Elisabeth Schmitt

The title of this article is ambiguous. For other people with a similar name, see Elisabeth Schmidt .

Elisabeth Schmitt , née Elisabeth Dorothea Hamburger (born October 28, 1891 in Frankfurt am Main , † 1974 in Chicago ) was a German-American lawyer.

On October 19, 1916, she was one of the first women in Germany to be awarded a Dr. jur. PhD. Since, as a woman, she did not succeed in finding a permanent position in line with her education in the following years, she began to give private lessons in 1924 - now married to Julius Anton Schmitt. The experience she gained and her extensive knowledge of foreign languages ​​enabled her to work at the Quaker School in Eerde from 1935, first as a housemother and later as a teacher of Latin, Greek, English and French. From 1941 she was responsible for looking after the school's Jewish children before she was able to travel to the USA in 1946.

Origin and education

Born Elisabeth Dorothea Hamburger, she came from a wealthy Jewish family. Her father, Adolf Hamburger, who was born in 1841 and grew up in Hanau , emigrated to Australia in the late 1850s. As a result of the Australian gold rush, he founded an import-export business in Sydney , which developed very well and formed the basis of his fortune. In 1889 he transferred the business to one of his brothers and returned to Germany. He married the teacher Jenny Behr and bought two houses in the posh Bockenheimer Landstrasse ("Bockenheimer Parkway") in Frankfurt. He “spent his remaining years with the fruits of his adventurous life. With the exception of an occasional visit to the stock market to keep an eye on his investments and managing his prime urban real estate, he was done with the turmoil. ”In 1891, at fifty, he became a father for the first time. Elisabeth was born.

The family led the lives of assimilated Jews with only loose connections to Judaism. On the other hand, the traditional secular and religious festivals of the surrounding civil society were cultivated, and the ties to the German Empire went so far that Adolf Hamburger returned his British passport, which he still had from his time in Australia, when the First World War broke out to show his undivided loyalty to the emperor and empire.

The historian Hans A. Schmitt describes his grandfather, despite his German-national convictions, as a person with a liberal and cosmopolitan outlook, who attached great importance to his two children, Elisabeth and her younger brother Richard, Greek and Roman history as well as the history of the To convey renaissance . This also meant that both had to learn English, French and Italian. Much English was spoken at home and Elisabeth had several opportunities to travel to England. She got to know members of the Labor Party , with whom she was in contact until the 1930s.

The domestic idyll was clouded when Elisabeth, who attended the Elisabethenschule in Frankfurt , a higher school for girls , expressed her wish to study law. While the father was open to this wish despite the difficulties for women to be admitted to university at the time, this wish to study met with the determined resistance of the mother, who envisioned a more traditional female profession for her daughter. So it came about that Elisabeth first enrolled in the municipal teachers' seminar. Its director, however, certified Elisabeth's outstanding abilities for an academic career, so that the maternal resistance to the daughter's career aspirations could be softened and Elisabeth began her law studies first in Heidelberg and then in Berlin.

In 1916 Elisabeth Hamburger followed her academic teacher and doctoral supervisor Gerhard Anschütz from Berlin to Heidelberg. Here she received her doctorate on October 19, 1916 - just under two weeks before her 25th birthday. In his memoirs, von Anschütz recognized her as one of the three best of his students. (Lucky Victim, p. 12)

Weimar times and early Nazi years

The career prospects for a doctorate in law were anything but brilliant in the middle of the First World War and at the beginning of the 1920s, and so it came about that Elisabeth Hamburger received only a few and consistently limited job offers during these years. It was not until 1924 that she found a way to build up a long-term professional existence, but that led away from her actual training. She became a private tutor, a tutor, first for law students preparing for their exams, and then for students who were unable to cope with the demands of secondary education and whom she helped to pass the final exam. "Thanks to my mother's efforts, these problem children graduated, and when word of their success got around, their community grew and took up most of their time." At that time, Elisabeth was already married to Julius Anton Schmitt and had two children.

Julius Schmitt, a husband from a humble background

In contrast to the wealthy Hamburger family, Julius Schmitt's ancestors come from significantly poorer backgrounds. His father, Johann Matthäus Schmitt, who was born in 1844 and died early in 1887, was a coachman from Franconia. The mother, Elise Schneider, born in 1843 and an illegitimate child, worked as a housemaid in Nuremberg. In 1882, Elise was 39 years old, she married, but became a widow four years later. The short marriage resulted in two sons - one of them Julius Schmitt, born on December 9, 1883 in Nuremberg.

Julius Schmitt's uncle was a Catholic priest who, after his brother's death, wanted to ensure that the boy, who was originally baptized as a Protestant, converted to Catholicism against his mother's wishes. The mother was able to prevent this, but this led to a long-term dispute about the boy's right faith, which was actually decided by the fact that he lived with the mother and that the uncle could only exert limited influence.

