Mathilde Jacob
Mathilde Jacob (born March 8, 1873 in Berlin ; † April 14, 1943 in Theresienstadt concentration camp ) was a translator and stenographer . As a secretary and close confidante of Rosa Luxemburg , she smuggled her letters and manuscripts out of prison and rescued parts of her estate.
Life
Mathilde Jacob was born as the daughter of the Jewish butcher couple Julius and Emilie Jacob. As a freelance typist and translator, she got to know the editors Julian Balthasar Marchlewski , Franz Mehring, and Rosa Luxemburg through writing assignments for Die Sozialdemokratische Korrespondenz .
Deeply impressed by Rosa Luxemburg's personality, Mathilde Jacob helped the anti-militarist, especially during her multiple imprisonment. This ranged from taking care of the apartment (including Mimi the cat) to smuggling letters and highly political manuscripts out of prison. When Mathilde Jacob was briefly imprisoned herself in May 1919, she learned of Rosa Luxemburg's death, whose body she also had to identify.
After psychologically processing the great loss, she joined the former defender of Luxembourg, Paul Levi , who became chairman of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in March 1919 . After he was excluded from the KPD in 1921 due to differences of opinion about the March Action , he founded the Communist Working Group (KAG) and joined with Mathilde Jacob in 1922 initially the USPD and, with its majority, the SPD .
Here she supported Paul Levi in editing various publications, such as the magazine Our Way . After Levi's death in 1930 Mathilde Jacob withdrew from all political activities, but after 1933 she kept in touch with resistance groups . As a Jew, she had to endure the reprisals and restrictions of the Nazi regime . She could hold only a small pension and occasional typing afloat until they picked up on 27 July 1942 and sent to the concentration camp Theresienstadt deported was where she died on April 14, the 1,943th Her grave is in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee .
Services
Heinz Knobloch researched her life and her achievements for the first time and published them in 1985 in his book Meine liebste Mathilde . Mathilde Jacob is particularly credited as a historical merit for smuggling Rosa Luxemburg's manuscript The Crisis of Social Democracy out of prison in 1915 and for printing and distributing it. Another historical act is the rescue of parts of the Rosa Luxemburg estate, which Mathilde Jacob carefully administered and handed over to an American historian in 1939.
Awards
In 1995 the forecourt of the former Berlin Tiergarten district was named after her, and in 1997 a commemorative plaque was inaugurated on the town hall. Since the Berlin district merger in 2001, Mathilde-Jacob-Platz 1 has now been part of the Mitte district .
In 1996 a terracotta stele in honor of Mathilde Jacob, which was created by the artist Ingeborg Hunzinger , was set up in front of the New Germany publishing house on Franz-Mehring-Platz .
On May 10, 2011 , a stumbling block was laid for her in front of her former home, Altonaer Strasse 26, in Berlin-Hansaviertel .
literature
- Kulturamt Tiergarten: New beginnings. Women's stories from Tiergarten 1850-1950 . Berlin 1999.
- Hans-Jürgen Mende, Kurt Wernicke (Ed.): Tiergarten. The district lexicon . Berlin 2000.
- Mathilde Jacob: From Rosa Luxemburg and her friends in war and revolution 1914-1919 . Edited and introduced by Sibylle Quack and Rüdiger Zimmermann . In: International scientific correspondence on the history of the German labor movement (IWK). Vol. 24, Issue 4, December 1988, pp. 435–515, ISSN 0046-8428 (an excerpt from pp. 490–498 and 505f. Also in: Andreas Lixl-Purcell (Ed.): Memories of German-Jewish Women 1900 -1990. Reclam, Leipzig 1992, pp. 105-119, ISBN 3379014230 ).
- Heinz Knobloch : My dearest Mathilde. The inconspicuous life of Mathilde Jacob. Berlin 1985.
- Ottokar Luban : Mathilde Jacob. More than Rosa Luxemburg's secretary. With the text of M. Jacobs' only public speech (19.12.1920) . In: Year Book for Research on the History of the Labor Movement . Book III, 2002, pp. 110-128. ISSN 1610-093X .
- Jacob, Mathilde . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Mathilde Jacob in the catalog of the German National Library
- Timetable arrival Theresienstadt 11.26 a.m. Friday , January 25, 2002
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Jacob, Mathilde |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German socialist |
DATE OF BIRTH | March 8, 1873 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
DATE OF DEATH | April 14, 1943 |
Place of death | Theresienstadt concentration camp |