Emma Heintz

Emma Heintz

Grave in the north cemetery in Jena Photo: Sascha Brachwitz 2017

Emma Heintz (born November 4, 1888 in Jena as Frieda Minna Emma Schulze , † October 21, 1947 ) is the founder of the Jenaer Wohlfahrt .

Life

As the daughter of a coachman and bricklayer and a laundress, she attended elementary school in Jena. Without any professional training, she later worked as a maid and as a seamstress in various households. She gave birth to her daughter Hildegard in 1907 and her son Rudolf Thomas on July 20, 1909 in Jena. In 1910 she married the social democrat and father of their two children - AH Rudolf Thomas, who was a glassmaker at Schott Jenaer Glas . This fell on the Western Front in 1917 during the First World War .

In 1911 she joined the SPD herself at the 22nd Social Democratic Party Congress (September 10-16, 1911) in Jena . In 1918 she (together with other women) took over the leadership of the SPD women's group in the local SPD association. During the November Revolution of 1918/19 she and Gertrud Morgner were the only two women on the Jena Workers 'and Soldiers' Council .

From 1919 to 1933 she represented the SPD in the Jena municipal and city council . She cooperated closely with Emil Hädrich on social issues in the city. In 1919/20 she and other women organized and founded the Jena local branch of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt and provided for malnourished children in what was then the Schützenhaus (at that time on Wöllnitzer Platz, now Jenaplan) with warm meals that were financed from donations. After the First World War, with the support of the trade unions, she founded a sewing room in the trade union building (Krautgasse / Bachstrasse - today F-Haus).

In the 1920s she began to organize vacation arrangements for Jena working-class children in the Jena Forest (today's Stern school camp). Together with other women, she organized interesting games, hikes and events year after year in which the children were involved in order to promote their independence and responsibility.

In 1933 she was removed from all her offices by the National Socialists. In the same year she married the social democrat Eduard Heintz (see list of honorary citizens of the city ), who was also a glassmaker and pipe drawer at Schott Jenaer Glas . In the course of the action grid (sometimes also called action thunderstorm), after the assassination attempt on Hitler, both were arrested by the Gestapo in August 1944 as SPD functionaries and opponents of the regime and taken to the Buchenwald and Ravensbrück concentration camps .

After the Second World War , she began again to set up sewing rooms (sewing room in the Jena glassworks for the widows of employees of the glassworks, sewing room in Jena-Ost) and again provided children with warm meals. In addition, she initiated holiday campaigns for school children again and re-founded the Stern school camp on the Jena Forest. It is still operated today as such with the same goals.

Since 1946, after the forced unification of the SPD and KPD to form the SED , she represented the SED in the Jena city assembly . She was the chairwoman of the women's committees. On October 21, 1947, she and some employees of the Maxhütte (Unterwellenborn) were killed in a traffic accident near the Hermsdorfer Kreuz on the way back from a ZK meeting of the SED in Berlin (deliberations on the future of Jenas) . Her son Rudolf Thomas was killed also survived in the vehicle but was slightly injured.

A street in the Jena-Süd district (near the "Beutenberg Campus") has been named after her since 1950 .

literature

• Johanna Henninger, Utz Merkel: Telling Jena street names ... Page 53. jena-information, Jena 1983.
• Rüdiger Stutz, Matias Mieth, Claudia Häfner u. a .: Jena Lexicon on City History, page 277, Tümmel Verlag GmbH, Berching 2018