Hertha Nathorff

Hertha Nathorff (born June 5, 1895 in Laupheim as Hertha Einstein; † June 10, 1993 in New York ) was a German pediatrician . As a doctor, she headed a children's clinic in Berlin-Charlottenburg from 1923 until the 1930s .

biography

Berlin memorial plaque on the house, Turmstrasse 21, in Berlin-Moabit

Hertha Einstein was born as the eldest of three daughters of Mathilde Einstein (1865–1940) and Arthur Einstein (1865–1940), a Laupheim cigarette manufacturer. The Jewish family was seen as liberal and patriotic. There were family ties to the physicist Albert Einstein , the musicologist and music critic Alfred Einstein and the film producer Carl Laemmle .

Hertha Einstein was the first girl to attend the Laupheim Latin School , which later became the Carl-Laemmle-Gymnasium , which at the beginning of the 20th century led to considerable attention and initial resistance from the school authorities. In 1914 she passed her Abitur examination at a grammar school in Ulm. Instead of studying music originally planned by her, she decided to study medicine , which she completed in Freiburg and Heidelberg.

After completing her studies and obtaining her doctorate, Einstein took over the medical management of a maternity and infants' home in Berlin-Charlottenburg, which was supported by the Red Cross . In October of the same year she married the internist Erich Nathorff (July 13, 1889-1954). Erich Nathorff was a senior physician at the Moabit Hospital and head of tuberculosis care in Berlin's Tiergarten district . Heinz Nathorff, the couple's only son, was born on January 10, 1925. He died in 1988.

In addition to working in the clinic, the Nathorffs set up their own practice, which they ran until 1938. Both Nathorffs were dismissed from hospital service after 1933 as part of the “ Aryanization ” and, as Jews, saw themselves exposed to growing discrimination. In 1938, the National Socialist rulers withdrew their medical license as Jews , and Erich Nathorff was allowed to continue the joint practice as a “Jewish practitioner”. During the November pogroms of 1938 , the National Socialists deported him to Sachsenhausen concentration camp , from which he was released after five weeks of torture.

" ¹ / ₂ 10 evening. It rings twice in quick succession. I answer the door: 'Who's there?' - ,Open! Criminal Police! ' I open it trembling and I know what they want. 'Where's the doctor?' - 'Not at home', I say - 'What? The porter saw him coming home. ' - 'He was at home, but was called away again.' (...) But at that moment I hear the door to our apartment being unlocked. My husband is coming - he is coming, the unfortunate one, at the moment when I think he has been saved. And as he walks and stands, they lead him away. 'Thank your Lord God that your wife does not have a bullet in her head.' (...) I run after them into the street. 'Where to go with my husband, what about my husband?' They brutally push me back. (...) And I see them get into a car and drive off with my husband into the dark night. "

- Hertha Nathorff : Hertha Nathorff's diary.

Carl Laemmle advised the Nathorffs to emigrate from Germany and vouched for them, so that in August 1938 they applied for a visa for the USA . The couple first traveled to London in 1939, where they had already brought their son to safety months earlier on a Kindertransport . From London they traveled on to New York. In the meantime, the family was completely destitute, as the National Socialists robbed them of their wealth. Carl Laemmle had died in 1939, so the family could no longer expect any help from this side. In 1940 Hertha Nathorff wrote:

“This having to wait has brought everything we had, everything that we still had in terms of earthly goods. Our ship tickets have expired, our lift (removal goods) in Holland is lost because we now have to pay for the transport in foreign currency a second time, since the Nazi robbers did not transfer this money either. We are dependent on help and kindness from others. "

Since the degrees of the Nathorffs were not recognized in the USA, they could not work as doctors. The mood towards the German emigrants in the USA was also characterized by mistrust, and the Nathorffs received no support. Hertha Nathorff therefore worked as a nurse to secure the family income, while Erich Nathorff was preparing for American degrees. Her own qualification for re-entry into the medical profession was denied her because the income of her husband's medical practice was low and he denied her any support with additional studies. So she worked as an office assistant in his practice.

Although it was not easy for Hertha Nathorff to no longer be able to practice her profession as a doctor, she campaigned for the social concerns of German emigrants in New York. She worked as a psychotherapist and was a member of the Virchow Medical Society and the Association for the Advancement of Psychotherapy , and she was also a member of the Alfred Adler Mental Hygiene Clinic . Just as the family had started a new existence, Erich Nathorff died in 1954.

She published several works, including a volume of poetry, and received various awards such as the Federal Cross of Merit in 1967.

Hertha Nathorff lived in modest circumstances in New York until her death in 1993. In 1986 she donated an annual prize for the best Abitur at her former school in Laupheim in memory of her school days. However, Hertha Nathorff never visited Germany itself again.

Honors

In 1967 Hertha Nathorff was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for her social commitment in Germany and the USA . In 1995 the Berlin Medical Association endowed an annual award named after Hertha Nathorff for the best theses in health science courses at the Berlin School of Public Health and the Free University of Berlin .

Works

• Wolfgang Benz (ed.): The diary of Hertha Nathorff (= series of the quarterly books for contemporary history . Volume 54). Oldenbourg, Munich 1986.
• Hertha Nathorff's diary. Berlin - New York. Records 1933 to 1945. 3rd edition, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2010 ( My Life in Hitler's Germany ).
• He, I: song book e. Marriage. Suppan, Solingen 1982.

literature

• Wolfgang Benz:  Nathorff, Hertha. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , pp. 747 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Jutta Dick, Marina Sassenberg (ed.): Jewish women in the 19th and 20th centuries. Lexicon on life and work. Reinbek 1993, ISBN 3-499-16344-6 .
• Edda Ziegler: The burned female poets. Writers against National Socialism. Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2007.
• Wolfgang Benz: German Jews in the 20th Century: A History in Portraits. Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-62292-2 , therein: The lived misfortune of exile: Hertha Nathorff. Pp. 123-142.

Web links

Commons : Hertha Nathorff  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Hertha Nathorff in the catalog of the German National Library
• Righteous people of care: Hertha Nathorff
• Hertha Nathorff Prize from the Berlin Medical Association
• Biography at LeoBW
• Part of Hertha Nathorff's estate in the German Exile Archive of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hertha Nathorff: The diary of Hertha Nathorff.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Sabine Kittel: Women in the Holocaust - an overdue book? Review. In: querelles-net , 2001.
3. ↑ Carl-Laemmle-Gymnasium Laupheim: The price for the best Abitur, donated by Hertha Nathorff ( Memento of the original from February 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ The Hertha Nathorff Prize ( Memento of the original from July 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Website of the Berlin Medical Association, accessed on November 21, 2014.