Ruth Kellermann

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Ruth Kellermann , née Hesse (born June 23, 1913 in Berlin ; † 1999 ) was a German historian , racial and folklorist and women's researcher who was involved in the recording and assessment of Roma for the Racial Hygiene Research Center . T. worked freelance. A preliminary investigation into murder that was opened against her in 1984 was closed in 1989.

Life

Her parents were the trade teacher Georg Hesse and his wife Frieda nee Gohde. From 1919 to 1923 she attended elementary school in Berlin and then the Luther school, which she graduated from in March 1932. Starting in the summer semester of 1933, she studied prehistory , folklore, anthropology and racial studies , geology , German , Danish , history , newspaper studies and philosophy at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin , developing an interest in " gypsies " and learning Romani .

In 1938 she received her doctorate in Berlin with the dissertation : The Kimbernzug . Attempt to establish it on the basis of the prehistoric finds .

Ruth Kellermann died in 1999, leaving behind her five biological children and an extensive collection of literature. Individual copies from this have been used in museums since 2012.

"Gypsy" expert at the Racial Hygiene Research Center

Robert Ritter (center) at work in a showmen's yard in Hamburg in 1938
Hamburg 1938: Robert Ritter on the left, his colleague Eva Justin in the center
Ravensbrück concentration camp, women's camp (photo from 2008)

From October 1938 to July 1939 she was a research assistant at the Racial Hygiene Research Center (RHF) in Berlin. In 1939 she married and moved to Hamburg. At least until mid-1942, she worked as a freelancer for the RHF: She interviewed Roma and prepared reports, primarily on Roma living in the Hamburg area . For this purpose, together with other employees of the research center, she first evaluated the documents from the Hamburg police "Gypsy Service".

A Gypsy specialist of the Hamburg criminal police, who was later co-accused of the murder of Roma, testified in 1985: “Dr. The interviews carried out by Kellermann were very frequent and extensive up to the removal on May 20, 1940 , but such interviews were also carried out in numerous cases afterwards ”.

Other focal points were the mainly in Bohemia and Moravia -based Lalleri and "Gypsy name research." Kellermann, partly supported by her RHF colleague Ruth Helmke , continued her interviews in the Ravensbrück concentration camp . She promised that the female inmates would be released if they allowed themselves to be sterilized . Many of the Roma she interviewed later stated that they had been "insulted, threatened and abused" by Kellermann.

"Gypsy" expert after 1945

After the end of the war she gave some of the "Gypsy" materials that Kellermann had collected before 1945 to the Hamburg police. It is unclear whether she received remuneration for this. There she presumably also gave lectures to police officers. In 1961 she took part in a working conference of the clerks for combating the rural driving nuisance of the LKA and gave a lecture there. a. about the "gypsy language".

Controversies: Kellermann's Nazi Past and Trials

After the files of the Hamburg Nazi authorities became accessible to those affected after protests, the Rome and Cinti Union (RUC) filed a criminal complaint against Kellermann in 1984 for aiding and abetting murder . The RUC had found corresponding clues in the "Landfahrer files" received in the Hamburg State Archives .

The investigation was slow; During a house search, however, family tree overviews prepared by Kellermann and other documents that she had created for the purpose of "race diagnosis" and that were still in her possession were confiscated . The public prosecutor's office responded to a request from the Hamburger Abendblatt on November 21, 1985, but no reports from Kellermann had been found. Persons who appear in the confiscated family trees can be identified as prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp .

On the same day, Kellermann was to give a lecture on the subject of “Women's Work in the 19th Century” at the Museum of Hamburg History as part of the lecture series “Women's Work - Women's Life” at the University of Hamburg . The event was blown up by members of the RCU. Giovanna Steinbach , a survivor of the Auschwitz gypsy camp and the Ravensbrück concentration camp , held out to Kellermann: “You brought my family to the camp!” And spat in the face of the speaker. Rudko Kawczynski , RCU board member, read out a leaflet in which Kellermann's work for the “notorious Racial Hygiene Research Institute” was presented and which Kellermann named as the person responsible for the assessment and thus ultimately also the deportations and sterilizations. Kawczynski informed those present about the criminal complaint against Kellermann. Kellermann applied for an injunction against the RCU and was defeated.

