother Adolf from 1904 a member of the academy of non-profit science in Erfurt . Between 1904 and 1905 Clara Harnack attended the drawing school in the Volkshaus Jena and, with Helene Czapski, was one of Erich Kuithan's students , where she created portraits and wall paintings.

In 1905 she moved with her husband to Stuttgart because of his new professorship , from where the family frequently traveled to the Lake Constance region and the Black Forest around 1911 . The daughter Angela ("Ansa", approx. 1907–1990) and in 1913 the youngest child, the son Falk , were born in Stuttgart . Clara Harnack studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts under Hölzel and at the arts and crafts school under Pankok . In 1913 she took part in the Great Art Exhibition in Stuttgart . Arvid attended a grammar school in Stuttgart from 1911 to 1914. The family lived in a culture saturated humanistic -liberalen atmosphere until Otto Harnack, the "the German people often jokingly even as his family called" was the German classical loud Clara's statement and a worshiper, 1914 in March suicide committed - probably because of nervous disease Depression and a crisis of meaning in the face of Wilhelmine militarism (in contrast to his brother Adolf von Harnack, who co-signed the 93 manifesto ). Clara Harnack did not remarry afterwards.

Their eldest son Arvid has now been brought up by her brother Adolf von Harnack in Berlin, of him after Notabitur 1919 and a member of a volunteer corps while studying law and US supported -Stay financially. In the meantime, Clara Harnack returned to Jena with the younger children, where from 1915 she worked as an art teacher in her apartment on Westendstrasse as well as in a private school and as a painter. She was active in the Jenaer Kunstverein and known the art-loving families of Siegfried Czapski , Arnold Sommerfeld and Felix Auerbach . With the latter's wife, Anna Auerbach (1861–1933; née Silbergleit), she campaigned for feminist interests in the local branch of the German Association for Women's Suffrage , founded in 1912, and chaired it in 1915 and 1919. In 1922 she also became the mother-in-law of the Auerbach's nephew, namely the Bauhaus student and artist Johannes Ilmari Auerbach , who married her daughter Ingeborg in Jena in 1922 and moved with her to the Kranichstein hunting lodge near Darmstadt (1925 birth of their son Wulf) and to Paris ( 1926 birth of their son Claus, † 1944). In 1928 Arvid Harnack married the American literary scholar and translator Mildred Harnack .

After the divorce from Johannes Auerbach, the daughter Ingeborg married the violinist Gustav Havemann in 1931 , whom she probably acquired through her position at that time with Reinhard Limbach in the Reich Association of Mixed Choirs in Germany and through the husband of her ex-sister-in-law Cornelia Schröder-Auerbach, the composer Hanning Schröder ( former pupil of Havemann). The Havemanns now lived in Berlin with Ingeborg's sons Wulf and Claus Auerbach (Auerbach's sons were later to deny their Jewish descent and, after attending Nazi schools, take positions in the air force and the navy ). Gustav Havemann brought his son Wolfgang Havemann, born in 1914 (later in the OKM and resistance fighter "Italian" at the Rote Kapelle ), into the marriage, who as a law trainee soon followed Clara Harnack's eldest son Arvid Harnack.

In the 1930s, Clara Harnack lived in uncertain circumstances with her daughter, the violin teacher Angela, in a garden house in Jena, where she worked as a painter and private teacher for art and French. There she was frequently visited around 1932 by her youngest son Falk and his later fiancé Lilo Ramdohr , who attended school in Weimar (Lilo Ramdohr was at the boarding school of the Fritz Weiß women's high school, Falk attended the “Abitur-Aufbauschule” under class teacher Charly Weiß, a Brother of the boarding school owner). Lilo Ramdohr was included in the family, admired the paintings by Clara ( Muhmi ) Harnack and was treated by her like a biological daughter.

