Marga Meusel

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Memorial plaque for Marga Meusel at Teltower Damm 4/8, Berlin-Zehlendorf , where she worked from 1932 to 1953

Margarete "Marga" Meusel (born May 26, 1897 in Falkenberg OS ; † May 16, 1953 in Berlin ) was a German social welfare worker and a member of the Confessing Church .

Life

A study carried out by Marga Meusel on behalf of the Women's Academy

From 1903 Meusel attended the elementary school in Katowice and from 1908 in Munsterberg the training school of the Protestant teachers' college . From 1911 she worked in the parental household. From 1916 to 1918 she worked as an office assistant at the Wohlau district court and then in a law firm. Meusel finished her training at the teacher training college in 1920 and completed training as a nurse, which she completed in 1921 in Breslau . She then ran a children's home in Michelsdorf until the facility was closed a short time later due to a lack of funds, and then worked there as a community nurse. Meusel temporarily represented the district welfare officer in Soest in 1922 and completed a special course at the women's social school in Breslau. In addition, she worked in infant care in the district welfare center "Gotteshilfe" in Rothkretschau. In 1923 she passed the exam to become a welfare worker with a focus on health care and was employed as a district welfare officer in the Hirschberg district from 1924 . From 1927 Meusel completed a one-year course at the Pestalozzi-Froebel-Haus , which she completed in 1928. After that she was district welfare officer in Wohlau and from 1929 in Soldin . In 1930 she acquired an additional qualification at the German Academy for Social and Educational Women's Work in Berlin-Schöneberg , through which she received state recognition as a youth nurse. As a district welfare officer, she campaigned for the creation of rural kindergartens in order to counter the neglect tendencies of children.

time of the nationalsocialism

From August 1932 until her death in May 1953, Meusel headed the Evangelical District Welfare Office in the Berlin district of Zehlendorf, which from 1940 was referred to as the District Office of the Inner Mission . Your supervisor was Martin Niemöller , who was part of the administrative committee of the Evangelical District Welfare Office. Meusel held office hours in which she advised and supported people in social emergencies. After the National Socialists came to power , in addition to mothers-to-be, alcoholics, homeless people and offenders, Christians also went to her office hours for racial reasons, which she helped under the adverse circumstances of the Nazi era.

In order to be able to better support the large number of Christians of Jewish origin in need, she and her friend Charlotte Friedenthal (1892–1973) contacted Friedrich von Bodelschwingh via Superintendent Martin Albertz in autumn 1934 to set up a central advice center for Christians of Jewish origin ( "Aid for non-Aryans"). Since Bodelschwingh put them off, Albertz and Meusel decided to initiate a discussion with a memorandum at the DEK Confessing Synod in June 1935 on Christians of Jewish origin in need. In May 1935 Meusel therefore drafted the memorandum on the tasks of the Confessing Church for Protestant non-Aryans . However, this memorandum was not discussed either in Augsburg or later. The memorandum on the situation of German non-Aryans , which Meusel was long believed to be the author, was anonymously distributed in the Confessing Church in 1935/36 and is now attributed to Elisabeth Schmitz . In 1935 and 1936, Meusel turned to the deaconess mother houses of the Kaiserwerthers Association with little success in a survey in order to accommodate non-Aryan student nurses there.

Meusel therefore began to work in silence and accepted Jewish welfare workers as interns from 1933 to 1936. For example, Charlotte Friedenthal , a member of the Confessing Church who was persecuted as a Jew and dismissed from her job, became Meusel's volunteer worker.

“If we ever get hit by the car: I don't expect you to beat us out. I stand for what I do, right now. "

- Marga Meusel in a letter dated June 3, 1937 to Pastor Martin Niemöller

After the beginning of the Second World War , she did not accept her election to the advisory board of the Grüber office in April 1940 , because she feared difficulties with the administrative committee of the Evangelical District Welfare Office if she accepted this office. From 1941 Meusel placed women who were threatened with deportation to extermination camps in safe accommodation. In March 1943 Meusel was denounced because of statements critical of the regime . However, Superintendent Max Diestel succeeded in getting the informer to revoke her statement.

