Maria Countess von Maltzan

Maria Helene Françoise Izabel Countess von Maltzan, Freiin zu Wartenberg and Penzlin (born March 25, 1909 near Militsch , Silesia ; † November 12, 1997 in Berlin ) was a German biologist , veterinarian and resistance fighter against the National Socialists .

Life

Origin and childhood

Maria Countess von Maltzan was born as the youngest of seven children at Militsch Castle, about 55 kilometers north of Breslau . Her father, Andreas von Maltzan (May 20, 1863– April 10, 1921) belonged to the old north German-Swedish nobility , the family had come to Silesia from Pomerania . Her mother, Elisabeth (January 24, 1869– February 25, 1934), was born in von der Schulenburg and came from Oefte Castle in what is now the Essen district of Kettwig .

Maltzan grew up close to nature on her father's rule of twelve estates. She had a warm relationship with her father. She never got along with her mother and her only brother. Early on she was characterized by a rebellious, unconventional nature. Above all, injustice and violence against the weaker and animals were repugnant to her from an early age, which her father, who is considered very social, encouraged her.

education

The young countess first went to boarding school in Warmbrunn , then she continued attending school at the Kirstein Lyceum in Berlin. Against the wishes of her mother - her father had died in 1921 - she then attended the scientifically-oriented Elisabeth High School in Berlin-Kreuzberg instead of a school for higher daughters and graduated from high school in 1927. She studied first in Breslau , from 1928 in Munich zoology , botany and anthropology . In 1933 she did her doctorate under Reinhard Demoll in fishery biology with a thesis on the nutritional biology and physiology of carp for Dr. rer. nat., but did not find a job in a scientific institute due to initial activities in the resistance against National Socialism .

Travel, Munich bohemian and first contacts with the resistance

Through the Jesuit Friedrich Muckermann she came into contact with the Catholic resistance. She brought illegal information about Starnberg to Innsbruck about Adolf Hitler . In 1934 she traveled with a friend in a car via France and Spain to Africa : for a year through Morocco , Algeria , the Sahara , Libya , Egypt and back.

When she returned to Munich, she moved - smoking a pipe and cigar - in bohemian circles, had numerous affairs and worked as a translator, freelance journalist and editor. She hired herself as a groom and hired as a double for riding scenes at Bavaria Film . In 1935 she married the actor and cabaret artist Walter Hillbring and moved with him to Berlin, where she worked in publishing . The marriage failed after a year; Hillbring returns to Munich, Maltzan stays in the capital.

Professional career and resistance from 1937

After the pogrom of November 9th to 10th, 1938, she trained as a preliminary helper at the Red Cross. After the outbreak of war in 1939, Maltzan was first drafted to the post office and later to the tracing service of the German Red Cross . In 1940 she began studying veterinary medicine in Berlin , which she completed in 1943 with the state examination. She worked as a practice representative and at the animal welfare association .

Maltzan was also in contact with resistance groups in Berlin. In 1937 she took in a man who had been released from the concentration camp for the first time . From 1942 she hid her friend, the Jewish writer Hans Hirschel (1900–1975), the former editor of the magazine for German avant-garde literature Das Dreieck , founded in 1925 , and two other Jews in her apartment in Berlin-Wilmersdorf . At times, the men had to stay in the bed boxes of the sofa beds for days, only interrupted by a few breaks, in order not to fall into the hands of the Gestapo . During this time, their child, who was born one month prematurely, died when a bomb attack caused a power failure in the incubator in which the baby was lying.

In cooperation with the Swedish Church ( Victoria Church in Wilmersdorf), Maltzan helped those persecuted by the Nazis to escape, obtained false passports and led the refugees through the sewers of Berlin. In addition, she was involved in the “Aktion Schwedenmöbel”, in the framework of which Jews and politically persecuted persons were hidden in furniture boxes loaded for transport that Swedish citizens were allowed to send home . It can be assumed that she helped in various ways in the rescue of around 60 politically or racially persecuted people. Maltzan's alliances in the resistance against National Socialism were not tied to any particular political color. She kept in touch with communists as well as with the Kreisau Circle . Her brother, however, had become a National Socialist .

During the last months of the war, Maltzan helped refugees and deserters and organized a private soup kitchen for forced laborers in the backyard of their house at Detmolder Strasse 11, which was ultimately destroyed.

Post war and later fame

After the end of the war, she worked as a veterinarian with her own practice, initially for the Soviet and later for the British occupation officers . She couldn't go back to Militsch: Her brother had fallen, most of the property was lost and the family was scattered to the wind. In 1945 Militsch was placed under Polish administration.

In 1947, Maltzan married Hans Hirschel, they divorced in 1949, and in 1972 the two married again. The veterinarian had to give up her profession in the meantime: Due to drug addiction and drug addiction , she was forcibly committed to psychiatry and lost her license to practice medicine. After regaining her license to practice medicine as a veterinarian, she traveled around the country with a circus and worked in the Berlin zoo ; at the age of over 50, she worked throughout Germany and Switzerland as a vacation replacement for veterinarians.

