Lilli Jahn

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Lilli Jahn , b. Schlüchterer (born March 5, 1900 in Cologne , † presumably June 19, 1944 in Auschwitz-Birkenau ) was a German doctor of Jewish faith and a victim of National Socialism. Your letters are considered an important literary testimony.

Life

childhood and education

Lilli Jahn was born as Lilli Schlüchterer, daughter of the wealthy businessman Josef Schlüchterer in the liberal, assimilated Jewish milieu of the city of Cologne. For her time, she received a very advanced for a girl Education: In 1919 she graduated from the Empress Augusta school their high school and then studied in Würzburg , Halle (Saale) , Freiburg and Cologne medicine . Her sister Elsa, who was one year younger than her, studied chemistry . In 1924 Lilli successfully completed her studies in Cologne with the state examination and received her doctorate with the hematological topic on the total sulfur content of the blood, especially the red blood cells . Your examiners were u. a. the paediatricians Ferdinand Siegert and Erwin Thomas and the dermatologist Ferdinand Zinsser . After passing the exam, she initially worked as a practice substitute and as a trainee and from 1925 as an assistant doctor in the Israelite Asylum for the sick and the elderly in Cologne.

Marriage and starting a family in Immenhausen

She gave up her plan to train as a pediatrician and to settle in Halle when she met Ernst Jahn , a Protestant doctor of the same age, and married him in 1926, despite her parents' objections. The unlikely couple - Ernst Jahn was considered brooding and hesitant, Lilli Schlüchterer as gripping and cheerful - moved to Immenhausen in northern Hesse , where they opened a joint family doctor's practice . The five children together, Gerhard , Ilse, Johanna, Eva and Dorothea, were baptized and brought up as Protestants . In the northern Hessian region, the Jahns frequented the local dignitaries . The Jewish faith of the popular family doctor, who regularly visited the synagogue in Kassel , was initially not an issue.

Life under the Nazi terror

This changed after the seizure of power by the National Socialists and the replacement of the SPD - mayor by a Nazi -member initially insidious and certainly not supported by the majority population of the traditional social democratic elected Immenhäusener. Lilli Jahn remained relatively protected until 1943 because she lived in a so-called “privileged mixed marriage ”. However, Lilli Jahn was no longer allowed to work as a doctor. She was increasingly cut in the place and lived largely isolated. Only through numerous letters that she wrote to friends and relatives did she remain connected to the outside world. Soon Lilli Jahn was the only Jewish woman in Immenhausen. Lilli's sister Elsa and her mother Paula - their father had died in 1932 - were able to emigrate to England in good time .

Divorce and remarriage of the husband

The situation changed dramatically when Ernst Jahn fell in love with a young, non-Jewish doctor who had a child in his house in 1942. Lilli Jahn even assisted her husband with the delivery . In the same year, against the advice of friends, she agreed to the divorce Jahn had wanted . In November 1942 Ernst Jahn married his lover, who moved to Kassel with their child, while he stayed with his "old" family in Immenhausen.

Expulsion from Immenhausen

In July 1943, at the instigation of the deputy local group leader of the NSDAP and Immenhausen mayor Karl Groß , Lilli Jahn was driven out of the town and had to move into a rented apartment in Kassel, which was hard hit by the Allied bombings . The 15-year-old son Gerhard Jahn was at the time in the air defense , the father was drafted into a military hospital . The new Mrs. Jahn now lived in the family house with her child.

Imprisonment in Breitenau

At the end of August 1943, Lilli Jahn was denounced - she had left out the " Sara " required for all Jewish women in her name on the doorbell, but left the doctorate , which was forbidden for Jews . She was arrested by the Gestapo , interrogated and, for violating the ordinance of August 17, 1938 , transferred to the Breitenau labor education camp near Guxhagen south of Kassel under circumstances that were never fully clarified . The underage children were largely left to fend for themselves. Lilli Jahn was initially employed as a forced laborer in the Spangenberg branch of the B. Braun Melsungen pharmaceutical factory . Only once did the daughter Ilse manage to visit her mother, who was already considerably weakened, while she was in camp. Whether Ernst Jahn tried to save the life of his former wife by petitioning the competent Gestapo in Kassel or the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin has not yet been clarified. Rescue attempts by friends of the Confessing Church in Kassel were unsuccessful.

Deportation to Auschwitz and murder

In March 1944, Lilli Jahn was deported to Auschwitz via Dresden in a collective transport . Before that, she managed to smuggle her children's letters out of Breitenau: They ended up in the hands of her son, who kept them without his sisters' knowledge until his death in 1998. Lilli Jahn's last surviving letter from Auschwitz, dated March 6, 1944, was written by an unknown hand, only the signature is hers. In September 1944, the children in Immenhausen received news of their mother's death.

Commemoration

Grave in the Jewish cemetery Bocklemünd (hallway 1)
Stumbling block for Lilli Jahn Bismarckstrasse 29 in Cologne

In 1962 Gerhard Jahn planted two trees in honor of his mother in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem . Lilli's great cousin and close friend Lotte Paepcke survived the Nazi era, became a writer and remembered Lilli in her autobiography Under a Strange Star in 1952 .

