Manfred Pollatz

Erwin Herbert Manfred Pollatz (born October 21, 1886 in Dresden ; † September 8, 1964 in Duisburg ) was a German reform pedagogue , editor and translator , member of the German annual meeting of Quakers.

Family and work

Manfred Pollatz as a student

Manfred Pollatz was born in Dresden on October 21, 1886. He was the son of the court counselor and head of a military preparatory institute Rudolf Pollatz (January 15, 1838 to June 5, 1926) and his wife Celestine, b. Benisch (October 19, 1843 to December 16, 1925), who worked as a French teacher in the military preparation institute. Manfred Pollatz had two brothers and four sisters and was the youngest in the sibling line. After graduating from high school in Dresden in 1906, Manfred Pollatz studied German language and literature, classical philology, history and philosophy in Freiburg, Berlin, Munich and Leipzig, but also dealt with economics and law. Since the winter semester of 1908/09 in Leipzig, he worked with Karl Lamprecht at the Institute for Cultural and Universal History in Leipzig, particularly with Japanese and American history. In 1911 he passed the examination for the higher teaching post in history and German as well as for philosophical propaedeutics, Latin and Greek with distinction.

His wife Lili Engelsmann (November 8, 1883 to March 1, 1946) met Manfred Pollatz at Leipzig University, where she was one of the first women to be enrolled in the philosophy faculty since 1906. She studied English, German and history and in 1910 passed the teaching examination for the first level in these subjects. The couple, who married in Dresden on December 27, 1915, had a total of four children: Marianne (December 17, 1916 to August 24, 1986), Inge (April 21, 1918 to December 1, 1995), Karl Heinz (born December 31, 1986) May 1919, missing since January 1945) and Rosemarie (April 28, 1922 to February 22, 1986). The family lived in Klotzsche , a spa and villa town near Dresden, which was incorporated in 1950. Manfred Pollatz was a member of the local council from March 1919 to January 1924 and was involved in welfare activities, among other things.

After completing his studies, Manfred Pollatz was initially a teacher at the Carola-Gymnasium in Leipzig and then taught at the Dresden Reformrealgymnasium (Wettiner Gymnasium) and at the humanistic state high school in Dresden-Neustadt, and from 1912 together with his wife at the Old Town Higher School for Girls and Women in Dresden. At Easter 1916, the couple quit school together and founded their own forest and day school for boys and girls in Klotzsche in order to realize their educational reform ideas. The pedagogical concept, which was based on the idea of ​​a work school and community education, provided for outdoor lessons as well as courses in sports, foreign languages, natural history and handicrafts, and also placed great emphasis on artistic education. Grades were not awarded and socially disadvantaged children were offered an inexpensive lunch. The small school, which was sponsored by the education authority, developed into a company with over a hundred students during the war, but collided with the changed school legislation after the First World War and had to close in 1920.

Manfred Pollatz then worked briefly in the salary department of the Saxon Ministry of Economic Affairs in Dresden. In 1921 he was appointed as a teacher of history and literature at the new Sächsische Landesschule Dresden, a boarding school with musical, artistic and technical training, which moved into a new building in Klotzsche in 1927.

Collaboration with the Quakers ( German annual meeting )

Manfred and Lili Pollatz both joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Germany in 1929 , with which they had been in close contact since the early 1920s. The Dresden Quaker group, which had existed for several years at that time, but was only a small group, was restructured by Manfred and Lili Pollatz and in July 1930 moved entirely into the Pollatzsche house in Klotzsche, which not only became the center of Dresden Quakerism, but also of which also emanated a variety of impulses that enlivened German Quakerism as a whole. As his articles in the monthly magazine of the German Quakers show, Manfred Pollatz can be regarded as one of the most important Quaker theorists of his time. In 1931, on the initiative of the Pollatz couple, the annual meeting of the German Quakers was held in the Dresden-Hellerau reform estate. At this annual meeting a committee was set up to deal with the establishment of an own Quaker school in Germany and to which Manfred Pollatz also belonged. The aim was a religiously founded educational community of all social classes, which should also be open to students from other countries. But location and financing difficulties arose until the beginning of National Socialist rule in Germany finally put an end to these plans.

