Love Charlotte Kohlbrugge

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Hebe Charlotte Kohlbrugge (born April 8, 1914 in Utrecht ; † December 13, 2016 there ) was a Dutch resistance fighter against the Nazi regime .

Education and interests

As a religious and social person interested carbon Brugge went in March 1936 after their time in England into the German Reich in order to u. a. to form an opinion there about National Socialism . In Berlin she came into contact with Martin Niemöller's parish and got to know the Confessing Church . In 1938/39 she worked in Fehrbellin with Günther Harder for the Confessing Church. Because this was not wanted, she was arrested and only barely escaped her transfer to the Ravensbrück concentration camp . In 1939 she went to Basel to study theology with Karl Barth . When the Second World War began, she could not continue her studies and returned to the Netherlands, where she immediately fell into the resistance movement.

Activity in resistance

Kohlbrugge took the initiative and set up a connection line with which microfilms containing information collected by the Dutch resistance were channeled into Switzerland (the so-called Swiss line ). The end of this line was the Secretary of the World Council of Churches Willem Adolf Visser 't Hooft , who lived in Geneva . In this espionage conspiracy she worked together with Baron Six , the head of the security service , a department of the national armed forces.

Finally she was arrested in 1944 and deported from Kamp Vught to the Ravensbrück concentration camp , where she survived under dire circumstances.

Post-war activities and recognition

Because of her merits, she was asked in 1947 to help reduce the Dutch people's feelings of hatred towards Germans. At times she turned her attention to East Germany and the other Eastern European countries. She mainly dealt with the churches of Eastern Europe . She smuggled theological reading and Bibles into communist- oriented countries, e.g. B. to Hungary , Czechoslovakia and Romania . From 1963 she made sure that Dutch theology students could study in Eastern Europe. 81 Dutch theology students spent a year or two in a communist-ruled country. She also arranged home colleges there with eight weekly seminars per semester for those who were not allowed to study and those who wanted to know more. Kohlbrugge was a member of the Christian Peace Conference and took part in the All-Christian Peace Assemblies in 1961 and 1964 in Prague .

In 1975 she received the Joost van den Vondel Prize for her work in favor of Dutch-German relations. In 1990 she received an honorary doctorate from Charles University in Prague and in 1995 an honorary doctorate from the University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania.

Her first publication in 2000 concerned the collecting and editing of essays by her sister Hanna Kohlbrugge , who had died the year before and was professor of Iranian language and literature at the University of Utrecht . In 2002 Kohlbrugge wrote an autobiography entitled "Twice two is five".

The US government awarded her the Medal of Freedom with the silver palm for her resistance work.

On November 3rd, 2009 the Evangelical radio station illuminated her life in the program “'t Zal je maar gebeuren” (“That should happen to you”). This contribution included a documentary trip that the 95-year-old undertook to Berlin and Ravensbrück , among others .

Fonts

  • Hanna Kohlbrugge, postuum bezorgd door Hebe Kohlbrugge: De Islam aan de deur. Op zoek naar een answer. Boekencentrum, Zoetermeer 2001, ISBN 90-239-1142-3
    • German as: Hanna Kohlbrugge, published posthumously by Hebe Kohlbrugge and Berthold Köber: Der einsame Gott des Islam. Which makes us wonder about Islam. LIT Verlag, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8258-6175-9
  • Hebe Kohlbrugge: Twee keer twee is vijf. Doing things in East and West. Kok, Kampen 2002, ISBN 90-435-0519-6
    • German as: Hebe Kohlbrugge (author); Annegret Klinzmann and Mechthild Ragg (translators): Two times two is five. My unpredictable life since 1914. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2003, ISBN 3-374-02051-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Courageous commitment to the church in the GDR: Dutch theologian Hebe Kohlbrugge has died , ekmd.de, report from December 14, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Kohlbrugge, Hebe Charlotte
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch resistance fighter against the Nazi regime
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Utrecht
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 2016
Place of death Utrecht