Lili Pollatz

Lili Engelsmann as a student in Leipzig, 1909

Lili Louise Pollatz , née Lily Engelsmann , (born November 8, 1883 in Leipzig ; † March 1, 1946 in Haarlem , Netherlands ) was a German reform pedagogue , translator and member of the German annual meeting of Quakers .

Family and work

Lily (she personally always used the spelling Lili) Engelsmann, later married to Pollatz, came from a family of merchants on his father's side who had settled in Augsburg with a cheese trade in the middle of the 19th century and became wealthy. Her father Karl Johann Engelsmann (June 22, 1853 - December 6, 1928) worked as the technical director of a worsted spinning mill. On April 5, 1881, he married Laura Knode (November 4, 1862 - October 23, 1927), with whom he had five children. The eldest son was born in Fourmies (a wool spinning center in northern France), Lili, another her subsequent brother and two younger sisters in Leipzig, where an important textile industry had settled in the last third of the 19th century.

The General German Women's Association (ADF) was founded in Leipzig in 1865 , which marked the organizational beginning of the bourgeois women's movement. In 1894 the ADF set up “Realgymnasialkurs für Mädchen” in Leipzig, which gave girls and young women the opportunity to take the Abitur - the prerequisite for women who were previously tolerated at German universities at best as guest students, a real opportunity for a full-fledged university course opened up. It then took another ten years until the Saxon Ministry of Education and Culture changed the enrollment regulations by decree of April 10, 1906 so that women could now also enroll regularly. But the graduates of these courses, including Lili Engelsmann, were able to make use of this new option immediately: Together with 29 other students, Lili Engelsmann enrolled at the University of Leipzig in April 1906 to study English and German as a teacher and history one. After a medical student who had enrolled two days before her, she was the first regular student at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Leipzig (matriculation date April 21, 1906). Only four weeks after their matriculation, on May 5, 1906, the thirty Leipzig students joined together in the “Association of matriculated female students” (there were a total of 4,147 students in Leipzig in the 1906 summer semester, so the female students only made up 0.7% of the total student body). Lili Engelsmann was a founding member of the association and was its secretary in October 1910 until completing her studies, which had meanwhile also taken her to London and Oxford. After her death, her future husband Manfred Pollatz wrote about his wife that she “campaigned for the rights of young women in education and training with energy and enthusiasm”, “as did Helene Lange , Alice Salomon and Gertrud Bäumer as pioneers. ”But she felt the“ hard intellectual struggle with tradition and prejudice ”more as a duty than as humanly satisfying. It was different with social work, especially with the student training courses for workers, in which she participated and in which she also met Manfred Pollatz. The couple married on December 27, 1915 in Dresden and had four children together in the following years.

Before the marriage, Lili Engelsmann had taught - at times together with Manfred Pollatz - at the Old Town Higher School for Girls and Women in Dresden . After their marriage, both quit public schooling in order to found their own school in Klotzsche (then a health resort), where they wanted to implement their educational reform ideas, the work school principle and community education. Originally, in addition to a secondary school for boys and girls, they also planned to set up women's school courses in which young girls who already had a certain level of previous education could receive further training. Lili Pollatz, who ran the school together with her husband, was supposed to take over these courses. However, these were only offered once in April 1916. Either the need for such courses in Klotzsche was not great enough or the rapidly developing Pollatzsche forest and day school tied up all the strength of the couple. Because in this school, which originally started with only six students from grade 5 (according to today's count), not only were more than a hundred students taught at the same time during the war, but in order to implement the educational concept seamlessly from the beginning, contrary to the original plan, pupils in elementary classes were also accepted, i.e. immediately after school enrollment. By the way, the school was not only financed by the tuition fees, which were common at the time, but also with capital that came not only from Manfred Pollatz's family, but also from the Engelsmann family. Manfred Pollatz attested Lili in the life picture he wrote after her untimely death that she was able to develop all her educational and housewife qualities in their joint school “with the most joyful devotion, albeit under the greatest physical strain from this double work and the material difficulties.” At the same time, he referred to the general difficult supply situation for the population during the First World War as well as to the additional stress on Lili from pregnancies and small children (Lili Pollatz had given birth to two daughters during the war and at the end of the war was pregnant with her only son, another Daughter was born after the war).

After the pollatz forest school had to close due to the reorganization of the school system in the Weimar Republic , Lili Pollatz could no longer find an educational activity outside the home that was appropriate for her. Her husband has been teaching at the state school in Dresden , a boarding school for boys , since 1921 . In 1930 Manfred Pollatz tried in vain to have his eldest daughter accepted as an external student at this school. It was all the less conceivable that his wife would have been able to teach at this school, although this would have been obvious, since the school was also committed to the work school concept and had also been located in Klotzsche since 1927. Until she emigrated to the Netherlands in 1934, Lili Pollatz limited herself to organizing her family, her involvement in the Society of Friends , the Quakers, of which she had been a member since 1929, and left herself particularly during the times of high unemployment at the end of the Weimar Republic to revive her social engagement in worker education courses where she taught English. She also looked after the families of prisoners after the National Socialists “came to power”.

Emigration and engagement for the Quakers and for Jewish children

The White Pen: First edition after the start of the Second World War in 1939

After her husband resigned from the state school for political reasons in July 1933 and was imprisoned for a week in August 1933, the family decided to emigrate to the Netherlands and established a refuge for Jews in Haarlem, the Netherlands, in accordance with Nuremberg Laws and so-called "half-Jewish" children, which was also a home school. Lili Pollatz taught there regularly again. For organizational reasons, the 15 or so children who had found refuge in the Pollatzschen house were divided into two age groups (over and under 13 years of age). Lili Pollatz taught her in English, mathematics and religion and Manfred Pollatz in German, history and geography. Dutch teachers were responsible for drawing, music, gymnastics and Dutch language lessons. In general, particular emphasis was placed on language acquisition, and Lili's English lessons were also attended by refugees who were preparing for emigration in the Netherlands (mostly to the USA).