Elise Schmitt managed to send her son to a secondary school in Nuremberg , which would have enabled him to study for a higher teaching post later. In 1897 Julius Schmitt had to stop attending school, although it remained unclear whether this was due to his lack of school success or because his mother could no longer pay the school fees. After several attempts, it was finally possible to find an apprenticeship position for the boy at a Nuremberg company, for which the priest-uncle took over to pay the tuition fee. "Father Georg paid the fee in three annual installments, although there was obviously no hope that this generosity would convert the beneficiary to the Roman Catholic faith." Hans A. Schmitt is certain that the generosity of the Uncle saved his father from having to lead a marginal existence similar to that of his poorly educated parents.

Julius Schmitt spent 14 years building and repairing electrical systems, especially telephone systems. But he gradually developed an interest in further education and enrolled in evening courses supported by the “National Association for Liberal Germany”. In this way he came into contact with Wilhelm Ohr, the general secretary of the association, who offered Schmitt in 1911 to support him full-time in his campaign for a seat in the Reichstag. Although Ohr lost the election to the Reichstag, he then helped Julius Schmitt to get a job as secretary of the “Protestant Workers Association” in Frankfurt. From there, his further professional career led him to the services of the city of Frankfurt: He became head of the youth department of the municipal employment office. He held this position until August 1919, but before that he had also served as a soldier for three and a half years.

After his return from the war, Julius Schmitt came closer and closer to the Social Democratic Party of Germany . In this way, in the spring of 1919, he met Elisabeth Hamburger at a meeting in the house of a mutual friend. Hans A. Schmitt draws an ironic conclusion from this: “I owe my existence to two revolutions: the French, which liberated my Jewish ancestors from their ghetto, and the German, which, which seldom happened, offered the opportunity for citizens and workers to meet could mix as same. Only in this situation was it possible for the sullen driver's widow and the tolerant, hedonistic Frankfurt reindeer to take their places among my ancestors. "

A civil marriage during the Weimar period

The upper-class Hamburger family seems to have been very sympathetic to their future son-in-law, who came from poor backgrounds. Even more: Elisabeth's father urged Julius Schmitt to give up his municipal job and start studying. Father Hamburger wanted to cover the costs.

Julius Schmitt did not have a formal university entrance qualification. He owed the fact that he was still able to study to the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the still young Frankfurt University . The latter decided to allow Schmitt to study because of his professional experience despite the lack of a high school diploma and was also based on a recommendation from the city of Frankfurt. Schmitt, now 36 years old, was able to enroll for the first time in September 1919 for the winter semester of 1919/1920. Two months later he married Elisabeth Hamburger.

The Hamburger family, the father died shortly before his daughter's wedding, and as a result the young Schmitt family lost their financial security due to the inflation, so that Julius Schmitt was forced to get a job before his dissertation was finally completed to search. He became a senior employee of the Hoechst paintworks and “ My father did what society expected of a middle-class paterfamilias. He assumed the chief responsibility for the support of his growing family. "(German:" My father did what society expected from a middle-class father. He took over the main responsibility for supporting his growing family. ") Elisabeth Schmitt, meanwhile, looked after the son Hans, who was born in June 1921, his brother Richard, who died in 1927 was born, and started her above-mentioned activity as a tutor and tutor.

In 1928 the Schmitt family moved to Berlin. In 1920, Elisabeth's brother, Richard Hamburger, founded a successful consulting company there, which Julius Schmitt has now also joined. He became responsible for the institute's bi-monthly magazine, and Elisabeth also became an institute employee. The latter was by no means a matter of course under the circumstances at the time, because according to the prevailing role model of middle-class circles, a mother of two children primarily had to take care of the household.

The family achieved a certain wealth. She first rented a house in Berlin-Frohnau and in 1930, with the help of a Bauhaus architect, had a villa built near the Tegeler Forst , which was quickly decried as a "living machine" by the neighbors because of its modern style. (Lucky Victim, p. 25)

The family's happiness turned at the beginning of 1932. Elisabeth's brother received a lucrative offer from Telefunken and thereupon closed the “Organization Institute”. Elisabeth and Julius Schmitt became unemployed. Julius Schmitt tried as a representative to keep the family afloat. First he sold insurance, then typewriters. “ The recently high-flying son of the penniless washerwoman had become a penniless bourgeois. "(German:" The recently aspiring son of the penniless laundress had become a penniless bourgeois. ")

However, the family was able to return to Frankfurt in the spring of 1932. Elisabeth Schmitt had taken a trip to Frankfurt and used old connections to there. This enabled her to find a job for Julius Schmitt; from then on he could work for a manufacturer of bicycle tires as head of quality control. Elisabeth Schmitt, however, had to go back to her previous job and give tutoring. The elegant residential building in Berlin, “our Bauahaus palazzo”, was rented out. (Lucky Victim, p. 30)

Nazi time and move to Holland

In the 1932 presidential election there were heated discussions in the Schmitt house. One of Hitler's elections was ruled out, but Elisabeth Schmitt voted for Paul von Hindenburg ("the lesser-of-two-evils candidate of the republican parties"), which her husband, who chose the communist candidate Ernst Thälmann , was very indignant about . (Lucky Victim, p. 29) Julius Schmitt followed up on this internal family dispute on the evening of January 30, 1933 , after he had learned that Adolf Hitler von Hindenburg had been appointed Chancellor of the Reich . He accused his wife of her vote for Hindenburg at the time, the consequences of which he had prophesied for her and which would now have become reality.

