Lilo milk sack

Memorial plaque in memory of Lilo Milchsack and the company she founded at the Carsch-Haus in Düsseldorf's old town , unveiled on March 18, 2002

Lisalotte "Lilo" Milchsack , DCMG , CBE (born May 27, 1905 in Frankfurt am Main as Lisalotte Duden ; † August 7, 1992 in Düsseldorf ), founded the Society for Cultural Exchange with England on March 18, 1949 in Düsseldorf , the 1951 was renamed the German-English Society and in 2001 the German-British Society . This company is managed under her chairmanship, which since 1950 held annually Königswinterer Conference (English: King Winter Conference ) to establish an important discussion forum for German-British dialogue after the Second World War , the society the most important non-governmental organization of British-German relations made .

Life

Milchsack was born as Lisalotte Duden in 1905 in Frankfurt am Main. Her father was the chemist Paul Duden , her grandfather the linguist Konrad Duden . She studied history at the universities of Frankfurt, Geneva and Amsterdam and developed an internationalist attitude. She married the Duisburg shipowner Hans Milchsack (1904–1984), with whom she had two daughters. On January 26, 1932, Hans Milchsack was one of the few people who left the hall of the Parkhotel Düsseldorf in protest during Hitler's speech in front of the Düsseldorf Industry Club . Lilo Milchsack stood out in the 1930s when she tried to convince her husband's London business friends of her negative attitude towards Adolf Hitler , which in the eyes of some of these people made her a “traitor to Germany”. In London, Lilo Milchsack also came into conflict with the NS-friendly Anglo-German Fellowship , which, as a sister organization of the NS-led German-English Society (DEG), tried to warm the United Kingdom to an alliance with the National Socialist German Reich . The Milchsack couple, who were friends with the writer Herbert Eulenberg, who lived in Düsseldorf-Kaiserswerth , survived the Second World War in " inner emigration " in Wittlaer near Düsseldorf, where they lived since 1933 and where the British occupying power after the Second World War was Hans Milchsack Mayor started. Forced laborers who were assigned to a Dutch company Hans Milchsacks during the German occupation of the Netherlands and treated there well are said to have made the British aware of him as an unencumbered and trustworthy person for the political reconstruction.

Driven by her Anglophilia and favored by her husband's new position and her English language skills, Lilo Milchsack was able to establish contacts with British occupation officers since the spring of 1945. In particular, she met for Reeducation competent Educational Advisor Robert Birley (1903-1983) know who promoted their cause largely an Anglo-German understanding. In 1948 Lilo Milchsack took part in a trip by German women to Norwich and Cambridge , which the British Foreign Office had financed. On March 18, 1949, Lilo Milchsack - together with Theo Albeck, Anne Franken , Prof. Haas, Prof. Emil Lehnartz , Georg Muche and Dietrich Stein - founded the Carsch-Haus in Düsseldorf , where the British cultural center "Die Brücke" was at that time The Society for Cultural Exchange with England eV 1950 organized this society, which was renamed the German-English Society the following year , the so-called Königswinter Conference in the Adam-Stegerwald-Haus in Königswinter near Bonn , financially supported by Hans Milchsack, the " paymaster ”of the event. The event, also known in German as Königswinter Conference or in English Königswinter Conference , was intended from the outset as a discussion forum for independent, non-partisan and voluntary contact between actors in German and British society, thus establishing a new political dialogue between Germany and Great Britain In addition to parliamentarians, diplomats, journalists and scientists, top politicians from both countries soon took part regularly, on the German side Richard von Weizsäcker , Helmut Schmidt , Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Kurt Biedenkopf , on the British side Roy Jenkins , Edward Heath and Douglas Hurd . Regional groups and networks were founded in many places under the umbrella of the company and its headquarters in Düsseldorf, later in Bonn, and most recently in Berlin. In 1982 Lilo Milchsack passed the chairmanship of the German-English Society on to Karl-Günther von Hase .

In a speech on March 29, 1990, the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher highlighted the life's work of Lilo Milchsack as “marvelous work” and she personally as the “moving spirit of Konigswinter” at the Königswinter Conference at St Catharine's College in Cambridge. In his funeral address, the historian Wolfgang J. Mommsen saw in Lilo Milchsack's work an “unmistakable trace in German and English post-war history”, to which he assigned a “lasting character”. The British journalist and politician Bill Deedes recognized Lilo Milchsack in 2004 as “one of the architects of post-war Europe”. The British publisher and politician Nigel Nicolson called her a heroine and “one of the most remarkable women of my generation”.

