Hanna Solf
Johanna "Hanna" Susanne Elisabeth Solf , b. Dotti (born November 14, 1887 in Neuenhagen near Berlin ; † November 4, 1954 in Starnberg ), was a German politician and member of the German resistance . The Solf Circle is named after her.
Life
Johanna Solf was born in Neuenhagen on November 14, 1887 as the daughter of the head of the office and landowner Georg Leopold Dotti and his wife Elisabeth Therese Maria Weygoldt. In 1908 she married the then Imperial Governor of Samoa and later State Secretary in the Foreign Office and German Ambassador in Tokyo , Wilhelm Solf . Hanna Solf saw herself not only as his wife, but also as a fellow campaigner in the struggle for humanity, law and peace. The stays outside Germany (Samoa, India, German East Africa, Japan and England) shaped Hanna Solf and, not least, ensured the deep understanding of other cultures that distinguished the couple.
In the 1920s she attended the events of the SeSiSo Club , of which Wilhelm Solf was chairman. Already there, like her husband, she was convinced that the exchange of people from different political directions was essential for a free and social society. This conviction also led to the foundation of the Solf Circle. After the seizure of power Hitler took early contact with dissidents on, about to General von Hammerstein , whose Meet with Richard Kuenzer regularly visited. Her husband died in 1936.
Similar meetings soon took place in Solf's apartment on Alsenstrasse in Berlin . In 1941 the Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke paid a visit to the Solf Circle, which was tantamount to an affront to Roland Freisler , who was already having Solf observed at the time. Encouraged by this, Hanna Solf tried - together with her daughter Lagi von Ballestrem - to enable some of those persecuted by the National Socialists to travel safely to Switzerland . To do this, she got false passports and Maria von Maltzan , a persistent swimmer, swam with the refugees through Lake Constance . Solf had u. a. For these actions she bought a house in Garmisch-Partenkirchen , in which her sister Elisabeth Dotti could live. When Solf and her daughter were totally bombed in 1943, they found refuge there.
On September 10, 1943, the spy Paul Reckzeh had Elisabeth von Thadden's tea party arrested on the orders of SS-Sturmbannführer Kriminalrat Herbert Lange . It was only by chance that von Maltzan, Solf, and von Ballestrem were not present at this meeting. On January 12th, Gestapo officials also came to the Solfs' apartment in Garmisch to arrest them and take them to Munich . There Hanna Solf was held by two officers in a tower room without a window. After three days she was taken to Berlin, and von Ballestrem was imprisoned there for another two months. From Berlin, where she was interrogated, Solf came to Sachsenhausen concentration camp . Although she was tortured and interrogated almost every day, she did not reveal any of the members of the Solf circle.
On March 15, 1944, she was taken to the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp , where von Ballestrem had also been taken. There she was subjected to the torture of Herbert Lange, who was responsible for the " July 20 " case as well as for the Solf district. After July 20, Solf was brought to the Cottbus prison , where she remained until Christmas 1944. She was then transferred to the Moabit remand prison, where her daughter had been in custody since August 1944 . Roland Freisler set the trial date in the "Solf and five others" case on February 8, 1945.
When one of the heaviest air raids on Berlin took place on February 3, and Freisler was killed in the process, Hanna Solf's hope, which had been lost in the agony of torture, reborn. Eventually Solf and von Ballestrem were fired. Ernst Ludwig Heuss had succeeded in persuading an official from the Ministry of Justice to issue her with discharge certificates.
After her release, Hanna Solf had to find out that over 70 members of the Solf group had fallen victim to the roll-up commandos. She herself only weighed 42 kilograms.
In the course of the Nuremberg trials , Hanna Solf testified as a witness. After spending about a month with her son Hans Heinrich in England, she moved to Starnberg , where she lived until her death on November 4, 1954. She was buried in the Starnberg cemetery.
In her birthplace Neuenhagen, Johanna-Solf-Straße has been named after her since 2008. Her parents' house was reconstructed and now serves as a house for encounters and learning .
literature
- Wolfgang Benz , Walter H. Pehle (Hrsg.): Lexicon of the German resistance. Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-596-15083-3 , pp. 298-300.
- Ursula Koehler-Lutterbeck; Monika Siedentopf: Lexicon of 1000 women , Bonn 2000, p. 343. ISBN 3-8012-0276-3
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Solf, Hanna |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Solf, Johanna (full name); Dotti, Johanna Susanne Elisabeth (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Members of the German resistance against National Socialism |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 14, 1887 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Neuenhagen near Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | 4th November 1954 |
| Place of death | Starnberg |