This dispute had no negative effects on the family climate, but the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor changed the family's life from then on. It became an unwritten rule that people were only allowed to speak to one another when the windows and doors were closed, the family became a bastion that shielded itself from the outside world, the parent-child relationship became closer: “After January 30, 1933, we closed Children and our parents grew closer together, while the distance between us and the outside world increased rapidly. "

While Hans A. Schmitt perceives the changes in everyday school life for himself, but does not consider them threatening and was also not exposed to any direct threats, the parents apparently assessed the situation differently. In the summer of 1933 Elisabeth Schmitt traveled to Switzerland and France to explore possible destinations for emigration. However, she returned home without success. (Lucky Victim, p. 59) But while the son took part in the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the HaFraBa on September 23, 1933 and then noticed a gradual normalization of school life, the parents never lost their goal of leaving Germany out of sight.

On September 19, 1934, the Schmitts sent their eldest son, Hans, on a trip to Holland. (Lucky Victim, p. 64) This was not preceded by any direct confrontations with the Nazi system, but more and more frequent occasions that made it difficult for the thirteen-year-old boy to take part in everyday school life. The parents “found it unbearable to separate their child from their peers and decided that I would have to continue my education elsewhere. In the spring of 1934 English Quakers founded a boarding school in Holland for children whose parents had suffered political or ethnic persecution. My parents visited the place and decided that it would be the right place for me. "

Hans A. Schmitt does not go into the more detailed reasons that prompted his parents to send him to the Quaker School in Eerde . He makes it clear, however, that his move to Holland, made possible by “British philanthropy”, was viewed in the eyes of the family as a kind of advance commando for their own subsequent emigration. (Lucky Victim, p. 68) This happened in 1935 for Elisabeth Schmitt and her second son, Richard. The reason for this was that he was increasingly exposed to anti-Semitic discrimination at school, against which his parents saw no other way to protect him than to give him the chance to leave Germany.

“Unfortunately, my parents lacked the means to send two children to boarding school in a foreign country. There was only one way to manage it. My mother would have to emigrate as well and somehow find a job abroad whose income would raise the money. Ever resourceful, and quick to translate plans into action, she wrote Mrs. Petersen to inquire whether the expanding school might possibly have a place on its staff for her. She offered to work without pay if my brother were accepted at Eerde. The two ladies had taken to each other during the visit that preceded my own enrollment, and there was no doubt that my mother had much to offer. After receiving a doctor of law from Heidelberg, she had become interested in juvenile problems and managed to combine profession and motherhood. [..] She had been free to build up a large tutorial practice. As a result, her inquiry bore fruit. The growing school needed a second housemother, and in the summer of 1935 she assumed that post. My father remained behind, alone, continuing to pay for my fees and board, as well as sending my mother, as spending money, the equivalent of the token salary she had forgone to gain my brother`s admission. "

“Unfortunately, my parents didn't have the means to send two children to boarding school abroad. There was only one way to organize it. My mother would also have to emigrate and somehow find a job abroad that would increase income. Always resourceful and quick to put plans into practice, she wrote to Ms. Petersen to ask if the growing school might have a place for her in the college. She offered to work without wages if my brother was accepted in Eerde. The two women had met during the visit that preceded my own recording, and there was no doubt that my mother had a lot to offer. After completing her doctorate in law in Heidelberg, she became interested in youth problems and learned to combine work and family. […] She was able to set up a tutoring school. As a result, their request bore fruit. The growing school needed a second housemother, and she accepted this post in the summer of 1935. "

This was connected with serious cuts in family life, because the father, Julius Schmitt, had to stay behind in Germany. His income there was still necessary to be able to pay the school fees and the accommodation for the first son, Hans A. Schmitt, and the admission fee for the second son, Richard. Nevertheless, Hans A. Schmitt felt the arrival of his mother and brother as a partial reunification of the family. However, he attests that his parents, and especially his father, had to bear a heavy burden from the new situation, which Elisabeth Schmitt found difficult to bear: “She separated from her husband for our sake. Fulfilling one obligation forced her to give up another, and in the years between graduating from high school and my father's death, she often considered returning to his side, regardless of the risks. "

Quaker School Eerde

In the years 1935 to 1945, the life of Elisabeth Schmitt and the history of the Quaker School in Eerde were closely linked, and from 1941 Schmitt became a central figure in one of the darkest periods in school history.

