Zenzl Hard

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Memorial plaque on the house, Binzstrasse 17, in Berlin-Pankow (2015)

Zenzl Mühsam also Creszentia Mühsam , born as Kreszentia Elfinger (* July 27, 1884 in Haslach near Au in der Hallertau ; † March 10, 1962 in East Berlin ), was involved in the battles for the Munich Soviet Republic on the side of her husband Erich Laborious .

Life

Gravestone at the Dahlem Forest Cemetery (2008)
Gravestone at the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery (2007)

Zenzl Mühsam was the fifth child of Holledauer innkeepers and hop farmers Creszentia and Augustin Elfinger.

On September 15, 1915, she married Erich Mühsam ; She married her son Siegfried, whose father she had never revealed in public. The marriage with Labor remained childless; she was a muse and an emancipated fighter at his side who campaigned for an amnesty for the council revolutionaries while he was in prison .

On two wedding days (1924 and 1933) Erich Mühsam sent her picture books from imprisonment with her own poems and pen drawings, which testify to Mühsams artistic talent also in the field of art.

After her husband was murdered in July 1934, she received help from Meta Kraus-Fessel, among others . Contrary to her husband's warning, she fled into exile via Prague to Moscow . She was able to save his estate and gave the writings to the Maxim Gorki Institute for International Literature. On April 23, 1936, she was arrested for the first time for “counterrevolutionary Trotskyist activity” and imprisoned in Moscow's Lubyanka . This was followed by changes to the charges, release under prohibition of residence for Moscow and Leningrad and a new arrest in November 1938 with a conviction under Article 58 of the RSFSR Criminal Code on September 11, 1939 for “belonging to a counterrevolutionary organization and for counterrevolutionary agitation” for eight years Labor camp. She was serving this sentence in the Potma camp in the Mordovian Republic . In November 1946 she was released and put on a train to Novosibirsk , completely destitute . In 1949 she was imprisoned again and exiled to Novosibirsk “forever”.

She was not released until 1954 and was allowed to travel to the GDR. By then she had spent almost 20 years in Soviet penal camps and exile . In 1959, on the occasion of her 75th birthday, she was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver.

Zenzl Mühsam died in 1962 at the age of 77. She received a grave of honor in the "Pergolenweg" grave complex of the Socialist Memorial at the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery . After the end of the GDR, her urn was transferred to Erich Mühsam's grave of honor in the Dahlem forest cemetery in autumn 1992 - prompted by rationalization measures by the cemetery administration and the Berlin Senate's view that “only the division of the city had prevented a common grave so far”.

In January 2020, a street in Munich was named after her.

Fonts (selection)

  • Zenzl Mühsam: A selection from your letters. Edited by Uschi Otten and Chris Hirte. Erich-Mühsam-Gesellschaft, Lübeck 1995, ISBN 3-931079-11-2
  • Erich Mühsams's ordeal. With a foreword by Werner Hirsch ; Mopr-Verlag: Zürich 1935

literature

  • Michaela Karl: Zenzl Mühsam: The indomitable widow. In: Bavarian Amazons - 12 portraits. Pustet, Regensburg 2004, ISBN 3-7917-1868-1 , pp. 96-115.
  • Uschi Otten: "To be able to cope with the days that come". On the life story of Kreszentia Mühsam. In: The Bear of Berlin. 2001 yearbook of the Association for the History of Berlin. Westkreuz-Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISSN  0522-0033 .
  • Uschi Otten: Survival for the work of Erich Mühsams. Zenzl Mühsam in the trap of exile. In: Simone Barck , Anneke de Rudder; Beate Schmeichel-Falkenberg (Ed.): Fates of the Century - Women in Soviet Exile. Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-931836-93-2 , pp. 128-141.
  • Reinhard Müller : Moscow human trap. Exile and Stalinist Persecution. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-930908-71-9 , pp. 241-286, 377-428.
  • Women around Erich Mühsam - Zenzl Mühsam and Franziska zu Reventlow. Sixth Erich Mühsam Conference in Malente, 12. – 14. May 1995. Edited by Jürgen-Wolfgang Goette. Erich-Mühsam-Gesellschaft, Lübeck 1995, ISBN 3-931079-13-9 .
  • Christoph Hamann: The Mühsams - History of a Family (=  Jewish Memoirs, Vol. 11). Hentrich & Hentrich Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-938485-00-0 .

reception

Web links

Commons : Zenzl Mühsam  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Meta Kraus-Fessel in the archive for the history of sociology in Austria at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
  2. ^ New Germany , August 13, 1959, p. 2
  3. ↑ https://www.muenchen.de/rathaus/Stadtverwaltung/Kommunalreferat/geodatenservice/strassennamen/2020/zenzl-muehsam-str..html
  4. ↑ Deutschlandfunk , January 27, 2015, [1]
personal data
SURNAME Difficult, Zenzl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Troublesome, Kreszentia (real name); Elfinger, Kreszentia (maiden name); Difficult, Zensl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Wife of the poet Erich Mühsam
DATE OF BIRTH July 27, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Haslach near Au in the Hallertau
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 1962
Place of death East Berlin