Lotte Strauss (author)

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Lotte Strauss (also Lotte Strauss-Kahle , born as Lotte Schloss on August 2, 1913 in Salzkotten ; died September 6, 2020 in New York City ) was a German-American author.

Life

Lotte Schloss was a daughter of Louis Schloss and Johanna Bildheim. The family moved to Wolfenbüttel in 1920 , where Schloss attended the Anna-Vorwerk-Oberschule . Schloss came to Berlin in 1932, married and was now called Lotte Kahle; the marriage was divorced again. After the handover of power to the National Socialists , she tried to gain a foothold professionally in Milan , but did not succeed, and she returned to Germany. The plan to emigrate to Great Britain became obsolete when the war began. Her brother Helmut Schloss (1915–1991) managed to emigrate to Palestine in 1937 .

During the Second World War, she was conscripted as a Jewish slave laborer in an armaments factory. She met Herbert Arthur Strauss (1918–2005). When her parents in October 1942 after Riga deported were murdered there, both went to Berlin in the illegality and were first of August Sapandowski hidden. On May 2, 1943, Kahle managed to escape from Berlin over the Green Border near Gottmadingen into Switzerland. Her escape was organized in Berlin by the escape assistant Luise Meier and when crossing the border by Josef Höfler . Soon after, Herbert Strauss was also brought across the border. Since they had arrived in the canton of Schaffhausen , they were not deported , which often happened in other Swiss border cantons , but interned in Switzerland . They married in 1944 and were able to emigrate to the USA in 1946. The daughter Jane Helen Strauss was born there in 1946.

Lotte Strauss worked for some time as an administrative clerk with the League of Women Voters in New York State. She stayed in Germany from 1982 to 1990 when her husband was the founding director of the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at the TU Berlin . In 1997, Strauss published her memories of the time in Germany up to her escape in 1943 under the title Over the Green Hill .

Wolfenbüttel (2012)

In 2012, stumbling blocks were laid for her and her family members in Wolfenbüttel .

Autobiography

  • We Were German Jews . Video with Herbert Arthur Strauss and Lotte Strauss, 1981. San Francisco: Kanopy Streaming, Michael Blackwood Productions, 2019, 59 min
  • Over the Green Hill. A German Jewish Memoir, 1913-1943 . New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 1999

literature

  • Marten Düring: Hidden Social Networks in National Socialism: The Origin and Functioning of Berlin Aid Networks for Persecuted Jews . Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015, p. 90ff.
  • Herbert A. Strauss: Above the Abyss. A Jewish Youth in Germany 1918–1943 . Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1997 ISBN 3-593-35687-2
  • Dietrich Strothmann : Life on the Edge. The memories of Herbert and Lotte Strauss . In: Die Zeit , October 24, 1997
  • Strauss, Herbert Arthur , in: Reiner Strätz: Biographisches Handbuch Würzburger Juden 1900–1945 . Würzburg: Schöningh, 1989, p. 613f.
novel
  • Fredrik Uhlson (pseudonym of Friedrich Strindberg): Under jorden i Berlin . Translation from the German manuscript Britta Höglund. Stockholm: Bonnier, 1945

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Louis Schloss , near Stolpersteine ​​Berlin
  2. ↑ Carsten Arbeiter: Little People as Big Heroes , in: Archivnachrichten, Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg , 50/2015 PDF
  3. ↑ The circumstances of Kahle and Strauss' escape are also described in the biography of the Judaist Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich , who also managed to escape this way. Hartmut Bomhoff: Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich. A life for dialogue and renewal . Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2011, ISBN 978-3-942271-11-0
  4. ↑ Jones, Jane Helen , at DNB
  5. ^ Herbert Strauss , deutsche-biographie.de
  6. ^ Project Stolpersteine ​​Wolfenbüttel , at Leibniz Realschule
personal data
SURNAME Strauss, Lotte
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schloss, Lotte (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American author
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Salzkotten
DATE OF DEATH September 6, 2020
Place of death New York City