Magda Goebbels
Magda Goebbels (born November 11, 1901 in Berlin as Johanna Maria Magdalena Behrend, from 1908 Friedländer , from 1920 Ritschel , 1921–1931 Quandt ; † May 1, 1945 ibid) was the wife of the National Socialist politician Joseph Goebbels . She was stylized as the model mother of the Third Reich for propaganda purposes.
Childhood and youth
Magda Goebbels was born as the daughter of the then unmarried maid Auguste Behrend. Her father was the building contractor and did a doctorate in engineering Oskar Ritschel, who married Auguste Behrend shortly after the birth of their daughter. The mother divorced in 1905 and married in 1908 the wealthy Jewish merchant Richard Friedländer , who worked in Brussels , who adopted Magda and whose name she took on. Ritschel and Friedländer, who valued each other personally, vied to raise their only child. Magda grew up in a middle-class atmosphere.
In Belgium, Magda Friedländer attended the Catholic monastery schools in Vilvoorde near Brussels. At the beginning of the First World War , mother and daughter left Belgium and moved to Berlin. The stepfather later followed them. Thanks to Ritschel's support, Magda was able to continue attending a girls' boarding school.
During numerous visits to her father Ritschel, who lived in Duisburg and belonged to the Freemason Lodge Eos in Krefeld , he introduced her to Buddhism .
During her school days she fell in love with the brother of a classmate, Viktor Chaim Arlosoroff . She became familiar with the Jewish faith in the Arlosoroff family. She wore the Star of David on a chain around her neck and even briefly toyed with the idea of emigrating to what was then Palestine with Chaim Arlosoroff . The relationship ended with the emigration of Arlosoroff, whom Magda did not want to follow after all.
Marriage to the industrialist Günther Quandt
On a train journey in February 1920, she met the industrialist Günther Quandt , who was twice her age. Magda took a liking to him and the prospect of moving up to the upper class by marriage. They got engaged on his 39th birthday on July 28, 1920 and married on January 4, 1921. Before that, she had to take the surname of her biological father (Ritschel) because Günther Quandt refused to give Magda what he believed to be a Jewish-sounding name Friedländer to join his Protestant family. She also switched to the Protestant faith.
Magda Quandt was also responsible for bringing up the two children from Günther Quandt's first marriage, whose mother had died in 1918. Ten months after the marriage, their son Harald was born on November 1, 1921 . She was not happy in this marriage and her needs for cultural and social life with lavish parties did not correspond to the lifestyle of the older, sober Quandt.
Günther and Magda Quandt were steadily alienating each other. When he learned in May 1928 that his wife Magda was cheating on him with a student, he threw her out of his home. The threat of publishing “scandalous” letters from Quandt then helped her to receive a generous settlement: 50,000 RM for a new apartment, 4,000 RM monthly payment and 20,000 RM for illness. She was also given custody of the son. The marriage ended in divorce in the summer of 1929. From the payments she was able to afford a representative apartment on Reichskanzlerplatz in Berlin-Westend as well as a nanny and a cook.
Between marriages
When the US multimillionaire Herbert Hoover, a nephew of the US president of the same name, learned of the divorce, he traveled from the USA and proposed to her, which she turned down.
Her divorced husband Günter Quandt belonged to a group of large industrialists who met with Hitler in the Hotel Kaiserhof in mid-1931 and offered the NSDAP 25 million Reichsmarks in the event of a left-wing coup.
Magda Quandt experienced her first contact with the National Socialist ideology in a political club called "Nordischer Ring" (which was later renamed "Bogenclub München"). Nobles like Viktoria von Dirksen and Princess Reuss frequented this racial debate . Here, in the late summer of 1930, Prince Auwi from the House of Hohenzollern , a son of the abdicated Kaiser Wilhelm II , recommended to her to volunteer with a local branch of the NSDAP as a remedy for boredom and depression . First, on August 30, 1930, she attended an NSDAP event in the Berlin Sports Palace, at which Joseph Goebbels spoke. The following day she became a member of the NSDAP local group Westend ( membership number 297.442 ), shortly afterwards head of the local Nazi women's group and began reading Alfred Rosenberg's The Myth of the 20th Century . But this work on the party base was not for her. She was rather impressed by Goebbels and reported to the headquarters of the Berlin NSDAP and offered her work there. At that time Goebbels was NSDAP Gauleiter of Berlin and worked on using propaganda and thugs to conquer Berlin for the NSDAP. He made her the custodian of his private archive. She collected and arranged z. B. Newspaper articles about Goebbels from the domestic and foreign press, where her language skills came in handy.
