Luise Meier

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the German philosopher, see Luise Meier (author) .

Luise Meier (born January 13, 1885 in the lobby as Luise Bemm ; † June 26, 1979 ) was a German housewife. During the Second World War, she helped Jews to flee to Switzerland and was posthumously named Righteous Among the Nations .

Life

Luise Bemm was born in Vorhalle in the southeastern Ruhr area , today a district of Hagen . She married Karl Meier, a businessman, lived with him in Soest from 1909 and had four children who were born between 1910 and 1918. In 1930 the family moved to Cologne and in 1936 to Berlin. Her husband died of stomach cancer in 1942 , and two of her sons died in the war.

In Berlin-Grunewald , Luise Meier lived in a Wilhelminian style villa on Taubertstrasse. In the house there was also a boarding house run by the Jew Fedora Curth, where Jews lived who were hoping to leave the country. Luise Meier, who was a devout Catholic, initially made it possible for them to telephone from their apartment after Jews had been banned from owning telephones. The residents included Felix and Herta Perls, with whom the Meier couple was acquainted and whom Luise Meier had stood by during her husband's illness. The pension was forcibly closed in 1941, the residents had to move into so-called Jewish apartments .

In November 1942, Fedora Curth and her friend Ilse Franken managed to escape to Switzerland with forged papers. The couple Perls 1942 was submerged , after it had been living temporarily at Luise Meier. She tried to locate Fedora Curth's escape route so that the Perls couple could also escape. The Perls reached Switzerland in December 1942.

At the beginning of 1943, a Swiss delegate from the International Red Cross asked Luise Meier to help other Jews and brought her forged ID documents from Fedora Curth and Ilse Franken. Luise Meier and Lotte Kahl, a then 30-year-old Jewish woman, traveled by train to Singen near Konstanz in April 1943 . Lotte Kahl reluctantly left her boyfriend and future husband Herbert Strauss, who had also gone into hiding, because young men were often suspected of being deserters . In Gottmadingen they met Josef Höfler and his Swiss wife Elise , who from then on formed a network to help people escape. Lotte Kahl arrived in Switzerland .

The couple Höfler and Luise Meier helped a total of 27 more Jews to flee. Emmi Brandt, who was to be brought to Switzerland with a young girl with the support of the network, caught attention when she escaped in May 1944 because of her extensive luggage; both were arrested. Emmi Brandt revealed the names of the escape helpers ; she survived the end of the war in the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Elise Höfler was able to escape to Switzerland before the intended arrest, Josef Höfler and Luise Meier were arrested on May 24, 1944. Luise Meier was initially in Singen, and from February 1945 in Stockach . Luise Meier's case was submitted to the People's Court in Berlin in July 1944 after the investigation was over . There was no longer any conviction. In Stockach it was liberated by Allied troops on April 21, 1945, Josef Höfler also survived.

Luise Meier spent the rest of her life in Soest and died in 1979.

Afterlife

In July 2001 Luise Meier was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations together with Josef Höfler and his wife Elise .

In Soest, the Luise-Meier-Weg along the Soestbach was named after her in 2011 .

See also

Singen escape route

literature

• Meier, Luise, Höfler, Josef, Höfler, Elise : In: Daniel Fraenkel, Jackob Borut (Hrsg.): Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations. Germans and Austrians. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-900-7 , pp. 194-195.
• Claudia Schoppmann : Switzerland as an escape destination. The aid network around Luise Meier and Josef Höfler. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Survival in the Third Reich. Jews in the underground and their helpers. C. H. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-51029-9 , pp. 205-219 ( limited preview in Google book search).
• Franco Battel: "Where it is light, there is Switzerland" Refugees and escape assistance on the Schaffhausen border during the time of National Socialism (=  Schaffhausen Contributions to History , Volume 77). 2nd Edition. Chronos Verlag, Zurich 2001, ISBN 3-905314-05-3 , pp. 204 ff. (Also dissertation , University of Zurich 1999/2000).
• Claudia Schoppmann: Luise Meier (1885-1979) and Josef Höfler (1911-1994) - escape aid between Berlin and Singen. In: Angela Borgstedt et al. (Ed.): Courage proven. Resistance biographies from the southwest (= writings on political regional studies of Baden-Württemberg , published by the State Center for Political Education Baden-Württemberg, vol. 46), Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 9783945414378 , pp. 239–248.

Web links

• Long-time Soesterin Luise Meier operated an escape network to Switzerland. Retrieved February 23, 2016 . 
• Claudia Schoppmann: Risk of escape aid. Retrieved February 23, 2016 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lona & Ludmilla. "Where there is light, there is Switzerland". On: SWR.de , 2006, accessed on July 15, 2012 (website for the television film Not all were murderers ). 
2. ↑ Righteous Among the Nations Honored by Yad Vashem By January 1, 2012 (PDF; 432 kB) Retrieved July 14, 2012 . 
3. ↑ A street for the "silent heroine" Luise Meier. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on January 1, 2015 ; Retrieved July 14, 2012 . 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.