Elisabeth Abegg

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Berlin memorial plaque on Tempelhofer Damm 56, in Berlin-Tempelhof

Luise Wilhelmine Elisabeth Abegg (born March 3, 1882 - † August 8, 1974 in Strasbourg ) was a German educator and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

The daughter of the German lawyer, officer and writer Johann Friedrich Abegg (1847–1923) and his wife Marie Caroline Elisabeth b. Rähm grew up in Strasbourg in Alsace . The cousin of the well-known politician Wilhelm Abegg (1876–1951) took up a university education after completing the teacher’s seminar . At the time, women were just beginning to enter universities. From 1912 she studied history , classical philology and Romance studies at the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität Strasbourg - as one of the first women in Germany . 1916 doctorate it to the University of Leipzig with a thesis on the history of the Italian Middle Ages to Dr. phil. From 1924 on she was a study advisor for history at the Luisen-Oberlyzeum in Berlin-Moabit , the first urban secondary school for girls in Berlin founded in 1838.

The single woman was very committed to society and society. a. in the social working group Berlin-Ost . The organization founded by the Protestant pastor Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze campaigned for disadvantaged young people, especially young women. During the Weimar Republic, Abegg was a member of the left-liberal German Democratic Party and maintained numerous contacts with other democratically minded people.

In 1933 Elisabeth Abegg, along with other teachers and older students, fought against the National Socialist interventions at the Luisen Oberlyzeum and the discrimination against Jewish students. In 1935 she was classified as "politically unreliable" because of her refusal to take the oath of leadership and transferred to the Rückert Gymnasium in Berlin-Schöneberg . Since the mid-1930s, she has been in touch with the left-liberal Robinsohn-Strassmann group . In 1938 the Gestapo interrogated her because of the support of a resistant theologian. Denounced in class because of comments that were critical of the war and understanding between nations, the teacher was forced into retirement in 1941 . It was around this time that she joined the Quakers after a few years of service in the religious community .

Already in the early days of National Socialism from 1933 Elisabeth Abegg and her confidants supported those persecuted by the Nazis. The actual initial spark, however, was the deportation of Anna Hirschberg in July 1942. Her Jewish friend did not trust herself to live in illegality, declined the assistance offered and was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944 . Abegg's will to save at least some individuals was reinforced by listening to English radio broadcasts in the house of Richard Linde , the father of a rebellious student. Through this she learned about the crimes in the occupied territories. According to her own later memories, she and her disabled sister Julie took a total of twelve people in the three-and-a-half-room apartment in Tempelhof, where their mother also lived. Some illegally living children received schooling here.

The sisters mostly hid Jewish people. In February 1943 they persuaded the kindergarten teacher Liselotte Pereles and her foster daughter Susanne Manasse to go into hiding before the impending deportation. Elisabeth Abegg sold her own jewelry for Jizchak Schwersenz's escape to Switzerland . But also politically persecuted people like Ernst von Harnack both offered accommodation, food, clothing, money and forged papers. The helpers included u. a. the former colleague Elisabeth Schmitz , the former students Lydia Forsström and Hildegard Arnold-Knies as well as their aunt Christine Engler, Bertha Becker (a non-Jewish relative of Manasseh), Richard Linde and Quaker friends. Contacts outside of Berlin existed, for example, with the Bunke family in East Prussia and the tailor Margrit Dobbeck in Alsace. Together they assisted an estimated 80 people, most of whom survived. Although her work took place in front of the neighbors and some of them were active Nazis, Elisabeth Abegg's assistance was neither discovered nor betrayed.

After the Second World War , Abegg worked as a teacher again until regular retirement, joined the SPD and became involved in the Berlin Quaker movement. Here she was one of the German co-founders of the Mittelhof e. V. in Berlin-Zehlendorf . The institution, built in 1947 on the initiative of American Quakers, was intended to make a socio-cultural contribution to the democratization of Germany.

Honors

literature

Web links

Commons : Elisabeth Abegg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Birth certificate 607/1882 Strasbourg registry office
  2. ↑ According to other information, born May 3, 1882
  3. ↑ https://www.elisabeth-abegg-grundschule.de/%C3%BCber-uns/
  4. ↑ Abegg, Elisabeth (1918). The politics of Milan in the first decades of the 13th [thirteenth] century. Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1972, repr. D. Ed. Leipzig, Berlin: Teuber 1918.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g Elisabeth Abegg (born 1882 - died 1974). In: Silent Heroes Memorial Center . German Resistance Memorial Center , accessed on February 17, 2014 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e Johannes Tuchel (editor): Network of Help. In: Silent Heroes Memorial Center - Resistance to the persecution of the Jews 1933–1945. 2nd Edition. Silent Heroes Memorial Center in the German Resistance Memorial Center Foundation , Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-926082-36-7 (hardcover), pp. 13-14. Digital edition in: Silent Heroes Memorial Center , URL: Network of Help.
  7. ↑ Abegg, Friedrich. In: Catalog of the German National Library. German National Library , accessed on February 18, 2014 .
  8. ^ The Politics of Milan in the First Decades of the 13th Century. In: Catalog of the German National Library. German National Library , accessed on February 18, 2014 .
  9. ↑ a b c Elisabeth-Abegg-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  10. ↑ a b c d e Elisabeth Abegg. In: Sara Bender, Jakob Borut, Daniel Fraenkel, Israel Gutman (ed.): Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations. Germans and Austrians. Yad Vashem and Wallstein-Verlag , Göttingen 2005, ISBN 978-3-89244-900-3 . Elisabeth Abegg. yadvashem.org
  11. ↑ a b c d https://www.elisabeth-abegg-grundschule.de/%C3%BCber-uns/
  12. ↑ Information from the Order's Chancellery in the Office of the Federal President
personal data
SURNAME Abegg, Elisabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Strasbourg
DATE OF DEATH August 8, 1974
Place of death Berlin