Philomena Franz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Philomena Franz , née Köhler (born July 21, 1922 in Biberach an der Riss ) is a German Sintizza , Auschwitz survivor , contemporary witness and author .

Life

Philomena Franz was born into a family of musicians. She had seven siblings. Her father Johann Köhler was a cellist , her mother a singer. The string quartet, in which Johannes Haag played the cello, won an international competition in 1906 with the "Golden Rose" from the hand of King Wilhelm II of Württemberg .

The family's life was closely linked to the Hohenzollern region . The family lived in Rohrdorf , a village near Meßkirch in Upper Swabia, until they sold their house in 1935 or 1937 to move to Bad Cannstatt , where the large family bought a larger family.

Until 1938, the family's musicians performed in the Liederhalle Stuttgart , the Lido and the Wintergarten in Berlin . In 1938, Philomena Franz had to leave the girls' high school in Stuttgart because of her “racial” affiliation.

After the “ Decree of Fixing ” against “ Gypsies ” came into effect in 1939 , the members of the family were identified and were no longer allowed to leave their place of residence. This had already preceded - so the memory of the daughter Philomena - that the family's car and all musical instruments had been taken away on a return trip from Paris. As far as able to work, the family members had to be active within the scope of the “work assignment”. It had become impossible to continue practicing the previous profession. Philomena Franz worked for the Stuttgart company Haga.

She was deported from working in this company. She was registered under her maiden name in the Auschwitz-Birkenau gypsy camp on April 21, 1944 with the prisoner number Z 10.550, and her further transport is noted there for May 25, 1944. In May / June 1944, Philomena Franz was admitted to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and registered there under the number 40,307.

In Porajmos their parents, uncles, nephews, nieces and five of her seven siblings were murdered. One of her surviving brothers was doing military service in the Wehrmacht before he was arrested.

After the liberation, she appeared again with her future husband and brother, including in officers' messes of the US armed forces and at events in Ansbach and Tübingen.

Philomena Franz sees herself as a "gypsy", as her writings also testify in the new editions. In her autobiography Between Love and Hate , she assumes that she belongs to a population group that is fundamentally different from the surrounding population ("We think differently. We feel differently.") With that, she represents a traditional view that agrees with traditional constructions of the majority of society by an antagonistic otherness of the "Gypsy nature" and is rejected today by many Roma.

Contemporary witness and author

Her first book was published in 1982 and was titled Gypsy Tales . The book, which has been published several times, is intended for children; it not only contains fairy tales told by Philomena Franz , but also claims to introduce the “Gypsies” to the “customs and traditions”. It should, so it is said in the perspective that was still little questioned at the time, in a foreword "arouse understanding for the strange people".

In her second book Between Love and Hate, Ein Zigeunerleben (1985), Franz writes her biography. The carefree youth followed the Nazi regime with school bans, forced labor and the deportation of family members. She describes her time in Auschwitz as well as “living on after zero”. The book is one of the first by survivors of the Porajmos.

The third book, a collection of poems, If we carry a branch of flowers in our heart, a songbird will always perch on it , shows Philomena Franz as a poet. Your second autobiographical work Keywords follows on from the previous prose and poetry. The latest book is called How the Clouds Run .

In the role of a contemporary witness, Franz is active in educational institutions and the media, often in schools and universities, but also in talk shows and radio broadcasts. The reason for this was her eldest son's experience of discrimination in a school in Cologne in the early 1960s. Her son was described by classmates as "you dirty gypsy". That was also the reason to turn to the subject of "Gypsy Tales", which she also lectures in schools. Since she survived, she has a responsibility to pass on her experiences as a victim of Nazi persecution. As a believing Christian, she is convinced that God let her survive so that she could report.

Philomena Franz experienced a reception as an author with her autobiographical work Between Love and Hatred (1985) and occasionally with Gypsy Tales (1982). The Marburg literary scholar Wilhelm Solms , who has long been active in the citizens' movement for the Roma minority, cites her as a contemporary witness, but does not name her as a representative of Roma literature or even limited to Sinti literature under the heading "Gypsy Tales".

The Bielefeld literary scholar Klaus-Michael Bogdal evaluates “the fairy tales of the Rome peoples” as introductory texts in a written form of the minority and names several European countries, the “Gypsy fairy tales from Hungary”, the Swedish Rome Dimitri Taikon and the Sintizza Franz. He gives her one “Comparable role” with Dimitri Taikon, although he does not necessarily see “authentic forms of expression” in the fairy tale literature of these two narrators either. This assessment connects him with Solms. Incidentally, Bogdal classifies Franz as a contemporary witness with her autobiographical descriptions. He wrongly describes her as a "showwoman".

The Romanist Julia Blandfort emphasizes the joint contemporary witness role of Franz, the Sinto Otto Rosenberg and the two Viennese Lovara Roma Ceija and Karl Stojka . With their memories they made an appeal to the majority society to recognize the genocide of the European Roma. Blandfort does not go into the fairy tales.

The Germanist Marianne C. Zwicker juxtaposes Philomena Franz and Lovariza Ceija Stojka, whom she sees both as pioneers of Roma memory literature with their autobiographical texts from the 1980s on the Holocaust. This would have made them very important for the development of a Roma identity (“Romani identity”). In addition to the therapeutic function that writing had for them, Franz's writing created space for the minority in German and Roma history (“space in German and Romani history”) from the majority society. As a “Romani woman”, Franz, who like Otto Rosenberg or Alfred Lessing always emphasized her Sinti affiliation, with the submission of her autobiography demanded that the history of the entire persecuted minority be heard and written.

In January 2015 she was one of 19 survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp , whose contributions were included in the cover report The Last Witnesses in the weekly magazine Der Spiegel .

Awards

Own writings

  • Zigeunermärchen , Europa-Union-Verlag, Bonn 1982. (3rd edition paperback 1989) excerpt online
  • Between love and hate. Ein Zigeunerleben , Herder: Freiburg im Breisgau 1985, several editions; New edition: Books on Demand: Norderstedt 2001, ISBN 3-8311-1619-9
  • If we carry a blossom branch in our heart, a songbird will always perch on it , Books on Demand: Norderstedt 2012.
  • Keywords , Books on Demand: Norderstedt 2016.
  • How the clouds run , Gabriele Schäfer Verlag: Herne 2017.

literature

  • Michael Albus : Philomena Franz. Love has conquered death. Düsseldorf 1988, ISBN 3-491-79288-6
  • Marianne C. Zwicker (2009): 'Places creating': The Claiming of Space in Writing by Philomena Franz. In: dies: Journeys into Memory: Romani Identity and the Holocaust in Autobiographical Writing by German and Austrian Romanies . University of Edinburgh (Dissertation) pp. 28-61 online

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Manuel Werner: Youth experiences of Auschwitz survivors Philomena Franz née Köhler. "The truth is painful, but only with it can we build our happiness ..." Website of the memorial initiative for the victims and sufferers of National Socialism in Nürtingen , accessed on January 30, 2017
  2. ↑ Philomena Franz, Between Love and Hate. Ein Zigeunerleben, Norderstedt 2001, pp. 15–31.
  3. ↑ Philomena Franz, Between Love and Hate. Ein Zigeunerleben, Norderstedt 2001, p. 11ff.
  4. ^ State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in collaboration with the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma Heidelberg: Memorial book: The Sinti and Roma in the Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp. Saur, Munich / London / New York / Paris 1993, ISBN 3-598-11162-2 . (Trilingual: Polish, English, German) P. 681f.
  5. ^ Resistance of Christian Women, List of Names
  6. ↑ Christian Schmidt-Häuer: Inmate No. 10550. A visit to Philomena Franz, who was recently awarded the prize of the European movement “Women of Europe - Germany 2001”, in: ZeitOnline / DIE ZEIT Nº 11/2001 , accessed on January 30, 2017
  7. ↑ Philomena Franz, Between Love and Hate. Ein Zigeunerleben, Norderstedt 2001, pp. 95–97.
  8. ↑ Philomena Franz, Between Love and Hatred, Freiburg 1985, p. 15.
  9. ↑ rombase: manual .
  10. ^ Center for Teacher Training at the University of Potsdam (ed.), Petra Rosenberg / Měto Nowak with the collaboration of Nina Bronke / Hannah Hintzen / Ellen Jonsson and others: German Sinti and Roma. A Brandenburg minority and how it is addressed in class, Potsdam 2010, p. 95. online .
  11. ↑ Christian Schmidt-Häuer: Inmate No. 10550. A visit to Philomena Franz, who was recently awarded the prize of the European movement “Women of Europe - Germany 2001”, in: ZeitOnline / DIE ZEIT Nº 11/2001 , accessed on January 30, 2017.
  12. ↑ See: Philomena Franz, Between Love and Hate. Ein Zigeunerleben, Norderstedt 2001, pp. 95–97; Michael Albus, Philomena Franz. Love has conquered death, Düsseldorf 1988, p. 44.
  13. ↑ Wilhelm Solms, "Kulturlos Volk"? Reports on "Gypsies" and self-testimonies from Sinti and Roma (contributions to research on antiziganism, vol. 4), Seeheim 2006.
  14. ^ Klaus-Michael Bogdal, Europe invents the gypsies. A story of fascination and contempt, Berlin 2011, p. 471.
  15. ^ Klaus-Michael Bogdal, Europe invents the gypsies. A story of fascination and contempt, Berlin 2011, pp. 455, 457.
  16. ^ Klaus-Michael Bogdal, Europe invents the gypsies. A story of fascination and contempt, Berlin 2011, p. 454.
  17. ↑ See: Julia Blandfort, German Authors and Genres. More than a gypsy fairy tale - the literature of the Sinti and Roma, Goethe-Institut e. V. April 2012 .
  18. ^ Marianne C. Zwicker (2009): 'Places created': The Claiming of Space in Writing by Philomena Franz. In, dies: Journeys into Memory: Romani Identity and the Holocaust in Autobiographical Writing by German and Austrian Romanies . University of Edinburgh (dissertation) p. 62, passim.
  19. ↑ Der Spiegel : Auschwitz never left me , N. 5, January 24, 2015, 50–69
personal data
SURNAME Franz, Philomena
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Köhler, Philomena (maiden name); Koehler, Filomena
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Sintizza, author, Auschwitz survivor, contemporary witness
DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Biberach an der Riss