“The Chamber is convinced that during the period from 1938 until the end of the war, the applicant was active in an area in which her work at least contributed to making the persecution and extermination of the Gypsies possible. Even if the applicant may not have fully recognized and overlooked the criminal intentions of the political leadership and her superiors at the beginning of her activity, she will have recognized, at least in the course of her work, on the basis of her position, her training and the sources that are accessible to her like everyone must that she did support for the later extermination of the gypsies. "

- Judgment text

The criminal proceedings against Kellermann were discontinued on May 3, 1989, because the proof could not be produced that their work for the RHF should be regarded as planning a genocide, even if it could not have remained unknown that at least a decimation of the term "Gypsies", a minority that was covered by the Nazi rulers, was planned.

The international press now also reported on Kellermann as a desk felon.

Fonts

  • The Kimbernzug. Attempt to establish it on the basis of the prehistoric finds . Dissertation, Friedrich Wilhelms University, Berlin. Wuerzburg 1938.

Kellermann is not aware of any other publications, especially tsiganological ones .

literature

  • "The nice old lady". Documentation on the Kellermann case. In: Communications from the Documentation Center on Nazi Social Policy [d. i. the documentation center of the Association for Research into National Socialist Health and Social Policy, Hamburg] 2/12 (1986), pp. 114–135.
  • Joachim S. Hohmann : Robert Ritter and the heirs of criminal biology. "Gypsy Research" in National Socialism. P. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-631-43984-9 , pp. 287 f.
  • Kathrin Kompisch: perpetrators. Women under National Socialism. Böhlau, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-412-20188-3 ( English-language review by Allan Hall in the Daily Mail of February 12, 2009).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Joachim S. Hohmann: Robert Ritter and the heirs of criminal biology. "Gypsy Research" in National Socialism. P. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1991.
  2. ↑ a b Paul Behrens: “Vollzigeuner” and “Mischlinge”. The former racial researcher Ruth Kellermann defends her reputation. In: Die Zeit of February 7, 1986.
  3. ↑ Info letter from the Museum für Arbeit from 1/2012 , pages 4-5 (.pdf)
  4. ↑ a b Kathrin Kompisch: perpetrators. Women under National Socialism. Böhlau, Cologne 2008.
  5. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Prehn: The deportations of Roma and Sinti from Hamburg. The contribution of perpetrators and assistants and the memories of the victims. In: News from the Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg 2009 ( Memento of the original from January 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.3 MB), pp. 81–94, here 92. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zeitgeschichte-hamburg.de
  6. ↑ a b Karin Guth: The perpetrators - Ruth Kellermann. In: This: The persecution and deportation of the Sinti and Roma in Hamburg by the National Socialists. University of Hamburg.
  7. ↑ Tobias Joachim Schmidt-Degenhard: Robert Ritter (1901-1951). On the life and work of the Nazi "gypsy researcher". Dissertation, University of Tübingen, 2008, p. 194.
  8. ↑ Hamburg Public Prosecutor's Office, files from the proceedings against Dr. Ruth Kellermann et al. A., 2200 Js 2/84, cited as archival document a. a. with Sybil Milton: preliminary stage to destruction. The gypsy camps after 1933. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, issue 1 (1995) (PDF; 9.0 MB), pp. 115–130, here p. 118.
  9. ↑ a b c Kathrin Herold: The memory is occupied. Right to stay protests by the Rom & Cinti Union at the Neuengamme concentration camp memorial. Master's thesis, University of Bremen, 2006.
  10. ↑ According to an article in Die Zeit , her prisoner number was Z-3709. See State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in cooperation 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 et al. 1993, ISBN 3-598-11162-2 , according to which the number belongs to Giovanna Lafrentz (born February 4, 1929 in Hamburg-Wandsbek ). Since this surname is extremely rare among inmates, the other inmates with the same surname probably belong to their family: Gertrude L. (Z-3710), born on September 1, 1930 in Luwitz, was dated May 5, 1944 Note died, with Giselle L. (Z-3696) (* May 19, 1933 in "Handsberk"), and Welda-Luise (Z-3697) (* May 18, 1936), the information about the whereabouts is missing (memorial book women , P. 239). The men reached the gypsy camp Auschwitz on March 14 and 15, 1943 respectively. Christian L. (Z-3299) (* July 7, 1904 in Kiel ), August L. (Z-3300) (* May 24, 1930 in Schoppe) and Rolf L. (Z-3309) (* September 30, 1940 in Hamburg) all died in Auschwitz in 1943 (memorial book men, p. 98).
  11. ↑ Hohmann 1991, p. 290, reports the judgment text; Date of recruitment and file number p. 383.
personal data
SURNAME Kellermann, Ruth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian and anthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 1999