Elisabeth von Thadden (resistance fighter)

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Elisabeth Adelheid Hildegard von Thadden (born July 29, 1890 in Mohrungen , East Prussia , † September 8, 1944 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a resistance fighter against National Socialism and belonged to the Solf circle . She was arrested in January 1944, sentenced to death before the People's Court in July of the same year and executed in September in Berlin-Plötzensee.

family

Elisabeth von Thadden came from an old Pomeranian noble family and was the daughter of the multiple landowner Adolf von Thadden (1858–1932), royal Prussian district administrator of the Greifenberg district , member of the Pomeranian provincial parliament and chairman of the Pomeranian district association, and his first wife Ehrengard von Gerlach (1868-1909). Her half-brother Adolf von Thadden (1921–1996) was a politician and party member of the NSDAP , DRP , DNVP and NPD . Her brother Reinold von Thadden was the founder of the German Evangelical Church Congress (1891–1976).

Live and act

Stumbling block in front of the house, Carmerstrasse 12, in Berlin-Charlottenburg

Elisabeth von Thadden grew up with her younger siblings Reinold , Marie-Agnes ("Anza"), Helene and Ehrengard ("Eta") on the Pomeranian Gut Trieglaff in the Greifenberg district (today Trzygłów , West Pomeranian Voivodeship ), interrupted by boarding years in Baden -Baden and at the Reifensteiner School in Reifenstein . After her mother's death, she returned to Gut Trieglaff at the age of nineteen, where she ran the house and farm for her father for ten years and took care of her younger siblings. The Thadden family ran a very open house with a constant number of guests and a variety of events with social, political and cultural content. During these years Elisabeth von Thadden got to know one of her most important companions and mentors, Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze , at that time pastor at the Potsdam Peace Church and founder of the ecumenical “social working group”. In cooperation with him, she provided organizational support for the deportation of Kinderland to Denmark and Holland during the First World War and even took in town children in need of relaxation for weeks at Gut Trieglaff.

In 1920 the father married the much younger Barbara Blank. Thereupon Elisabeth left Trieglaff and her beloved homeland with the other Thadden daughters. She moved to Berlin. There she worked in the social working group Berlin-Ost and completed crash courses in social work at the social women's school founded by Alice Salomon . In April 1921 von Thadden took over the position of educational director in the children's village Heuberg on the Swabian Alb, a recreation center that was only open a few months a year. She spent the winter in Berlin. She was not satisfied with this situation; she longed for a permanent job at a school: “But this was not possible because she did not have the relevant certificates. So she decided to found a school herself, a modern country school. But before that, she went to the Schloss Salem School, which has existed since 1920, for a year and a half , a comparable institution, in order to get to know the work of such a country school on site.

In search of a suitable location for her rural education home, von Thadden was able to lease the vacant Wieblingen Castle near Heidelberg and founded the Evangelisches Landerziehungsheim Wieblingen e. V. as a school authority. At Easter 1927 the “Evangelical Landerziehungsheim für Mädchen” was opened. The school pedagogical concept was based on reform pedagogy with a Christian character. Von Thadden headed the boarding school for girls, which was also open to “external people” and was also attended and inhabited by Jewish students until the end, until all denominational private schools were nationalized in 1941. Together with Hermann Maas , the Protestant pastor of the Heidelberg Church of the Holy Spirit , who, like herself, confessed Close to the church , it supported Jews emigrating abroad. Because she had concerns about the nearby western front when the war broke out, von Thadden relocated a large part of the school operations from September 1939 to Easter 1941 to Tutzing on Lake Starnberg. During this time there was a house search and an interrogation by the Gestapo due to the denunciation of a pupil or her mother. Marie Baum was an important friend and supporter in the Wieblinger and Tutzinger years .

After the National Socialists had taken her home for education, von Thadden found shelter in Anna von Gierke's house in Berlin . From September 1941 she worked in the Presidium of the German Red Cross , among other things for the organization of reading for German prisoners of war and internees abroad. A professional position, which corresponded to their abilities, could not get it, but was as DRC - nurse's aide used.

In Berlin, von Thadden took part in so-called “tea societies” with Anna von Gierke and Hanna Solf , at which even regime critics met and exchanged views at lectures, including about perspectives and organizational questions for the time after the foreseeable “collapse”. In addition, they were sporadically involved in helping the persecuted to flee, kept in contact with exiles and supported those in hiding with ration cards. The so-called Solf Circle had been observed by the Gestapo since 1941 and denounced on September 10, 1943 by the smuggled Gestapo spy Paul Reckzeh . As a result, 76 people from the Solf district were arrested and several sentenced to death or prison terms.

