Henriette von Schirach

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Henriette "Henny" von Schirach (born Henriette Hoffmann , born February 3, 1913 in Munich - Schwabing ; † January 27, 1992 ibid) was a German writer and wife of Baldur von Schirach , the former Reich Youth Leader and Gauleiter in Vienna .

Life

Henriette Hoffmann was born as the eldest child of the photographer Heinrich Hoffmann and his first wife Therese "Nelly" Baumann († 1928), a former singer and actress. She spent her childhood in Schwabing with her brother Heinrich (* 1916). Her parents' house was a refuge for the early National Socialists . In 1920 her father joined the nationalist and anti-Semitic DAP , which later became the NSDAP . When she was eight she first met Adolf Hitler . From 1923 her father was the “Führer ”'s personal photographer and had also secured the lucrative business of selling Hitler's busts .

In 1930 Henriette Hoffmann worked alongside her studies at the University of Munich as Hitler's secretary. She got to know powerful people in the Nazi state as well as his niece Geli Raubal and her father's former trainee, Eva Braun . She met Baldur von Schirach, the then leader of the National Socialist Student Union and the youngest member of Hitler's entourage, for the first time in 1931. The two married on March 31, 1932 in Munich, with Adolf Hitler and Ernst Röhm acting as witnesses .

Between 1933 and 1942 she gave birth to four children: Angelika Benedikta, Klaus, Robert and Richard . She is the grandmother of Ariadne von Schirach , Benedict Wells and Ferdinand von Schirach .

After her marriage, Henriette von Schirach became a member of the NSDAP. She did not exercise a function in the party apparatus, but she identified with the goals of her husband, who sought sole control over the educational system in the German Reich . He was appointed Gauleiter and Reich Governor of Greater Vienna by Hitler and moved with his family to the prestigious Vienna Hofburg . After the first heavy American air raid on Vienna , Baldur von Schirach sent his family to Bavaria, to his country estate, Schloss Aspenstein . Her husband, who called himself “the writer Dr. Richard Falk ”and voluntarily surrendered to the Americans , she only saw her again in June 1945 in the Rum internment camp near Innsbruck . Baldur von Schirach was sentenced to twenty years in prison on October 1, 1946, by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal for crimes against humanity .

In 1949 Henriette von Schirach filed for divorce from her imprisoned husband; she was in a relationship with Peter Jacob. The marriage was divorced on July 20, 1950. She tried to obtain a pardon from her ex-husband.

In 1955 Henriette von Schirach bought back Baldur von Schirach's 4312 square meter country house in Kochel am See from the Free State of Bavaria for 1.45 marks per square meter . This house was confiscated in 1946. In a confidential report in 1971 , the Bavarian Court of Auditors found that the price of land had already been 2.50 Reichsmarks in 1939 . After ten months she sold the country house for double the purchase price.

Pardon

In 1956 the discussion about the three prisoners from Spandau ( Rudolf Heß , Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach) flared up again. In view of the long imprisonment and the high costs, voices were heard in the international and especially in the English press calling for the war criminals to be released early. At that time Henriette Hoffmann-von Schirach traveled to London to bring British Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd a request to reduce her ex-husband's 20-year prison sentence. It was unsuccessful. In the same year her book The Price of Glory was published .

In 1982 Henriette von Schirach's relativizing book Anecdotes about Hitler , published by the right-wing extremist Türmer Verlag , was indexed because she described Hitler as a “cozy Austrian” who “wanted to make himself and others a little happy”.

Others

On the night of Good Friday 1943, Henriette von Schirach spoke to Hitler at the Berghof about the deportation of Jews to Holland . In 1943, Goebbels noted in his diary that “the Schirachs only discovered their sympathy after almost 60,000 Jews had been deported to their doorstep, as it were”.

In 1966, Speer confirmed this scene in an interview: “Afterwards it was a gloomy mood, you knew that something had happened, but it was kept silent about it, and as far as I know that was the reason why Henriette von Schirach and also her husband were banished from the 'court'. "

In the film Im toten Winkel - Hitler's secretary , Traudl Junge also describes this scene as it was described by her husband: Henriette von Schirach ", who had a relatively confidential position towards Hitler, [...] approached the Führer about it, that it would be terrible how the Jews are treated in Amsterdam ”. As a result, Hitler furiously advised her not to interfere in things she did not understand, was annoyed about "this sentimentalism and sentimentality" and left the room. In response to this, Ms. von Schirach was never invited back to the Berghof.

Literature, films

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Steffen Winter: Brown booty . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 2013, p. 34-43 ( online ).
  2. ^ A b Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 523.
personal data
SURNAME Schirach, Henriette von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schirach, Henny von (nickname); Hoffmann, Henriette (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and wife of Baldur von Schirach
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich - Schwabing
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1992
Place of death Munich - Schwabing