The entry of November 7, 1930 in Goebbels' diary contained the first mention of his future wife, followed by short notes about the beginning of intimate relationships in the coming weeks. In early 1931, Magda traveled to a party event with her future husband. There it was introduced into Goebbels' political environment. At that time Goebbels was still in an unhappy relationship with a childhood sweetheart who was “ half-Jewish ” according to the later National Socialist race legislation . Magda Quandt also had a parallel, intimate relationship with a student, her lover from the time of her marriage to Quandt. According to Goebbels' diaries, this repeatedly led to violent disputes from the start.
In autumn 1931 Magda Quandt got to know Adolf Hitler personally - over tea in the Hotel Kaiserhof, Berlin on Reichskanzlerplatz . On the same evening Hitler said to his economic advisor and SA chief of staff, Otto Wagener : “This woman could play a major role in my life, even without my being married to her. In my work she could play the female opposite pole against my one-sided male instincts ... It's a shame that she is not married. "
Marriage to Joseph Goebbels
Although the above-mentioned tensions between Magda and Joseph Goebbels never resolved in the long term, their wedding took place on December 19, 1931 at Gut Severin near Parchim in Mecklenburg . This belonged to her ex-husband Quandt, who knew nothing about the wedding on his estate. Goebbels was excommunicated from the Catholic Church because of his marriage to a (also divorced) Protestant . The now ten-year-old son Harald attended the ceremony in a DJ uniform. Adolf Hitler was the best man.
Even before the wedding, Hitler had established a friendly relationship with Magda, of which he was very impressed. It was also Hitler, whose judgment about a possible marriage was decisive for both future spouses. Goebbels stated that Hitler did not want to stand in the way of his old comrade's happiness, although he is said to have briefly shown interest in a relationship with Magda. Hitler put his own ambitions aside and finally, as a downright fatherly friend, gave the couple his blessing. On the basis of descriptions by Hitler's adviser Otto Wagener and other references, historians such as Goebbels biographer Peter Longerich assume that Hitler by no means only tolerated the wedding, but consciously arranged it, since he withdrew from the marriage of the two so publicly loyal and loyal National Socialists Promised propagandistic benefit and at the same time was able to work out that through his close contact with Goebbels, who was completely devoted to him, he would also be able to stay in contact with Magda.
Both happened. Hitler became a close friend of the family who often visited the couple and their children in Berlin. The Goebbels family was also frequently invited to the Obersalzberg in Hitler's private residence. Again and again Magda and Hitler spent time together even without Joseph Goebbels, sometimes for days. It is unknown whether the relationship between the two was also intimate at times. Longerich describes the constellation as a "triangular relationship".
From the Nazi propaganda stylized as a union nut, Magda Goebbels was a model for the "German woman" during the period of National Socialism . Since Hitler remained unmarried until shortly before his suicide in April 1945, Magda Goebbels took on the position of " first lady ", which was important for propaganda purposes ; she represented the Third Reich at receptions, balls and state visits .
She only appeared publicly once as a speaker: On May 14, 1933, she gave a lecture on the radio on the subject of The German Mother . She later gave an interview on the same subject to the English newspaper Daily Mail . When asked about the ousting of German women from public life, Magda Goebbels said that the rumors spread in England were greatly exaggerated.
In fact, she aspired to head the fashion department at the time. However, her husband was strictly against what it came to a dispute on July 20, 1933. The Völkischer Beobachter announced her resignation from the honorary chairmanship (together with chairman Sigmund von Weech ) on July 25, 1933.
Magda Goebbels put her children in the service of Nazi propaganda. In 1938 she had her children's lives filmed: They were portrayed as "purely Aryan" children. In contrast, one saw pictures of handicapped and thus “worthless” children in the sense of the Nazi ideology. Family propaganda peaked in 1942 when the Goebbels children were featured on the newsreel around thirty times . The Goebbels family was thus the model family of the Third Reich. But contrary to what is shown, Magda Goebbels did not care much about her children herself. This task was usually carried out by nannies and teachers, while the mother was often away from home for weeks.
