Lagi from Ballestrem

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So'oa'emalelagi "Lagi" Countess von Ballestrem (born Solf ; born August 31, 1909 in Vailima , Samoa , † September 14, 1955 in Bonn ) belonged to the resistance against National Socialism . Together with her mother Hanna Solf , she was significantly involved in the Solf circle .

Life

"Lagi" Solf was born in 1909 as the first child of Hanna and Wilhelm Solf , the governor of the German colony German Samoa , near Apia on the Samoan island of Upolu . She got her Samoan name because of her parents' attachment to the place where Lagis was born. Her name So'oa'emalelagi was difficult to pronounce for many non- Samoans , so it was shortened to “Lagi” as a nickname.

When Adolf Hitler came to power, she lived in Shanghai with her first husband, engineer Wolfgang Mohr . Since she had communicated openly with Jews there since her arrival in the 1920s or offered quarters to Jewish Germans who had emigrated from her homeland, she was avoided by the German minority in Shanghai. She maintained a lively correspondence with her parents, with Walter Simons and Hans von Seeckt , for which she used a code that fell into the hands of the Secret State Police (Gestapo) in 1943 .

In 1938 she returned to Berlin from China. On arrival she was immediately taken for interrogation because "the high authority had reported devastatingly on her political activities abroad." After she was let go again, she tried to help the gynecologist and writer Ferdinand Mainzer to escape to London . In 1940 she had to face another interrogation at the headquarters of the Gestapo, to which she appeared with two filled market bags in order to avoid the Hitler salute even at the headquarters of the National Socialist secret service . On November 25, 1940 she married the Silesian nobleman Hubert Graf von Ballestrem (1910–1995), who had been an opponent of National Socialism since his student days and a friend of Nikolaus Christoph von Halems .

In Berlin, Countess Lagi Ballestrem tried "to go to the poor Jewish ladies who were hidden in some small apartment at the time, to visit them and bring them something," said Hanna Solf about her daughter.

On March 15, 1944, she was brought from Munich , where she and her mother had tried to escape the hail of bombs in the capital, to the Ravensbrück concentration camp . After numerous interrogations, to which they had been driven to Berlin every time, the indictment against the members of the Solf circle was of high treason , the degradation of military strength , “favoring the enemy” and defeatism . On October 18, 1944, she was taken to the Moabit prison on remand prison. There she waited for her court hearing, which however never took place because of a heavy bombing raid on Berlin. Her husband, who had been sent on home holiday from the Eastern Front for Christmas in December 1944, could only visit her for 15 minutes.

Finally, Lagi Countess von Ballestrem was released from custody on April 23, 1945, disfigured by hunger edema and badly mentally damaged.

She died childless in Bonn at the age of 47 , just one year after her mother. Her old age was marked by sadness :

“I don't want to think about the past because it has lost its meaning. The world has learned nothing from it - neither the butchers, nor the victims, nor the spectators. Our time is like a dance of death whose uncanny rhythm few understand. Everyone whirls around, confused, without seeing the abyss. "

literature

  • Tricia Jenkins: Ballestrem-Solf, Countess Lagi (approx. 1919–1955). In: Bernard A. Cook (Ed.): Women and War. A Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara CA et al. 2006, ISBN 1-85109-770-8 , p. 52 .
  • Martha Schad : Women against Hitler. Forgotten resistance fighters under National Socialism. Herbig, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-7766-2648-3 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ballestrem, Lagi of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ballestrem, Lagi Countess of; Solf, Lagi (maiden name); Ballestrem, So'oa'emalelagi Countess of
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter, member of the Solf circle and daughter of Hanna Solf
DATE OF BIRTH August 31, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Vailima , Upolu , Samoa
DATE OF DEATH September 14, 1955
Place of death Bonn , Federal Republic of Germany