Elisabeth von Gustedt

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Marianne Thekla Elisabeth Perpetua von Gustedt (born December 10, 1885 in Berßel , † October 11, 1978 in Gerlingen ) was a German writer and National Socialist women leader in the Berlin district .

Life

Elisabeth von Gustedt was born on her parents' estate as the daughter of the Prussian general landscape director of the province of Saxony Ernst von Gustedt and was brought up strictly. She learned the profession of nurse because she was denied a degree. In 1907 she accompanied the wife of the governor of Cameroon , Hildegard Seitz, to Africa and met Philipp Engelhardt, a Bavarian officer, whom she married in 1908. During the First World War, she served as a consultant for the women's civil service of the Bavarian and Prussian armies and received several awards ( Ludwig Cross and Prussian Cross of Merit ). She became unemployed in 1919 and divorced in 1920. With an inheritance, she began studying administration in Detmold . During the inflation period up to 1923 she suffered from hunger and became seriously ill. It was only with difficulty that she was able to support her daughter Juliane from her marriage. With activities in the Baltic Sea bath tourism and with lectures on the German colony of Cameroon, she managed to get by until 1930, when she slowly recovered.

Von Gustedt joined the NSDAP in 1930 and became a follower of the left-wing National Socialist Gregor Strasser in Berlin, where she was promoted to Gau leader of the Nazi women's association in the Gau Berlin , for which she wrote a program. When Strasser was murdered in 1934 in connection with the Röhm Putsch in 1934, she left the party. She was then taken into protective custody and sentenced to death without a sentence. By chance (missing signature) the execution was not carried out and on August 7, 1934, because of Hindenburg's death, it fell under a general amnesty . Immediately she founded a resistance group in Berlin, the Stein-Kreis , named after the Prussian reformer Karl Freiherr vom Stein . This small group was active until 1937; contrary to the regulations, she traveled abroad to Otto Strasser to bring him medicines and materials. She was finally arrested at the Danish border on December 3, 1937 and sentenced by the People's Court in November 1938 to seven years in prison for high treason . In 1942 a pardon was obtained, after which she moved back to Berlin and in the summer of 1943 to Wernigerode .

There she saw the end of the war in 1945 and was recognized as a victim of fascism in the Soviet occupation zone. But when she gave lectures again, among others in the Kulturbund of the GDR , she came into conflict with the SED , which fought against bourgeois circles. She took care of victims after the uprising of June 17, 1953 and, after a warning from the ex-Prime Minister Erhard Hübener, who lived in Wernigerode, had to flee to the West in 1961, where she worked as a writer, but hardly published. There she went to the Stuttgart area, but was not recognized as a Nazi victim because she had been a member of the NSDAP until 1934.

Fonts

  • Jutta Cornill. From the stage of the west. Phönix-Verlag Siwinna, Berlin 1931.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Gustedt, Elisabeth von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gustedt, Marianne Thekla Elisabeth Perpetua von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and leader of the National Socialist women's association in Gau Berlin
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Berßel
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 1978
Place of death Gerlingen