Historians from the University of Kassel cultivate the memory of the Jewish doctor. A showcase with letters and memorabilia to Lilli Jahn has stood in today's Breitenau memorial since 1992. A street in Immenhausen was named after her in 1995 and the local elementary school in 1999. In 2011, the square in front of the former synagogue in Guxhagen was named after Lilli Jahn. In the Kassel district of Vorderer Westen , the square in front of the Advent Church was renamed Dr.-Lilli-Jahn-Platz. The inclusion of a doctorate in a street or place name is not common in Kassel. An exception was made here because the mention of her doctorate on the doorbell contributed to the arrest of Lilli Jahn. In the Jewish cemetery in Cologne-Bocklemünd , an inscription on the tombstone of her father Josef Schlüchterer commemorates Lilli Jahn.

The letters

After the death of their son and later Minister of Justice of the Federal Republic of Germany Gerhard Jahn in 1998 in Marburg , his heirs found boxes and envelopes with around 250 letters from Lilli Jahn's children to their mother. They came into the custody of the historian and mirror - editor Martin Doerry , a son of Lilli Jahns daughter Ilse.

The grandson edited a selection of the letters to his grandmother, together with letters from Lilli Jahn from the property of her daughters, Lilli's letters to her future husband Ernst Jahn as well as other documents and photos. With commentary and additional texts, these testimonies were published in 2002 under the title My wounded heart . The book became a huge hit with both audiences and critics. Well-known writers such as Eva Menasse , Martin Walser and Eva Rühmkorf certify that Lilli Jahn's letters are of high literary and documentary rank and put them on a par with Anne Frank's diary and Victor Klemperer's notes . In 2003 translations into Spanish , Catalan , Dutch , Danish , Italian , Finnish , in 2004 into English , Polish , Norwegian , French , Swedish , Portuguese , Hungarian , and in 2006 also into Hebrew , Japanese and Czech . An audio book with Sunnyi Melles , Beate Jensen and Martin Doerry as speakers was published in 2003.

literature

  • Lotte Paepcke: I was forgotten. Report of a Jewish woman who survived the Third Reich , Freiburg i. Br. 1979 (first as Under a Foreign Star ; Frankfurt am Main, 1952), therein many memories of Lilli Jahn
  • Martin Doerry: My wounded heart. The life of Lilli Jahn 1900–1944 ; 2nd edition, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart and Munich 2002, ISBN 3-421-05634-X . As an audio book: 2 CDs (reading) with booklet; DAV - the audio publishing house, Berlin 2003

Movie

In 2002 Carola Wittrock shot a documentary about Lilli Jahn for WDR .

theatre

The Viennese theater director Nehle Dick worked together with the one from Kiel coming actress Katrin Marie Bernet a one-man play , inter alia, in Kiel, Vienna and Munich was shown.

Web links

Commons : Lilli Jahn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Barbara Becker-Jákli: The Jewish hospital in Cologne: the history of the Israelite asylum for the sick and the elderly from 1869 to 1945 . Emons, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-89705-350-0 , p. 403 .
  2. ↑ Congregation unveils memorial plaque in front of former synagogue. On: hna.de from November 10, 2011
  3. ↑ Why didn't it turn out differently? The fate of Lilli Jahn (...). Review of Martin Doerry: My wounded heart on leipzig-almanach.de from February 19, 2003
  4. ↑ The local newspaper reported . Website of the HNA. Retrieved August 8, 2013.
  5. ^ Resolution of the local advisory board of March 26, 2014 to rename a site after Dr. Lilli Jahn on the website of the Kassel-West eV association
  6. ^ ZDF History: The story of Lilli Jahn. from minute 42:00. Retrieved October 4, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Mi corazón herido: la vida de Lilli Jahn 1900–1944 . Rosa Pilar Blanco in Romanian. Taurus Madrid
  8. ↑ El meu cor ferit: biografia de Lilli Jahn, 1900–1944 . Carme Gala in Romanian. Columna Barcelona
  9. ↑ Mijn gewonde hart: het leven van Lilli Jahn, 1900–1944 . Translation by Gerda Meijerink. Bezige Bij Amsterdam
  10. ↑ With sårede hjerte: Lilli Jahns liv 1900–1944 . Translation by Astrid Heise-Fjeldgren. [København]: Aschehoug
  11. ↑ Lilli Jahn il mio cuore ferito: Lettere di una madre dall'Olocausto. Translation of Roberta Zuppet. Rizzoli Milano
  12. ↑ "Haavoittunut sydämeni": Lilli Jahnin elämä 1900-1944. Translation Veli-Pekka Ketola, Dingua. Espoo: Plataani Oy
  13. ↑ My Wounded Heart. Translator: John Brownjohn
  14. ↑ Moje serce zranione . Translated by Anna Kryczyńska. Warszawa: Muza
  15. ↑ Mitt sårede hjerte: Lilli Jahns liv 1900–1944 . Translation by Eivind Lilleskjaeret
  16. ↑ A tout de suite, les enfants
  17. ↑ Mitt sargade hjärta
  18. ↑ Meu coração ferido
  19. ↑ "Megsebzett szívem"
  20. ^ Entry of the audio book version in the DNB catalog
personal data
SURNAME Jahn, Lilli
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lili Schlüchterer
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor and letter author
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH June 19, 1944
Place of death Auschwitz-Birkenau