After the end of the war

After the liberation from National Socialism , Meusel also worked in refugee aid and the station mission.

“Through her unconditional readiness to work and her courage, which did not take into account her personal safety, Fraulein Meusel directed the work of her district office during the war in ways that were unusual. She put her advisory and active care primarily at the service of those who were persecuted by National Socialism. In particular, it has taken care of Christian and Jewish non-Aryans and so-called mixed race who were harassed and endangered by the legal and illegal measures of the Third Reich. In addition, in a very significant number of cases she has tried to cover up, accommodate, and provide food and ID documents to non-Aryans who had escaped the Gestapo's access and were forced to lead an illegal life. She never asked what danger she ran herself. It is thanks to your help that a number of people have been saved from death. "

- Walter Strauss in a tribute to Marga Meusel in 1946

Due to the efforts made during the National Socialist era , Meusel was physically and mentally overworked and ill. She felt no longer up to her tasks and looked unsuccessfully for another occupation. She died alone in Berlin in mid-May 1953.

Honors

tomb

Meusel rests in an honorary grave in the Zehlendorf cemetery in Berlin. Her gravestone bears the inscription: "After 1933 she bravely stood up for those who were racially persecuted and disenfranchised".

Meusel was posthumously recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for her selfless commitment to racially persecuted people. On August 30, 2011, a previously unnamed green space in Berlin-Zehlendorf was named Marga-Meusel-Platz . At her former place of work at Teltower Damm 4 there is a plaque in honor of her. Marga-Meusel-Strasse bears its name in Datteln . The parish hall of the Protestant parish in Weiterstadt near Darmstadt was also named after her.

Fonts (selection)

  • Gymnastics course at the Hassitz youth hostel , in: Social professional work 1929 / H. 5 / &, pp. 48-49
  • Living conditions of single mothers in the country , Eberswalde 1933
  • Georg Müller. A father of orphans , in: Christian child care 1936 / H. 9, pp. 252-258

literature

  • Hansjörg Buss: Courageous commitment for Christians of Jewish origin: Marga Meusel . In: Manfred Gailus / Clemens Vollnhals (ed.): With heart and mind: Protestant women in resistance against Nazi racial politics , Göttingen 2013, pp. 129–146.
  • Katharina Bamberger: Important graduates of the German Academy for Social and Educational Women's Work . A contribution to the history of social work in the 20th century, Hanover 2000 (unpublished diploma thesis)
  • Rainer Bookhagen: Protestant child care and the inner mission in the time of National Socialism, mobilization of the communities ; Volume 1: 1933-1937 ; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 1998; ISBN 3-525-55729-9 .
  • Julietta Breuer: Marga Meusel. Refused help in the Confessing Church. Source: In: Geschichtelern, 7 (1994) 40, pp. 32-36, ISSN  0933-3096
  • Martin Greschat : "Against the God of the Germans". Marga Meusel's fight to save the Jews . In: Ursula Büttner and Martin Greschat (eds.): The abandoned children of the church: Dealing with Christians of Jewish origin in the »Third Reich« , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1998, pp. 70–85, ISBN 3-525-01620- 4 .
  • Heike Köhler:  Meusel, Marga. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 5, Bautz, Herzberg 1993, ISBN 3-88309-043-3 , Sp. 1407-1409.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Claudia Lepp : Marga Meusel and Elisabeth Schmitz . Two women, two memoranda and their path to the culture of remembrance . In: Siegfried Hermle / Dagmar Pöpping (ed.): Between transfiguration and condemnation. Phases of the Reception of Protestant Resistance to National Socialism after 1945 (AKiZ B 67). Göttingen 2017, pp. 285–301.
  • Peter Reinicke : Meusel, Margarete , in: Hugo Maier (ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , p. 394f.

