Erna Rüppel

Erna Rüppel , née Marcus (born February 11, 1895 in Barmen ; died June 28, 1970 in Solingen ), was a German pediatrician . The doctor of Jewish origin survived the Nazi era in various hiding places and with false papers.

biography

Origin and education

Erna Marcus was born as the daughter of the businessman Siegmund Marcus and his wife Henriette, née Feist. Henriette Feist's father, Joseph Feist from Linz , had lived in Solingen since the beginning of the 1850s and was the founder of the renowned Omega cutlery factory . After the death of his first wife, he married Franziska Steiner around 1858, with whom he had eight children; the third was Erna's mother Henriette, called Henny, born in Solingen.

After 1905 the Marcus family, who were probably close to liberal Judaism, moved to Cologne , where they moved several times within the city. Erna Marcus attended the Girls 'High School in Cologne , which was initiated by the Girls' High School in Cologne and was one of the first in Germany. She is said to have had "a little bit of a Cologne tongue" even later. In 1913 she graduated from high school . Then she matriculated for medicine at the University of Cologne . It is possible that her choice of subject was influenced by the fact that her sister Grete had polio . In 1919 she obtained her license to practice as a nurse practitioner and a doctorate on the subject to clinic and pathology of influenza pneumonia ; her doctoral supervisor was Hugo Ribbert .

Marriage and starting a practice

On December 17, 1921, Erna Marcus married Hans Rüppel in Bonn, who was also a doctor by profession. The dowry of his wife allowed him in 1922 the Kurhaus from Herrenalb to lease; Erna Rüppel opened a pediatrician practice there. After she converted to the Catholic Church around 1918/19 , she left the Church again and professed her monism . In 1926 Hans Rüppel traveled around Africa as a ship doctor for the Woermann Line . In 1927 the couple moved to Solingen because a practice that had become vacant had been offered there; Hans Rüppel also became the chief doctor of the inner ward of the Bethesda Hospital. At the end of 1933, the Rüppels moved into their own house with apartments and practices in Augustastr. 10 in downtown Solingen and took a foster daughter into the house. The couple had a large group of families and friends, almost exclusively made up of supporters of the Weimar coalition . This included, for example, the left-wing democratic school teacher Ludwig Braun, about whom his pupil Walter Scheel later said that he tried to “open our eyes” during the Nazi era .

Nazi era

Stumbling stone for Erna Rüppel, Augustastr. 10 in Solingen

On April 1, 1933 , after the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , SA men stood in front of Erna Rüppel's practice to prevent patients from entering. Because she was considered Jewish, she lost her medical license on April 22nd , and the number of her private patients also fell. Her non-Jewish husband, who was born out of wedlock, had to prove his “Aryan” descent . His practice was also boycotted and he was forced to resign from the board of directors of the medical association. Because he lived in a so-called mixed marriage , he too lost his medical license. In the course of the November pogroms in 1938 , the Rüppels' house was stormed and the facility destroyed.

The couple decided to get a sham divorce. Hans Rüppel later reported that this decision had been made so that he could work as a doctor again and provide for the family with his income. The couple stayed in touch and are said to have met once a week, and they exchanged letters through an intermediary. Erna Rüppel initially lived with friends in Solingen until she moved to Cologne in 1942 to work as a nurse and then as a " nurse " for the sick and the elderly in the Israelite asylum there. Her mother and her sister, who was sitting in a wheelchair, were given a room in the asylum. Erna Rüppel also tried to obtain a special permit to use public transport in order to continue to treat Jewish patients living in Solingen.

After a heavy bombing raid on Cologne on May 31, 1942 , the Israelite asylum was cleared and its residents and staff were transported to the Müngersdorf assembly camp . From there, Erna Rüppel managed to escape and go into hiding in June 1942. The German historian Horst Sassin commented: "She acted out of the clear knowledge that she could no longer help mother and sister." The two women died a little later in Theresienstadt . First Erna Rüppel hid with friends in Düsseldorf and later in Solingen with Johannes Lutze , a pastor of the Confessing Church , in the cellar of his rectory in the Solingen district of Dorp. She is said to have been hidden with the Hillers family for a few days . Erna Rüppel received Croatian documents in May 1943 through the Solingen confectionery entrepreneur Milena Maric, who was in contact with Yugoslav diplomats, in the name of Anna Markus , who was born in Sarajevo . Lack of language skills was explained by the fact that she grew up in Belgium. She later reported that in May 1943 she had been checked at Düsseldorf Central Station by an officer whose children had been her patients; the man recognized her, but let her pass.

