Rosemary Kennedy

Family portrait (1931), Rosemary in front on the far right

Rosemary Kennedy (born September 13, 1918 in Boston , Massachusetts , as Rose Marie Kennedy, † January 7, 2005 in Fort Atkinson , Wisconsin ) was a sister of John F. and Robert F. Kennedy .

Life

Rosemary Kennedy was the third child and first daughter of Joseph and Rose Kennedy . She has been very shy since birth and also suffered from dyslexia . She learned to walk late, but swam enthusiastically, liked to dance and wrote diaries. An intelligence test had shown a mild intellectual disability ( retardation ), but this finding is controversial. In 1939 she graduated in Montessori education . She participated actively in social life and was passionate about attending opera performances, sporting events and other social occasions, and grew up to be a fun-loving adult. After Rosemary had reached adulthood, her character was described more often as stubborn to irascible and difficult to tame. One possible reason is considered to be Rosemary's disappointment at not being able to keep up with her older successful siblings. Parents began to fear that Rosemary's behavior could discredit the entire family and possibly become pregnant unintentionally - a possibility that sparked unrest in the strictly Catholic Kennedy family.

When Rosemary was 23 years old, her father, fearing for the family's reputation, had a lobotomy performed by his friend Walter Freeman . At the time, this operation was considered to be a way of "appeasing" people with uncontrolled instinctual life , but the operation was already very controversial. In Rosemary's case, the operation was disastrous. The improvement hoped for by the father did not materialize; instead, after the operation, her condition worsened so much that she could only babble like a child, became incontinent and was partly dependent on a wheelchair . Joseph Kennedy, ashamed of his now severely disabled daughter, had her admitted to St. Coletta Asylum in Wisconsin , where she spent the rest of her life. He never went to see her and was enraged when asked about her.

The operation was initiated by the father without the mother's consultation or knowledge, and this, together with the subsequent admission, is seen as one of the reasons for her mother Rose Kennedy's emotional departure from her husband Joseph P. Kennedy. Rose called her daughter a "gift from God"; she taught the people around her respect for disabilities. Rosemary's older brother John F. Kennedy did not publicly confess to her until 1960.

Rosemary's condition led her younger sister, Eunice Kennedy-Shriver, to set up the Special Olympics in 1968 and campaign for people with disabilities. When Rosemary Kennedy died at Fort Atkinson Memorial Hospital at the age of 86, her surviving siblings, including U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy , were by her side.

literature

• John H. Davis: Win! Win at any cost. The Kennedys - their true story , Zurich 1987.
• Kate Clifford Larson: Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015, ISBN 978-0-547-25025-0 .
• Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff: The Missing Kennedy: Rosemary Kennedy and the Secret Bonds of Four Women . Bancroft Press, Baltimore 2015, ISBN 978-1-610-88174-6 .

Web links

• Rosemary Kennedy in theInternet Movie Database(English)
• Marc von Lüpke: Rosemary Kennedy - “What have we done to you?” In: one day . Spiegel Online , October 21, 2015, accessed October 21, 2015 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ A Woman's Bridge Foundation: Rosemary Kennedy. Retrieved January 23, 2012 . 
2. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung : The missing Kennedy sister . May 11, 2009. Archived from the original on May 5, 2010. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved February 6, 2011. 
3. ↑ Die Presse : Why the Kennedy Patriarch Hid His Daughter , October 28, 2015, accessed June 1, 2016