Magdalene von Waldthausen

Magdalene von Waldthausen (born October 31, 1886 in Berlin , † January 20, 1972 in Oberstdorf (in the Allgäu), buried in Essen-Bredeney), was active in Protestant associations and a member of the CDU state parliament in North Rhine-Westphalia .

Life

Magdalene von Waldthausen, b. v. Goßler, 1909, as fiancée to future husband, Heinrich.jp

Magdalene Mathilde Elisabeth Klara von Waldthausen was the ninth and youngest child of the Prussian Minister of War Heinrich von Goßler (1841–1927) and his wife Emma, ​​née. von Sperber (1848–1914) born. Due to her father's professional obligations and government duties, she spent most of her youth in Berlin . Since March 10, 1908, she was married to the royal Prussian mountain assessor Heinrich von Waldthausen (1875–1954), an industrialist from Essen . The marriage had five children (Maria, Karl Heinrich, Maximilian, Renate, Jutta). Together with the Krupps , Grillos and Huyssens , the von Waldthausens were among the most influential families in the up-and-coming industrial metropolis of Essen. The family is Protestant . Even in the dark, according to family experts, the Waldthausens remained firm in their faith and immune to Nazi ideology .

Magdalene von Waldthausen, who was considered a concert-ready pianist at a young age, showed herself to be a very committed and socially responsible person who held numerous positions on a voluntary basis. Throughout two world wars, she worked tirelessly to alleviate hardships. As early as 1916, at the age of 30, she became chairwoman of the district association of Protestant women's aid in Essen. In Essen she founded and supported numerous other social institutions. During the First World War, this included a small private auxiliary hospital, which she set up makeshiftly in an outbuilding of her own house in Essen. There she fed the wounded from her own kitchen and had them looked after by doctors from the nearby Huyssenstift. Other facilities that she founded were a care home, an infant home, a convalescent home for mothers with their children (Heimathaus Siechar), a mothers 'school for young women, a homeless shelter, a girls' shelter for girls who have committed offenses, a house for women, mothers and babies , and in 1928 a retirement home (Castel Sant'Angelo) for women in Essen-Werden, in which recreational camps were also held, and later the Waldthausen women's home, which still exists today.

During the Third Reich , she and her husband were actively involved in the Confessing Church , which was declared hostile to the state , which repeatedly caused difficulties for the immediate family. From 1929 to 1951 she was the chairwoman of the Protestant Women's Aid in the Rhineland , sat for years as the only woman in the Protestant General Synod in Germany and, as a convinced and courageous Christian, campaigned against the efforts of the National Socialist regime for the organization of Protestant women's aid during the National Socialist era to connect with the Confessing Church . She defied the restrictions of the National Socialist rulers with special collections for the maintenance of women's work. During the Second World War she took particular care of the evacuees from the Ruhr area, organized child transports to East Prussia, Mecklenburg and Pomerania in order to initially accommodate young people from the starving Ruhr area in a safe and well-cared for. Later, after the end of the war, she took care of the accommodation and integration of refugees and displaced persons from the east . She was also an honorary member of the Synod of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland , where she actively participated in the preparation of the church order . For example, she worked to ensure that women could be elected to leadership positions (e.g. presbyteries ).

She lived with her family in Essen during the Second World War, but she had to leave Essen in 1943 because her house on Huyssenallee, near what is now Essen's main train station, had been completely destroyed by Allied bombing. It was never built again. In 1945 she moved to the Müggenburg in Norf bei Neuss , a property of her husband's family.

In the predominantly Catholic parish of Norf, after the Second World War, the flow of many refugees from the former German eastern regions created a new Protestant parish, which, however, did not yet have its own church. For more than 15 years, the von Waldthausen family made the private hall of the Müggenburg available to the evangelical community for Sunday worship. As a well-trained pianist, Magdalene von Waldthausen accompanied the singing congregation on her piano during the services at this time. By raising considerable financial resources and the foundation of a suitable piece of land by her family, she contributed significantly to the construction of the first Protestant church in Norf, which was completed in 1961 as the Peace Church . The Norf community later thanked her for her commitment by being made an honorary citizen of the Norf community. In 1966, a street and the local sports stadium were named after her in the municipality of Norf, today a district of Neuss, at the endeavor of the last Mayor of Norfer, Wilhelm Graf von Pfeil.

Immediately after the Second World War, Magdalene von Waldthausen joined the CDU . From Konrad Adenauer , she was a member of the first -proclaimed state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia called, to which she belonged in the years 1946 and 1947th Together with Elly Heuss-Knapp , the wife of the then German Federal President Theodor Heuss , she founded the maternal recovery organization in 1950 . When she was 75 years old, the Federal Republic of Germany recognized her in 1961 with the award of the Great Federal Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for her rich diaconal work and her exemplary social commitment.

In later years Magdalene von Waldthausen spent many months of the year in her house in Oberstdorf in the Allgäu , where she had often withdrawn during the difficult war with her husband, who had died in 1954. There she repeatedly visited Richard von Weizsäcker with his wife Marianne , whose mother, Asta von Kretschmann, was an adoptive daughter of their cousin by marriage, Fritz von Waldthausen . Richard von Weizsäcker himself was personally liable partner of the Essen bank Waldthausen & Co. (later taken over by Merck Finck & Co ) from 1958 to 1962 , of which Magdalene von Waldthausen was one of the limited partners . After her death in 1972 in Oberstdorf, Magdalene von Waldthausen was transferred to the gravesite of the von Waldthausen family in the cemetery in Essen-Bredeney and buried there.

literature

• History of Evangelical Women's Aid in Sources. Schriftenmissions-Verlag, Gladbeck 1975, ISBN 3-7958-0380-2 .

Web links

• Magdalene von Waldthausen at the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament
• Evangelical Women's Aid in the Rhineland e. V.