Gerda Christian

Gerda Christian (born December 13, 1913 as Gerda Daranowski in Berlin , † April 14, 1997 in Düsseldorf ) was one of Adolf Hitler's four secretaries from 1937 to 1945 alongside Traudl Junge , Christa Schroeder and Johanna Wolf . Besides Traudl Junge, she was the only secretary who remained in the Führerbunker in Berlin until after Hitler's death .

Career in the time of National Socialism

Before joining the Führer’s Personal Adjutantur , Daranowski worked as a clerk for the US cosmetics company Elizabeth Arden .

Hitler hired the young woman in 1937 after his two older secretaries Johanna Wolf and Christa Schroeder had long complained about the amount of work that two women could not possibly do on their own. Hitler shortened her Polish family name and called her Dara . She quickly became Hitler's closest confidante among the secretaries, and he often praised her for her attractive appearance. At the end of 1942 Daranowski went on vacation for a long time, because she had met the major of the Luftwaffe Eckhard Christian , who was working as adjutant to the chief of the Wehrmacht command staff at the Fuehrer's headquarters . Daranowski and Eckhard Christian married on February 2, 1943. The marriage remained childless and was divorced after 1945. In order to fill the gap that had arisen in the Führer’s personal adjutant position, the young Munich-based Traudl Humps (later boy) was hired in December 1942. In the summer of 1943, to the delight of Hitler, Dara returned to work as the Fiihrer's secretary. From then on she made every trip to the Führer headquarters and to the Berghof .

End of war

During the last days of the war she stayed in the Soviet-occupied Berlin in the Führerbunker under the Reich Chancellery . After Adolf Hitler's suicide, she joined, like Hitler's last personal adjutant, the 27-year-old Otto Günsch , a group of about twenty people led by SS Brigadefuhrer Wilhelm Mohnke , who managed to open the Reich Chancellery on the night of January 1 To leave May 2 to May 2 and in the morning to reach a beer cellar of the old Schultheiss brewery that had been converted into a bunker , but which was surrounded by Soviet soldiers. With her colleague Traudl Junge , Martin Bormann's secretary Else Krüger and Constanze Manziarly , Mohnke instructed her to continue wearing civilian clothes and to hand over a last report previously written by Mohnke to Hitler's successor Karl Dönitz . The following day, the four women lost sight of each other in the turmoil of the capitulating city . Gerda Christian left for Bavaria . There she was arrested and interrogated by the US military police. Gerda Christian later found work in commercial enterprises in the Rhineland , just like Günsch, who was released from Soviet captivity .

Another résumé

The Deutsche Bank offered Christian a job in the Rhineland; previously she was temporarily a receptionist at the Eden Hotel Düsseldorf. Gunsch became operations manager in a pharmaceutical company. She became Edmund Veesenmayer's lover and was part of the inner leadership of the Gauleiter-FDP , which sought to restore National Socialism. Both stayed in contact after the motto "In Treue fixed". They also cultivated the friendship with the sculptor Arno Breker , who had once begun in the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin , who had meanwhile moved from Bavaria to Düsseldorf with his wife Mimina. His spacious studio became a meeting place for “friends from the past”. Gerda Christian was Arno Breker's honorary secretary for decades until Arno Breker's death in 1991.

Gerda Christian died of cancer on April 14, 1997 in a hospital in Düsseldorf. She was cremated on her prior orders. There was a burial at sea in German waters, as was the case later in 2003 in the case of Günsch, who was friends with her until death.

literature

• Joachim Fest : The Downfall. Hitler and the end of the Third Reich. Alexander Fest, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-8286-0172-3 .
• Traudl Junge, Melissa Müller: Until the last hour. Hitler's secretary tells her life. Claassen Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-546-00311-X .
• Roel Vande Winkel: Hitler's Downfall, a film from Germany (Der Untergang, 2004) . In: L. Engelen, R. Vande Winkel (eds.): Perspectives on European Film and History. Academia Press, Gent 2007, ISBN 978-90-382-1082-7 , pp. 182-219.
• Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven : With Hitler in the bunker. Records from the Führer Headquarters July 1944 - April 1945 . wjs-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-937989-14-5
• Uwe Bahnsen , James P. O'Donnell: The catacomb - the end in the Reich Chancellery . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt DVA, Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-421-01712-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Christian archive, interview on 60th birthday, December 10, 1973
2. ↑ Traudl Junge, Melissa Müller: Until the last hour - Hitler's secretary tells her life , Munich 2002, p. 213 f. and 234 ff.
   Escape through the subway shafts, the residents leave the bunker of the dead Führer Save yourself who can! (No longer available online.) In: Berliner Kurier . September 17, 2004, formerly in the original ; accessed on March 16, 2020 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  
3. ^ Conversation with Günsch, 1980; about the Naumann Club: 2012 . Beate Baldow, episode or danger? The Naumann affair. Diss. Phil. FU Berlin , 2012, p. 313
4. ↑ Prometheus, Internet Bulletin No. 197, 2014
5. ^ Memorial letter / obituary notice, April 1997