The Guardianship Act

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The Guardianship Act is a non-fiction book by Irene Eckler published in 1996 about the persecution of Jews during the National Socialist era . Irene Eckler uses contemporary documents to trace the history of her own family.

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The "Aryan" August Landmesser , born in 1910, got engaged in 1935 to the "Jewess" Irma Eckler, born in 1913. The invitation to marry was no longer accepted in August 1935. The relationship resulted in two children named Ingrid and Irene. Even during the second pregnancy August surveyor was in July 1937 because of racial disgrace indicted and was to provisional detention in the prison detained Fuhlsbüttel (Hamburg). At the end of the trial, however, August was acquitted. Despite the prohibition to establish contact with Irma Eckler, August met his fiancée again and appeared with her in public. Landmesser was then arrested again and sentenced to two and a half years in prison in the subsequent trial.

Irma Eckler was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938 and taken to the Fuhlsbüttel prison . From there she was transferred to the women 's concentration camp in Lichtenburg and later to the women's concentration camp in Ravensbrück . The children Ingrid and Irene were separated from the Guardianship Court . While Ingrid was allowed to live with her grandmother, Irene first went to an orphanage and later to foster parents. A few letters from her mother Irma came from the concentration camp until January 1942. In April, Irma Eckler's death certificate was issued.

The father August Landmesser was released from prison in 1941 and drafted three years later. There the trace of the father is lost. Long after the end of the war, in 1951, he was pronounced dead by the local court. In the summer of 1951, the marriage of August Landmesser and Irma Eckler was recognized by the Hamburg Senate . In the autumn of the same year Ingrid and Irene receive their father's surname.

The non-fiction book is accompanied by numerous documents from the period, from private letters from the mother to documents from government institutions.

August surveyor will also be featured on a famous photograph, which was taken on 13 June 1936: It shows a man in the midst of a large amount of workers of the Hamburg shipyard Blohm and Voss that the launch of the naval training ship Horst Wessel all their arms in the Hitler salute to lift. Landmesser is the only one who refuses to say hello and keeps his arms crossed over his chest. It is not certain whether the picture actually shows land surveyors, as his daughter Irene Eckler believes.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The photo on the website of the research and work center "Education to / about Auschwitz" , accessed on October 30, 2010
  2. ↑ Simone Erpel, moral courage. Key picture of an unfinished »Volksgemeinschaft« , in: Gerhard Paul (Ed.), Das Jahrhundert der Bilder, Vol. 1: 1900–1949 , special edition for the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2009, pp. 490–497, ISBN 978-3 -89331-949-7

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