After a stopover in Leipzig , Erna Rüppel arrived in Munich on June 1, 1943 , where Milena Maric had apparently been able to find her a job at the Red Cross Clinic . She lived and worked there in constant fear of being discovered. The hospital was almost completely destroyed in a bomb attack on January 7, 1945. A few weeks later, Erna Rüppel fell ill with a painful inflammation of the salivary glands , which she did not have the operation - as necessary - for fear of betraying herself when she woke up from the anesthetic. The ailments resulting from this illness were later recognized as being caused by persecution.

Sassin: “It is noticeable that Erna Rüppel determined her own life and that she repeatedly made far-reaching decisions. She was not prepared to let the law of action be taken from her hands and passively endure how the Nazi regime further reduced her existence. "

After the war

After the end of the war, friends brought Erna Rüppel to Solingen by car. Shortly afterwards she drove together with the then Mayor of Solingen, Oskar Riess, and other companions in a bus in the direction of Theresienstadt to pick up Jewish citizens of Solingen and get information about her mother and sister; but the group was turned away at the border. Erna Rüppel was not certain of the fate of the two women, so that she finally declared them dead in 1952 and had an inscription for them put on her father's tombstone in Cologne. Because she was anti-Semitic when she visited the Jewish cemetery , she only visited the grave in company from now on.

On May 17, 1946, Erna and Hans Rüppel remarried because attempts to have the divorce declared invalid turned out to be "impossible" for legal reasons. Erna Rüppels denomination was given as "Protestant". In these post-war years, the couple were socially and socially committed: Erna Rüppel, who reopened a pediatric practice, became a member of the support committee for politically injured persons and was a member of the presidium of the non-partisan Democratic Women's Committee in Groß-Solingen . Hans Rüppel was elected to the city council in 1948; however, the Düsseldorf Higher Administrative Court ruled that his mandate was incompatible with the work of a senior physician at the municipal hospitals , which he had held since July 1946, so he gave up his seat on the council. He supported the Groß-Solingen Heimathilfe , which was founded in Newark in the US by emigrants from Solingen and which sent relief supplies to Solingen until 1951. In 1952 the couple separated because Hans Rüppel had met another woman; but they remained on friendly terms with one another.

In 1969 Erna Rüppel, who ran her practice to the end, suffered a fractured femur . During a subsequent cure she had a heart attack , from the consequences of which she died a few days later on June 28, 1970 at the age of 75 in Solingen. She was buried in the Evangelical Cemetery in Kasinostraße . It should have taken two hours until all the mourners at the grave had said goodbye to her. The grave no longer exists.

In August 2018, in front of Erna Rüppel's former home in Augustastr. 10 laid a stumbling block for them. 25 members of the Feist family (family of Erna Rüppel's mother) who had come from Sweden, Portugal, Germany, the USA and Israel were present at the time of the transfer.

literature

• Horst Sassin : Survival in the Underground. The pediatrician Dr. Erna Rüppel (1895–1970) . In: Home No. 26 . 2010, p. 4-37 . (pdf)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Feist family in search of traces. In: rp-online.de. June 6, 2010, accessed June 28, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 4 f.
3. ^ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 5.
4. ↑ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 6 f.
5. ↑ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 8 f.
6. ^ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 12.
7. ↑ Student Councilor Dr. Ludwig Brauns repeatedly questioned the Nazi state. In: rheinische-geschichte.lvr.de. Retrieved June 28, 2019 . 
8. ↑ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 12 f.
9. ^ Stephan Stracke: The November pogrom 1937 in Solingen in the mirror of justice. Presentation and documents. Solingen 2018 (pdf). Retrieved June 28, 2019.
10. ↑ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 18 f.
11. ↑ ^{a b} Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 20.
12. ↑ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , pp. 20 f.
13. ↑ The Protestant pastor Johannes Lutze hid the Jewish doctor Dr. Erna Rüppel. In: rheinische-geschichte.lvr.de. Retrieved June 28, 2019 . 
14. ↑ Between Transfiguration and Condemnation. P. 251 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
15. ↑ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 24 f.
16. ^ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 25.
17. ↑ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 28.
18. ↑ Susanna Schrafstetter: Escape and hiding. ISBN 3-8353-1736-9 , p. 188 ( limited preview in Google book search).
19. ↑ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 28.
20. ↑ ^{a b} Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 34.
21. ^ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 29.
22. ↑ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 30.
23. ↑ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 31.
24. ^ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 32.
25. ↑ Sassin, Survival in the Underground , p. 31 f.
26. ↑ City lays stumbling block for Dr. Erna Rüppel. In: solinger-tageblatt.de. August 3, 2018, accessed June 28, 2019 . 
27. ↑ 25 descendants of the Feist family visit the laying of stumbling blocks for Dr. Erna Rüppel. In: stolpersteine-solingen.de. July 25, 2018, accessed June 28, 2019 .