Marie Schlieps

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Marie Schlieps
Matron Marie Schlieps
Matron Marie Schlieps
Born June 26, 1881 (Lyswa)
Deceased March 18, 1919 (near Mitau)
Holiday March 18 ( Evangelical calendar of names )

Marie Schlieps , sometimes also Maria Schlieps (born June 26, 1881 in Lyswa , † March 18, 1919 near Mitau ), was a Kurland teacher and deaconess . She is considered a Protestant martyr .

The dates in this article are based on the Julian calendar for the period up to 1918 unless otherwise noted.

parents

The family belonged to the Baltic German minority. Marie Schlieps' father was Wilhelm Ludwig Schlieps. He was born on February 1, 1836 as the son of Johann Ulrich Schlieps in Peterhof in Courland . From 1855 to 1860 he studied mathematics in Dorpat . Then he was a senior teacher in Birkenruh and Mitau. From 1869 to 1871 he worked in the central office of the Great Russian Railway Company in Saint Petersburg . From 1872 to 1885 he was the inspector of Count Shuvalov's factories, then a farmer in the Perm Governorate . Later that year he lived in the Saratov Governorate . From 1885 he worked again as a senior teacher in Mitau until the year he died. He died there on April 29, 1888.

Marie Schlieps' mother was born to David Schabert and was called Anna Juliane. She was born on March 20, 1840 in Mitau and died there on March 12, 1909.

Life

Marie Schlieps as a young woman

Marie Schlieps attended the Paucker School in Mitau (today Jelgava ). She completed her training as a teacher with an exam, after which she worked for two years as a private tutor near Mitau. Marie Schlieps then practiced her profession at the Carlhoff School in Mitau. In 1912 she was asked to enter the deaconess house there, already with the intention of appointing her later as head of the house. In 1912 and 1913, she went to Germany for nine months in order to be able to take over the management of the Mitau House . There she first visited the Deaconess Institute Wilhelm Löhes in Neuendettelsau . Afterwards she was trained in nursing by deaconesses at the Henriettenstift in Hanover . In 1913 she became a deaconess .

Start of war and German occupation

In 1914, in connection with the First World War , Marie Schlieps became head of the hospital for the wounded, which had been set up by the Courland Knighthood in the Mitau Deaconess House. In the spring of 1915 she finally took over the management of the deaconess house in Mitau as superior. During the German occupation she was in Germany several times in this capacity.

Arrested by the Bolsheviks

In the further course of the war there was the Soviet occupation of Mitau in December 1918 after the German troops had withdrawn. During this time a Bolshevik commissar fell ill with flu, but had to continue working. So three days later he was admitted to the hospital where Schlieps worked with severe pneumonia. The night watch observed these patients throughout the night with hourly visits. When he was handed over to the day watch, his condition was unchanged. But a few minutes later he jumped out of bed, collapsed and died, as his two roommates reported. A Latvian nurse who belonged to the Red Cross and had been admitted to the deaconess house for charitable reasons reported to the political department that the blame for the death lay with the deaconesses and that it could even be a poisoning . Matron Marie Schlieps and Pastor Paul Wachtsmuth were immediately arrested on February 18, 1919; the commissioner's funeral took place immediately afterwards, without a forensic investigation into the question of poisoning or an interview with the attending physician.

House search in the deaconess house

A week after Schlieps' arrest, the house of the deaconess house was searched. The nurse who had denounced Schlieps and another woman of Latvian ethnicity, who had been found unfit for the deaconess office by Marie Schlieps but was allowed to stay in the deaconess house until the Bolsheviks were employed, led the group. The two women laughed and danced, and those involved in the search were delighted with the alleged evidence. These consisted of an old helmet that was left behind by a medical officer of the Army of the German Reich, a suitcase with foreign linen that had been left to the house, and a box with silver objects that had not been delivered.

Detention

The conditions of detention were very harsh. The cell was mostly unheated, severely overcrowded and unlit. Furthermore, the prisoners were insufficiently fed, and the facilities for personal hygiene were completely inadequate. For the first few weeks the prisoners received the soup brought to them by relatives; later, the food that was given to the prison did not reach the detainees. After two weeks in detention, the prisoners developed typhus . In this situation, Schlieps gave her fellow prisoners care and consolation. The overcrowding of the prison due to the daily delivery of new prisoners resulted in the female prisoners being transferred to the women's prison. This made Marie Schlieps' work a little easier. It even became possible to put her bread on her.

interrogation

Schlieps' first interrogation took place three weeks after her arrest, when there was allegedly enough evidence against her. Schlieps and Wachtsmuth were carefully questioned about the helmet and linen found in the house search, while the silver items were not mentioned. It is possible that those involved in the search had acquired it. The interrogation also concerned political attitudes towards the Bolsheviks, but not the death that led to the arrests. Although there was insufficient evidence, the superior and pastor remained in custody.

