Lily Grosser

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Lily Emilie Grosser (born June 2, 1894 in Frankfurt am Main ; † September 20, 1968 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye ), née Rosenthal, was the wife of the pediatrician and scientist Paul Grosser (1880–1934), who had been expelled by the National Socialists . ; she is the mother of the political scientist and publicist Alfred Grosser (* 1925). As secretary of the Comité français d'échanges avec l'Allemagne nouvelle , she was instrumental in building up political and cultural Franco-German relations after the Second World War .

Career

Lily Emilie Rosenthal was born as the daughter of Alfred Rosenthal in a middle-class Frankfurt household; until she was 18 she was only allowed to leave the house at Mendelssohnstrasse 92 in Frankfurt's Westend if she was accompanied by a governess . Like many young women, she supported the German soldiers from home with active relief measures during the First World War and was honored for this. Her fiancé Max Koch from Kronberg im Taunus fell in 1918, her father Alfred died in 1919.

On March 16, 1921, she married the university professor and resident doctor Paul Grosser in Frankfurt am Main. Their daughter Margarethe was born there on April 13, 1922 and their son Alfred on February 1, 1925.

Lily Grosser (left) around 1929/30 with her family in Frankfurt am Main

When her husband was withdrawn from private liquidation and the chair in April 1933 in the course of the Nazis' successive repression against Jews and he was finally dismissed in the summer as the extremely successful medical director of the Clementine Children's Hospital , matured after further humiliations and disappointments as well as massively exercised physical violence against the eight-year-old son, the decision to move to neighboring France. The decision was preceded by the family's exploratory stay in Paris and Champagne in the summer .

On December 16, 1933, the family emigrated from Frankfurt am Main to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where the husband died unexpectedly early only a short time later. Lily Grosser realized and ran the children's sanatorium planned by her husband on the outskirts of the French capital after the death of her husband as a children's home without a medical context. On October 1, 1937, Lily Grosser and her children received French citizenship. In 1938, her mother also moved to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where she died after a serious illness on July 29, 1940 at the age of 81.

A few weeks earlier, Lily Grosser's children, Margarethe and Alfred, had to flee into unoccupied France on June 10, 1940 after the German Wehrmacht invaded . Lily Grosser followed her children to Saint-Raphaël in the south of France in September . The daughter Margarethe died of sepsis in 1941 as a result of an injury suffered while fleeing . After the surrender of the Italians in 1943, Lily Grosser and her son had to flee separately again, and the Wehrmacht moved in instead of the Italians. Lily Grosser got a job in Cannes to support the director of a children's home, but was blackmailed and exploited by the latter due to false documents with threatened denunciation . In the summer of 1944 she came to Monte Carlo . From autumn 1944 she was able to meet her son Alfred again in Marseille . There she became deputy head of a military hospital in the Croix-Rouge française (CRF).

Despite and because of these experiences, Lily Grosser and her son Alfred were involved in the Comité français d'échanges avec l'Allemagne nouvelle from 1948 to 1967 and advocated lively exchange and reconciliation between Germans and French as well as strengthening democratic structures in Germany . In 1962 she received the Federal Cross of Merit for her tireless commitment.

" A loyal worker for a better understanding (...) was Mrs. Lily Grosser. No one who came in contact with this kind woman can forget her. (She) was what is called in French the »cheville-ouvrière«, the soul of the Comité. Services to the Franco-German understanding - many adorn themselves with that. I can't name many who have done so much for it. "

- Paul Frank , State Secretary and Head of the Office of the Federal President, in 1975

Honors

literature

  • Hans Jürgen Schultz (Hrsg.), Alfred Grosser et al. In: Mein Judentum. Kreuz Verlag, Stuttgart 1979. ISBN 3-7831-0550-1 , pp. 42-49.
  • Alfred Grosser: My Germany. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1993. ISBN 3-455-08475-3 .
  • Eduard Seidler: Pediatricians 1933 - 1945. Disenfranchised - fled - murdered. Bouvier-Verlag, Bonn 2000. ISBN 3-416-02919-4 .
  • Alfred Grosser: Joy and Death. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2011. ISBN 978-3-498-02517-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The highest form of hope . In: Die Zeit, October 25, 1968 on: zeit.de
  2. ↑ Written information from the registry office in Frankfurt am Main dated June 4, 2012 (the author has an e-mail)
  3. ↑ Head of the Clementine Children's Hospital in Frankfurt am Main 1930–1933 on: juedische-pflegegeschichte.de
  4. ↑ Alfred Grosser, essay My Judaism . 1986. pp. 42-49.
  5. ↑ Lily Grosser in Saint-Germain-en-Laye on: weltmusikfestival-grenzenlos.de
  6. ^ Eduard Seidler: Paediatricians 1933 - 1945. Disenfranchised - fled - murdered . Pp. 258-259.
  7. ^ Alfred Grosser: My Germany . P. 43
  8. ↑ Lily Grosser as full-time secretary of the Comité français d'échanges avec l'Allemagne nouvelle, pp. 4–5 at: boersenverein.de (PDF file, 182 KB)
  9. ^ Alfred Grosser: My Germany . P. 78
personal data
SURNAME Big one, Lily
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Big one, Lily Emilie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German peace activist
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH 20th September 1968
Place of death Saint-Germain-en-Laye