Gusti Hecht

Gusti Hecht (* 1903 in Brno ; † December 17, 1950 in Johannesburg , South Africa ) was a German architect and journalist .

Gusti (Auguste) Hecht was born in 1903 in Brno, which at that time belonged to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy . From 1922/1923 she studied architecture in Vienna and finished her studies with a degree in engineering. She moved to Berlin and worked as an architect. In 1929 she and Hermann Neumann won a competition, advertised by the Berlin Jewish Community among Jewish architects, with her design for a new synagogue on Klopstockstrasse in the Hansaviertel in Berlin-Tiergarten. The design, which deliberately avoided sacred forms in its modernity, was never carried out.

From August 1931 Gusti Hecht worked as a picture editor for the Berliner Tageblatt and the Welt-Spiegel . From issue no. 41 of October 11, 1931, she took over editorial responsibility for Welt-Spiegel. Under her editorial leadership, an offensive position was taken for the defense of the republic and against the danger of the National Socialists taking power . Even after the transfer of power to Hitler and the NSDAP on January 30, 1933, the front page of the February 26, 1933 issue, one day before the Reichstag fire , showed demonstrating supporters of the “ Iron Front ” of the SPD and the Reich Banner with their fists raised (the photo was taken by the worker photographer Eugen Heilig ), combined with the appealing text "Freedom!"

The editors' law of October 4, 1933 made it impossible for Jewish journalists to continue to work. On October 1, 1933, Gusti Hecht was responsible for the magazine for the last time.

Gusti Hecht was politically active in the area of ​​the SPD, moved in the left-wing intellectual scene and was very closely related to Carl von Ossietzky . After Ossietzky was arrested on February 28, 1933, she belonged to the "Friends of Carl von Ossietzky", which supported the family of the arrested and maintained contact with the prisoner.

Gusti Hecht emigrated to South Africa via Paris in 1936 and married the chemist Ernst Koenigsfeld there around the turn of 1940/1941. She opened a gift shop with an attached Austrian café in Johannesburg. From her exile she wrote articles for the " CV-Zeitung ", which continued to appear in Berlin , until the newspaper and the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith were banned in 1938, and for Der Morgen , the monthly magazine for German Jews .

Gusti Hecht died of cancer on December 17, 1950 in Johannesburg.

Fonts (selection)

• (with Georg Greko): Do you have to get a divorce right away? Mosse, Berlin 1932.

literature

• Thomas Friedrich: The "Welt-Spiegel" edited by Gusti Hecht, October 1931-1933. Notes on the history of an (almost) unknown magazine. In: Diethart Kerbs, Walter Uka: Photography and photo journalism in the Weimar Republic. Bönen 2004, pp. 162-174.
• Gusti Hecht - Between the Worlds , in: Ute Maasberg, Regina Prinz: The new ones are coming! Female avant-garde in the architecture of the twenties . Hamburg undated, p. 89

Web links

• Research project on Gusti Hecht
• Gusti Hecht's design for the new synagogue in Berlin in 1929
• Gusti Hecht in "Der Morgen", Berlin 1936

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karen Peter: Karen Peter Gusti Hecht. Retrieved June 26, 2017 .