Shootings

A few weeks before Mitau was retaken by the Baltic State Armed Forces in the course of the Latvian War of Independence , executions by the Bolsheviks were only carried out by a tribunal after appropriate death sentences. The situation for the prisoners worsened daily with the approach of the enemy troops. In one night 40 to 50 prisoners of both sexes were shot without a prior hearing. They were put in a mass grave and buried there without their death having been determined beforehand.

Via dolorosa

The approximately 240 prisoners of the Bolsheviks, including Marie Schlieps, should on March 18, just one hour before the reconquest Mitau, at temperatures of -14 ° C in a snowstorm over 42 km at top speed in 13 hours after Riga will be made without that they were allowed to take breaks. Only half of the hostages survived the march. The route was later referred to as the via dolorosa based on the suffering of Jesus .

death

The further events could be deduced from the examination of the bodies of prisoners who were later found on this via dolorosa . The Libausche Zeitung reported on April 7th that numerous of these dead were found on the first 15 km of the way. They had gunshot and saber wounds and traces of Nagaika blows . Marie Schlieps apparently supported an old woman on the way until she could no longer walk 9 km from Mitau due to exhaustion. Judging by the evidence, she received a Nagaika blow. She was hit six shots, two of them fatal: One in the head, the second penetrated through her golden deaconess cross in her chest. The old woman was also shot. So much for the newspaper report.

funeral

Marie Schlieps' funeral did not take place until April 6, Wachtsmuth's death on March 20 was only known after April 7.

motto

A biblical motto, which Marie Schlieps followed, according to Arno Pagel , is 1 Joh 3,16  LUT : »We recognized love from this, that he left his life for us; and we should also give life to the brothers. "

meaning

Matron Marie Schlieps and Pastor Paul Wachtsmuth, the rector and chaplain of the Mitau Diakonissenanstalt, were the first martyrs of the deaconess mother houses of the Kaiserswerther Association.

Remembrance day

Before the introduction of the official name calendar, the day of remembrance was already listed in:

  • Albrecht Saathoff : The Book of Faith Witnesses , Göttingen 1951
  • Jörg Erb : The Cloud of the Witnesses , Kassel 1951/1963, Vol. 4, pp. 508-520
  • A. Ringwald: People before God , Stuttgart 1957/1968

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Alexander Burchard: "... all your miracles": The last German provost in Riga remembers (1872–1955) (= series of the Carl-Schirren-Gesellschaft, 10). Carl-Schirren-Gesellschaft, Lüneburg, 2009, ISBN 978-3-923149-59-9 , p. 269.
  2. a b c d e f g h i Baltic Historical Commission (ed.): Entry on Marie Schlieps. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital
  3. a b c d e f g h Schlieps, Marie. In: Kulturportal West-Ost.
  4. a b c d e f Marie Schlieps in the Ecumenical Saint Lexicon
  5. ^ Calendar reform by the Bolsheviks on February 1st July. / February 14,  1918 greg. , Declaration of independence of Latvia on November 5th jul. / November 18,  1918 greg.
  6. Source on both parents: Wilhelm Ludwig Schlieps. In: Erik Amburger database . Institute for East and Southeast European Studies , accessed on March 18, 2019 .
  7. a b c d e Joachim Januschek: Marie Schlieps. In: Ecumenical Calendar of Names. October 14, 2004 .;
  8. a b c d e f g h Report on the capture and murder of the superior of the Mitau deaconess house Marie Schlieps by the Bolsheviks in the Libauschen Zeitung , No. 81 of April 7, 1919, online under Schlieps | issueType: P
  9. Twenty years ago. in Evangelium und Osten: Russian Evangelical Press Service , No. 5, May 1, 1939, online at Marnitz | issueType: P
  10. Claus von Aderkas : The Testimony of the Baltic Martyrs in the Years 1918/1919. In: Günther Schulz (Ed.): Church in the East: Studies on Eastern European Church History and Church Studies , Volume 39. Verlag Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1996, ISBN 3-525-56385-X , p. 16.
  11. Light to the East, p. 165. (PDF)
  12. reopening of Mitauschen Deaconess Motherhouse. in the Rigaschen Rundschau , No. 9 of January 13, 1930, online at Wachtsmuth | issueType: P
  13. ^ Frieder Schulz, Gerhard Schwinge (ed.): Synaxis: Contributions to the liturgy. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1997, ISBN 978-3-525-60398-7 , pp. 412 and 416.