→ Main article : Quaker school Eerde

Family life in times of separation

Elisabeth Schmitt started out as a housemother in Eerde, but soon began teaching Latin, Greek, English and French. There was, however, no form of family life: the mother had her own room, but the two sons lived with the other students, and meals were also eaten at different tables. Hans A. Schmitt reports that his mother quickly made friends among her colleagues and worked hard. She tried to help others without looking for help for herself. (Lucky Victim, p. 108)

The year 1937 brought two turning points for the Schmitt family. In June, Hans A. Schmitt passed his exams at the school and in September 1937 he traveled to England, where he began training in London at Pitman's College, a kind of commercial college named after Isaac Pitman , the father of English shorthand. (Lucky Victim, pp. 130–132) The fact that he had to take up this training instead of studying was due to the changed family situation. The father's Jewish employer had sold his company in the spring of 1937. Julius Schmitt, who was married to a Jewish woman and refused to join the NSDAP or deliver the Hitler salute, was a thorn in the side of the new owner. Julius Schmitt was released. This meant that there was no financial support for the family living in Holland.

Hans A. Schmitt was given the opportunity to emigrate to the USA in 1938 through his mother's cousin, an engineer at Carl Zeiss , whom his company had transferred to New York instead of releasing him as a Jew under state pressure. That was the reason for the whole family to meet again in Holland for six weeks in the summer of 1938. (Lucky Victim, p. 145)

“It was a lugubrious reunion since we did not know when we would see one another again. My mother was now persuaded that the whole clan must eventually follow me. My father, knowing no English, and therefore presumably unable to support us in the English-speaking world, was equally convinced that he would not join our exodus. Many hours were spent in futile debate over this difference of opinion. My mother, unyielding, nagged until my father agreed to go wherever the rest of us went. l call this dialogue futile because l sensed that his eventual, weary acquiescence signified no change of mind, but merely a desire to have some peace. For the moment, both parents had achieved what they wanted: my mother the feeling that her eloquence had preserved the family, my father the boon of having our collective future struck from the agenda of daily conversation. For the rest of the holidays all of us put on a brave front, as if convinced that my departure was the mere prelude to happier days to be enjoyed in safety and liberty. "

“It was a sad reunion because we didn't know when we would see each other again. My mother was now convinced that the whole clan should eventually follow me. My father, who could not speak English and therefore probably would not be able to assist us in the English-speaking world, was equally convinced that he would not join our exodus. Many hours have been spent debating this difference of opinion in vain. My mother, adamant, nagged around until my father agreed to go wherever the rest of us went. I call this dialogue useless because I felt that his ultimately tired consent did not mean a change of heart, just a desire to have peace. For the moment, both parents had achieved what they wanted: my mother the feeling that her eloquence had preserved the family, my father the blessing of banning our collective future from the agenda of daily conversation. For the rest of the holiday we all formed a brave front, as if we were convinced that my departure was the mere prelude to happier days to be enjoyed in safety and freedom. "

After the eldest son moved to the USA, the family continued to be in contact by letters. This is how Hans A. Schmitt found out that his father had meanwhile joined the small Frankfurt Quaker community. The friendships he experienced there helped him to endure the separation from his wife more easily, but they could not stop his increasing depression in the long run. In August 1940 he surprisingly found a job in a factory for defense systems, to whom his specialist knowledge was more important than his Jewish wife, but: “My father was fifty-six years old, physically young, but emotionally marked by struggle and disappointment. His new job meant a fifty to sixty hour week. He got up at five thirty in the morning, returned home around seven in the evening, prepared his meal, and then did the dishes and put his dishes away. Special and routine errands, complicated by the war, not just for him, of course, increased the everyday pressures. After his death, his landlady wrote to my mother: “The doctor was often very tired and said: 'All I want to do is sleep,' which one can understand in view of his long working hours. Maybe it was too much because he had so much to worry about, always on the run. »

At the beginning of January 1941, Hans A. Schmitt received a telegram from his uncle, who was living in Amsterdam, informing him of the death of his father. Julius Schmitt had spoken to his landlady on December 9, 1941, before going to bed. No one saw him the next day, so another day later the landlady had the lock on his room opened. Julius Schmitt was dead on his bed, one hand on his heart and looking peaceful. The doctor also attested him a peaceful death. (Lucky Victim, p. 184)

Julius Schmitt was buried by the Frankfurt Quaker community, as he requested, at the side of his Jewish in-laws. Rudolf Schlosser gave the funeral speech . Elisabeth Schmitt had been refused entry to the funeral by the German authorities. Together with her son Richard and the few relatives in Amsterdam, she gathered in a small Catholic chapel in Amsterdam at the time of the Frankfurt funeral. (Lucky Victim, pp. 184-185)

Under German occupation

A good six months before Julius Schmitt's death, on May 10, 1940, the German Wehrmacht occupied the Netherlands. This brought decisive cuts for the Quaker School Eerde and also for Elisabeth Schmitt.

