Lieselotte Hachmann
Lieselotte Hachmann (born June 27, 1919 in Schönebeck (Elbe) ; † May 1, 1989 in Kaltenkirchen ) was the founder of the German-Indian Society (DIG) in 1953 and its first president.
Life until 1945
Lieselotte Hachmann grew up as the eldest daughter of Ella and Ewald Bernhardt in Schönebeck on the Elbe. The father died when she was twelve years old. After attending the girls' school in Schönebeck for four years, she switched to the town's high school. At the age of 19 she decided to study in Edinburgh . In the Cosmopolitan Club of the University of Edinburgh she made the acquaintance of the budding botanist Debabrata Chatterjee (1911-1960), the son of a respected Brahmin family from Calcutta . Through him and many of his Indian friends and fellow Indian students, she began to be interested not only in the country, Indian history , Indian culture and the people, but also a feeling of the many worries, needs and problems of studying far away from home Indian to get.
On September 29, 1938, shortly before the outbreak of World War II , she had to leave Scotland in a hurry. Back in Germany, she accepted a job as a secretary at Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke Dessau , which had a branch in Schönebeck. There she met her future husband Friedrich Hans Hachmann. They married on June 28, 1941. This marriage resulted in four daughters.
In August 1945, Lieselotte Hachmann fled with her two children to her cousin in the Lüneburg Heath before the Russian occupation troops marched on. On April 5, 1950, she opened a doll clinic there .
Working for the Indo-German Society
Founding of the association and presidency
In 1953 Lieselotte Hachmann began correspondence with Debabrata Chatterjee, the friend from her Scottish student days. Because of this, she often received suggestions for literature in which she became increasingly interested. As a result, she came into frequent contact with Indian students in Hamburg. On October 25, 1954, she finally founded the Indo-German Society , which, according to the extract from the register of associations of the Hamburg Senate, identifies her as President of the DIG on October 25, 1954. On October 6, 1958, the German-Indian Society was renamed the German-Indian Cultural Society in Hamburg eV. The association was dissolved on November 20, 1964 by resolution of the general meeting on September 30, 1964.
On 12./13. May 1956 the Indo-German Society in Hamburg eV paid homage to the city of Lüneburg on its 1,000th anniversary. The regional newspaper for the Lüneburger Heide (hereinafter referred to as the Lüneburger Zeitung ) reported on it. Lord Mayor Gravenhorst and City Director Dr. Bötcher received u. a. the cultural attaché of the Indian embassy, Majumdar, the Hamburg consul, B. Sitaraman, the Indologists from the Hamburg University, Professor Alsdorf and the president of the DIG, Lieselotte Hachmann.
The Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited Germany on July 16, 1956 with his daughter Indira Gandhi and his grandchildren Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi . Initially, Nehru was a guest of Federal President Theodor Heuss and Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in Bonn . He then visited the city of Hamburg, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate by both the medical and law faculties of the University of Hamburg . During this visit Lieselotte Hachmann, as President of the Indo-German Society, had the opportunity to have a longer conversation with Nehru.
Trip to India
On August 27, 1956, she set out on a trip to India. She embarked on this journey alone, which according to the moral standards of the time was a risk in itself. Reaching her destination by train in 18 days, she was received with a very large reception by the German Consul General Wilhelm von Pochhammer . The Indian newspapers reported about it. She later drove from Bombay to Calcutta. Once there, she was greeted by the head of India's oldest botanical garden (the Indian Botanical Gardens ) Debabrata Chatterjee. In October 1956 the two of them went on a trip through the Himalayas that took them to Sikkim .
Before leaving Calcutta, she paid a visit to Shantiniketan and the Visva-Bharati University founded by the first Indian Nobel Prize winner in literature, Rabindranath Thakur (Tagore) .
At the end of November 1956 she traveled, again by rail, first to Madras , then on to Kerala and finally to Delhi . In Delhi on January 26, 1957, she received an invitation from the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany, Ernst Wilhelm Meyer , to take part in the Republic Day parade , and from the Indian President, Rajendra Prasad, the invitation to come to the Rashtrapati Bhavan , the presidential palace. There she met the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru again and was personally introduced to the Indian President Prasad.
Before she returned to Calcutta in early March 1957, she had also toured Punjab and visited the cities of Amritsar , Kanpur , Allahabad and Benares . When, after staying in Calcutta for several weeks, she returned by train to Bombay to board the ship to Germany, not without stopping at other places of cultural and historical interest such as Ajanta and Ellora , she had a journey of over 12,000 kilometers brought behind.
Further life
After returning home from their long trip to India, the Hachmann family moved from Lüneburger- to Nordheide and opened a toy store in Tostedt .
Already seriously ill, after the death of her husband Hans Hachmann (1902–1985), she lived with one of her daughters in Schleswig-Holstein from 1988 onwards.
Debabrata Chatterjee's claim that she was “more Indian than Indian women” was confirmed when, after her death, she was cremated in her most beautiful sari, the typical garment of an Indian woman, and buried in the Baltic Sea.
literature
- Dietlinde Hachmann: My desired inheritance. A biographical love travel documentary about the founder of the Indo-German Society in Hamburg eV 2 volumes. Acabus-Verlag, Hamburg 2010.
- Volume 1: Between two worlds. ISBN 978-3-941404-12-0 ;
- Volume 2: In the land of my dreams. ISBN 978-3-941404-72-4 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Lieselotte Hachmann in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ^ Register of associations of the State Archives of the City of Hamburg. Vol. 95, pp. 138 ff., No. 5511.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hachmann, Lieselotte |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German founder of the German-Indian Society in Hamburg eV |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 27, 1919 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Schönebeck (Elbe) |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 1, 1989 |
| Place of death | Kaltenkirchen |