Hannah von Bredow

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Hannah von Bredow in Potsdam, 1920

Hannah von Bredow (born November 22, 1893 in Schönhausen (Elbe) as Hannah Leopoldine Alice Countess von Bismarck-Schönhausen ; † June 12, 1971 in Hamburg-Bergedorf ) was a German opponent of National Socialism .

Live and act

Childhood and adolescence

Hannah von Bredow was born on November 22, 1893 in Schönhausen (Elbe) as Hannah Leopoldine Alice Countess von Bismarck-Schönhausen . She was the eldest daughter of Herbert Fürst von Bismarck , the son of the founder of the empire Otto von Bismarck , and Marguerite, née Countess von Hoyos, Freiin zu Stichsenstein (1871–1945). She received English and French lessons at an early age and later mastered both languages ​​perfectly, both spoken and written. She lost her father at the age of just under 11 and, as the oldest, had to take on duties in the Bismarck family household in Friedrichsruh at an early age .

Family, marriage and society

Hannah with her siblings Goedela, Otto, Gottfried and Albrecht in 1941

Hannah von Bredow used her start-up capital from the three father and mother countries Germany, Austria and, through her grandmother Alice, née Whitehead, also England on many trips and visits to relatives until the beginning of the First World War.

In March 1914 she met Leopold Waldemar von Bredow and married him a year later. The captain of the guard cuirassiers in Brandenburg had been widowed since 1907 and brought a nine-year-old daughter into the marriage. In 1919 the family moved to Potsdam and grew by five daughters and three sons between 1916 and 1933. Leopold von Bredow died at the beginning of October 1933. Shortly after the beginning of the National Socialist regime and until after its end, Hannah von Bredow was solely responsible for the large family. She largely kept her children away from Nazi organizations. Despite repeated requests from her mother and brothers, she did not enter into another marriage.

Hannah von Bredow continued the intense life she had begun in the 1920s with personalities from German society. In the Darmstadt " School of Wisdom ", a philosophical circle of friends founded by her brother-in-law Hermann von Keyserling , she met among others. on the Swiss historian Carl Jacob Burckhardt and the psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung and maintained contact with them. As the granddaughter of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, she met politicians such as Paul von Hindenburg , Heinrich Brüning , Franz von Papen , Kurt von Schleicher and Konstantin von Neurath, as well as various German and foreign ambassadors. She associated with the family of the Nobel Prize winner Max Planck , especially with his son Erwin , the gray eminence of the last Chancellor of the Weimar Republic . From him the historically and politically educated and interested Hannah von Bredow received deep insights into the final phase of the republic and the development of the Third Reich .

Opponent of the Nazi regime

Hannah von Bredow followed the rise of the NSDAP under its leader Adolf Hitler early on and noted in her diary in 1930: “If he becomes a dictator, Germany will be a madhouse”. The brothers Otto and Gottfried von Bismarck had been in personal contact with Hitler since January 1932. Together with the brothers she was a guest at Hermann Göring's in March 1932 . She refused his request to join the NSDAP, referring to the fact that she had demonstrably fulfilled the 'patriotic obligation to bear' with seven children. Brother Gottfried joined the NSDAP on September 1, 1932, Otto on May 1, 1933. Hannah von Bredow commented on Hitler's takeover on January 31, 1933 with the words: “The world is out of joint and we can only wait until our necks are turned. "

Hannah von Bredow worried about the discrimination against her Jewish lawyers Walther von Simson and Ernst Wolff as well as her banker Paul von Schwabach , which began in 1933 . Despite constant warnings from her inner circle, she held on to Jewish connections and friendships until she emigrated or the victims died. The banker Otto von Mendelssohn Bartholdy was able to escape deportation in 1943 with their help.