→ Main article : Eerde during the German occupation

The consequences of the occupation made contact between Hans A. Schmitt and his mother more difficult, especially after America had also entered the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor . “After Pearl Harbor, the correspondence was reduced to a trickle of 25-word messages exchanged with the help of the Red Cross and the occasional letters delivered by third parties. The mother of my music teacher in Eerde, Billy Hilsley , who lives in Switzerland near Bern , and an Eerde alumnus in Stockholm , Kurt Weingarten, periodically served as channels between me and my mother. I would only discover in 1945 what her life really was at that time. "

The brutal effects of the German occupation became apparent for the Quaker school in Eerde on September 1, 1941: The 18 Jewish children who remained at the school had to be separated and were in the “Aryan” section under the care of Elisabeth Schmitt, who was banned from doing so to teach at the school, housed in a separate building, the house "De Esch". This step itself, the segregation of the Jewish students and their resettlement, was and is highly controversial, as was the role Elisabeth Schmitt played in this context.

→ Main article : The refused escape

At the beginning of April 1943, the Jewish students were deported from the “De Esch” house. They were taken to the extermination camps in the east via the Dutch camps of Camp Vught and Westerbork . A memorial stone donated by former students of the Quaker School has stood in the park of Schloss Eerde since 1999. The names of 14 victims are recorded on it.

The discussion about what part Elisabeth Schmitt had in the death of these children has never stopped. From the circle of Wolfgang Frommel she was charged with the main culprit because she prevented the children who trusted her blindly from going into hiding. On the other hand, Hildegard Feidel-Mertz points out that "Ms. Schmitt [..] caused the [..] children who remained in De Esch to go to the camp with good intentions and deliberately."

What this “good intention” could have been in view of the foreseeable consequences is not known. However, it can be considered certain that the decision by Schmitt and the other responsible persons at the school was based on misjudgments and false loyalties:

• Piet Kappers, the most important Quaker functionary in the school's management team, was a college friend of Friedrich Wimmer (administrative lawyer) , general commissioner for administration and justice in the occupied Netherlands under Arthur Seyß-Inquart , the Reich commissioner for the Netherlands. Wimmer is said to have assured Kappers that Eerde could continue to work undisturbed as long as German decrees were followed there and no one was employed who was involved in illegal activities. The German occupiers would consider everyone living in Eerde to be a member of the Quaker community and therefore there would be no danger there for either Jews or Gentiles. Although Kappers and the other people in charge at the school were able to observe the persecution of the Jews up close, they trusted a high-ranking Nazi. Hans A. Schmitt on this later: “Whether these assurances should have been believed is also still discussed. In the end, the skeptics, of whom there were many, were right when the remaining Jewish children in De Esch were taken to the Vlught concentration camp on April 10, 1943 and from there to Auschwitz, where they all perished. "And elsewhere:" The responsible teacher in De Esch, Elisabeth Schmitt, just as unconditionally trusting in Kapper's judgment as Kappers trusted his German contacts, impressed on her youngsters that escaping underground was risky for both the escape and the rest of the two school communities because it would expose anyone to German retribution. The discussions on the subject in the castle led to the same result. [...] In the end, of course, the skeptics were right. "
• In the Exile Archive in Frankfurt there is a transcript of a conversation with the former Eerde teacher Werner Hermans on March 28, 1980. In it he reports on an evening meeting shortly before the deportation of the Jewish students. There was a plan to let them go into hiding at Hellendoorn. Papers had also already been prepared. This plan failed because of Elisabeth Schmitt's violent opposition. She would have persuaded the children not to be hidden. Her position was that the authorities should be treated honestly and that they were all under the protection of the Quakers. Hermans saw this in 1980 in the context of a fundamental Quaker position: always telling the truth, even if it was to your own disadvantage, and he quoted from a conversation with Kappers, who at the time demanded that German laws be complied with one hundred percent. Hans A. Schmitt also refers to this when he addresses the discussions within the Quakers that continued long after the war. Following a statement by Kapper's wife Luise, who insisted that she and her husband always acted honestly and sincere during the German occupation, he wrote: “How to remain 'honest and sincere' was a bone of contention among Dutch Quakers until now long after the war and the occupation ceased to be a subject of daily reflection and inventory. The group continued to be divided into those who insisted that Quakers must always tell the truth - a position exemplified by Piet Kapper's dealings with the occupation authorities - and those who believed, especially when it came to the Nazis that this truth could be compromised whenever the truth could cost lives. "
• Peter Budde refers to a sometimes absurd apolitical behavior on the part of some teachers at the school. He makes this clear with the example of Heinz Wild, whom he characterized as a protagonist of a “wanting to be apolitical” that often seemed tense during the time when Katharina Petersen was still the headmistress. The following episode shows how naive and dangerous apolitical behavior can be at the same time - accepting one's own destruction, as it were, with fatefulness: “Laura [van Honk], a resolute Quaker, meets teacher Wild with a Jewish star on her suit, ready to be transported on the platform. ,You come with me!' She pulls him into the toilet, removes the - mandatory - star and hides the teacher in a shed in her apartment for half a year - and laughs when she talks about his fear: She almost went to the camp before he did, had he been caught. "

