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Petra Vermehren , originally Wilhelmine Petra Vermehren , b. Schwabroch (born August 2, 1893 in Lübeck , † October 31, 1971 in Bonn ) was a German journalist.

Live and act

Petra Schwabroch was the daughter of the steel merchant and Possehl partner consul Johannes Schwabroch (1863–1945) and his wife Friederike (1865–1952). In August 1914 she married the lawyer Kurt Vermehren . The couple had three children: Michael (1915–2010), Erich (1919–2005) and Isa (1918–2009).

The couple had lived separately since the 1930s. Petra Vermehren moved to Berlin in 1933 and worked as a journalist. Paul Leverkuehn got her a job with the Berliner Tageblatt , where she became the first woman in the foreign policy editorial office. After passing the editor's exam in 1934, she worked in the editor-in-chief at Paul Scheffer . From September 1937 she reported as a foreign correspondent for the Balkan Peninsula from Athens, first for the daily newspaper, then after its closure in 1939 for the German publishing house and the German general newspaper . She traveled to Istanbul several times . During this time she aroused the suspicion of the British secret service to be an agent of the Abwehr . Whether this suspicion, which is also reflected in the literature, was justified cannot be decided at the moment due to the lack of publication in German sources.

The Hotel Palacio in Estoril

From February 1941 she was a foreign correspondent in Lisbon , based in the Hotel Palacio in Estoril . Her contributions also appeared in Das Reich . After her son Erich Vermehren, who was stationed as a diplomat but actually a defense agent in Istanbul , defected to the British with his wife in early 1944, Petra Vermehren immediately flew to Germany. The Vermehren family was lured to Potsdam under a pretext , where they were first placed under house arrest in a hotel and then interned as part of the “ kin detention ”. Kurt, Petra and Michael Vermehren were sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp , where Petra Vermehren was the only female prisoner. Isa Vermehren survived her stay in the Ravensbrück , Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps .

On April 15, 1945 Kurt, Petra and Michael Vermehren were released from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on the instructions of the Reich Main Security Office .

Petra Vermehrens' grave in the family grave at Lübeck's Burgtorfriedhof

Petra Vermehren went to Hamburg and started working as a journalist again. She wrote radio plays for the NWDR . She became active in the World Organization of Mothers of all Nations (WOMAN) founded by Dorothy Thompson and, alongside Vilma Mönckeberg-Kollmar, took on a leading role in their Hamburg organization. From 1948 she ran her own small news agency. Since the first congress of the European Union in 1949 she was a member of its presidium. From 1952 to 1953 she was press officer at the German Consulate General in San Francisco . Most recently she lived in Bonn.

literature

  • Margret Boveri : Branches. Edited by Uwe Johnson . Piper, Munich 1977; new: Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996- ISBN 3-518-39076-7
  • Winfried Meyer: Kurt, Petra and Michael Vermehren . In: Winfried Meyer (Ed.): Conspirators in the concentration camp. Hans von Dohnanyi and the prisoners of July 20, 1944 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. ( Series of publications by the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation , Volume 5) Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-89468-251-5 , pp. 365–371

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ She used her middle name Petra from the 1930s, initially as an author's name and later exclusively, see Margret Boveri : Branches. Edited by Uwe Johnson . Piper, Munich 1977, p. 230; new: Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996 ISBN 3-518-39076-7 . Petra W. Vermehren is on her tombstone
  2. ↑ Petra Vermehrens file in The National Archives
  3. ^ Nigel West (ed.): The Guy Liddell diaries: MI5's director of counter-espionage in World War II. Volume 2: 1942–1945. Taylor & Francis, 2005 ISBN 978-0-415-35215-4 , p. 174: She is a member of the German intelligence service.
  4. ^ Denise Tscharntke: Re-educating German women: the work of the Women's Affairs Section of the British Military Government 1946−1951. (European University Studies: History and Allied Studies, 967; Europäische Hochschulschriften 967) Frankfurt etc .: P. Lang 2003 ISBN 978-0-8204-6480-0 , p. 147.
  5. ^ Vanessa Conze: Das Europa der Deutschen: Ideas of Europe in Germany between imperial tradition and western orientation (1920-1970). (Studies on contemporary history, 69) Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag 2005 ISBN 978-3-486-57757-0 p. 303
personal data
SURNAME Increase, Petra
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vermehren, Wilhelmine Petra (full name); Schwabroch, Wilhelmine Petra (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübeck
DATE OF DEATH October 31, 1971
Place of death Bonn