In the so-called Solf Circle , Hannah von Bredow found like-minded people in her rejection of the brown terrorist state. From the beginning of the Nazi era, Hanna Solf , widow of the diplomat Wilhelm Solf , hosted the circle of almost two dozen former and active diplomats, officers of the Abwehr as well as men and women from the arts, science and culture. They saw themselves as a kind of auxiliary community for critics, opponents and persecuted persons of the Nazi state, as an island of open words and humanity. The betrayal by the Gestapo spy Paul Reckzeh meant the end of the circle and, in early 1944, the arrest and conviction of several members, including Hanna Solf, Elisabeth von Thadden , Otto Kiep , Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff , Lagi von Ballestrem , Richard Kuenzer . Only Hanna Solf and Lagi von Ballestrem escaped execution. Hannah von Bredow did not attend the treason meeting on September 10, 1943.

Hannah von Bredow was a devout Protestant Christian. In 1935 she joined the Confessing Church , the opposition movement of Protestant Christians against attempts to bring the German Evangelical Church into line with the Nazi regime. Her main reference person was the agricultural scientist Constantin von Dietze , her neighbor in Potsdam from 1932 to 1937. As a living member of the Heiliggeistgemeinde, the community of Hannah von Bredows, Dietze was on the fraternal council of the “Confessing Church”. In the summer of 1937 the Gestapo briefly arrested him for his church activities. After the failed assassination attempt on July 20, 1944, Dietze served a longer period of imprisonment from September 1944 to the end of April 1945.

Hannah von Bredow was neither involved nor confessed to the attempted assassination on Hitler. Her 21-year-old daughter Philippa, who had been friends with the conspirator Werner von Haeften since 1943, was in know of the plans for a coup . Hannah von Bredow's close confidante, Sydney Jessen, was one of the extended ranks of the Navy resistance, and her brother Gottfried von Bismarck was also more than just a confidante. The brother and confidante were arrested at the end of July 1944 and the daughter a month later on suspicion of conspiracy and remained in prison for between 6 and 8 months. Hannah von Bredow escaped arrest due to a stay in Switzerland and a serious illness after her return. From mid-November 1944 onwards, she was subjected to a 14-day interrogation by a Gestapo representative of the “Special Commission July 20” at her hospital bed.

persecution

Hannah von Bredow was targeted by the Gestapo as early as autumn 1933. Several of her letters were intercepted, individual interrogations followed, and in early 1938 her passport was withdrawn. When asked, Wilhelm von Wedel , the police and Gestapo chief of Potsdam, Hannah von Bredow's brother Otto von Bismarck quoted passages from her letters with insults from Nazi leaders. There was also a large “register of sins”: “Foreigners”, “Confessing Church”, non-membership in Nazi associations, raising children to be enemies of the state, dealing with “dubious elements”, refusing to give a Hitler salute. The interrogation by the “Special Commission on July 20” showed that the Gestapo's allegations were based both on its own findings and on denunciations. An advertisement by ex-Chancellor Franz von Papen for “dangerous speech” and one by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder for “foreign espionage” were among the most prominent among several denunciations from professional circles.

Fourth phase of life

Hannah von Bredow in her Swiss chalet l'Espérance in 1971

After the bombing, the end of the war and the liberation, Hannah von Bredow and four young daughters experienced the invasion of the Red Army in Potsdam . The poor supply situation also prompted her to move to Berlin-Charlottenburg in November 1945 and, a few months later, to her underage sons in Switzerland . She spent the winters in Basel or traveling, the summers in her chalet l'Espérance in Les Diablerets with her family. Until the 1960s, she claimed the release of her assets that had been confiscated in the USA and inherited from her husband. The US authorities refused to recognize their active membership in the “Confessing Church” as opposition to the Nazi regime.

Hannah von Bredows died on June 12, 1971 in a clinic in Hamburg-Bergedorf after she fell while visiting her brother Otto von Bismarck and suffered a fracture of her spine. She was buried in Friedrichsruh in the park of the Bismarck mausoleum next to her brother Gottfried Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen .

estate

Hannah von Bredow kept a diary from early youth and into old age . She also wrote letters to family members, friends and acquaintances almost every day. The letters to her mother Marguerite Fürstin von Bismarck are kept in the archive of the Otto von Bismarck Foundation Friedrichsruh. Her son Leopold Bill von Bredow owns the diaries and letters to siblings, friends and acquaintances .

