Hilde Marchwitza

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Hilde Marchwitza , née Stern, divorced Schottlaender, (born April 7, 1900 in Breslau , † September 8, 1961 in Berlin ) was a German translator and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Live and act

Hilde Marchwitza was the daughter of the inventor of the first intelligence quotient, William Stern , and his wife Clara Stern . She had two younger siblings named Günther and Eva (1904–1992). In 1916 the family moved to Hamburg , where William Stern received a professorship. Hilde Stern graduated from high school in the Hanseatic city. Then she went to a social women's school under the direction of Gertrud Bäumer . In 1921 she got a job at the Hamburg employment office, for which she initially worked as an intern and later as a career advisor.

After marrying Rudolf Schottlaender in September 1922, Hilde Schottlaender moved to Berlin with her husband . Here she worked for some time as a secretary for Gertrud Bäumer and had two children: Michael (* 1924 - † 1989) and Hanna, * 1925, married Obermann. The marriage with Rudolf Schottlaender lasted until December 1926, the divorce took place in 1927. Hilde Schottlaender went to Hamburg with the children and worked there again for the employment office. In July 1933, she was dismissed under the Law to Restore the Civil Service . She then worked for the Jewish career advice center in Hamburg.

Schottlaender, which was politically and socially active, joined a resistance group around Hans Westermann . She made her apartment available to the group as a meeting point for discussions and studying foreign press. Work in the resistance ended with the arrest of leading people in March 1935, including Hilde Schottlaender. The Hanseatic Higher Regional Court imposed a two-year prison sentence on her in October 1935 for allegedly "preparing for a treasonous enterprise". Schottlaender spent his imprisonment in the Lübeck-Lauerhof women's prison .

Grave of Hilde and Hans Marchwitza in the Friedrichsfelde central cemetery in Berlin

After she had served her sentence, Schottlaender was able to flee the German Reich. In August 1937 she traveled to the USA via Holland, where her children were staying (son Michael attended the Quaker School in Eerde ). In New York she worked from 1937 to 1939 as an editorial secretary and employee for the German-language weekly newspaper Deutsches Volksecho . From 1939 to 1942 she took on office work and was a social worker for several aid organizations for Jewish emigrants. Accompanying this she wrote several articles on socio-political issues from 1939 to 1941, which appeared in the column “Problems of everyday life” in the newspaper Aufbau . From 1939 to 1946 she wrote for the women’s page of German-American and took part in the editorial work of the anti-fascist newspaper.

Hilde Schottlaender had known Hans Marchwitza since 1942 . Like her, the communist writer lived in the USA as an emigrant from the German Reich. They married in 1945 and returned after the end of World War II in 1946. The couple initially lived in Stuttgart , moved to Potsdam in 1947 and on to Prague in 1950, where Hans Marchwitza took on a position as cultural attaché of the GDR in Prague . Hilde Marchwitza headed the press office of the diplomatic mission and supported her husband in his work as a writer. In the GDR she translated several works , especially for Dietz Verlag . This included Culture in a Changing World: A Marxist Study (1949) by VJ Jerome and India Today (1951) by Rajani Palme Dutt .

Hilde Marchwitza's urn was buried in the “Pergolenweg” grave complex of the Socialist Memorial at the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in Berlin-Lichtenberg .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Raimund Bahr: Günther Anders. Living and thinking in the word. , Edition Art Science, Vienna and St. Wolfgang, 2010, ISBN 978-3-902157-71-3 , available as a Google book: Michael Schottlaender
personal data
SURNAME Marchwitza, Hilde
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stern, Hilde; Scott, Hilde (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German translator and resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH September 8, 1961
Place of death Berlin