The Pollatz couple continued their commitment to and in the Society of Friends (Quakers) during their emigration. In 1931 Lili and Manfred Pollatz had suggested the publication of their own Quaker youth magazine, "The White Feather", which they then continued to publish monthly from Haarlem and for which Lili Pollatz in particular solicited contributions, obtained permission to print, translated, summarized or summarized foreign-language texts retold and led the extensive correspondence required for this (the magazine was sent to 23 countries). After the previous editor Wilhelm (William) Hubben had emigrated to the USA in 1933, Lili and Manfred Pollatz also took over the editing of the "Quaker", in which Lili published translations and reports, in particular on the activities of the Quakers in the USA and Great Britain. In 1940, “The White Feather” and the members' magazine “Der Quäker” had to be discontinued. From the Netherlands, both Manfred and Lili Pollatz continued to take part in the working committee meetings of the German Quakers in Bad Pyrmont . In 1937 alone, the couple traveled to Germany a total of seven times. At the same time, Lili Pollatz still found time to carry out the translation work she had already begun in Germany with the transmission of John Woolman's “A Plea for the Poor” (published 1931) with the publication of a summary of the thoughts laid down in Richard Gregg's 1934 book “About the working force of Nonviolence ”. In this way, disguised as a book review, Lili Pollatz helped the non-violence attitude, which has been discussed again and again within the Quakers since the 1920s, to a wider public: "Only those who have the courage to fight and still refrain from it are true peace fighters," she wrote in this. Her translation of William Axling's “Kagawa”, which appeared in 1939 and had several editions, was also very successful.

In addition, Lili Pollatz was busy organizing the large household, which after the occupation of the Netherlands by Germany also included babies and toddlers from deported Dutch Jews. Especially when Manfred's pension was not paid from Germany since 1938, the financial and material provision of the children entrusted to her was a daily logistical and human challenge that Lili and Manfred Pollatz only had with the support of their biological children and the active help of all students at the Mastered the basis of as much self-sufficiency as possible (self-cultivation of fruit and vegetables). The combination of educational and housewife activities, which was more than just coexistence, but was mutually dependent, runs through Lili Pollatz's entire (professional) life. In one of his résumés, Manfred Pollatz described his wife as the “soul of our relief work over the years”.

After Manfred Pollatz was arrested and taken to a concentration camp and her son Karl-Heinz, who had studied medicine to save his father and the Jewish children who were still in the house, reported himself to the front as a doctor, everyday life was like that Family overshadowed by the fear of being discovered and also deported. After Manfred's return from the Dachau concentration camp at the beginning of October 1944, worries about his son Lili and Manfred's life determined who would not return from the war. At this point in time, Lili Pollatz had been suffering from breast cancer for several years, which was initially successfully operated on. But the lack of treatment options, the poor diet and the constant fear had caused the disease to break out again. Lili Pollatz died on March 1, 1946. In her memory, Jewish friends planted a tree for her in a memorial grove in Jerusalem as part of the reforestation program of the Jewish National Fund in Palestine / Israel.

Works (selection)

• John Woolman: For the poor! A call for justice . A Quaker message from social duty (translated and introduced by Lili and Manfred Pollatz), Berlin-Lübars 1931.
• Lili Pollatz: The working force of non-violence (after Richard Gregg), o. O. o. J. [Ansbach 1936].
• William Axling: Kagawa (translated by Manfred and Lili Pollatz), 1st edition, Bad Pyrmont 1939; 2nd edition Bad Pyrmont 1946.

Honors

• In 2013 Manfred and Lili Pollatz were honored by the State of Israel as Righteous Among the Nations .

• On the initiative of Isobel Wijnberg, a memorial plaque was put up in front of the Pollatz family's house in Haarlem, Westerhoutpark 14, on May 4, 2014 to commemorate their commitment to the rescue of Jewish children, their willingness to make sacrifices and their courage.

literature

• Claus Bernet , Cordula Tollmien : Lili and Manfred Pollatz, in: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, Volume XXXIII . Traugott Bautz GmbH, Nordhausen 2012, p. Columns 1046-1062 .
• Isobel Wijnberg, Anja Hollaender: He never wakes up a child ... De quakers Lili en Manfred Pollatz, now School en kindertehus in Haarlem 1934–1945 . AMB, Diemen 2014, ISBN 978-90-79700-67-7 .
• Cordula Tollmien: "A nightmare is behind us and maybe it's not even over yet" - Lili Pollatz from the Netherlands to her American Quaker friends . In: Irene Below, Inge Hansen-Schaberg , Maria Kublitz Kramer (eds.): The end of exile? Letters from women after 1945 . text and criticism, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-86916-373-4 , p. 45-58 .
• Cordula Tollmien: "Our children are raised in hatred of England" - two teachers from Dresden against the decreed enemy propaganda . In: Dresden in the First World War, Dresdner Hefte 119 . 2014, ISBN 978-3-944019-08-6 , pp. 48-58 .

Web links

• Manfred Pollatz and Lili Engelsmann on tollmien.com
• Claus Bernet: Lili Pollatz (1883-1946) . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ List on yadvashem.org, accessed on January 20, 2015 (PDF).
2. ↑ Report on the unveiling of the memorial plaque ( memento of the original dated February 9, 2015 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. , accessed February 9, 2015.