Marital crises and World War II
In the course of 1935 at the latest, she found out about her husband's various fleeting affairs, especially with young artists from the radio and film sectors. At first Magda tried to tolerate this, but drowned her grief with at times excessive alcohol consumption . It was only when her husband declared in the summer of 1938 that he loved the Czech actress Lída Baarová and asked his wife to have a three-person marriage that she complained to Hitler about her husband's behavior. Hitler ordered both spouses to come to him at the Berghof. While Joseph Goebbels was determined at the beginning of the talks - in which Hermann and Emmy Göring also took part - to hold on to his relationship with Baarová, Hitler decided that Goebbels had to part with Baarová in a telephone call supervised by Göring; the marriage was continued on a probationary basis on Hitler's instructions, leaving the decision to Magda Goebbels alone as to whether the marriage would be continued permanently or not. Goebbels complied.
It is noteworthy that Magda Goebbels cheated on her husband himself with his two years younger State Secretary Karl Hanke , who later reported (or had to report) as a soldier at the beginning of the war, since he was continuing his work as State Secretary in the Reich Ministry for Public enlightenment and propaganda was regarded as no longer acceptable due to the private entanglements. Apparently Hitler had put considerable pressure on Magda to continue the marriage despite all adversities.
When the Nazi leadership began the Second World War , Magda Goebbels and her children again put themselves in the service of propaganda. She trained as a Red Cross nurse and nursed the wounded twice a week, effectively promoting propaganda.
While the marriage appeared to be harmonious again, Goebbels increasingly withdrew from his family. The relationship with Magda consisted only of occasional visits. Because of the air raids on Berlin , Magda and her children moved from Schwanenwerder to a country house on Bogensee near Lanke in August 1943 , which in turn allowed her husband, who still had various relationships, including actresses who were dependent on him, to act out his inclinations Berlin houses relieved. The children went to school in Wandlitz near Lanke . With the war situation becoming increasingly hopeless, Magda Goebbels fell ill several times and was admitted to a sanatorium for several days at the beginning of 1944 . When Magda Goebbels found out about the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944 , she is said to have suffered a nervous breakdown . On the phone, she swore her "eternal" loyalty to him and agreed to die for him "when the Russians are in Berlin". For this she is now determined to "the utmost".
Murder of the children and suicide
On the afternoon of April 22, 1945, Magda Goebbels moved with her children into the Führerbunker .
On April 28, 1945 Magda Goebbels wrote a farewell letter to her son Harald Quandt , then 23 years old, who was in a POW camp in Benghazi . This letter is the only written left behind from Magda Goebbels.
“My beloved son! Now we've been here in the Führerbunker for 6 days, Pappa, your six little siblings and I, to give our National Socialist life the only possible honorable conclusion ... I don't know whether you will receive this letter, maybe there is a human soul that gives it to me allows you to send last greetings. You should know that I stayed with him against Pappa's will, that last Sunday the Führer wanted to help me get out of here. You know your mother, we have the same blood, there was no thought for me. Our wonderful idea is perishing, and with it everything I have known beautiful, admirable, noble and good in my life. The world that comes after the Führer and National Socialism is no longer worth living in, and that's why I took the children here with me. They are too good for the life to come after us and a gracious God will understand me when I will give them redemption myself. You will go on living, and I have the only request to you: never forget that you are a German, never do anything that is against honor and make sure that your life did not lead to our deaths. The children are wonderful ... never a word of complaint or a cry. The impacts shake the bunker. The older ones protect the even smaller ones, and their presence is a blessing in that they sometimes make the Führer smile. God grant that I have the strength to do the last and most difficult. We have only one goal left: loyalty to the Führer until death. Harald, dear boy - I'll give you what life has taught me: Be faithful! True to yourself, true to the people and true to your country ... Be proud of us and try to keep us in happy memories ... "
She responded negatively to multiple requests, if not to save yourself, then at least the children from the bunker. According to witness statements, Magda Goebbels is said to have burst into tears at the sight of her children.
On May 1, 1945, the six children of the Goebbels were murdered with poison. How and by whom the children were killed could not be conclusively clarified. According to Rochus Misch , Magda Goebbels gave her children cocoa in which she had previously dissolved a sleeping pill. Then she combed her children's hair and then put them in white nightgowns. While she was doing this, she had given her children hope that they would be home in Schwanenwerder in a few days. Then she went to the nursery with the children and one of the doctors, Ludwig Stumpfegger .
