Martha Wertheimer

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Martha Wertheimer (born October 22, 1890 in Frankfurt am Main ; † June 1942 , probably in the Sobibor extermination camp ) was a German educator, journalist and writer who came from a Jewish family.

Live and act

Martha Wertheimer came from a middle-class family . In 1911 she was enrolled at the Academy for Social and Commercial Sciences (from 1914 University of Frankfurt ). She completed her studies in history, philosophy and English philology in 1917 with a dissertation . From 1919 she worked as an editor for the liberal Offenbacher Zeitung ; she was politically committed to women's suffrage and occasionally worked on the radio. During this time she often used the pseudonym "Martha Werth" for journalistic work. Martha Wertheimer was interested in many things and had a large circle of acquaintances and friends.

The departure from Jewish orthodoxy and contact with Franz Rosenzweig led her to the circle of the Offenbach liberal rabbi Max Dienemann .

In connection with the National Socialist seizure of power , she was dismissed by the Offenbacher Zeitung in 1933 . She joined the editorial team of the Israelitisches Familienblatt , where she wrote about religious questions, Jewish self-image and, above all, the training of young people and young adults who wanted to emigrate to Palestine ( Aliyah ).

After the Jewish athletes were excluded from all German teams for the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Wertheimer, an enthusiastic foil fencer and long-distance swimmer, together with two other Jewish athletes, Paul Yogi Mayer and Siddy Goldschmidt, wrote a documentary in which the achievements of Jewish people Athletes were honored.

In addition to her book publications, there were two book types ( Amazonenritt and Beyond the Flood ), a drama Channah and the libretto for the one-act opera Riccio . The work has not yet been found. The author herself rated journalistic work in the Israelitisches Familienblatt (years 1936–38) as “quite good” .

In 1936 Martha and her sister Lydia, who lived with her permanently, were expelled from their shared apartment. Martha Wertheimer went to Berlin, where she took over the editorial management of her magazine, was involved in the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden , but above all in youth work. She took over functions in the Jewish sports and youth organization Makkabi Germany and helped with the preparation for the settlement in Palestine ( Hachshara training). At the end of 1937 Martha Wertheimer went on a journey of several weeks to Palestine, but returned to her duties in Germany. In 1938 she moved back to Frankfurt to live with her sister and now toured southern Germany as a propagandist for the Zionist Association for Germany . Later she took over the management of the entire Jewish child welfare. Above all, child transports had to be organized to save foreign countries. She accompanied such transports to England several times.

After her sister's passport was revoked, Martha also decided to stay in Germany. She became more involved in religious life and took on functions that were otherwise reserved for rabbis . After interrogations and temporary arrests, the sisters made another attempt to emigrate in 1940, but there were no more countries that were open to them. Despite a serious leg injury and the loss of apartment and property due to bombing, Martha continued to take on educational tasks and founded a Jewish apprentice workshop . At the end of 1941 the sisters had to move to a ghetto house . Finally the Gestapo forced Martha Wertheimer to help organize the deportations of Jews to the east. She and her sister were among the approximately 1,000 Frankfurt Jews who were deported on the third transport on June 11, 1942. Nobody came back. In Lublin the people were selected by the SS , women and men who were unable to work were probably sent to the Sobibor extermination camp .

Works

  • On the influence of Frederick the Great on Voltaire, according to the state-theoretical content of their correspondence (dissertation Frankfurt am Main 1917)
  • under the pseudonym Martha Werth: Frauenart and physical exercise (Göttingen 1921)
  • Training as a fencer (Ludwigsburg 1923)
  • under the pseudonym Hal G. Roger: Machine F 136 (Berlin 1933)
  • Machine F 136 (2nd edition Berlin 2013) pdf ISBN 978-3-923211-28-9
  • All the days of your life A Book for Jewish Women (Frankfurt am Main 1935)
  • Fanny Neuda: hours of devotion. Reviewed and worked through by Martha Wertheimer (Frankfurt am Main 1936; new edition: Basel 1968)
  • The Jewish Sports Book (together with Siddy Goldschmidt and Paul Yogi Mayer) (Berlin 1937)
  • Service on the Heights (Berlin 1937), republication under the title Decision and Reversal (Leipzig 2010) pdf ISBN 978-3-923211-79-1
  • The great dark calm has come into me. Letters to Siegfried Guggenheim in New York 1939–1941 (Ed. Fritz Bauer Institute; Frankfurt am Main 2nd expanded edition 1996)

swell

  • Hanna Becker: Getting to know life in depth. Martha Wertheimer and her work after the 'Kristallnacht' . In: Monica Kingreen (Ed.): After the Kristallnacht. Frankfurt / M. 1999.
  • Hanna Becker: Martha Wertheimer. In: Wolfgang Klötzer (Ed.): Frankfurter Biographie . Personal history lexicon . Second volume. M – Z (=  publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission . Volume XIX , no. 2 ). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-7829-0459-1 . Pp. 552-553.
  • Jewish Museum Frankfurt : Short biography and photo Martha Wertheimer [1]
  • Hannah Thiede: In the footsteps of Martha Wertheimer. In: Gisela Breitling , Gisela Gassen (ed.): Forgotten women. Berlin 2005, pp. 123-136.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Title page: The Jewish sports book . For more detailed information on Jewish sport in the time of National Socialism, see: Text selection from W. Ludwig Tegelbecker's master's thesis “Reorganization” under the sign of the Aryan paragraph. Jewish Sport in National Socialist Germany and its Impact in History , Master's Thesis at FB 8 (History) of the University of Bremen, 1997.
  2. ↑ cf Wiebke Wiede: Race in the Book (Munich 2011, page 243)

Web links

Wikisource: Martha Wertheimer  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Wertheimer, Martha
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German educator, journalist, writer and victim of the Holocaust
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH June 1942
Place of death Sobibor extermination camp