Honors

• Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire ( CBE , 1958)
• Federal Cross of Merit (1959)
• Honorary Commander des Order of St. Michael and St. George ( CMG , 1968)
• Honorary Dame Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George ( DCMG , 1972)
• Theodor Heuss Medal (1979)
• Honorary Chairwoman of the German-English Society (1982)
• Large Federal Cross of Merit with Star (1985)

Web links

• Lisalotte milk sack in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Milchsack, Dame Lilo in abitofhistory.net (Women of History)

literature

• Marion Countess Dönhoff : The beginnings of the German-English society. In: Wolfgang J. Mommsen (Ed.): The unequal partners. German-British Relations in the 19th and 20th Centuries . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-421-05287-5 , p. 238 ff.
• Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.): Milchsack, Lilo . In: German Biographical Encyclopedia . 2nd edition, KG Saur Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-598-25030-9 , p. 105.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Düsseldorfer Stadtchronik 2002 , accessed on the duesseldorf.de portal on January 7, 2014.
2. ↑ Anthony Glees: Obituary: Lilo milk sack. Obituary. August 8, 1992 from independent.co.uk portal , accessed December 30, 2013.
3. ↑ Eckart Konze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 , p. 634 ff.
4. ^ Godehard Uhlemann: The German-British network.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Rheinische Post . February 28, 2009 and the affiliated newspaper Bocholter-Borkener Volksblatt (BBV) , accessed on the portal abo.bbv-net.de on December 30, 2013.  
5. ↑ Barbara Suchy: Determined to overcome a gap ( memento of the original from March 6, 2016 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. . In: Düsseldorfer Hefte. (June 1989), PDF file in the debrige.de portal . accessed on January 2, 2014. 
6. ^ Karl-Günther von Hase: Lilo Milchsach (1905-1992) and the German-English Society. ( Memento of the original from December 31, 2013 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. Lecture given on October 14, 1999 to the Industrie-Club Düsseldorf , edited by Barbara Suchy, accessed on the debrige.de portal on December 30, 2013. 
7. ^ Arnd Bauerkämper, Christiane Eisenberg: Britain as a Model of Modern Society? German Views. Wissner Verlag, 2006, p. 97.
8. ↑ See article Robert Biley in the English language Wikipedia
9. ↑ Denise Kathrin Tscharntke: Educating German women: The work of the women's affairs section of the British military government 1946–1951 , Dissertation, University of Durham, Department of History, 2001, p. 14 ff., PDF file, accessed in the portal etheses.dur.ac.uk on December 30, 2013.
10. ↑ Gerda Kaltwasser: Carsch House. ( Memento of the original from December 30, 2013 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. January 27, 1979, website of the women's culture archive in the phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de portal , accessed on December 30, 2013. 
11. ↑ Letter to the Düsseldorf District President Kurt Baurichter from December 13, 1949 ( Memento of the original from December 31, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , PDF file in the debrige.de portal , accessed on December 30, 2013. 
12. ^ History of the German-British Society , website in the portal debrige.de (German-British Society), accessed on December 30, 2013.
13. ↑ Jo Grimond : Memoirs . Verlag W. Heinemann, 1979, p. 226.
14. ↑ Marion Countess Dönhoff: On the death of Lilo Milchsack: Old enemies reconciled. Obituary. August 14, 1992 in the zeit.de portal , accessed on December 30, 2013.
15. ↑ Richard von Weizsäcker cultivated intensive contacts with the milk sacks, especially during his time in Düsseldorf, when he was employed by Mannesmann AG , which introduced him to the subject of German-British relations. - Cf. Werner Filmer , Heribert Schwan : Encounters with Richard von Weizsäcker , Verlag Wilhelm Goldmann, 1994, p. 170.
16. ^ Margaret Thatcher: Speech to the Konigswinter Conference. March 29, 1990, accessed on margaretthatcher.org on December 30, 2013.
17. ↑ Wolfgang J. Mommsen: Speech on the funeral of Lili Milchsack. 1992, accessed on the yumpu.com portal on December 30, 2013.
18. ^ WF Deedes: Brief Lives. Macmillan, London 2004, Pan Macmillan 2005 edition, ISBN 0-330-42639-7 , pp. 134-141.
19. ^ Nigel Nicolson: Long life: Presiding genius. August 15, 2013 from archive.spectator.co.uk portal , accessed January 7, 2014.
20. ^ Biography Milchsack, Dame Lilo in abitofhistory.net (Women of History), accessed on January 7, 2014.
21. ↑ Marion Countess Dönhoff: Königswinter is her work . May 24, 1985 from the zeit.de portal , accessed on January 7, 2014.