The SS dentist Helmut Kunz (1910–1976) stated during an interrogation by the Soviets on May 7, 1945 that Magda Goebbels had poisoned the children and that he was merely a witness to the crime. Magda Goebbels asked him at the end of April to help kill her six four to twelve year old children Helga, Hilde, Holde, Hedda, Heide and Helmut. He refused, but was put under so much pressure by Magda Goebbels that he finally agreed to sedate the children with morphine injections so that their mother could give them cyanide capsules (hydrogen cyanide ). On the evening of May 1, 1945 - the day after Adolf Hitler's suicide - he injected the children with morphine, but Magda Goebbels was not able to kill her children. Kunz then had to fetch Hitler's second personal physician, Ludwig Stumpfegger, who entered the nursery with Magda Goebbels. When she left the children's room, Magda Goebbels said it was "all over". On May 19, 1945, he corrected his statement to the effect that Stumpfegger had participated in the killing of the children. (Ludwig Stumpfegger took his own life together with Martin Bormann on May 2, 1945 with a hydrocyanic acid poison capsule and could no longer be interrogated). Kunz repeated this second version at his later trial in the Federal Republic. He did not deny having injected the children with morphine as a preparatory measure .
Witnesses testified that Magda Goebbels played cards in silence after her children were murdered. Then, around 9 p.m., Joseph and Magda Goebbels killed themselves with hydrogen cyanide . Their bodies were burned that same night by members of the bunker crew. The next day around 5 p.m., Soviet soldiers discovered the bodies of the Goebbels couple just a few meters from the emergency exit of the Reich Chancellery.
It was not possible to determine with certainty whether a coup de grace was given before the cremation , especially in the case of Magda Goebbels, whose body was no longer complete. It is known that Joseph Goebbels ordered such shots of grace. In the event that the cremation squad had no doubts about the death of the two, the coup de grace could have been omitted.
The children's corpses had previously been found in a chamber in the driver's bunker . For evidence purposes they were placed next to the burned corpses of the Goebbels couple so that they could be filmed for the Soviet newsreel.
progeny
By 1940 Magda Goebbels had six children from her marriage to Joseph Goebbels, whose first names all began with an H. In addition, there is her son Harald from her first marriage:
Harald Quandt
Harald Quandt was born on November 1, 1921 and died in a plane crash on September 22, 1967.
Helga Susanne
Helga was born on September 1, 1932. The Goebbels' oldest child was allegedly preferred by Adolf Hitler. In 1935 she was featured on the cover of two magazines . In July 1936 she was sent on vacation to her grandmother in Peenemünde . She was photographed with her younger sister Hilde and her father in 1937 at the spring regatta in Berlin. She needed an operation on her throat in 1939 . She was killed with poison at the age of twelve.
Hildegard Traudel
Hildegard was born on April 13, 1934. She was commonly called "Hilde". She was photographed with her older sister Helga and her father at the 1937 spring regatta in Berlin. At the age of eleven she was killed with poison.
Helmut Christian
Helmut was born on October 2, 1935. He was the Goebbels' only son together. In a diary entry from 1939, his father described him as a clown ; he dreamed of becoming a subway conductor. Joseph Goebbels was permanently dissatisfied with the development of his son, whom he perceived as effeminate, soft and tearful, and assumed that the reason was that he was constantly surrounded only by women. At the age of nine he was killed with poison.
Holdine Kathrin
Holdine - usually called "Holde" for short - was born on February 19, 1937. Her father had noted in a diary entry in 1939 that her birth had been very complicated. According to Otto Meißner, she was the quietest of the children and was mostly "marginalized" by the five livelier siblings. That is why she was all the more attached to her father, who was happy to return her affection. She was killed with poison at the age of eight.
Hedwig Johanna
Hedwig was born on May 5, 1938. Generally she was called "Hedda". In 1944 she declared that she wanted to marry SS adjutant Günther Schwägermann when she was an adult because she was fascinated by his false eye . Shortly before her seventh birthday, she was killed with poison.
Heidrun Elisabeth
Heidrun was born on October 29, 1940. She was the youngest child of Joseph and Magda Goebbels and was usually called "Heide" or "Heidi". Generally she was seen as the child of reconciliation after the Baarová affair . She was killed with poison when she was four years old.
Magda Goebbels also had at least three miscarriages.
Magda Goebbels in art
Marcel Beyer's novel, flight foxes , published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 1995 , takes up the story of Magda Goebbels and her six children and is largely told from the perspective of her daughter Helga. The German writer and publisher Meike Ziervogel , who lives in London, has written a fictionalized novel about Magda Goebbels. The novel "Magda" was published in 2013 by the London publisher Salt and was nominated for several prizes. In 2015 “Magda” was released in Polish. In the same year the novel was published in a translation by Martin Thomas Pesl by the Austrian publisher Edition Atelier .
literature
- Petra Fohrmann: "The children of the Reichsministers" - memories of an educator of the Goebbels family 1943–1945. Fohrmann Verlag, Swisttal 2005, ISBN 3-9810580-1-1 .