Hannah von Bredow began correspondence with the former naval officer and doctor of economics Sydney Jessen in 1925 and continued it almost uninterrupted until his death in 1965. A large part of the approximately 2,000 letters, unlike Jesse's counter-letters, have been preserved. She also wrote extensive letters to her youngest brother Albrecht Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen as well as to close friends and to Helene Burckhardt-Schatzmann , the mother of the historian Carl, about the time of National Socialism, especially about Hitler's takeover and the events of July 20, 1944 Jacob Burckhardt . In his book “Hannah von Bredow. Bismarck's fearless granddaughter against Hitler ” , Reiner Möckelmann evaluated over 400 letters and diaries mainly from the years 1930 to 1950.

The estate also includes an extensive essay from 1949 on the phenomenon of fear . In this, Hannah von Bredow dealt with the oppressive National Socialist period in a liberating overall understanding and created a noteworthy approach to a totalitarian theory .

The point of view of contemporaries

Many contemporaries saw Hannah von Bredow's self-confident and courageous attitude in the Nazi dictatorship thanks to her sociable and open nature. Characterizations of foreigners such as that of the former US secret service chief Allen Dulles have survived : "Frau von Bredow, a granddaughter of Bismarck, was often referred to as the 'only male descendant of the Iron Chancellor' 'because of her energetic personality." Or by the British historian John Wheeler -Bennett , according to which she inherited “blood and iron” from her grandfather and, in contrast to her brothers, who welcomed National Socialism for various reasons, resolutely opposed neo-paganism. The Bismarck admirer and resistance activist Ulrich von Hassell compared the Bismarck grandchildren and found that Hannah von Bredow “inherited more from her grandfather” than the brothers.

literature

Web links

Commons : Hannah von Bredow  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hannah von Bredow , Leopold Bill von Bredow on wbg-wissenverbindet.de of the Scientific Book Society from December 1, 2017
  2. ↑ Reiner Möckelmann : Hannah von Bredow. Bismarck's fearless granddaughter against Hitler , Theiss in Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2018, p. 47ff.
  3. ↑ According to Möckelmann 2018, p. 57
  4. ↑ According to Möckelmann 2018, p. 66
  5. ^ Reiner Möckelmann: Franz von Papen. Hitler's eternal vassal , Zabern-Verlag in Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2016, pp. 278f.
  6. ↑ Möckelmann 2018, p. 114
  7. ↑ Möckelmann 2018, pp. 215–220
  8. ↑ Jochen Thies : The Bismarcks. A German dynasty , Piper Verlag Munich 2013, p. 308 f.
  9. ↑ Hannah von Bredow: Thoughts on the phenomenon of fear , January 26, 1949, published in Reiner Möckelmann . Hannah von Bredow. Bismarck's fearless granddaughter against Hitler , Darmstadt 2018, pp. 240-257
  10. ↑ Allen Dulles : Conspiracy in Germany. Afterword by Wolfgang von Eckardt, the translator of the book, Europa Verlag , Zurich 1948. p. 13
  11. ↑ John Wheeler-Bennett : Knaves, Fools and Heroes. Europe Between the Wars, Macmillan New York, 1974, pp. 85f.
  12. ^ Ulrich von Hassell : The Hassell diaries 1938-1944, Siedler Verlag Berlin 1988, p. 433
personal data
SURNAME Bredow, Hannah von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hannah Leopoldine Alice Countess von Bismarck-Schönhausen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German opponent of National Socialism, granddaughter of Otto von Bismarck
DATE OF BIRTH November 22, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Schönhausen (Elbe)
DATE OF DEATH June 12, 1971
PLACE OF DEATH Hamburg-Bergedorf