Nadine Hwang

Nadine Hwang , also Nadine Huong ( Chinese 黄 娜汀; born March 9, 1902 in Madrid , died 1972 ), was one of the first Chinese female pilots and served as an honorary colonel in the Chinese Air Force . The lawyer used her diplomatic skills and versatile skills to live in different countries. She was the lover of Natalie Clifford Barney and survived the deportation to the Ravensbrück concentration camp .

Life

Early years

Nadine Hwang was born in Madrid, her mother Juliette Brouta-Gilliard came from Belgium . Her father, Lühe Hwang ( Chinese 黃 履 和, Pinyin Huáng Lǚhé ) came from an influential Chinese family, was a diplomat and high official. As he spoke fluent Spanish, he was transferred to Madrid at the beginning of his career as secretary of the 1st embassy, ​​where he met his wife Juliette Brouta-Gilliard. In 1904 he was briefly transferred to Havana , where Hwang's sister Marcela ( Chinese 黄 玛 赛) was born in 1905 , who later became the writer and translator Marcela de Juan (died 1981). A few months later the whole family returned to Madrid, where Lühe had been appointed head of the Chinese legation.

At the school in Madrid, Nadine Hwang spoke Castilian fluently as well as her mother tongue French . She practiced Mandarin Chinese with the other families in the legation and took English lessons.

emancipation

After the collapse of the Manchu Empire in 1911 and the establishment of the republic, which was proclaimed on January 1, 1912, Hwang's father was transferred to Beijing in 1913 to the European Affairs Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The family moved to China, where they moved among the political, intellectual and social elite. Nadine Hwang continued her education in an international school run by French nuns. She then studied law at the American Hamilton College by means of distance learning .

As a young girl from a family with high social status, Hwang had the privilege of meeting personalities of her time such as Mao Zedong , Lin Yutang and Hu Shi , who were invited to the family home as guests.

Even as a girl, Hwang tried to escape the shackles of conventions and gender stereotypes . She learned to drive and fly small aircraft very early on. “Everything about these Western mechanics fascinates me,” she confided in 1928 to a journalist from the Excelsior . "I would like to sit on a locomotive and drive a train at full steam". She liked to wear men's clothing, be it for sports or at a party, where she performed in traditional Aragonese costume, for example , to dance the Aragonese iota with a rider . The Japanese-American artist and designer Isamu Noguchi recalled meeting a "beautiful lieutenant in the army of the young Marshal Chang Hsueh-Liang" in 1930. He described them as "pirate-like". She learned sports such as polo , cricket and horse riding , unthinkable pursuits for the average Chinese women of her time. Not long ago, Chinese women had been liberated from the millennial tradition of the three-inch lotus feet .

Careers in China

Zhang Zongchang was the first warlord to accept women into his army. When he met Nadine Hwang, he decided to make her a Colonel in the Air Force and insisted that she wear short hair and a uniform. Although her rank as colonel was apparently only an honorary rank, Nadine was nevertheless given a position of trust as a liaison officer on the staff. During this time she earned her nickname "the Amazon of the North".

From 1929 Nadine Hwang was stationed as a lieutenant in the Chinese army under Marshal Chang Hsueh-Liang. She later held an important economic position in the Beijing government of China and served as the confidential secretary to Prime Minister Pan Fu .

The modernization of republican China under nationalist rule in the early 1930s was threatened by domestic unrest and increasingly aggressive Imperial Japan , so that Hwang could never lead the life she wanted in China. In 1933 she moved to Paris , where she devoted herself to the bohemian life. On trips to the USA and Europe , she gave lectures about her country and diplomatically advocated a stronger economic exchange.

Stay in Paris

Friendship stamp at 20 Rue Jacob

At the beginning of the 1930s, Nadine Hwang moved to Paris, occasionally took over the role of chauffeur for Natalie Clifford Barney and became her lover. Barney regularly organized literary salons ( Le salon de l'Amazone ), in which the cosmopolitan , avant-garde Paris mostly met in their temple of friendship ( French Le Temple de l'Amitié ). Hwang enjoyed the bohemian lifestyle that the Parisian capital offered her. In one account of this particular period in Parisian history she is described as a “pirate” Asian beauty, while in another account she is described as a transvestite .

A large group of intellectuals and artists from around the world gathered in Barney's Salon , including many leading figures in French literature and American and British modernists, the so-called Lost Generation of the last century. There is evidence that suggests that Nadine Hwang also spied on the Nazis as an agent on behalf of the French Resistance. As described in Helene Nera's writings, Hwang suffered from suffocating racism due to her Chinese identity and the jealousies among Barney's many admirers.

In 1940, the whole of Europe was overshadowed by the Nazis, and Natalie Barney fled to Florence from the German invasion . For reasons unknown until now, Nadine Hwang was deported to the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp in 1944, shortly before the liberation of large parts of France by the Allies .

deportation

On May 13, 1944, the transport left the Gare de l'Est in Paris. Four days later the 567 women reached Fürstenberg train station . In the Ravensbrück concentration camp, Nadine Hwang was given prisoner number 39239 and had to wear the red triangle that marked her as a political prisoner .