Elisabeth Schmitt showed a behavior similar to that of Heinz Wild. In the spring of 1942 a Dutch policeman stood at the door of “De Esch”. He had the order to pick her up, but offered not to come back until the next day, since she would need time to pack. “The question was, should she try to escape or stay? Without fuss she decided that she couldn't leave the children to an unknown fate to save herself and stayed. "

As announced, the policeman reappeared the following afternoon and was astonished to find her. Again he gave her more time to pack and said goodbye again. When he still found her the following day, he arrested her. She came to Westerbork, which could have resulted in deportation and certain death. Elisabeth Schmitt was lucky:

“I do not know exactly how long she stayed there. One day she was called to the office of an SS Sturmbannführer who had discovered that she was the widow of an Aryan manand the mother of his surviving minor son. The dignitary was much exercised because she had been detained, an error for which she was scarcely responsible. He explained that the Führer did not wish the sons of pure-blooded Germans to be needlessly orphaned, even by the loss of a racially inferior mother. She would be reprieved to look after her child until he was of legal age. For the moment, the gas chamber could wait.
My mother's account of this detour through the underworld made me wonder whether she would have returned from Westerbork had my father still been alive. "

“I'm not sure how long she stayed there. One day she was called to the office of an SS storm banner who had discovered that she was the widow of an Aryan man and the mother of his surviving young son. Much was expected of the dignitary due to their imprisonment, a mistake for which he was hardly responsible. He stated that the Führer did not want the sons of the pure-blood Germans to be orphans unnecessarily, especially through the loss of a racially inferior mother. You can look forward to looking after your child until they are of legal age. The gas chamber could wait for the moment.
My mother's reporter of this detour through the underworld made me ask whether she would have returned from Westerbork if my father had still been alive. "

Even if Hans A. Schmitt emphasized his mother's sense of responsibility towards the Jewish young people she cared for and referred to rational aspects that may have stood in the way of her own flight as well as that of the children later, he still found Elisabeth Schmitt's behavior important different reasons:

“There may have been other reasons for my mother's passivity, less rational and, I suspect, less conscious. By training and education she was a German jurist. Breaking the law, any law, was not part of her code; it took her time to adjust to the lawless ways slowly permeating the lives of the occupied. She was equally slow shedding the skin of her original nationality. "

“Perhaps there were other reasons for my mother's passivity, less rational and, I suspect, less conscious. Through training and education, she was a German lawyer. Breaking the law, any law, was not part of their norms; it took her time to adjust to the lawless paths that slowly permeated life under the occupation. It was just as slow to shed the skin of its original nationality. "

It would be wrong to want Elisabeth Schmitt to be solely responsible for the deportation and murder of the Jewish students from Eerde, as Wolfgang Cordan suggests. Many factors played together, the trusting and legalistic behavior of the leading Quaker functionary Piet Kappers, to whom she uncompromisingly subordinated, her own rather apolitical behavior and the fatal clash of her legal-normative thinking with the Quaker dictum never to tell the untruth.

New start in the US

The Quaker School in Eerde virtually ceased to exist in the last two years of the war. However, some teachers, including Elisabeth Schmitt, continued to live there and mostly taught their own children. In the fall of 1944, Schmitt's son Richard, who had just turned seventeen, went into hiding and was hidden by a peasant in the neighborhood. One of the farmer's daughters ensured contact between mother and son by letter. (Lucky Victim, p. 230) Hans A. Schmitt met his mother, brother and the remaining residents of Eerde in July 1945. He had come to Europe as an American soldier and was stationed in Ingelheim at the time . From there he started the journey to Holland in a jeep, accompanied by a driver, since as an officer he was not allowed to drive the vehicle himself. The discussions in which he got involved were sobering for him, who had risked his life against Nazi Germany: there was considerable prejudice against the Allies, the Canadian troops that had liberated the Netherlands were accused of indiscipline, the imminent break-up of Prussia was regretted and fear of the Russians was omnipresent. “Once again I discovered that peace brought greater relief to the fighters, whom it had freed from daily physical danger, than did the civilian population. The soldier could put down his weapons and his fears and wait for demobilization. Many friends whom I had visited in Germany and those with whom I now celebrated a reunion in Holland escaped such peace of mind. "