From 1931/32 onwards, the Pollatz couple published the youth magazine “ Die Weisse Feder ” and in 1933 also took over the editing of the magazine “Der Quäker. Monthly notebooks of the German friends ”(until 1940).

Fight against National Socialism and emigration

With the onset of the economic crisis in 1929, Manfred and Lili Pollatz, who had already held courses for blue-collar workers during their studies, offered evening courses for young unemployed people in their house in cooperation with the unions. The courses were monitored by the police and later also observed by SA guards. In the first months of 1933 they regularly invited the women and children of workers from Klotzsche who were imprisoned in the concentration camp to their home for lunch. On July 16, 1933, Manfred Pollatz applied to the Ministry of National Education in Dresden to release him from his position as a teacher at the state school, because his religious convictions meant that he did not follow the regulations of the ordinance that had just been issued on the Hitler salute in schools could. He was then retired on the basis of Section 6 of the 'Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service' (“Simplification of Administration”) of April 7, 1933. On August 23, 1933, a raid squad of the SA occupied Pollatz's house and arrested him together with 200 other citizens from Klotzsche and the neighboring town of Hellerau. Pollatz was imprisoned for a week but was released after the American Quaker Richard L. Cary (1886–1933) stood up for him. After his stay in prison, Manfred Pollatz decided to emigrate with his family and made an official application to move to the Netherlands, which was granted. The family sold their house in Klotzsche and moved to Haarlem in Holland on January 31, 1934, where Manfred Pollatz bought a new house in Westerhoutpark 14.

Refuge for Jewish children

In the following years, Lili and Manfred Pollatz set up a home with a small school for refugee children from Germany in their Haarlem house. First and foremost, they took in so-called half-Jews there, whom the Quakers took care of in the Netherlands, since no other aid organization felt responsible for them. The lessons were mainly given by Manfred and Lili Pollatz, supported by their son Karl Heinz and some teachers from Haarlem. Dutch was taught, but the language of instruction was German. The refugee children were intensively involved in the housework and gardening and the care of the entire community, which was otherwise mainly done by the three daughters. Since February 1940, the Pollatzsche apartment was recognized as a place of residence for foreigners according to the Dutch Aliens Ordinance, and after the occupation by the Germans, homeless children were officially assigned to them. The home was financed through the pension, which Manfred Pollatz received until 1938, through financial contributions from English and American Quaker organizations and through private donations, such as the Dutch banker Eduard Vis. However, the financial ceiling was so thin, especially after the boarding house was not available, that the family and the children housed there sometimes suffered hunger.

The Pollatz couple visited Germany regularly until the German occupation and immediately after the November pogrom in 1938 Manfred Pollatz was still able to help persecuted Jews in Nuremberg, Leipzig and Duisburg. After the occupation by the Germans, the Pollatzsche house offered refuge for Dutch resistance members. Manfred and Lili Pollatz distributed their writings and - after Jews were banned from staying in the Dutch coastal area in 1941 and the German children who were still housed in their home had to leave the home - they instead took in babies and toddlers of Dutch Jews, who had been deported to Germany. A total of ten Dutch Jewish children between the ages of two months and three years were hidden by the Pollatz family. Of the 28 German-Jewish children known by name who had previously found refuge in the Pollatz home, 23 survived the Nazi era. The babies and toddlers all survived, although two of them were deported with him when Manfred Pollatz was arrested on May 14, 1943. But it was possible to free these two children with the help of the Dutch resistance later.

