Minna Flake

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Minna Flake 1886-1958

Margareta "Minna" Flake , born May (born November 27, 1886 in Würzburg , † February 12, 1958 in New York ) was a German doctor and socialist.

Life

Minna grew up as the youngest of four children in the merchant family David and Berta Mai in Würzburg. After graduating from high school in 1907, she gave birth to her son Thomas in 1908, who was born from her marriage to Otto Flake from 1907 to 1911 . From 1911 to 1915 she studied medicine at the Universities of Würzburg and Berlin and then worked as an assistant doctor in Basel and Bern. In 1917 she gave birth to her daughter Renate Miriam Flake, whose father was René Schickele . She was promoted to Dr. med. PhD and then worked as a spa doctor in the summer months and as a resident doctor in Berlin in the winter. As a self-confident and revealing "poet's muse" in the circle around the pacifist writers Otto Flake and René Schickele, later as a socially and feministly committed doctor and employee of the Association of Socialist Doctors in Berlin , she was a well-known personality of her time. She was elected to the Berlin Medical Association in 1927 and was particularly involved in the welfare sector. In October 1927, on the recommendation of the SPD mayor Otto Ostrowski, she became a city ​​school doctor at the Prenzlauer Berg health department. In the school office, for example, she introduced a free fruit breakfast. From 1931 she was a member of the Association of German Doctors (BdÄ), where she lectured on the question of abortion at a conference.

She was initially politically active in the USPD and from there in 1919 switched to the KPD , of which she was a member until she was expelled in 1927. She then joined the KPO and around 1932 the SAP .

During the time of National Socialism she was considered a Jew. Her appointment from 1929 as "City High School Doctor for Life" was canceled and she was arrested on April 8, 1933 on charges of illegal abortions and hiding of Nazi opponents. After their release from prison and that of their 16-year-old politically active daughter from juvenile custody, they fled Germany via Switzerland and Czechoslovakia to France in May 1933.

In exile, she did not have a professional qualification or a work permit, she was on occasional work and from 1935 worked in a semi-legal practice in a Paris doctor's practice, which also served as a contact address for the Ernst Eckstein Fund and SAP. In Paris she was also a member of the Association of German Teacher Emigrants .

In 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, Minna Flake tried to obtain visas for the USA for herself and her family. They first fled to southwest France, where they were in contact with Erich Cohn-Bendit's family . With the help of Walter Friedländer and the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) they finally managed to get the necessary visas for the USA. She traveled with the ship Capitaine Paul Lemerle on March 24, 1941 from Marseille to Martinique . The Capitaine Paul Lemerle was a converted cargo ship that was used to bring European refugees to safety with the support of Varian Fry . It was mostly a group of emigrants who had received American visitor visas signed by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt , including Dyno Löwenstein and his mother Mara, the widow of Kurt Löwenstein . The other passengers on board included many celebrities, including Anna Seghers , who worked on drafts of her novel Transit during the crossing :

“With three hundred and fifty passengers with only two cabins and seven beds, this floating nutshell is also catastrophically overcrowded. Poorly made bed frames were maneuvered into the airless and lightless cargo holds for the 'rabble', recounts Claude Lévi-Strauss in 1955 in Tristes Tropiques . The French ethnologist is on board alongside other unwelcome celebrities, including the Russian revolutionary Victor Serge and the surrealist painter Wilfredo Lam . "

Even the captain of the ship to the passengers have warned that, Martinique the shame of France ', and so the refugees were immediately after their arrival at the camp Pointe Rouge interned, and only holders of French passports were allowed during the day for a few hours the bay to Fort Cross-de-France . Minna Flake was able to continue her journey from Fort-de-France. On board the Duc D'Aumale , she reached New York on May 21, 1941, as documented in the Ellis Island database .

In 1946 Minna Flake received a permanent residence permit and her German exam was recognized so that she could now work as a doctor again. In 1952, she became a US citizen. The compensation payments from Germany were delayed. Her colleague Ella Kay in the health department, who is now the district mayor, invited her to the inauguration of a children's home in Germany.

In 2015 a square was named after her in Berlin .

Journal articles (selection)

In: The Socialist Doctor .

  • The health system in Palestine. Volume I, Issue 2–3, July 1925, p. 25. (digitized version)
  • Workers' health resorts. Volume II, Issue 1, April 1926, pp. 43-46. (Digitized version)
  • General assembly of the Association of Socialist Doctors. Volume II, Issue 4, March 1927, pp. 45-46. (Digitized version)
  • To the draft of an occupational health and safety law. Volume V, Issue 2, June 1929, pp. 50-54. (Digitized version)
  • The Berlin austerity measures and health care. Volume, Issue 1, February 1930, pp. 1-3. (Digitized version)
  • To the rye bread law. Volume VI, Issue 2, May 1930, p. 52 (digitized version)
  • To reform medical studies. Volume VI, Issue 2, May 1930, p. 71. (digitized version)
  • Berlin doctors on § 218. Volume VI, Issue 3, July 1930, p. 116.
  • The Reich Meeting of the VSÄ in Dresden. Volume VI, Issue 3, July 1930, pp. 141-142. (Digitized version)
  • Public health and church dogma. Volume VII, Issue 2, February, 1931, p. 33.
  • Unemployment and public health. Volume VII, Issue 3, March 1931, pp. 68-69. (Digitized version)
  • Public health crisis. Volume VII, Issue 12, December 1931, pp. 325-331. Digitized

literature

  • Julie Boghardt: Minna Flake. Power and impotence of the red woman: from poet muse to socialist. (= Campus Judaica. Volume 9). Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 1997, ISBN 3-593-35676-7 .
  • Eric T. Jennings: Escape from Vichy. The Refugee Exodus to the French Caribbean. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts), 2018, ISBN 978-0-674-98338-0 , pp. 55-58. (books.google.de)

Web links

Commons : Minna-Flake-Platz (Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hiltrud Häntzschel, Inge Hansen-Schaberg : Politics, party work, pacifism in emigration: women act. 2010, ISBN 978-3-86916-078-8 , p. 153.
  2. ↑ Christian Pross , Götz Aly , Berlin Medical Association: The value of people: Medicine in Germany 1918–1945. Edition Hentrich Druck, 1989, p. 40.
  3. ↑ Doctors in the Empire: Minna Flake, b. May
  4. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz , Hermann Schnorbach : teachers in emigration. The Association of German Immigrant Teachers (1933–39) in the traditional context of the democratic teachers' movement. Beltz Verlag, Weinheim / Basel 1981, ISBN 3-407-54114-7 , p. 229.
  5. ↑ Eric T. Jennings reports in detail on Flake's escape from France in his book Escape from Vichy (see literature).
  6. ^ Dyno Loewenstein collection in the USHMM
  7. ↑ Kristine von Soden: "And outside a strange wind is blowing ..." Across the seas into exile. Aviva Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-932338-85-4 , p. 192. Pictures from this crossing are in the holdings of the USHMM : Group portrait of European refugees assisted by the Emergency Rescue Committee on board the Capitaine Paul-Lemerle and View of the Capitaine Paul-Lemerle
  8. ↑ Césaire, Lam, Picasso, ils se sont trouvés!
  9. ↑ From the short biography of the Women's Council Pankow on the occasion of the nomination application for a place
  10. ↑ Printed matter VII-1019: Intent to name a public square in the Prenzlauer Berg district in "Minna-Flake-Platz"
personal data
SURNAME Flake, Minna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mai, Margareta (maiden name); Flake-Mai, Minna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor and socialist
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Wurzburg
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1958
Place of death New York City