After Christmas 1945, Hans A. Schmitt traveled to Eerde again, and this trip also decided the fate of his mother and brother. Elisabeth Schmitt and her son Richard benefited from a special arrangement: Members of the American armed forces were not subject to the quota restrictions that had become an almost insurmountable hurdle for many people when they intended to enter the USA; Without being placed on waiting lists, they were entitled to immediate entry. Elisabeth Schmitt, however, needed a Nansen passport because the Nazis had revoked her citizenship and she no longer had a German passport. (Lucky Victim, pp. 235–236) In December 1946 Elisabeth and Richard Schmitt traveled to the USA via Stockholm. Coming via New York, they met Hans on December 6, 1946. A. Schmitt and his wife in Chicago. (Lucky Victim, p. 239)

Elisabeth Schmitt was in her mid-forties when she arrived in the USA. She lived here for another 28 years and became a US citizen. She went on several extended trips to Europe, but homesickness for Germany was just as alien to her as the desire to return there permanently (Lucky Victim, p. 247)

Her own academic career did not open up in the USA. Although she received an offer from a Quaker college in Iowa , she turned it down and became a secretary in the German Department of the University of Chicago . In addition, she was able to hold courses on philological method here and start a career as a translator. In 1967, in the middle of translating a work on Catholic theology, she suffered a stroke. (Lucky Victim, p. 247) She died in 1974.