Concentration camp detention

Manfred Pollatz was arrested on May 14, 1943 and spent a total of 18 months in prison. He was first taken to a prison in Amsterdam-South from May 15 to August 1943, then from August 1943 to May 24, 1944 in the Herzogenbusch concentration camp ( Kamp Vught in Dutch ) and finally to the concentration camp on May 25, 1944 Transferred to Dachau . His son, Karl Heinz Pollatz, who studied medicine and, under pressure from the security service (SD), had been a member of a student medical company in Münster since 1941, had actually wanted to go into hiding after completing his training, but was now negotiating with the SD about the release of his father and finally reached it by reporting to the Eastern Front as a doctor. Manfred Pollatz was then actually released from Dachau on October 6, 1944, and Karl Heinz Pollatz, from whom the family received last message in January 1945, was probably killed in the fighting in the Vistula bend (Warsaw / Radom). The tragedy that the son of the man, of all people, who in 1937 was the only member of the German Quakers to plead that a Quaker should not serve in the Wehrmacht under any circumstances, even under great external pressure , died as a soldier in World War II , and that to save his father overshadowed the life of the entire family until the end.

post war period

In February / March 1945 the Pollatzsche house in Haarlem was confiscated by the occupying forces and the family with the remaining foster children were evicted from the house shortly before the end of the war. Less than a year after the end of the war, Lili Pollatz died on March 1, 1946.

In 1946 the family initially worked for the European aid organization for American Quakers; the former home was now the depot and distribution point, and in the following years Pollatz was also involved in organizing recreational trips for children from West and East Germany. In June 1946, Pollatz and his three daughters applied for Dutch citizenship and in 1953 his German pension was granted again. A return to Germany was out of the question for him and his daughters. In the 1950s Manfred Pollatz was offered a new field of activity in the artistic field. For example, he translated art calendars into German and wrote articles for educational films. In 1962 he played a key role in the large Franz Hals exhibition in Haarlem, for which he also worked as a translator. Manfred Pollatz died on September 8, 1964 at the age of 77 after a heart attack at the Duisburg train station on the way home to Haarlem.

Works (selection)

• John Woolman: For the poor! A call for justice . A Quaker message from social duty (translated and introduced by Lili and Manfred Pollatz), Berlin-Lübars 1931.
• Manfred Pollatz: The inner light. In: The Quaker. Monthly books of the German friends, VIII, 6, 1931, pp. 161–170.
• Manfred Pollatz: Quaker's answer to contemporary questions. In: Der Quäker, IX, 5, 1932, pp. 141-144.
• Manfred Pollatz: Is there a right to the life of the other? In: Der Quäker, XI, 6, 1934, pp. 163-165.
• William Axling: Kagawa (translated by Manfred and Lili Pollatz), 1st edition, Bad Pyrmont 1939; 2nd edition Bad Pyrmont 1946.
• Manfred Pollatz: John Woolman. On the creative power of personality (Richard L. Cary lecture), Bad Pyrmont 1951.

Honors

• In 2013 Manfred and Lili Pollatz were honored by the State of Israel as Righteous Among the Nations .

• On the initiative of Isobel Wijnberg, a memorial plaque was put up in front of the Pollatz family's house in Haarlem, Westerhoutpark 14, on May 4, 2014 to commemorate their commitment to the rescue of Jewish children, their willingness to make sacrifices and their courage.

Literature and Sources

• Claus Bernet , Cordula Tollmien : Lili and Manfred Pollatz, in: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, Volume XXXIII . Traugott Bautz GmbH, Nordhausen 2012, p. Columns 1046-1062 .
• Isobel Wijnberg, Anja Hollaender: He never wakes up a child ... De quakers Lili en Manfred Pollatz, now School en kindertehus in Haarlem 1934–1945 . AMB, Diemen 2014, ISBN 978-90-79700-67-7 .
• Cordula Tollmien : A nightmare is behind us and maybe it's not even over yet - Lili Pollatz from the Netherlands to her American Quaker friends . In: Irene Below, Inge Hansen-Schaberg , Maria Kublitz Kramer (eds.): The end of exile? Letters from women after 1945 . text and criticism, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-86916-373-4 , p. 45-58 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ List on yadvashem.org, accessed on January 20, 2015 (PDF).
2. ↑ Report on the unveiling of the memorial plaque ( memento of the original dated February 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) 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. , accessed February 9, 2015. 

Web links

• Manfred Pollatz and Lili Engelsmann on tollmien.com