Web links

Commons : Marga Meusel  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Katharina Bamberger: Important graduates of the German Academy for Social and Educational Women's Work . A contribution to the history of social work in the 20th century, Hannover 2000, p. 23 ff
  2. ^ A b Rainer Bookhagen: The Protestant child care and the inner mission in the time of National Socialism, mobilization of the communities ; Volume 1: 1933 to 1937 , Göttingen 1998, pp. 583f
  3. ^ Rainer Bookhagen: The Protestant child care and the inner mission in the time of National Socialism, mobilization of the communities ; Volume 1: 1933 to 1937 , Göttingen 1998, p. 306
  4. ↑ a b Hartmut Ludwig: A "Righteous Among the Nations". Margarete Meusel (1897-1953) . In: Junge Kirche, issue 3/2007, p. 61
  5. ↑ a b c Hartmut Ludwig: I really stand for what I do. Margarete Meusel. A Righteous Among the Nations ( Memento from January 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). in: St Thomas Berlin .
  6. ↑ See Uta Gerdes: Ecumenical Solidarity with Christian and Jewish Persecuted. The CIMADE in Vichy France 1940–1944 ; Göttingen 2005; AKiZ. B 41; ISBN 978-3-525-55741-9 , pp. 364f.
  7. ↑ Hans Erler, Ansgar Koschel (ed.): The dialogue between Jews and Christians: Attempts at the conversation after Auschwitz. Campus, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-593-36346-1 , pp. 142f.
  8. ^ A b Jochen-Christoph Kaiser : Evangelical Church and Social State: Diakonie in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-17-020163-7 , p. 163ff
  9. ↑ Jana Leichsenring, Women and Resistance , series of publications of the research community July 20, 1944 e. V., Lit, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8258-6489-8 , p. 62
  10. ↑ one of the few sisters of Jewish origin known by name, then of Protestant faith at this time and in this institution was Maria Krehbiel-Darmstädter. The exact time period of her activity there is not yet known. Compare the information in this: Letters from Gurs and Limonest. Compilation, ed. And preface by Walter Schmitthenner . Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg 1972
  11. ↑ Uta Gerdes: Ecumenical solidarity with Christian and Jewish persecuted. The CIMADE in Vichy France 1940–1944 ; Göttingen 2005; AKiZ. B 41; ISBN 978-3-525-55741-9 , p. 354
  12. ↑ Quoted in: Hartmut Ludwig: A "Righteous Among the Nations". Margarete Meusel (1897-1953) . In: Junge Kirche, issue 3/2007, p. 61
  13. ↑ Quoted in: Martin Greschat: "Against the God of the Germans". Marga Meusel's fight to save the Jews . In: Ursula Büttner and Martin Greschat (eds.): The abandoned children of the church: Dealing with Christians of Jewish origin in the »Third Reich« , Göttingen 1998, p. 84
  14. ↑ Martin Greschat: "Against the God of the Germans". Marga Meusel's fight to save the Jews . In: Ursula Büttner and Martin Greschat (eds.): The abandoned children of the church: Dealing with Christians of Jewish origin in the »Third Reich« , Göttingen 1998, pp. 84f.
  15. ^ Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 406.
  16. ^ Cemeteries and graves of honor. Query of the honorary graves ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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. at www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de
  17. ↑ Cemetery Views. Marga Meusel
  18. ↑ The naming ceremony of the Marga-Meusel-Platz in Zehlendorf on August 30, 2011 ( Memento of the original from December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. District Office Steglitz-Zehlendorf @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.berlin.de
  19. ↑ Memorial plaques in Berlin-Zehlendorf on www.dasjahrbuch.de
personal data
SURNAME Meusel, Marga
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meusel, Margarete (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German welfare worker and Righteous Among the Nations
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Falkenberg OS
DATE OF DEATH May 16, 1953
Place of death Berlin