literature

• Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. An Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times 1933-1946 , Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1989, ISBN 0-8071-1500-2 .
• Hans A. Schmitt: Quaker Efforts to Rescue Children from Nazi Education and Discrimination: The International Quakerschool Eerde , in: Quaker History, Vol. 85, No. 1 (Spring 1996), pp. 45-57.
• Hans A. Schmitt: Quakers and Nazis. Inner Light in Outer Darkness , University of Missouri Press, Columbia and London, 1997, ISBN 0-8262-1134-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Unless other sources are given below, the presentation follows the book Lucky Victim. An Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times 1933–1946 by Hans A. Schmitt, who is Elisabeth Schmitt's son and emeritus historian. The exact date of his mother's death cannot be found on him; the year of death is a reconstruction from the life data he has given. In order not to bloat the annotation apparatus unnecessarily, simple references to the book are only marked with "Lucky Victim, S. XX". However, this does not apply to longer quotations that have been translated into German; they continue to be awarded the “ref” mark.
2. ^ He "spent his remaining years enjoying the fruits of his adventurous life. Except for an occasional visit to the stock exchange to keep an eye on his investments, and the management of his gilt-edged urban real estate, he was done with toiling and spinning. "Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. P. 7.
3. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. P. 11, indicates that in 1910 only 15 women were enrolled as law students in Prussia.
4. ^ "Thanks to my mother's efforts, these problem children graduated, and as word of her success spread, her parish expanded and occupied most of her time." Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. P. 21.
5. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt does not record the exact year of his father's birth; in connection with the year 1919 he describes him as a thirty-six year old (Lucky Victim, p. 20). In connection with his death in 1941, he mentions his birthday, December 9th (Lucky Victim, p. 184). Mention of the place of birth: (Lucky Victim, p. 250)
6. ^ "Father George paid the fee in three annual installments, even though there was plainly no longer any hope that this munificence would turn the beneficiary into Roman Catholic." Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. P. 14.
7. ↑ “The 'National Association for the German Reich' - or from June 1907 the 'National Association for Liberal Germany' - was founded on March 15, 1907 in Munich. Wilhelm Ohr had taken over the office of Secretary General. The association was completely liberal and cross-party. Its main task should be political education in order to contribute to the liberalization of the state and society. With the name he referred to the German National Association, in which liberals and democrats worked together from 1859 to 1867 to do education and agitation work for the small German nation-state. ”Theodor Heuss: Aufbruch im Kaiserreich. Letters 1892-1917 , edited and edited by Frieder Günther, de Gruyter, Berlin and Boston, 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-25123-8 , p. 193. The work of Wilhelm Ohr, who, alongside Friedrich Naumann and Theodor Heuss, was an important one The role played by the liberal movement at the beginning of the 20th century has so far been little explored.
8. ^ "Director of the youth division of Frankfurt's municipal labor office"; Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. P. 15.
9. ^ "Thus l owe my existence to two revolutions: the French, releasing my Jewish forebears from their ghetto, and the German, providing the opportunity, if rarely taken, for bourgeois and workers to mingle as equals. Only at this point was it possible for the coachman's dour widow and the tolerant, hedonistic Frankfurt rentier to take their places amidst my ancestry. "Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. P. 19.
10. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. P. 20.
11. ^ Richard Hamburger was head of the corporate concentration department of the European Coal and Steel Community after the Second World War . (Lucky Victim, p. 246)
12. ^ In the Berlin address book from 1928 the company trades as "Organizational Institute Dr. Piorkowski and Dr.-Ing. Hamburger GmbH “ Address Book Berlin 1928 . Many of the company's writings can be found in the DNB catalog: Richard Hamburger and the Organization Verlagsges. mb H.
13. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. P. 29.
14. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. Pp. 38-40. “ After January 30, 1933, we children and our mparents moved closer together as the distance between ourselves and the outside world increased rapidly. ”(P. 39)
15. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. S. 66. “ They found it intolerable to have their child segregated from his contemporaries, and resolved that I must continue my education elsewhere. In the spring of 1934, English Quakers founded in Holland a boarding school for children whose parents were suffering political or ethnic persecution. My parents visited the grounds and decided that it was the place for me. ”
16. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. Pp. 106/107.
17. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. Pp. 107/108. “ She seperated from her husband for our sake. Satisfying one obligation forced her to abandon another, and during the years between my graduation and my father's death, she often considered returning to his side, regardless of the risks. ”
18. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. WF a reminder report. Edited and with an afterword by Stephan C. Bischoff, Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin, 2009, ISBN 978-3-86650-068-6 , p. 255.
19. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. P. 149.
20. ↑ For the largely unknown work of the small but active Frankfurt Quaker community see on the one hand the Wikipedia article about the Rest Home project , and on the other hand: Petra Bonavita: Quäker als Retter im Frankfurt am Main during the Nazi era , Butterfly Verlag, Stuttgart, 2014, ISBN 3-89657-149-4 . The book also contains a longer section about the "Quaker boarding school" Eerde "" with a strong connection to Frankfurt pupils and support services provided by the Frankfurt Quakers.
21. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. S. 182. “ My father was fifty-six years old, physically young, but emotionally worn by struggle and disappointment. His new job meant a fifty-to sixty-hour work week. He rose at five-thirty in the morning, returned home around seven o'clock, prepared his meal, and afterwards washed and put away his dishes. Special and routine errands, complicated by war, not for him alone of course, added to the pressures of daily life. After his death, his landlady wrote to my mother: “The Herr Doktor was often very tired and said,“ ‹I want to do nothing but sleep,› which one can understand in view of his long working hours. Perhaps it was too much, because he had so much to take care of, always on the run. " ”
22. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. S. 185. “ After Pearl Harbor that correspondence declined to a trickle of 25-word messages, exchanged through the medium of the International Red Cross, and occasional letters transmitted by third persons. The mother of my Eerde music teacher, Billy Hilsley, living near Bern in Switzerland, and an Eerde alumnus in Stockholm, Kurt Weingarten, intermittently served as channels between me and my mother. What her life was really like during that time I would not discover until 1945. "
23. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz (Ed.): Schools in Exile. Repressed pedagogy after 1933 . rororo, Reinbek, 1983, ISBN 3-499-17789-7 , p. 164.
24. ^ Hans A. Schmitt: Quaker Efforts to Rescue Children. P. 54. “ Whether these assurances should have been believed will likewise continue to be debated. In the end skeptics, of whom there were many, were proved right when the remaining Jewish Children at De Esch were taken to Vlught concentration camp on April 10, 1943, and thence to Auschwitz, where all of them perished. ”
25. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Quakers and Nazis. Pp. 200-201. “ The teacher in charge at De Esch, Elisabeth Schmitt, believing as unconditionally in Kappers' judgment as Kappers trusted his German contact, impressed on her youngsters that an escape into the underground was risky for the escape as well as for the rest of both school communities because it would expose everyone to German retribution. Discussions of the issue at the castle produced the same conclusion. [..] In the end the skeptics were, of course, proved right. ”
26. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Quakers and Nazis. S. 213. “How to remain 'honest and sincere' persisted as a bone of contention among Dutch Friends long after the war and the occupation had ceasaed to be a subject of daily reflection and stocktaking. The group continued to be divided between those who held that a Quaker must always tell the truth - a position exemplified by Piet Kappers's dealings with occupying authorities - and those who believed, especially when dealing with Nazis, that truth could be compromised whenever veracity might cost lives. "
27. ↑ Peter Budde: Katharina Petersen and the Quaker School Eerde. A documentary collage , in: Monika Lehmann, Hermann Schnorbach (Ed.): Enlightenment as a learning process. Festschrift for Hildegard Feidel-Mertz , dipa-Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 1992, ISBN 3-7638-0186-3 , pp. 86-101, p. 97.
28. ↑ Feidel-Mertz (Ed.): Schools in Exile. P. 164.
29. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. P. 228. “The question was, should she attempt to flee or stay? Without ado, she decided that she could not leave the children to an unknown fate in order to save herself, and remained. "
30. ^ Ref> Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. P. 229.
31. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. P. 229.
32. ↑ Wolfgang Cordan: The mat. Autobiographical records, in the appendix: Days with Antonio, MännerschwarmSkript Verlag, Hamburg, 2003, ISBN 3-935596-33-2 , pp. 186–188.
33. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Lucky Victim. S. 231. “Once again I discovered that peace brought greater relief to combatants, whom it removed from daily physical danger, than to civilians. The soldier could put away his weapons and his fears and wait for demobilization. Such peace of mind eluded many of the friends I had visited in Germany and those with whom l now celebrated a reunion in Holland. "