She had to do forced labor at Siemens and befriended Rachel Krausz and her nine-year-old daughter Irene Krausz, both British citizens who had lived in the Netherlands. “My mother and Nadine shared a love for poetry,” reported Irene Fainman-Krausz, who now lives in South Africa .

Encounter with Nelly Mousset-Vos

On Christmas Eve 1944, Nelly Mousset-Vos was asked to sing Christmas carols with French prisoners in the barracks. After a few songs a voice called out: “Sing something about Madame Butterfly!” Mousset-Vos sang Un bel di vedremo , about waiting for a loved one. Nadine Hwang, who had asked for the song, remained connected to Mousset-Vos from that moment on. They became a couple and spent as much time together as possible. From Nelly Mousset-Vo's diary entries it emerges that, thanks to her encounter with Nadine Hwang and this love affair, she was able to survive the horrors of two years in the camp. Nelly Mousset-Vos worked as a courier in the Belgian resistance against the Nazis.

They were separated in March 1945 when Nelly Mousset-Vos was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp , where she almost died. In April 1945, shortly before the camp was liberated, Nadine Hwang, Irene and Rachel were together with thousands of other prisoners with the white buses of the Red Cross to Sweden evacuated. Their arrival in Malmö on April 28th was documented by Swedish news photographers.

After the war

In 1945 Nadine Hwang moved to Brussels via Sweden, where she began to live together with Nelly Mousset-Vos in a lesbian relationship. They left Europe soon after to start a new life in Venezuela . Posing as cousins, they lived together in Caracas for two decades . Nelly Mousset-Vos had previously worked in the Venezuelan embassy in Brussels and Hwang worked in the secretariat of a bank in Caracas. Her apartment was a popular meeting place for friends and acquaintances.

“Nadine was an excellent cook and had a special grace; I remember a Chinese dance she performed with such delicate movements on one occasion. Her outstanding intelligence and impressive talents were strong characteristics of her personality. "

- Jose Rafael

An illness forced Hwang to take strong medication and suffered a stroke before treatment was finished. Due to Nadine Hwang's deteriorating health, the couple returned to Europe in the late 1960s.

Nadine Hwang died in 1972, Nelly Mousset-Vos in 1985. They are buried in various graves in Brussels.

Web links

• Nadine Hwang - Every Face Has a Name. In: everyfacehasaname.com. (English). 

literature

• Alfonso Ojedas: Cinco historias de la conexión española con la India, Birmania y China: Desde la imprenta a la igualdad de género. Los Libros de La Catarata 2020, ISBN 978-8-41352-044-5 .

Movies

• Harbor of Hope
• Every Face Has a Name Documentation by Magnus Gertten

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Hélène Néra: Nadine Hwang - Dans la tourmente du XXe siècle - 1/3. In: www.helenenera.com. Hélène Néra, December 1, 2020, accessed November 1, 2021 (French). 
2. ^ ^{A b c} Peter Harmsen: A Chinese Woman in Ravensbrueck Concentration Camp. In: http://www.shanghai1937.com/ . Shanghai 1937, October 9, 2013, accessed October 1, 2021 . 
3. ↑ La Influencia de Una Madrieña en China. In: ABC, 3 de marzo de 1928, p. 29. ABC, 3 de marzo de 1928, p. 29, March 3, 1928, accessed on November 2, 2021 (Spanish). 
4. ↑ Don Mariano Benedieto Estaún: La historia de una señorita madrileña que es coronel del Ejército chino. In: estampa. estampa, October 1, 1929, accessed November 2, 2021 (Spanish). 
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Aaron Zhang: 'China Hwang' of the Nazi camp for women. In: blogs.timesofisrael.com. The Times of Israel, April 9, 2021, accessed November 1, 2021 . 
6. ^ The Chicago Tribune and the Daily News, New York, June 11, 1933. In: www.retronews.fr. The Chicago Tribune and the Daily News, New York, June 11, 1933, accessed November 2, 2021 . 
7. ↑ Irene Fainman-Krausz. In: projekt-ravensbrueck.com. Werner-von-Siemens-Werkberufsschule School privately owned by Siemens AG, accessed on November 28, 2021 . 
8. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Nelly & Nadine. In: www.juntadeandalucia.es. Junta de Andalusia. Ministry of Culture and Historical Heritage. Andalusian Agency for Cultural Institutions, accessed on November 1, 2021 (Spanish). 
9. ↑ ^{a b} Every Face Has a Name. In: everyfacehasaname.com. Every Face Has a Name, accessed November 1, 2021 . 
10. ↑ Nadine Hwang. In: everyfacehasaname.com. Retrieved November 28, 2021 . 
11. ^ Harbor of Hope. In: harbourofhope.com. Harbor of Hope, accessed November 1, 2021 .