Hilde Barz

Hilde Barz, colored pencil drawing by Mathias Barz 1937

Brunhilde Barz , née Brunhilde Stein (born December 28, 1896 , † 1965 in Düsseldorf ) was a German actress . She was married to the painter Mathias Barz .

Life

Hilde was the daughter of Josef Stein and Helene, née Kaufmann. In 1915/16 she attended the Hochschule für Bühnenkunst founded by Louise Dumont and Gustav Lindemann and the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf . In 1924, Hilde Stein sat as a model for the painter Otto Dix for his painting “Self-Portrait with Muse” . Her friend, the painter Mathias Barz, established contact with Dix. Both had known each other since childhood. They married in 1929 and took an apartment at Apollinarisstrasse 17 in the working-class district of Oberbilk .

As a Jew, Hilde Barz was banned from performing in 1935. In 1936 she and her husband were temporarily arrested by the Gestapo . On August 23, 1942, her mother was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp . Since Hilde lived in a so-called " mixed marriage ", she was initially spared. When the Gestapo asked Hilde Barz in September 1944 to show up at the Düsseldorf- Derendorf slaughterhouse and cattle yard , the couple went into hiding and fled to the Eifel. At first they found refuge in the house of their painter friend Otto Pankok and his wife Hulda in Pesch near Münstereifel . When after two months they were no longer safe there, Otto Pankok passed them on to the Catholic pastor Joseph Emonds . In his rectory in Kirchheim they were hiding in the attic. The pastor was supported by his housekeeper Anna Schürkes .

Shortly before the end of the war, a small staff of the Waffen SS was quartered in two rooms in the rectory , while the Barz couple hid in the attic. The pastor provided them with the remains of the SS rations. When it became too dangerous here, Pastor Emonds smuggled her on to Susi Harmonis in Cologne-Ehrenfeld, where they stayed for a few weeks. Eventually the couple returned to Düsseldorf at the end of 1944, where they found help from the Libotte family and Otto and Alice Himmelreich. The latter were caretakers in the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf , where the Barz couple could hide until the end of the war. After the war, the couple stayed in Düsseldorf.

Place of remembrance of the old slaughterhouse

In February 2016, the old slaughterhouse was opened on the campus of the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences , the former deportation site of the Slaughterhouse and Viehhof Düsseldorf . The memorial also commemorates the couple and their rescuers in text and images.

literature

• Hans-Dieter Arntz : persecution of Jews and help to escape in the German-Belgian border area . Kümpel, Euskirchen 1990, ISBN 3-9800787-6-0 , 810 pages
• Otto Barth: Otto Dix and the Düsseldorf artist scene 1920–1925 , Düsseldorf 1983

Web links

• Expressionist Otto Pankok saves his painter friend Mathias Barz and his Jewish wife
• Hilde and Mathias Barz
• The hiding place in the attic