time of the nationalsocialism

Clara Harnack was a member of the International Women's League for Peace , but in order to continue her work as an artist, she had to join the Reich Chamber of Culture . From 1938 onwards she had increasing problems with the Gestapo in Jena and after being denounced (by parents whose children she had taught old folk songs instead of Nazi songs), she was held in Gestapo detention for a few weeks. After another denunciation by a resident of the house, she was imprisoned in the Jenaer Steiger official prison. Thanks to the director of the Jena mental hospital, Hans Berger, and a lawyer, Clara Harnack was able to avoid being transferred to a concentration camp , but had to leave Thuringia. From September 1940 to January 1941 she was housed with friends of the Harnack family in Bavaria, namely with the art theorist Egon Kornmann at the Gustaf Britsch Institute in Starnberg and with Johannes Müller at Elmau Castle . From May 1941, Clara Harnack's daughter Angela moved to Neckargemünd , where Clara Harnack herself also lived in the future. In the winter of 1941/1942 she stayed again with Egon Kornmann in Starnberg. Meetings between Clara, Arvid, Mildred, Falk Harnack and Lilo Ramdohr took place at these locations as well as on the outward and return journey in Munich.

Through these meetings and the constant correspondence with Lilo Ramdohr, who had meanwhile been inaugurated by Alexander Schmorell from the Schwabing art school by Hein König about the development of the White Rose resistance group in Munich , Clara Harnack probably had knowledge of the existence of the resistance group led by her son Arvid The Red Orchestra and the White Rose , when Arvid and Mildred were arrested by the SS in Preil on September 7, 1942 . Together with her nephew Axel von Harnack and her daughter Ingeborg Havemann-Harnack, she tried to organize the defense and to submit requests for clemency to the Reich Court Martial with reference to her brothers who were high-ranking civil servants in the Nazi judiciary, which was ultimately unsuccessful.

After the execution of her son Arvid on December 22, 1942 and her daughter-in-law Mildred on February 15, 1943, which was accelerated by an order from the Fuehrer's headquarters (legally flawed even then, since the trial ended with imprisonment on direct orders from the Fuehrer without an appeal instance a second time by War Judge Roeder was rolled up as a public prosecutor) Clara Harnack came even more into the sights of the Karlsruhe Gestapo.

On March 6, 1943, her younger son Falk was arrested by his company commander in Chemnitz because of his contact to Alexander Schmorell and Hans Scholl through Lilo Ramdohr . Despite their recent conflict with the Gestapo, succeeded Clara Harnack before the second process of the White Rose in March / April 1943 in person in Munich Gestapo headquarters in Briennerstraße 50 the Gestapo Commissioner Gustav Beer the important role Falk Harnack as propaganda creator for Wehrmacht , the old German Harnack family tree and the merits of the family, including their two nephews, Oberleutnant Helmut von Harnack (Heer, 10./Pz.Rgt. 21; awarded January 17, 1942) and lieutenant, who were decorated with the Knight's Cross Heinrich Hunger ( Luftwaffe , Stabsstaffel / KG 2; awarded July 5, 1941). She also handed the Gestapo a prepared letter of exoneration which stated:

“... a tragic fate tore my son Falk out of the midst of his fruitful task, the cultural well-being of our soldiers. He and I do not give up hope that he will be allowed to resume his beloved and valuable work. Hail Hitler!"

In order to avoid further persecution after Falk's flight to the Greek partisans of ELAS in December 1943 , she had to leave Neckargemünd and went into hiding in Unteruhldingen until the end of the war .

Post-war years

Around 1948 she was often on vacation with Egon Kornmann in Starnberg and with Lilo Ramdohr in Niederpöcking . She lived temporarily in the GDR , at times with her daughter Ingeborg in Schwerin or her son Falk in Berlin, and in 1950 she created paintings in the Harz Mountains . After Falk's differences with the SED leadership in 1952, however, it also went to the West. She became a member of the women's peace movement , spoke at the Geneva Four Power Conference in 1959 and wrote papers against the suppression of the Nazi era in the FRG . She moved back to Neckargemünd with her unmarried daughter Angela, again to a simple garden house on Wiesenbacher Strasse, where she lived around 1958 and stayed there until her death in January 1962. Her grave can also be found in Neckargemünd.

