Margarete Wessel
Bertha Luise Margarete Wessel (birth name Margarete Richter ; * 1881 or 1882 in Aerzen near Hameln , † April 12, 1970 in Uedem ) was the mother of Horst Wessel . After her son was killed by KPD members and subsequently stylized as a " martyr of the movement " by Nazi propaganda , she profited considerably from the heroic cult around him.
Life
Origin, marriage and time of National Socialism
Margarete Wessel grew up in Aerzen near Hameln as the daughter of a Protestant pastor. On May 1, 1906, she married the Protestant pastor Ludwig Wessel in her hometown . The couple lived in Bielefeld, where Ludwig Wessel was pastor at the Pauluskirche . On October 9, 1907, they became the parents of their son Horst there . From February 1908 to October 1913 the family lived in Mülheim an der Ruhr , where Wessel was appointed pastor of the old town parish. There the children Ingeborg (born May 19, 1909) and Werner (born August 22, 1910) were born. Then the family moved to Berlin, where Ludwig Wessel took over a pastor's position at the Nikolaikirche on July 7, 1913 . Margarete Wessel had not learned a trade and took care of the household with the help of a maid . Her husband is described by the historian Daniel Siemens as a self-righteous authoritarian head of the family.
In the months before the death of her sons, Margarete Wessel was concerned about their way of life. Dealing with the mostly unemployed " proletarians " in connection with the violent clashes with the Red Front Fighter League as well as Horst's dropout and his coexistence with the former prostitute Erna Jaenichen were the reason for regular admonitions. Since Horst Wessel did not have a regular job, Margarete Wessel supported him financially, according to statements from his partner. It was only then that Horst Wessel was able to work with all of his creative power in the construction of the SA train he was leading without having to work. After her eldest son Horst was admitted to hospital seriously injured on January 14, 1930, Margarete Wessel, together with her daughter and Richard Fiedler , woke up at his sick bed before his death on February 23, 1930 .
After Horst Wessel's death and funeral, his mother and sister moved from Berlin to Hanover to stay with Margarete Wessel's sister, where they registered on May 4, 1930 at 32 Stolzestrasse. In the extensive reporting on the trial against Albrecht Höhler's perpetrators , it is not mentioned whether family members also took part. The trial was a political issue in which the family tragedy of a family with two dead members within two months was of no public interest. It is said that Margarete Wessel met with Joseph Goebbels twice during the trial . After lunch and dinner together on September 28, 1930, he noted in his diary that she boarded the train after the day with him, "quite satisfied". Otherwise she is an "unhappy and internally broken mother". On March 26, 1931 Margarete Wessel moved back to Berlin with her daughter Ingeborg. The new apartment was in the middle-class, comparatively quiet Wilmersdorf .
The contents of the novel Horst Wessel published by Hanns Heinz Ewers to glorify Horst Wessel in 1932 . A German fate was heavily censored by mother and sister Wessel. Ewers only managed to hint at the relationship with Erna Jaenichen, so that Horst Wessel is portrayed in the novel as a quasi genderless, emotionally cold person. No evidence can be found for the truth of the passages of “ten glowing nights” with a young Austrian woman. Although Evers complained privately about the interference with the content by the Wessel family, he dedicated the book to Margarete Wessel. In the novel, as well as later around the "Wessel cult", she was stylized as the ideal type of the "German mother" and portrayed with borrowings from religious symbolism. In November 1933 Margarete Wessel protested against the showing of the propaganda film Hans Westmar , as she saw in this a "desecration" of her son's reputation.
After the seizure of power , the cult around Horst Wessel took on dimensions that were difficult to imagine. His relatives could benefit financially from it. After the Second World War, Hans Bernd Gisevius described the fact that Margarete and Ingeborg Wessel, as family members of Horst Wessel, stylized as a quasi "national saint" by the Nazi movement, both in the press and on Nazi Events were omnipresent. Ingeborg Wessel published the biography Mein Bruder Horst in the National Socialist Franz-Eher-Verlag at the end of 1933 , which was published in 12th editions until 1941. The New Book for Girls she published was also published in at least seven editions.
