Hanna Schramm

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Hanna Schramm (born April 7, 1896 in Berlin , † February 13, 1978 in Paris ) was a German educator, persecuted by the Nazi regime, emigrant and interned in the Camp de Gurs . After her liberation from this camp, she stayed in France and lived in Paris after the Second World War. She worked as a journalist and author and was best known for her book People in Gurs .

Life

Hanna Schramm's book People in Gurs is very present on the internet. However, data about them are more than rare, which is why there is no information about their origin or their education.

Schramm taught unskilled workers at a vocational school as a commercial instructor. Since 1926 she was a member of the SPD and the General Free Teachers' Union of Germany .

In the spring of 1934 she fell victim to the law to restore the civil service : she was dismissed from school because of “political unreliability”. At the end of the same year she emigrated to Paris, where she joined the Association of German Teacher Emigrants . Since she did not yet have a work permit, she had to get by with undeclared work as a stenographer.

After receiving the work permit, Schramm was able to work as a German repetiteur at a girls' school in Besançon from 1937 . Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, she was arrested on suspicion of espionage and spent 3 months in custody. After her release from prison, she was interned in various smaller camps before she was interned in Camp de Gurs from June 9, 1940 to November 25, 1941 . Unlike Lisa Fittko , who was interned in Gurs from May to June 1940, she apparently had no opportunity to use the days surrounding the French surrender to the German Wehrmacht (June 22, 1940) to flee the camp.

Hanna Schramm's liberation from the camp was based on a coincidence. The head of the social service in the camp had put Hanna Schramm and her comrade Anneliese Eisenstaedt on a list of 40 people in the summer of 1941, for whose release from Gurs Abbé Glasberg, Alexandre Glasberg (1902–1989) wanted to campaign. This actually received the permission of the Vichy regime and was able to accommodate the 40 people in a former hotel in the tiny village of Chansaye near Lyon. Leo Breuer was one of these 40 people, but Schramm does not mention him. His curriculum vitae shows that in 1943 some or all of the group had to flee from the Germans. They were able to go into hiding in the Center Cazaubon, also supervised by Abbé Glasberg . Whether this also applied to Schramm is not clear from her book, but Patrik von zur Mühlen , who mistakenly made Abbé Glasberg Swiss, rightly points to Hanna Schramm's luck that she received from the Abbé: “In the autumn of 1941, Hanna Schramm and several other female prisoners left the camp for eastern France through the intervention of the Swiss Abbé Glasberg. For many, this change of location ended in a German concentration camp and meant death for quite a few. "

Hanna Schramm returned to Paris after the end of the Second World War, where she worked as a journalist and author. From 1954 to 1955 she worked as a secretary for the United Restitution Organization . She refused to return to Germany "because she 'skipped a whole generation of pupils as a teacher' 'and could not get rid of the idea of ​​asking every older man to what extent he was a Nazi".

The book People in Gurs

Georg Heintz, who edited the text by Hanna Schramm, describes people in Gurs as an experience report that above all "depicts the behavior of people who are torn out of their living environment from one day to the next and in what at first glance seem unbearable were crammed into a camp. In spite of all the misery, the majority of people found the strength not to let themselves 'get down' and tried tenaciously to cope with the difficulties as far as possible. ”Klaus-Peter Schmid also had this impression in his review of the time:“ This one The book is neither a literary nor a scientific work, but an experience report that vividly describes a sad chapter of Franco-German history in simple, sometimes even clumsy language: the internment of German citizens in France after the outbreak of the Second World War. [..] Hanna Schramm describes life in the camp: monotony, hopelessness, illness, death. These are evidence of resignation before the hopeless alternative of returning to fascist Germany or vegetating in an inhuman barrack camp, but also evidence of an unshakable will to live. ”Hanna Schramm describes an example of this“ unshakable will to live ”in the person of Lou Albert-Lasard :

“We knew very well that there were quite a number of visual artists in the camp. In the summer of 1940 we had seen Lou Albert-Lazard, one of Rilke's numerous friends, dressed in flowing white robes, a huge calabrian made of straw on a red forelock, wandering around the neighboring îlot with a sketch pad under his arm, looking for models. The women were irritated at first, but then they got used to the 'crazy painter' when she used them as nude models, crouching in a corner of the washhouse. The result was countless sheets of paper with very attractive sketches that were quickly thrown out. At the end of the summer Lou Albert-Lazard was freed and left the camp. "

Works

  • People in Gurs. Memories of a French internment camp (1940-1941) , with a documentary contribution to French emigration policy (1933-1944) by Barbara Vormeier, Verlag Georg Heintz, Worms 1977, ISBN 3-921333-13-X .
    • The French translation of the book was published under the title Vivre à Gurs. Un camp de concentration français 1940-1941 , Paris, 1979.
  • Verbond van dieren en kinderen , Vink, Amsterdam, 1953. ( Association of Animals and Children )

literature

  • Hildegard Feidel-Mertz (Ed.): Schools in Exile. The repressed pedagogy after 1933 . rororo, Reinbek, 1983, ISBN 3-499-17789-7 .
  • Martine Cheniaux assistée de Joseph Miqueu: LE CAMP DE GURS (1939-1945). Un ensemble de témoignages dont celui d'Hanna Schramm , Cercle Historique de l'Arribère de Navarrenx, 2010, ISBN 978-2-918404-01-9 . Based on the text by Hanna Schramm, the authors brought together further information about the people mentioned by Schramm as well as about a wide range of other people and groups who had various relationships with the camp (religious and non-profit associations, guards, external witnesses, etc.) .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, the following explanations are based on the brief biographical information in Hildegard Feidel-Mertz, Schools in Exile , p. 247. These are almost identical to the information about Schramm on the back of her book. No other sources could be found.
  2. ↑ Lisa Fittko: My way across the Pyrenees. ERinnerungen 1940/41 , dtv, Munich, 1985, ISBN 3-446-13948-6 .
  3. ↑ Glasberg, who came from the Ukraine and was of Jewish descent, converted to Catholicism in his youth and practiced as a priest in France. He played an active role in the resistance during World War II and helped save many Jews.
  4. ↑ Hanna Schramm: People in Gurs , pp. 135-136
  5. ↑ Something about the history of Glasberg's work in Cazaubon can be found on the website Museée De La Résistance: Cazaubon .
  6. ↑ Leo Breuer biography
  7. ^ Patrik von zur Mühlen: Research results and reviews: Hanna Schramm and Barbara Vormeier.
  8. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Schools in Exile. P. 247
  9. ↑ Georg Heintz: Foreword by the editor. In: Hanna Schramm: People in Gurs. S. IX.
  10. ↑ Klaus-Peter Schmid: Review in a nutshell: People in Gurs.
  11. ↑ Hanna Schramm: Menschen in Gurs , p. 124. On page 128 one of the nude drawings by Lou Albert-Lasard mentioned is printed. The term Îlot used in the quote , which means islet in French , is a demarcated area of ​​the camp that was divided into several Îlots.
personal data
SURNAME Schramm, Hanna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German educator, emigrant, journalist
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 13, 1978
PLACE OF DEATH Paris