Elisabeth von Saldern

Elisabeth von Saldern (born July 5, 1878 in Lauban ; † August 30, 1938 in Heiligengrabe ) was abbess of the Protestant women's monastery at Stift zum Heiligengrabe in Brandenburg from 1924 to 1938 .

Life

Elisabeth von Saldern was the daughter of District Administrator Johannes von Saldern , who was the Royal Prussian President and State Director of the Principality of Waldeck and Pyrmont in Arolsen . Her mother Margarethe was a native Countess von Hohenthal. Elisabeth von Saldern had three older siblings. She attended school in Droyziger and completed a teacher training course there . In April 1901 she came to Heiligengrabe and taught there until July 1902. Then she went to Great Britain to perfect her English language skills. In 1904 she became the tutor of the Prussian Princess Viktoria Luise , daughter of the German Emperor and King of Prussia Wilhelm II and his wife Auguste Viktoria . In this capacity, Elisabeth von Saldern was appointed head governess in 1906 . In order to secure the future of their daughter's educator, the imperial couple provided her with a job as a minor in Heiligengrabe in 1906. In 1909 Princess Viktoria Luise was confirmed; Elisabeth von Saldern's task as the princess's tutor was thus fulfilled. She received a pension and a position as a conventual in the women's monastery in Heiligengrabe, but continued to live in Potsdam and until 1913 took over the representation of the lady-in-waiting of Princess Viktoria Luise. Wilhelm II abdicated in 1918 after the end of the First World War and went into exile in Doorn (Netherlands), where Elisabeth von Saldern visited him several times.

In 1924 Elisabeth von Saldern succeeded Adolphine von Rohr as abbess. After 1933, the women's monastery, under the direction of Elisabeth von Saldern, increasingly came into conflict with the Protestant clergyman of the Techow parish, Karl Oestreich, who was also the headmaster in Heiligengrabe and had applied for membership in the NSDAP and established a local branch of the BDM in Heiligengrabe. He was replaced as headmaster at the end of September 1934, but an inspection of the lyceum at the end of August 1934 revealed that many female students were members of the BDM and almost all teachers belonged to the National Socialist teachers' association. However, the abbess and three canonesses who taught at the school were seen as unsuitable to really give the lessons in the National Socialist sense with inner conviction. The abbess, like the three teachers, had to be replaced and the relationship between aristocratic and non-aristocratic students had to be changed in favor of non-aristocratic students.

Elisabeth von Saldern asked the mother of a schoolgirl for help. She wrote to Winifred Wagner , Richard Wagner's daughter-in-law. Their daughter Friedelind Wagner attended the lyceum. Winifred Wagner telegraphed to Wilhelm Kube , the Oberpräsident of Brandenburg on September 2nd : An ambitious canoness [meant Annemarie von Auerswald ] and a wholly owned pastor are trying the Heiligengrabe collegiate school and its director Abbess von Saldern as reactionary and the school as a foreign body in today's state to denounce. A school where my daughter is raised in her third year is definitely neither. She also sent requests for help to August Wilhelm von Prussia and Johann Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk , the Reich Finance Minister. After a conversation between the abbess and Bernhard Rust , the Reich Minister for Education, Science and Public Education, the situation eased. In 1935 Otto Schlißke, a German Christian and NSDAP member, became the new headmaster. The tension remained, but in 1936 he applied for his release. In 1937, the Heiligengraber teacher Margarete Grolmus became the headmaster. Elisabeth von Saldern died in 1938; she was followed by Armgard von Alvensleben as abbess.

literature

• Elisabeth von Saldern in Lifetime Achievements - Women in Kloster Stift Heiligengrabe between 1847 and 1945 Kloster Stift zum Heiligengrabe (Simone Oelker, Astrid Reuter) (Ed.) Monuments, publications of the German Foundation for Monument Protection, Bonn 2002 ISBN 3-935208-19-7 , page 56 and 57

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Christa Stache: Confrontation with the National Socialist school policy in: Lifetime Achievements - Women in the Kloster Heiligengrabe Monastery between 1847 and 1945, page 49