- E. Ebermayer, Hans Roos: Companion of the devil - life and death of Magda Goebbels. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1952.
- Elke Fröhlich (Ed.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels. On behalf of the Institute for Contemporary History and with the support of the State Archives Service of Russia, Part I, Notes 1923–1941, 14 volumes (previously 12 volumes), Munich 1998 ff .; Part II, Dictates 1941–1945, 15 volumes, Munich 1993–1996, ISBN 3-598-23730-8 and ISBN 3-598-21920-2 .
- Joseph Goebbels: Diaries 1945 - The last notes. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-404-01368-9 .
- Peter Hartl: The deadly silence of Magda Goebbels , in: Guido Knopp: History. Secrets of the 20th Century , p. 65, C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-570-00665-4 .
- Anja Klabunde: Magda Goebbels - Approaching a life. Munich 1999, ISBN 3-570-00114-8 .
- Guido Knopp / Peter Hartl: Magda Goebbels - The Follower. in: Knopp: Hitler's women and Marlene. , P. 85, C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-570-00362-0 .
- Stefan Lehnberg: My oath. The fabulous death of Joseph Goebbels. Play, ISBN 978-1-5153-6087-2 .
- Peter Longerich : Goebbels. Biography. Siedler Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-88680-887-8 .
- Hans-Otto Meissner : Magda Goebbels - A picture of life. Blanvalet, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-7645-5744-3 .
- Erich Schaake: Hitler's women. List, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-471-78763-1 .
- Wolfgang Schneider: Women under the swastika. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-455-09337-X .
- Anna Maria Sigmund: The women of the Nazis. Anthology (1–3), Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-8000-3699-1 .
- Hitler's end . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 2004 ( online ).
- Robert Wistrich: Who was who in the Third Reich - a biographical encyclopedia: supporters, followers, opponents from politics, business, the military, art and science. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-596-24373-4 .
- Rüdiger Jungblut: The Quandts - their quiet rise to the most powerful economic dynasty in Germany. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-404-61550-6 .
- Eric Friedler : The Quandts' silence . NDR 2007.
- Meike Ziervogel : Magda. Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-903005-01-3 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Magda Goebbels in the catalog of the German National Library
- Magda Goebbels. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
- Georg Bönisch: Second World War: Child murder in the Führerbunker. In: one day . October 7, 2009 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ history. Retrieved October 13, 2019 .
- ^ Rüdiger Jungbluth : The Quandts. Your quiet rise to the most powerful economic dynasty in Germany. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2002.
- ↑ Magda Goebbels - Companion of Evil . In: Der Spiegel . No. 39 , 2001 ( online ).
- ↑ Abendblatt.de
- ^ The diaries of Joseph Goebbels: Notes 1923–1941. June 1931 - September 1932, part 1, p 189. .
- ↑ Peter Longerich: Goebbels , 2010, p. 167 ff.
- ↑ The heirs of Magda Goebbels. In: Cicero Online . Retrieved November 1, 2018 .
- ↑ Film recordings of the original letter (partly also read out) from 6:00 to 7:59 min in the documentary "Hitler's Death"
- ↑ Dominik Groß, Mathias Schmidt, Alexander Heit, Helmut Kunz and the murder of the Goebbels children , Zahnärztliche Mitteilungen, issue 8/2020, pp. 72–74, April 16, 2020. Accessed April 22, 2020.
- ↑ State Archives North Rhine-Westphalia, Q225 PPOM No. 316, Volume 1.
- ↑ Alexander Heit, Jens Westemeier, Dominik Gross , Mathias Schmidt: 'It's all over now.' The dentist Helmut Kunz and the killing of Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels' children at the end of the Third Reich. In: British Dental Journal 227 (2019), p. 997-1000. doi : 10.1038 / s41415-019-0992-1
- ↑ suhrkamp.de
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Goebbels, Magda |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Behrend, Johanna Maria Magdalena (maiden name); Friedländer, Magda; Ritschel, Magda; Quandt, Magda |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German industrialist's wife, later wife of Joseph Goebbels |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 11, 1901 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 1, 1945 |
| Place of death | Berlin |