Klara Griefahn

Klara Griefahn (born September 19, 1897 in Budapest as Klara Hoffmann, † January 30, 1945 in Jena ) was a Jewish doctor who committed suicide in 1945 in order to avoid deportation by the Nazis .

Live and act

Klara Griefahn, daughter of a Jewish wine merchant, passed her Matura (Abitur) in Budapest in 1916 and began studying medicine. In 1917 she moved to Greifswald and continued her studies there. Her Jewish origin was not registered there; she was considered a Hungarian who would like to be trained as a doctor in Germany. Here she met her future husband Siegfried Griefahn. Both married in Budapest in 1920.

In 1922 the Griefahn family moved to Lobeda near Jena. Her husband Siegfried opened a doctor's practice here (initially at Markt 3, from 1924 to 1939 at Diakonatsgasse 5, and later at Schulstrasse 13). Klara Griefahn completed her studies in Jena and received her license to practice medicine on November 3, 1923 . She worked in her husband's practice, devoted herself particularly to health care in the puerperium and in infancy, and introduced the first free maternal consultations in Jena. The patients valued her motherly and selfless manner. In 1924 their son Sigurd was born, in 1928 their daughter Dörte.

In 1931 Klara Griefahn opened her own general medical practice in Jena, Goethestr. 6. As a precautionary measure, she resigned this practice in July 1933 in order to avoid being labeled as a “non-Aryan” doctor - she was considered a “2nd degree hybrid”. Occasionally she then worked in her husband's practice.

Until 1943, Klara Griefahn was able to hide the fact that she was Jewish within the meaning of the Nazi race laws . In 1943, however, she was denounced by a close friend. After numerous interrogations by the Gestapo, she had to admit that she was Jewish. She tried to take her own life shortly afterwards, but was saved. Her license to practice medicine was revoked and she had to use the additional first name Sara. At the same time, their children were classified as "first degree mixed race", which resulted in significant repression. Her daughter was expelled from the Lyceum and her son discharged from the Air Force. At first she was spared any worse consequences because her husband Siegfried refused to part with her. In this dangerous situation, he was protected by his patients, who took his side.

From then on, Klara Griefahn lived in constant fear of a possible deportation. Although she had many sympathizers in the village of Lobeda and used her medical knowledge to illegally help many neighbors, her mental situation worsened. On January 29, 1945, Klara Griefahn received the deportation notice to Theresienstadt . Then she passed away on the night of January 30th to 31st, 1945 due to an overdose of morphine .

The farewell letter contains the quote that has become known: ... I'd rather be dead than a slave . What was also tragic about their decision was that all Jena Jews who were transported on the last deportation train on January 31, 1945 survived the war and returned to Jena. This suicide terrified the citizens of Lobeda. The cemetery is said to have been full of people on the day of her funeral.

Honors

Stumbling block for Klara Griefahn

As early as November 12, 1945, Schulstrasse in Lobeda, where she had lived, was renamed Klara-Griefahn-Strasse . After the political change in 1989, further honors followed: Since November 19, 2002, Ward 3 of the Jena Women's Clinic has been named Klara Griefahn . On November 12, 2005, exactly 60 years after Schulstrasse was renamed, an information board about Klara Griefahn was put up during a memorial hour.

On August 17, 2009, a “ stumbling block ” by the artist Gunter Demnig from Cologne was set in front of her former home, and Klara Griefahn has been commemorated there on November 9th every year.

On March 25, 2015, Jena's city council unanimously included her grave in Lobeda as a protected grave site in the city's honorary grave charter.

literature

• Thomas Grieser: Jewish Doctors in Thuringia during National Socialism (1933–1945). Dissertation, Friedrich Schiller University Jena 2003.
• Gisela Horn: Klara Griefahn. In: Adaptation - Persecution - Resistance. Women in Jena 1933–1945. Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-940265-07-4 .
• Eberhart Schulz: Persecution and extermination: racial mania and anti-Semitism in Jena 1933 to 1945. Städtische Museen Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-930128-83-9 . (About Klara Griefahn p. 43 and 103f.)
• Gisela Horn, Birgitt Hellmann: Design and Reality: Women in Jena 1900 to 1933. Hain Verlag, Jena 2001, ISBN 978-3-89807-022-5 . (About Klara Griefahn p. 388f.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Griefahn, Klara (née Hoffmann) ( Memento of the original from January 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Biography in the Biography Collection Documentation: Doctors in the Empire of the Institute for the History of Medicine at the Free University of Berlin . 
2. ↑ Christian Fleck, Volker Hesse, Dr. Günther Wagner: Pioneer of modern medicine: Jena doctors from three centuries: From Loder and Hufeland to Rössle and Brednow. Publishing house Dr. Bussert & Stadeler, Jena / Quedlinburg 2004, ISBN 3-932906-43-8 , p. 347.
3. ^ Photo of the memorial plaque , accessed on January 9, 2014.
4. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​in Jena - Dr. Klara Griefahn, b. Hoffmann ( Memento of the original from January 8, 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. , Information page on the website of the city of Jena, accessed on January 9, 2014.