Margarete Wessel was invited to the inauguration of monuments and memorial plaques throughout the German Reich and took part in the NSDAP party congresses from 1933 to 1935 with honorary cards . Among other things, she was the guest of honor at the unveiling of the memorial at St. Marien and St. Nikolai Cemetery I and when a commemorative plaque was attached to her former home in Jüdenstrasse . The former in the presence of the entire NSDAP prominence including Adolf Hitler. At the beginning of 1933 she and her daughter Ingeborg applied for admission to the NSDAP with the membership numbers of the dead family members (Horst 48.434; Werner 92.715) in order to benefit from the preferential treatment of old fighters . They were denied membership numbers for "fundamental reasons". Despite the ban on admission, they were accepted on February 16, 1934 with the membership numbers 2,084,783 for Margarete Wessel and 2,084,611 for her daughter. In October 1937, Magarete Wessel was Benito Mussolini's guest of honor at the celebrations for the 15th anniversary of the so-called “ March on Rome ”.
In 1935, the municipality of Krummhübel (today Karpacz in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship ) gave her a representative plot of 3600 m², just a few kilometers from Werner Wessels' death place. Ingeborg Wessel had a house built there with a living space of 200 m² with high-quality equipment at the time, such as central heating and a garage. According to Daniel Siemens, the NSDAP contributed to the costs. Margarete Wessel lived in this house with her daughter and grandchildren from the end of 1942, fleeing from the Allied air raids , as their first residence. At the same time, they took all family valuables to the Giant Mountains. Before the advancing Red Army , they fled via the intermediate station in Dresden, where they claimed to have lost all their property in the air raids on February 13 and 14, 1945 , to the Weser Uplands. Margarete Wessel had been an honorary citizen of Hameln since 1933 . In neighboring Hajen she found accommodation with her daughter and their children.
Her honorary citizenship of the city of Hameln was officially revoked in 2017.
After the Second World War
Since 1945, Magarete Wessel has received a social pension from the Hildesheim pension office as well as monthly “emergency aid” from the eastern pastor’s supply. The latter first from the Landeskirchenamt Hannover and later from the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland. In the correspondence with which she had requested this, she denied her children and presented herself as a lonely poor old woman who was dependent on the charitable gifts of the Church. There is evidence that her son-in-law, who had a high family income together with her daughter, prescribed her several cures, so that she was lying about this information. Between July 20, 1957 and August 15, 1968 she received DM 23,178.80 as compensation for the house in Krummhübel under the Burden Equalization Act .
Magarete Wessel spent a materially carefree retirement. She never questioned her own behavior during the time of National Socialism, although she had benefited considerably from the hero cult around Horst Wessel.
She died on April 12, 1970 in the St. Laurentius Hospital in the municipality of Uedem in the district of Kleve.
Individual evidence
- ^ Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel: Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist , Munich, Siedler, 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 , p. 37 "On May 1906 he had the 24-year-old pastor's daughter Bertha Luise Margarete from Aerzen with him Hamelin married in her hometown. " and 274
- ^ Daniel Siemens; P. 15, 36 and 37
- ^ Daniel Siemens, p. 39
- ^ Daniel Siemens; P. 98
- ^ Daniel Siemens; P. 94/95
- ^ Daniel Siemens, p. 214
- ^ Daniel Siemens, p. 118
- ^ Daniel Siemens, p. 105
- ^ Daniel Siemens; P. 137
- ^ Daniel Siemens; P. 147
- ^ Daniel Siemens, pp. 139/140
- ^ Daniel Siemens; 170 and 174
- ↑ a b Daniel Siemens, pp. 141–143
- ^ Daniel Siemens; P. 142
- ↑ ndr.de
- ↑ a b c Daniel Siemens; Pp. 271-274
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wessel, Margarete |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wessel, Bertha Luise Margarete (full name); Richter, Margarete (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Mother of Horst Wessel |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1881 or 1882 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Aerzen near Hameln |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 12, 1970 |
| Place of death | Uedem |