There, the leading head office clearing the Stasi even after her death unsuccessful investigations because of their connection to the Red Orchestra through to the widespread in the former BRD negative image of the resistance organization to refute as Soviet spy ring.

Clara Harnack's eldest daughter, Ingeborg Havemann-Harnack, who lived temporarily in England and worked as a literary translator in the GDR (Schwerin) in the 1950s and 1960s (including Maupassant ), died on August 1, 1974 in Ziegelhausen , leaving her behind Son Wulf Auerbach, who became a professor in England. Clara's daughter Angela Harnack worked as a violin teacher and died childless in 2001 in Heidelberg. Her son Falk Harnack died childless on September 3, 1991 after a long illness in Berlin.

Works and exhibitions (selection)

  • Great Art Exhibition Stuttgart (1913)
  • Landhaus An der Riese 9 (House of the nanny Trude Klawe in Wöllnitz, 1920)
  • Falk Harnack as a student (1933)
  • Stolberg am Harz (1950), oil painting
  • 3rd German Art Exhibition Dresden, Albertinum (March – May 1953)
  • Preface by Clara Harnack in: Nico Rost: I was back in Dachau . Edited by d. Camp community Dachau, Dt. Section d. Boarding school Dachau Committee (Frankfurt a. Main, 1956)
  • Clara Harnack: To the living. Pictures of life and last letters of German resistance fighters , (Bremen 1960)
  • Design and Reality. Women in Jena 1900 to 1933 . Exhibition of the Association for Jena City and University History e. V. in the Thuringian state parliament in Erfurt (April 2003)

literature

  • Joachim Lilla : The Reichsrat: Representation of the German states in the legislation and administration of the Reich 1919-1934. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 2006, ISBN 3-7700-5279-X .
  • Gert K. Nagel : Swabian artist lexicon . Munich 1986, ISBN 3-921811-36-8 , p. 53.
  • Edith Neumann: Artists in Württemberg: on the history of the Württemberg Association of Women Painters and the Federation of Women Artists of Württemberg . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-608-94192-4
  • Friedrich Bolay: Johannes Ilmari Auerbach, Joannès Ilmari, John I. Allenby 1899–1950. An autobiography in letters . A & V Woywod, Bad Soden am Taunus 2004, ISBN 3-923447-08-6
  • Cornelia Schröder-Auerbach: A youth in Jena . In: John, Wahl (ed.): Between convention and avant-garde . Weimar 1995
  • Maike Bruhns: Art in the Crisis , 2nd Edition. Dölling and Galitz Verlag , Munich / Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-933374-95-2 , pages 42-45
  • Meike Werner: Modernism in the Province: Cultural Experiments in the Fin de Siècle Jena . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-89244-594-X
  • Lisa Kerstin Kunert: “Between school yard and Parnassus - artists in Jena” In: Gisela Horn (Ed.): Design and Reality. Women in Jena 1900 to 1933 . Building blocks for Jena city history, Vol. 5, pp. 144–150. Hain Verlag Rudolstadt 2001, ISBN 3-89807-022-0
  • Lilo Fürst-Ramdohr : Friendships in the White Rose . Verlag Geschichtswerkstatt Neuhausen , Munich 1995, ISBN 3-931231-00-3
  • Joachim Ret, Egon Sartorius, Helmut Donner, Hans Heininger: Writers of the German Democratic Republic , page 67, Central Institute for Libraries (ed.), VEB Verlag für Buch- und Bibliothekwesen, 1961
  • Walter Kaupert (Ed.): International art address book: International directory of arts. Annuaire international des beaux-arts. Annuario internazionale delle belle arti , Kaupterverlag, 1958
  • Hans Coppi , Jürgen Danyel, Johannes Tuchel : The Red Chapel in the Resistance to National Socialism . Edition Hentrich, 1994, ISBN 3-89468-110-1 , page 117
  • Gert Rosiejka: The Red Chapel. "Treason" as an anti-fascist resistance . Hamburg 1986
  • Stefan Roloff , Mario Vigl: The Red Orchestra: the resistance group in the Third Reich and the history of Helmut Roloff . Ullstein, 2002
  • Shareen Blair Brysac: Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra . Oxford University Press, USA 2002, ISBN 978-0-19-515240-1 , pp. 74 and 146
  • Ruth Hanna Sachs, D. Heap: The White Rose Travel Guide , Exclamation! Publishers, 2008, ISBN 0-9822984-4-7 , page 36
  • Ruth Hanna Sachs: White Rose History, Volume I (Academic Version) . ISBN 0-9710541-9-3 , chapter 4, p. 4 ff.
  • Ruth Hanna Sachs: White Rose History, Volume II (Academic Version) . ISBN 0-9767183-0-8 , chapter 56, pp. 8, 16 ff.
  • Hans-Joachim Fieber, Klaus Keim, Lothar Berthold, Michele Barricelli: Resistance in Berlin against the Nazi regime 1933 to 1945: a biographical encyclopedia . (Volume 10). Trafo-Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89626-350-1
  • Gisela Horn (Ed.): Design and Reality. Women in Jena 1900 to 1933. (Building blocks for Jena city history, Vol. 5) Hain Verlag Rudolstadt, 2001, ISBN 3-89807-022-0
  • Johannes Tuchel : The forgotten resistance. On real history and perception of the struggle against the Nazi dictatorship . Wallstein Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-89244-943-0 , p. 241