After the death of her husband in 1975, she opened her own prosperous veterinary practice near Berlin's Kurfürstendamm , which was frequented by celebrities (including those from the red light district ), and from 1981 onwards she set up a small veterinary practice in Berlin-Kreuzberg . She looked after the animals of the punks in the neighborhood free of charge. Outwardly of a rather gruff and quick-tempered nature, she campaigned for the socially excluded and people with a migration background in her neighborhood and often came into conflict with the authorities .

Grave of Maria Countess von Maltzan in the Heerstrasse cemetery in Berlin-Westend

She published her memoir in 1986 under the title Beat the drum and don't be afraid , she appeared on talk shows , including with Alfred Biolek , and became known to a wider audience. In 1987 the Jewish helper was given the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations . On October 1, 1989, she received the Order of Merit of the State of Berlin . The publicist Reimar Lenz lived in the neighborhood in Berlin-Wilmersdorf , to whose circle of friends and discussions she belonged, so that she appeared several times in the long-term documentary Berlin - corner of Bundesplatz .

Maria Countess von Maltzan died on November 12, 1997 at the age of 88 in Berlin. The burial took place on November 20, 1997 at the Heerstraße cemetery in today's Berlin-Westend district (grave location: 13-C-11).

Aftermath

Memorial plaque at Detmolder Strasse 11 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf

The feature film Hidden (1984) is loosely based on von Maltzan's life story. Jacqueline Bisset plays the countess in him and Jürgen Prochnow her husband.

Since 1999, a memorial plaque on the sidewalk in front of the Detmolder Strasse 11 property in Berlin-Wilmersdorf has been commemorating the veterinarian and resistance fighter Maria Countess von Maltzan. Margarethe von Trotta designed the character of Lena Fischer in her feature film Rosenstraße after the quarreling countess. In Great Britain and the USA she is regarded as an example of the “decent Germans” who did not take part in the Nazi terror: She was included in a video documentary, and her memoirs were highly praised by English critics. The American Jewish actress Deborah Lubar, who looks astonishingly similar to Maltzan, has the two-act You do what you do (author: Marianne Lust) with scenes from Maltzan's life in her solo program. Maria Countess von Maltzan's autobiography has now been published in 17 editions as well as in several special editions.

On August 8, 2008, the barracks of the Bundeswehr School for Service Dogs in Ulmen was given the name Countess von Maltzan Barracks as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations .

In Berlin-Kreuzberg , a square not far from her veterinary practice on Oranienplatz will in future remind of Maria von Maltzan: the so-called "Bullenwinkel" in Naunynstrasse.

Works

• Beat the drum and don't be afraid , 1986 (most recently from Ullstein, Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-548-20941-8 ).
• The new cat book: Raising and caring for domestic cats. (Falken Verlag 1952)

Filmography

• Treason (in English)
• Hidden (English Forbidden ), directed by Anthony Page, GB-USA-D 1984 (the character and story of Nina von Halder corresponds to Maria von Maltzans) based on the book by Leonard Gross. In the main roles: Jacqueline Bisset and Jürgen Prochnow .
• Berlin - corner of Bundesplatz , documentary series, directed by Hans-Georg Ullrich and Detlef Gumm, FRG 1986–2012, documents the life of selected residents in the neighborhood and a quarter of a century of contemporary history in Berlin. Maria von Maltzan encounters the viewer several times, e.g. B. as a guest in the discussion group on the roof terrace of the homosexual "dropout couple" Hans Ingebrand and Reimar Lenz
• They Risked their Lives. Rescuers of the Holocaust , documentary, director: Gay Block, USA 1991 (in which Maria von Maltzan as herself)
• Rosenstraße , directed by Margarethe von Trotta, Germany 2003 (the character of Lena Fischer is based on Maria von Maltzan's character)

literature

• Johann Schäffer: Maria Countess von Maltzan (1909–1997): A veterinarian in the resistance. In: Deutsches Tierärzteblatt , Vol. 56, 2008; Pp. 1332-1341
• Johann Schäffer: Maria Countess von Maltzan (1909–1997): A vet in the resistance - laudation on the occasion of the naming of the barracks for the school for service dogs of the Bundeswehr in Countess-von-Maltzan barracks
• Christoph Gunkel: Suspicious permanent guests. A countess hid her Jewish lover in Berlin, in: Der Spiegel Geschichte 2/2019, pp. 72–79.

Web links

Commons : Maria Gräfin von Maltzan  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Maria Countess von Maltzan in the catalog of the German National Library
• Maria Countess von Maltzan. In: FemBio. Women's biography research (with references and citations).
• auschwitz.dk

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Maria Countess von Maltzan on the website of Yad Vashem (English)
2. ↑ Jürgen Karwelat: She helped many Jews to escape . In: taz . Thursday, November 20, 1997. p. 23. Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial sites . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 491.
3. ↑ Hidden in the Internet Movie Database (English)