Maimi from Mirbach

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Maimi von Mirbach , actually Maria Celina Gabrielle Antoinette Freiin von Mirbach (born April 9, 1899 in Antwerp , † October 8, 1984 in Berlin ), was a German cellist and a member of the Confessing Church .

Life

Memorial plaque on the house, Alleestraße 10, in Potsdam

Maimi von Mirbach comes from an old noble family . Her father, the merchant Wilhelm Freiherr von Mirbach (1858-1914) was a brother of the Prussian lieutenant general and court official Ernst von Mirbach (1844-1925). Through her mother Carmen Laura geb. von Bary (1876–1938) Maimi von Mirbach was directly related to Cornelio Saavedra , the first president of the La Plata republics . In this cosmopolitan and international home, she enjoyed a Christian-liberal upbringing with a strong musical orientation. The family had to leave Belgium within 24 hours of the beginning of the First World War in 1914 and moved to Potsdam.

Shaped by her experience as a member of a minority, Maimi von Mirbach turned to people who needed help at an early age. She recognized the nationalist and anti-Semitic development in Germany as early as the 1920s . After the National Socialists came to power , she helped oppressed Jews, also as a member of the Confessing Church. She detested the racial ideology of the Nazis and, as a cellist, continued to have numerous contacts with Jewish musicians, although she repeatedly endangered herself.

Maimi von Mirbach helped Fritz Hirschfeld , with whom she played in a private string quartet, to escape in 1938 . Hirschfeld, chairman of the Potsdam Labor Court for six years from 1927, was arrested after the pogrom night and remained in the Potsdam police prison for three weeks. He was released only on condition that he would leave the country. The German authorities required him to pay a Reich flight tax of 35,000 Reichsmarks and a Jewish property tax of 38,000 Reichsmarks for his departure . In order to raise this sum, Maimi von Mirbach bought the Hirschfelds' house and property. His Aryan wife Grete stayed free in the house until her death in April 1941. Maimi von Mirbach gave Fritz Hirschfeld 8,000 Reichsmarks in cash for his escape to Holland. In August 1942 he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and finally deported to Auschwitz , where his trace is lost. Maimi von Mirbach visited him several times in the internment camp and slipped him food, jewelry and money.

Several times she hid Jews wanted by the Gestapo in her house to save them from deportation. At the end of 1941 she accepted the former music student Gisela Distler-Brendel, a student of the composer and piano teacher Ilse Fromm-Michaels , as a subtenant. As a first-degree hybrid, Gisela Distler-Brendel was not allowed to study at a university. She also had an illicit relationship with a non-Jew with whom she was expecting an illegitimate child. Maimi von Mirbach kept this connection a secret from the authorities and was thus guilty of racial disgrace under the Nuremberg Laws .

Since she was exposed to various humiliations and restrictions in the Soviet occupation zone after 1945 and in the early days of the GDR, Maimi von Mirbach left Potsdam in 1956 and moved to Berlin-Charlottenburg . Until her death, she reported on her experiences during the Nazi era in schools and youth facilities.

In 2005 the Potsdam Administrative Court dismissed a lawsuit by the heirs Maimi von Mirbach against the transfer back of the property in Klein Glienicke legally acquired by Fritz Hirschfeld and expropriated by the GDR to Hirschfeld's daughter Aenne Dorothy Scott.

Honors

  • The State of Israel honored Maimi von Mirbach on April 2, 1981 with the title Righteous Among the Nations .
  • In 1995, a street in the Kirchsteigfeld district of Potsdam was named after her.
  • In the Alleestraße 10 in Potsdam, a plaque draws attention to the fact that Mirbach's Miami lived in this house.

literature

  • Dagmar Hoßfeld, Renate Wullenstein: The female Potsdam. Brief biographies from three centuries . Verlag Schwarzdruck, Potsdam 1998, ISBN 978-3-933297-00-6 .
  • Gabriele Schnell (Ed.): Potsdam women. 10 fates of women from the empire to today . Argo, Potsdam 1993, ISBN 978-3-910196-17-9 .

Web links

Commons : Maimi von Mirbach  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kurt Metschies: Mirbach, Maria Celina Gabrielle Antoinette (Maimi) Freiin v. In: Friedrich Beck (Hrsg.): Brandenburgisches Biographisches Lexikon. Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Potsdam 2002, ISBN 978-3-935035-39-2 . P. 284
  2. ^ Help to escape home buying. Potsdam Latest News , accessed March 7, 2013 .
  3. ↑ Use Fromm-Michaels. (No longer available online.) In: mugi.hfmt-hamburg.de. Archived from the original on December 17, 2013 ; Retrieved March 7, 2013 .
  4. ↑ Remembering is life - culture in Potsdam. Potsdam Latest News , accessed March 5, 2013 .
  5. ↑ What law can do ... In: journalistinnenbuero-berlin.de. Retrieved March 7, 2013 .
  6. ↑ Israel Gutman (ed.): Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations. Germans and Austrians . 2nd Edition. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 978-3-89244-900-3 ( full text / preview in the Google book search).
  7. ^ Klaus Arlt: The street names of the city of Potsdam. History and meaning. In: Communications from the Sanssouci Study Group. Association for Culture and History Potsdam e. V., 4th year (1999), issue 2, p. 47
  8. ↑ Seven panels for “Other Germans”. Potsdam Latest News , accessed March 7, 2013 .
personal data
SURNAME Mirbach, Maimi from
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mirbach, Maria Celina Gabrielle Antoinette Freiin von (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German cellist and member of the Confessing Church
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Antwerp
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 1984
Place of death Berlin