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ books.google.de
  2. ↑ books.google.de
  3. ↑ books.google.de
  4. ↑ page 67
  5. ↑ Gisela Horn, Birgitt Hellmann: Design and Reality: Women in Jena 1900 to 1933 . In: Building blocks for the Jena city history . tape 5 . Hain, 2001, ISBN 978-3-89807-022-5 , pp. 145 ( Google Books ).
  6. ↑ archive.org
  7. ↑ a b books.google.de
  8. ↑ books.google.de
  9. ^ Ostthüringer Zeitung January 14, 2012
  10. ↑ books.google.de
  11. ↑ lrz-muenchen.de ( Memento of the original from January 19, 2001 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lrz-muenchen.de
  12. ↑ on the marriage of Ingeborg Harnack
  13. ↑ books.google.de
  14. ↑ Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft, Ed. 33, Nos. 1-6, page 330; Rütten & Loening, 1985
  15. ↑ books.google.de
  16. ↑ books.google.de
  17. ↑ books.google.de
  18. ↑ buchhandel.de ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / buchhandel.de
  19. ↑ Lilo Fürst-Ramdohr: Friendships in the White Rose . P. 31.
  20. ^ Ostthüringer Zeitung January 14, 2012
  21. ^ Ruth H. Sachs, White Rose History, Volume I.
  22. ↑ heimatverein-erkner.de
  23. ↑ archives.library.wisc.edu ( Memento of the original from June 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 986 kB)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / archives.library.wisc.edu
  24. ^ Ruth H. Sachs, White Rose History, Vol. II, Chapter 57, page 3
  25. ↑ books.google.de
  26. ↑ spd-thl.de ( Memento of the original from October 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.spd-thl.de
  27. ↑ books.google.de
  28. ↑ books.google.de
  29. ↑ Horn: Design and Reality, 2001, p. 148
  30. ↑ deutschefotothek.de Image at deutschefotothek.de
  31. ↑ d-nb.info
  32. ↑ stiftung-sozialgeschichte.de
personal data
SURNAME Harnack, Clara
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Harnack-Reichau, Clara Emilie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Fulda
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 1962
Place of death Neckargemünd