After the spy was exposed and the arrests of the members of the Solf circle were feared, von Thadden had himself transferred to Meaux (France) in December 1943 to manage the soldiers' home there, probably in the hope of "getting out of the line of fire". On January 13, 1944, however, she was arrested in Meaux, sentenced to death by the People's Court under its president Roland Freisler in July 1944 , and beheaded on September 8 in Berlin-Plötzensee .

She herself described her imprisonment and her role in the resistance on the day of her execution to the prison minister Ohm as follows: “I was arrested in Meaux, France, at 8 a.m. In the car I was brought from Meaux to Paris, where I was interrogated from 9 in the morning until 6 in the evening. After 1 hour of supper, the interrogation continued throughout the night. The arrest was pronounced the next day. There were several possibilities of escape, I deliberately did not make use of this in order not to endanger my brother. Then I was taken to Berlin and interrogated again all night. The severity of the Inquisition was absolutely monstrous! I was asked about the Confessing Church and the Una Sancta . Not a single word escaped me that would have incriminated others. The Ravensbrück concentration camp was bad. I had nothing to do with the attack on July 20, I don't know any of these people. I had too much influence, my circle had become too important. We wanted to provide social help at the moment when this help was needed. It was clear that this moment had to come. We wanted to be good Samaritans, but nothing political. "

Heidelberg-Wieblingen: Elisabeth-von-Thadden-School

Your school continues to exist as the Elisabeth von Thadden School , which is sponsored by the Evangelical Church in Baden.

Appreciations

In Crailsheim , Dortmund , Eppelheim , Fulda , Heidelberg , Karlsruhe , Kiel , Leverkusen , Marburg , Mannheim , Vechta and Wesel , Elisabeth-von-Thadden-Straße was named after her. In Weiterstadt near Darmstadt , the office of the Evangelical Church Community and various event rooms are housed in a house named after it on Darmstädter Straße.

In 1999 she was honored in the Vatican by a representation in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel in the Apostolic Palace . In addition to biblical themes, the chapel's mosaics show martyrs of the 20th century, including Edith Stein and Elisabeth von Thadden.

literature

  • Manfred Berger : Thadden, Elisabeth von. In: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work. Freiburg 1998, p. 588 f.
  • Genealogical manual of the nobility . Noble houses A ; Vol. 25, Vol. 117 of the complete series. CA Starke, Limburg (Lahn) 1998, ISSN  0435-2408 , p. 519.
  • Marion Keuchen: Thadden, Elisabeth Adelheid Hildegard von (1890–1944), in: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) Vol. 38 - Supplements XXV, Nordhausen 2017, Sp. 1412–1421; (also: www.bbkl.de, reading date April 18, 2019).
  • Irmgard von der Lühe: Elisabeth von Thadden. A fate of our time. Eugen Diederichs, Düsseldorf 1966.
  • Almut A. Meyer: Elisabeth von Thadden (1890-1944). In: Gerhard Schwinge (Ed.): Pictures of life from the Protestant church in Baden in the 19th and 20th centuries. Verlag Regionalkultur, Heidelberg 2007, Vol. 5, ISBN 978-3-89735-502-6 , pp. 473-495, portrait photo p. 472.
  • Werner Oehme: Martyrs of Protestant Christianity 1933–1945. Twenty-nine life pictures. Union, Berlin 1980 2 , pp. 147-153.
  • Matthias Riemenschneider, Jörg Thierfelder (ed.): Elisabeth von Thadden. Shape - resist - suffer. Edition contemporary witnesses. Hans Thoma Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-87297-148-4 .
  • Martha Schad : Women against Hitler. Fates under National Socialism. Munich 2001, p. 145 ff.
  • Elisabeth Stiefel: You were a mess. Women in resistance. Francke, Marburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-86827-493-6 . (therein a chapter on E. v. Th.)
  • Günther Weisenborn : The silent uprising. Hamburg 1953.
  • Elisabeth von Thadden , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 48, 1954 from November 22, 1954, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Schad, 2001, p. 146.
  2. ↑ Von der Lühe, 1966.
  3. ↑ News from Vatican Radio from Thursday 11/11/99 to Monday 11/15/99. See section: On Sunday Pope John Paul II inaugurated a chapel in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican, decorated with mosaics from the Eastern Church . (No longer available online.) In: kath.de. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; accessed on May 11, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Thadden, Elisabeth von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thadden, Elisabeth Adelheid Hildegard von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Mohrungen , East Prussia
DATE OF DEATH September 8, 1944
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee