Rosa Buchthal

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Rosa Buchthal, undated, probably around 1900

Rosa Buchthal , née Dalberg (born July 31, 1874 in Marsberg in the Sauerland , † December 31, 1958 in Amsterdam ) was a German politician and women's rights activist . During the Weimar Republic she belonged to the left-liberal German Democratic Party (DDP) and in 1919 was the first woman in the Dortmund magistrate.

Life

Rosa Buchthal (right) with all her siblings, around 1895
Marriage certificate from 1895

Rosa Dalberg was the oldest of eight daughters of a respected Jewish couple Emilie (née Heymann) and Abraham / Alexander Dalberg who lived in Marsberg in the Sauerland. When she was born in 1874, her parents traded cattle and fabrics and lived in a villa in the neoclassical style on the main street of Niedermarsberg . After attending the girls' school in Marsberg, she married Felix Buchthal († 1921), the owner of a coffee roasting company "trading in coffee and chocolate" in Dortmund, who was also a Jew. "Buchthal u. Comp. ”Moved into a new building in Bornstrasse in 1894. 19. The roastery had several branches in the city and, contrary to what was usual at the time, Rosa did not become a housewife but co-manager. The marriage resulted in two children, Alice (* February 17, 1896) and Arnold (* November 18, 1900).

Dortmund politician

Dortmund developed into a metropolis with 142,000 inhabitants in 1900 with a lot of political activities in the last quarter of the 19th century. Circles of women were formed, who made a greater participation in social and political processes their goal. The right to vote for women did not yet exist. In 1908 Rosa Buchthal together with others founded an “association of liberal women”, of which she became second chairman two years later. The association adhered to conservative values ​​such as conscription, but advocated the abolition of the death penalty. He fought against civil servant celibacy (according to which a woman lost her civil service status if she married), against the moral code (which gave men a license to practice violence in marriage) and advocated animal welfare and the rights of people with dementia .

With the beginning of the First World War in 1914, the coffee business deteriorated, so that Rosa Buchthal decided to take an active part in politics. In 1915 she became head of the information center for women’s professions in the Dortmund Chamber of Commerce in the employment office, and in 1918 she became a “social welfare officer”. After the war, women were allowed to vote in the German Reich for the first time in 1919. She joined the DDP, became its head of department in Dortmund and on October 27, 1919 (elected on September 22) an unpaid member of the city's magistrate, sworn in by the mayor on April 20, 1920, again on May 4, 1921, this time in accordance with Article 78 of the Prussian Constitution. Until 1925 she was the only woman on the city council. She was re-elected in 1925, but did not run for the 1928 election.

Rosa-Buchthal-Strasse, Dortmund

When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, only one percent of Dortmund's population was Jewish. Rosa Buchthal's son Arnold had studied law and was a lawyer and assistant judge in Dortmund. He lost this post as early as 1933 under the National Socialists. His second daughter, Vera Buchthal, was born on September 16 of the same year. In July 1939, the parents sent their two daughters Renate and Vera from Vienna to England on a children's transport. Vera Buchthal later took on the name Stephanie Shirley there; she founded one of the first software companies in Europe in 1962 and was ennobled by the Queen of England as Dame Stephanie in 2000 . She only employed women in her company. Her father, the son of Rosa Buchthal, survived the Second World War and became the Hessian attorney general, then from 1957 a judge in Darmstadt.

Escape to the Netherlands

On the occasion of her 81st birthday in Amsterdam in 1955

Like all Jewish women registered in the Nazi regime, Rosa Buchthal had to take on the additional first name Sara . The registration office shows this entry on July 6, 1937. In 1939 she gave her silverware to her cheese merchant friend Else van Roseven, who sent the package to Bob de Vries in Amsterdam, where it never arrived. In August Rosa Buchthal began to flee to the Netherlands, which was not yet occupied by the Nazis. When she arrived at the border at Emmerich on August 29 , she was turned away by the Dutch officials. She was only able to enter the country on May 6, 1940. With the attack a few days later, almost all Jews living in Holland were deported, most of them murdered. Rosa Buchthal was arrested as well, but was released a little later by bribing the guards and went into hiding with a family she did not know before on their farm. According to her granddaughter Vera, she joked in retrospect that she had packed her knitting as a precaution so that she could have something to do in the basement during the day.

On January 2, 1947, she handwritten her son Arnold in Offenbach from Amsterdam to represent her in all property law matters. She gave her own address as Van Tuyll van Serooskerkenweg 43, in 1958 van Eegenstraat 64. She was stateless at the time.

After the Second World War, Rosa Buchthal once visited England. She died of cancer in a hospice in Amsterdam in 1958 and is also buried in the city. She bequeathed her daughter Alice, who was then living in Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands , 7290.59 DM. In 2010, Schwanenstrasse was renamed after Rosa Buchthal in downtown Dortmund.

Web links

Commons : Rosa Buchthal  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

swell

  • Dortmund City Archives
  • Marriage register Marsberg
  • Rosa Buchthal - A Sauerland woman as the first city councilor in Dortmund in the Weimar Republic. District archive of the Hochsauerlandkreis, 2012
  • Dame Stephanie Shirley's private archive

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Her siblings were Mathilde (* 1875), Clara (* 1877), Sophia (* 1879), Johanna (* 1881), Martha (* 1884), Hedwig (* 1887) and Helene (* 1891). A Marsberg writer named Olden who emigrated to London is reported to have remembered the Dalberg house so much that a beautiful girl looked out of every window.
  2. ↑ Signature 163/01 88, city archives Dortmund
  3. ↑ The file on the construction and occupancy of the house, which is located directly next to a circus area and which was destroyed in the Second World War, identifies a Mr. F. Heilbrunn as the original client who wanted to set up a “smokehouse” at Bornstrasse 19. The first document about his planning dates from June 1870. Apparently, however, it did not come to that. From 1894, the correspondence of the city administration and police authorities no longer runs with Heilbrunn, but with Buchthal. The first construction plan dates from April 2, 1894, the static report from October 1895. The Buchthal couple corresponded as early as 1895 with the letterhead “Buchthal & Co., Dortmund. Wholesale colonial goods, coffee wholesalers, steam coffee roasting, steam spice milling, office and warehouse: Bornstrasse 19 & Holzhof 2, telegram address: Buchthal. Telephone No. 406 ". In March 1896, the planing works W. Brügmann & Sohn set up furniture in the house. Around noon on February 7, a fire broke out in the building from the coffee roasting machine. In 1908 the telephone number became four digits: 1186. The spices disappeared from the letterhead. In the same year, the civil engineering department connected the building to the sewer system. At the end of 1913, the fire fighting department in Dortmund found defects in the building inspectorate: “The houses Bornstrasse 19 and Holzhofstrasse 55 are used by the large coffee roastery for office purposes, roasting and warehouse purposes.” The file jumps from 1913 to 1924, when the coffee roasting apparently one "Robert Bock paper wholesaler" had given way. There was talk of “lines of flight” (according to the law of flight lines of July 2, 1875), which had to be set up at the expense of land. In 1929 there is talk of another fire, which presumably was based on the storage of paper: “To Frau Stadtrat a. D. Buchthal, Dortmund, Leipziger Str. 19. With reference to your verbal application for restoration of the warehouse Bornstrasse 19, which was partially destroyed by fire, you are informed that the following requirements must be met in terms of building and fire protection ... “The file closes on December 6, 1930 with a letter from the Lord Mayor to "the municipal property management", in which Buchthal is not mentioned.
  4. ↑ On October 3, 1985, the OLG Frankfurt am Main wrote the following details to the Dortmund City Archives on request about the “professional career of Dr. Buchthal after his acceptance into the Hessian judicial service on February 1, 1949 ": 1.2.1949 Assistant Public Prosecutor at the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Kassel District Court / 1.7.1949 First Public Prosecutor at the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Higher Regional Court - Kassel branch / October 1, 1949 Higher Government Council in the Hessian Ministry of Justice / 1.7.1951 Senior Public Prosecutor at the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Regional Court of Wiesbaden / 25.10.1957 Regional Court Director and permanent representative of the Regional Court President at the Regional Court Darmstadt / July 1, 1958 President of the Senate at the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main / August 4, 1965, died in Pesaro / Italy. In a document of the District Court President Palm in Dortmund from January 16, 1931, his qualifications were named "bankruptcies, settlement proceedings, defensive proceedings, foreclosures and receiverships". His first day under “oath” was July 28, 1922, he passed the “major state examination” with a good mark, and on August 11, 1929 he became a district and regional judge in Dortmund. The Prussian Ministry of Justice wrote to him on July 7, 1933 that Buchthal was retired on November 1, 1933: “You are entitled to a pension based on Section 8 loc. in connection with no. 2.3 to §8 of the third ordinance for the implementation of the law for the restoration of the professional civil service of 6.5.1933 (RGBL. IS245) not to. "
  5. ↑ In the employment office from December 15, 1917 to November 15, 1918. Assistant officer from November 15, 1918. From: Personal files, Dortmund City Archives, 3P 4507
  6. ↑ on January 19, 1925. Among the 17 city councilors in this election were two women, besides Buchthal also Karoline Zorwald
  7. ↑ Signature 530, Buchthal Arnold, Dortmund City Archive
  8. ↑ State Archive NRW K104, No. 426066
personal data
SURNAME Buchthal, Rosa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dalberg, Rosa (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (DDP) and women's rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Marsberg , Sauerland
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1958
Place of death Amsterdam